Dick Sonnichsen’s latest book is a primer on living a good life

Dick Sonnichsen is on a roll, you might say. In five years, he has written and published five books. The latest is "Adventures in Good Living: A User’s Guide to Living a Happy And Meaningful Life on Planet Earth". With a weighty title like that, it might be expected that there are some big secrets revealed, but it’s much more like good advice from an old and experienced friend. In fact, Sonnichsen addresses letters to his grandchildren in the text, offering insights on the important subjects of drinking and dating

Of all the tips about living a good life offered in "Adventures in Good Living", perhaps the most profound is also one of the simplest. “Live life slowly,” Sonnichsen advises. “That will make it last longer.” That small gem may be what our world needs to hear most in these crazy times.

In his eighth decade, Sonnichsen makes an inclusive and incisive assessment of the state of the planet — the United States in particular — and presents a broad array of ideas to help make life more meaningful. On the angsty side, Sonnichsen addresses global warming; bitter partisan politics; poverty, income inequality and accumulation of wealth by the few; race relations, COVID-19; and the rabbit hole of the world wide web, a technology that should unite us but often serves to isolate us further from our fellow humans and the natural world. He urges each of us to take immediate action to help solve these concerns in the greater world as well as our personal lives.

On the lighter side, he discusses a diverse range of comforts, from food to drink to sex to the joy of hiking and the blessings of relationship with friends, family and spouse. It’s not all bad news, after all.

He returns also to a subject addressed in previous books: the efficacy (or lack thereof) of organized religion. Evolution, he asserts, offers a much more believable and provable version of how we and all of our fellow creatures (including all those bugs!) came to be.

Sonnichsen’s sources for Adventures in Good Living range from the ancient Greeks through Darwin and Thoreau to Rachel Carson and A.C. Grayling. The bottom line of his shared thoughts is that each individual has the capacity to live a good life, but it is each individual’s responsibility to take action to achieve it.

“Don’t let your life happen by accident,” he says. In a world full of problems and the worries that accompany them, there is much to be learned Adventures in Good Living.

Adventures in Good Living was published by Blue Creek Press (bluecreekpress.com) Sonnichsen’s latest book and his others are available at Vanderford’s Books in Sandpoint and online at Amazon.