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There is every reason to read Matthieu Ricard's book "Happiness" if you want to be happy. I am reading it for the second time and have just purchased it again from Powell's for a friend. Ricard is an impressive and valuable combination on this topic. As a young man living in his native France, he received a doctorate from the prestigious Pasteur Institute and worked in the field of molecular biology. Also as a young man, he became a Buddhist monk, now living in the Sechen Monastery in Nepal. He brings together his leaning of the ancient Buddhist teachings with his modern scientific background regarding the connection between the brain and "the mind," the result of which shows the merging of the ancient teachings with the new knowledge of the modern science, all auguring well for the possibility of happiness in our lives. He has taken part in the well-publicised collaboration of the Buddhist community with Western scientists conducting the studies. He takes on the subjects of the damaging emotions of anger, hatred, revenge,and envy-all of which prevent or at least impair one's happiness-and shows the promising evidence that a person can, as a matter of both the science and personal commitment, overcome these self-destructive emotions. The book is not a Buddhist book but one of "secular spirituality," as Ricard describes it. It's for everyone who's ever been stuck in a mind set that prevents happiness. As Ricard describes his purpose, the book is "for the heart and mind of anyone who aspires to a little more joie de vivre and to let wisdom and compassion reign in her or his life."

There are as many layers in Kathleen Norris' book "Dakota" as there are changes in the South Dakota weather. The index showing 13, albeit brief, chapters entitled "Weather Report," each for a different date, tips the reader to the importance of weather in this book. There are Ms. Norris' poetic, being-there word pictures of vast prairie, big sky, cyclones and tough winters. There's the contrast of her anticipated life as a writer in New York City to that of a small-town, farm-country resident, public librarian, artist-in-residence in the schools, preacher in a local church and, of course, writer in Lemmon, South Dakota, where there are "far more cattle than people" and not many publishing houses nearby. The stories about Ms. Norris' neighbors and friends in South Dakota are alone worth the read. And even though first published in 1993, Dakota provides a bonus of a compelling and compassionate view of an awesome and challenging part of the American Midwest with a culture foreign to most of us who have never been west of the Mississippi or east of California and which she describes as a "world so at odds with American society," and "[i]n a way,...a microcosm of the tribalism that is reasserting itself in the world." And it makes me want to know if much has changed and whether the Internet has transformed it. Regardless of its age, "Dakota" is an insightful study of culture at a macro and micro level, a meditation with the backdrop of weather, stark contrasts, stories and musings relevant to us all on enduring human concerns about how place shapes who we are and our myths, gossip and truth in small towns, the farm crisis, which persists, her monasticism, the real history of the American frontier, our connectedness to all things, and "having to live with limits."