Reasons to Be Happy, March 17, 2014

1. Alma in The Signature of All Things. Let me be clear: I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, even if it did make both the Tournament of Books and the Bailey's Prize longlist. I had many problems with it: Prudence's story, from beginning to end. Retta's story, from beginning to end. The character of Tomorrow Morning. The fact that Tomorrow Morning is named "Tomorrow Morning." The way Gilbert seems to just give up in exhaustion rather than coming up with a coherent, sensible ending. But I loved Alma. I loved her desire to know how everything works--everything, from her mother's accounting system to the growth of plants to the human heart. I loved that she seemed to have a perfectly productive and content life, most of the time, without being hung up on romance. I loved that there weren't a lot of scenes showing her longing for a husband and children. More than that, for reasons I can't quite articulately explain, Alma felt very much like a real person to me. Twelve hours after finishing the book, I am still trying to figure out how to manipulate the space-time continuum so that she and I can hang out and talk about moss.
2. The Morning News Tournament of Books. One of my favorite things about every March. Today's decision, pitting Kate Atkinson's Life After Life against Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees, proved to be quite the shocker (the literary equivalent of Weber State beating Arizona in the NCAA tournament).
3. The Good Wife renewal. The Cancellation Bear had me worried--is it my imagination, or does the Cancellation Bear take a little too much pleasure in watching struggling shows bite the dust?--but CBS renewed The Good Wife for another season. Yay! And to add to my joy, last night's episode was stellar, incorporating Alicia's origin story; Elsbeth, one of my favorite recurring characters; some developments in this season's ongoing story arc; and a wandering anti-Semitic bear.
4. Introducing my sons to Better Off Ted. Despite what you may have heard, there are pleasures in parenting teenagers and near-teenagers, and chief among them is sharing your favorite pop culture with them. Case in point: this quirky dead-too-soon sitcom. Listening to the boys chortle over it made me feel very pleased to have kids with good taste whom I enjoy hanging out with.
5. Josh Radnor's "Song of the Day". I started following Josh Radnor on Twitter because of my obsession with How I Met Your Mother (he stars in it). But I will keep following him after the show says good-bye in a couple of weeks because I've gotten hooked on his "Song of the Day." (If you don't like Twitter, there is also a Spotify list.)