Welcome to the Swagbucks Book Club.  As a reminder, we meet here in the blog every Friday at 10am Pacific Time and discuss various things related to books and the joy of reading.  Every 4-6 weeks we discuss a specific book which has been chosen by you, the Book Club.  Also, there are no membership requirements to be part of the Swagbucks Book Club.  It is open to anyone who wants to take part, just be here at the blog on Friday’s at 10am Pacific Time.

Before we get to today’s discussion I wanted to get your opinion on our next book selection. I’ve tried to lean towards positive or uplifting books to start the new year off on the right foot.

Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope by Gabrielle Giffords, mark Kelly, Jeffrey Zaslow – An unflinching look at the overwhelming challenges of brain injury, the painstaking process of learning to communicate again, and the responsibilities that fall to a loving spouse who wants the best possible treatment for his wife. Told in Mark’s voice and from Gabby’s heart, the book also chronicles the lives that brought these two extraordinary people together—their humor, their ambitions, their sense of duty, their long-distance marriage, and their desire for family.

The Happiness Project: Or Why I spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean Out My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. – In this lively and compelling account, Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

 This Year I Will…:How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True by MJ Ryan. - Helps you lock on to your unique formula for planning, implementing, and seeing a life change through, so you can use it again and again to tackle anything else you’d like to do. For anyone who has broken a New Year’s resolution, fallen off a diet, or given up on fulfilling a dream, the ingenious strategies, inspiring stories, and sheer motivational energy of This Year I Will . . . help you make a promise to yourself that you can actually keep.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. – An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.

An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff & Alex Tresniowski. – It is the heartwarming story of a friendship that has spanned thirty years, that brought life to an over-scheduled professional who had lost sight of family and happiness and hope to a hungry and desperate boy whose family background in drugs and crime and squalor seemed an inescapable fate.

The current Swagbucks Book Club selection is The Paris Wife, a novel by Paula McLain.  This work of historical fiction weaves the tale of Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley as they mix and mingle with fellow literary expatriates in 1920s Paris.  Please join in the discussion in the comments section between now and Sunday evening.  I will be hooking up insightful contributors with 25 Swag Bucks on Monday.

-Becky