You Don't Have to be Rich by Jean Chatzky

I could say that the title says it all-- and it very nearly does-- but I will add a couple of things that make this one of my favorite finance books.

Jean Chatzky had been a "personal finance expert" for some time when 9/11 happened, and many people-- including herself-- began to wonder about what really makes us happy, and whether money has anything to do with it at all, after 9/11 happened. Happily, she had the resources to find out: she commissioned a money-and-happiness survey, the results of which she explicates in this book.

It turns out that, though not having enough money can make you sad, money beyond a certain point doesn't make you happier. Also, there was a list of financial habits which, if you kept several of them, can make a little money seem like a lot more. (The ones I can remember off the top of my head are paying bills as they come in rather than in one bill-paying session, and being organized enough that you can find the financial documents you need within about ten minutes of looking.)

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this book is the fact that, while she does give some potential explanations for Why These Things Are So, she doesn't focus on them. She just focuses on how to help her readers have a relationship with money that doesn't cause them pain and does, to the extent it can, bring happiness.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This book - and this entire series - is a lovely portrait of life in the late 1800's - I am struck, each time I read it, with how much detail of daily life it has. Simply laid out to appeal to even a very young listening audience, I've found it good reading-aloud material for all ages. It's about a girl, but I've found boys to be as interested in the accounts of panthers and bears and household chores (making bullets, butchering pigs) as any girl I've ever known. And really worth re-reading. It is, technically, fiction; my best guess, given the level of detail, (and the difference between the earlier books, which she fully edited, and the last, published after she died, without said editing) that she smoothed over some of the difficulties of family life - but the everydayness of frontier life seems to be accurate (as would details of life in the late 1900's in any book someone my age would write, as the audience would spot discrepancies immediately). Delightful, excellent, and repeatedly re-visitable.