I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

I'm sometimes asked, what book changed your life?

So many books have changed my life.

It's impossible to answer.

Or I'm sometimes asked, what book do you give most often as a gift?

That question is easier to answer.

The book that I most often give as a gift and a book that changed my life is Christopher

Alexander's brilliant, strange book, a pattern language.

I love much of Alexander's work, but this book is my favorite.

Few books have made such an impression on me and the way that I see and think.

The book sets forth an archetypal language of 253 patterns, that's a pattern language,

that make the designs of towns, buildings, and most interesting to me homes the most pleasing.

This book doesn't need to be read from front to back.

I often just flip through it and study the parts that resonate with me.

And I look at the pictures, of course.

I'm a very text-centric person and not very visual.

And this book helped me to identify the elements about spaces that I like or don't like.

It allows me to see the world in a new way.

And as a consequence, I've been able to do some things differently in my own space

to make it more pleasing.

To give you an example, for instance, here's a list of some of the patterns that I love

most.

...