The Power of Habit

The Power of Habit
author:  Charles Duhigg
Publisher: Random House
to be published:  March 2012
source:  Publisher

Even though The Power of Habit is subtitled Why We Do What We Do and How to Change It, it is not a how-to self-help book.  

Duhigg gives us several tales about habits and how they affect individuals and organizations.  He talks about a few people with short-term memory loss.  One had to be institutionalized, another was able to live at home because of his power of habit.   

1929 ad source

 In the early 1900's, only 7 per cent of Americans owned a tube of toothpaste.  A man who invented Pepsodent  asked his old friend to help sell it.  They came up with a "gimmick" and a craving which immediately changed the habits of the nation.  Within a decade, 65 per cent had a tube of toothpaste in their medicine cabinet!

Duhigg goes on to explain why Febreze became so popular,  tells how Tony Dunghy changed his football team, and gives us many more interesting stories about the power of habit and how it works.

One tip is more than just a cue, routine, craving, and reward.  That is why I'm  doing Zumba -- the accountability of the Get Moving Fitness Challenge (see sidebar).

A fabulous read!  If you cannot wait until it is published, check out Duhigg's website with other stories of habits.

Non-fiction short list

These are the five books I'll be reading the next several weeks.  They're the short list books on the Indie Lit Awards.  Reviews won't be posted until after we have selected the winning book!

• Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe (Putnam Adult)
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (Crown)
• Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (Harper)
• Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku (Doubleday)
• The Social Animal by David Brooks (Random House)

Books in other genres can be found on the Indie Lit Awards website.

Now 'scuse me while I go cuddle with my cat and read, read, read.

2012 TBR Challenge

Box of Doom

2012 TBR Challenge

is my TBR reading challenge.   Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness has a shelf of doom; she got the idea from Fizzy Thoughts who got it from our fearless leader Adam of Roofbeam Reader.  

In sum, we are to choose 12 books we've had on our TBR Mountain more than a year, plus two alternatives, and read these twelve throughout 2012.  We are to post reviews of them too.    My shelves are too full to dedicate one shelf to these fourteen, so I pulled out the books and put them in a box next to my La-Z-Boy.  So when I feel like watching mindless t.v., I can look down into my Box of Doom.


The 12 books, in no specific order, are:

1. Speaking My Mind by Tony Campolo    Former pastor and his wife love this book.  They couldn't always speak their mind publicly because of his position.
2. Level 26 by Anthony E. Zuiker  Supposed to be a gruesome thriller
3. Complications by Atwul Gawande  medical memoir
4. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon    lives of three strangers intersect
5. Babi Yar by A. Anatoli (Kuznetsov)     Visited Kiev in July and  Yad Vashem in Israel in January and October.  Each time, I told myself, "Gotta get home to read Babi Yar!"  (Goodness, I just noticed on Amazon that a used paperback is over $16!)
6. Breakthrough-Return of Hope to the Middle East by Tom Doyle   Got this long before I knew I'd be visiting the Middle East twice in 2011.
7. The Six-Liter Club by Harry Krauss   a medical novel
8. The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen   I have all her books, yet haven't read one.  No wonder my TBR shelves are overflowing.
9. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
10. Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
11. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro  short stories
12. 18 Seconds by George D. Shaman  a blind psychic looks for a serial killer

Alternates:
Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison, a man with Asperger's
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi