"Wherever You Go, There You Are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn

I had been interested in reading this book for some time as it was constantly being quoted in Yoga classes.  A little "added stress" in my life and I pulled it off my rather impressive pile.  It was a good call, but I don't think I read it correctly.  This is a manual, a handbook of sorts, helping readers to be more mindful, to practice mindfulness, and the impact that mindfulness can bring to your life.  I tried, as I do with all books, to read the whole thing through, as my list of "to read" is constantly growing.  Ideally, what I should have done is read it in small bites, not big gulps.  The chapters are short and grouped.  Reading one to three chapters in a sitting is preferable than 50 or more pages at a time.  You need time to absorb the sometimes very deep, dense text, and other times you simply need to think about what was said.  Quotes from a wide variety of people -- from Walt Whitman to Lao Tzu -- pepper the end of each section.  I liked the center sections the best, where Kabat-Zinn breaks out different ways of meditating and "being present."  Although I practice many of them already, it was nice to step back and examine that a bit.  I particularly liked his suggestion of doing walking meditation in a grocery store, as no one cares how slowly you go when you have a cart in front of you.  That one made me laugh.  He did, of course, go over the wonders of getting up with the dawn.  I've occasionally found that to be a lovely experience when it happens naturally, but these days, watching sunrise from my car window on my way to work, I'm not always feeling it.  It was a nice reminder to appreciate the moment.  He did something odd at the end of the book, however.  Some will enjoy it, others, not so much.  I was kind of on the fence.  He had several chapters on parenthood.  These seemed fairly personal and some sort of catharsis -- which was an odd contrast to the didactic nature of the rest of the book.  Since I am not a parent, I couldn't fully connect, although some of his stories were amusing.  I honestly didn't know what to make of the whole "dirty cat dish" tale other than he was trying to make a public apology to his wife.  He then went on to try and separate the focus of this book from spiritualism.  Given that many of the quotes he used were from spiritual leaders, this seemed odd.  Again, it felt as if he was trying to use that section to speak to a specific reader, rather than readers at large.  In any case, I did find this book to be both interesting and useful.  For me, I was able to take from it "what I took from it" -- and suggest you do the same.