What a great book, I feel like I'd really like to visit a country where the measure of the country is how happy the people are instead of how much money or product they produce. Well written and plenty of interesting people. Written in 2011, I'd like to see the writer do a follow up as it seems the country was in transition when this book was written. ( )

This is a memoir of a woman in her forties who learns to find and create her own happiness. That it takes a trip to Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth, is almost coincidental.As with much in life, every decision taken or not taken, has consequences and learning to follow them and learn from them is the take-way I got from this book. A few quotes that spoke to me:

- Most important, I was learning to slow down, to sit with myself and the uncertainties of the future. To enjoy not knowing what was next, instead of fearing and panicking over what might be. To appreciate the success I'd had instead of dwelling on my failure to have accomplished more.

- Most compelling to me were the underlying principles of the religion (Buddhism): Compassion for all beings, and the interconnectedness of everyone. The ideals of wisdom and knowledge. Self-reliance. Acceptance and forgiveness. What you possessed and achieved wasn't what was important...Most religions espoused similar values, but there was something about the Buddhist approach to delivering the message that spoke to me...

- The mysteries of the brain and emotion, of letting go, of moving on...Clinging to a person or place or moment in time was futile and unwise and led to suffering; so did wanting things to be different than they were.

- I've learned that the ingredients for happiness are simple: giving, loving, and contentment with who you are.

- For a minute, I try to imagine how different my life would have played out had I......The only thing that's certain is that I would not have had the experiences I've had....I (now) understand how each decision has consequences. I also see the preposterousness of thinking you can have it all, much less trying to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I personally am not Buddhist or even religious in any way. But the concepts Lisa Napoli ruminates on in this book are, I think, quite universal and gave me a lot to think about. ( )

A woman in her forties accepts an invitation to help a new youth run radio station in Bhutan. During this and subsequent visits, she makes peace with her past, and begins to understand happiness. A great read with vivid descriptions of Bhutan, and a Bhutanese girl's first impressions of the United States. ( )

I read this book because I heard it was an interesting memoir. I have to agree, it was very interesting and there were times I had a hard time putting the book down to take part in life. The way the author presented her take on culture was very new to me, she allowed the reader to decided if the person or situation was good or bad. She presented her adventure in a balanced way. I will seek out this author again if she chooses to write another book. ( )

Part travelogue of the remote country of Bhutan and part self-search, this book takes the author to a corner of Asia not well traveled. There the author finds a remarkable people on the brink of joining the 21st century. She is invited to help them develop a national radio station. She advises the producers on content and helps the DJs overcome their innate shyness.

Along the way she finds an inner peace that she had been unable to connect with through traditional and nontraditional Western methods. ( )

Non-fiction account of a single woman's volunteer trip to Bhutan to help the fledgling radio station. A wonderful insight into the isolated Asian country at a major turning point. The monarch announced his giving over the throne to his son just before the author arrives. The new king announces the imminent adoption of a constitution and, as soon as the astrologers pick an auspicious date, the voting for parliament representatives. The author gives personal accounts of her growth as a "happy" person as well as the Westernization of this Buddhist country as fast food and packaged snacks are imported. ( )

I received this book from Read It Forward and have since passed it on to some friends who I think will enjoy the book. When Lisa Napoli gets the chance to visit Bhutan to help a fledgling radio station, she jumps at the chance to change her life & visit a country few get a chance to travel to.
The book is enjoyable & gives insight into Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" program. Recommended. ( )

Not what I had hoped for when I purchased this book in an airport book store. Written by a journalist as a travel memoir, Radio Shangri-La was missing something. I guess I had hoped to be swept away into a foreign land that I would want to someday visit. I wanted to meet enchanting individuals that would also fuel my interest in finding their counterparts in real life one day. None of that happened.

A wonderful book about a little known country, told by a woman who got to see it from the beginning of its opening to the western world. Some changes were good some changes less so, but like anything there is good and bad, and if you have blinders on to promote an agenda, you miss half of what is really happening. ( )

Radio Shangri-La is meandering tale of a jouralist's trip to Bhutan. It's told from the first person point of view. As with all single POV narratives, this too, has the limitations of showing only what the one person experiences.

The trouble with this book is that the author has too hard of a time keeping the focus on anything, thus making it hard for the reader to stay interested in the story. To be completely honest, I did not love Radio Shangri-La. Too much description (not too vivid); little or no action...

While the travelogue fascade may appeal to some, it's not my thing. The two best things I can say about this book are: #1. I didn't waste my time on it. #2. I'm glad I didn't buy it. ( )

Lisa Napoli was in the middle of what I would call a mid life crisis. She was wondering, "Is this all?" She had a job as a radio journalist, but no current romantic attachment, no children and was feeling despair.

She had an accidental meeting with a handsome stranger and was presented with the opportunity to go around the world to live in the small country of Bhutan. Instead of measuring its GNP, it measured its, GNH (Gross National Happiness. It is a poor country set with rugged mountains Two third to three fourths of the population are Mahayana Buddists.

She would be given room and board but no pay for her job of setting up and train the radio announcers for Kuzoo FM Radio, the country's only radio station. The irony was that she fleeing a complete overload of communciaton,
TV, radio, and cell phones and yet she was undertaking this to bring Bhutan radio!

She dived into a culture that takes life very slow, has very different customs and hot and spicy food.

I enjoyed this books so much, I felt that I was right there with her in Bhutan, enjoying the gorgeous mountains, making friends with people who have a totally different life experience and to whom shopping was not the least bit important to them. I relaxed and enjoyed the trip into this far off world.

Come along with her and enjoy this stay in Bhutan and learn what is important in life.

I recommend this to anyone who has ever wanted to get away from the confusion and stress of today. ( )

Lisa Napoli was a radio journalist in New York when she got the opportunity to go to the little-known Himalyan Kingdom of Bhutan, a place where the nation's success is not measured by the GDP, but by GNH...gross national happiness. Napoli volunteered to help Bhutan set up their first youth-oriented radio station, Kuzoo FM.

In spite of the over-supply of travel sub-genre where a woman reaches middle-age and decides to travel to an exotic location on some kind of quest to find herself, to find meaning, to find love, or to find something else, I still enjoyed this book, which almost falls in the category.

I especially enjoyed learning about little-known Bhutan, but I'm afraid the only thing I garnered from the book about happiness, in spite of the subtitle, is that ignorance is bliss, I suppose. The king had kept Bhutan isolated from the rest of the world, and the inahabitants seemesd to me to have a certain chldlike quality...a simplicity, a sense of wonder at the world that was slowly opening up for them, and a sort of patriarchal devotion to the king who seemed a father figurehead.
I don't think that Napoli made clear what it is that she learned from Bhutan, except that a simpler life is less stressful and therefore happier.

This was not the greatest book I've ever read, but I did enjoy it. ( )

What's going on when a country bravely tosses the idea of measuring a society's worth in GNP and seizes upon attempting to measure it instead with Gross National Happiness? I've always been curious about Bhutan. Sadly, Napoli reveals in this book that the food in Bhutan is abysmal, but in every other way Napoli finds a small Eden, epitomized by the fact that Bhutan is a country where the king's phone number is actually published in the local phone book.

(Side note: Just when I was feeling all gooey and lovey-dovey about Bhutan, I went to a family get-together last week and my nephew started telling me the sad story of a new fellow at his job who is a refugee from Bhutan, fleeing Bhutan because of persecution there for his religious beliefs. So you might wait a bit before you start packing....)

In spite of being in the news business herself, Lisa Napoli was tired of its noisy, incessant, over simplified sound bites, so when offered a six month volunteer position at a startup radio station in faraway Bhutan she put her job at NPR on hold and jumped at the chance. Bhutan, a tiny landlocked Buddhist kingdom surrounded by India and China and full of gorgeous alpine vistas, is famous for having a king who prefers promoting Gross National Happiness over Gross National Product. Mass communication is still relatively new in Bhutan and Napoli’s young coworkers at Radio Kuzoo FM, Bhutan’s first nongovernmental broadcast radio station, are excited and enthusiastic and just a little naïve.

Radio Kuzoo is a modern version of the old fashioned community radio stations that we don’t have much of in the US anymore. Kuzoo played youth music--whatever they could download--from around the world, read the test scores of students waiting to hear if they had passed the national exam, and held an American Idol inspired Valentine’s Day contest where listeners called in and sang. Other times listeners called to chat with the staff, or dedicated songs, or send greeting to other listeners who had called in earlier.

For Napoli, Bhutan is as much a state of mind as a place on a map—it’s an antidote to her NY/LA world where people pay more attention to their smart phones than each other—and her trip is as much a journey of self-discovery as it is a trek to a beautiful, unique country halfway around the world. I greatly enjoyed reading about both aspects of her journey. Radio Shangri-La is a thoughtful, colorful, informative account of a visit to a part of the world most of us will never get to see for ourselves. ( )

I selected this book from Amazon Vine because I don't know much of anything about Bhutan and since the author lived and worked there, rather than vacationing, I thought she would give me an open-eyed view of the people, the government, and the landscape.

Since I have an ARC copy, there are no photographs and I can't see from amazon's website that there are any in the published book either. I hope I'm wrong because it really needs pictures of Bhutan, her friends there, and herself.

Napoli went to Bhutan in 2007 when she was 40 and going through a bit of a midlife crisis, wondering if she should have stayed married, had children, and lived a more "normal" life. As it was, she had worked at CNN, NPR, and other radio outlets, and was at that time working in Los Angeles in radio. She was originally from New York City but had lived many places. As a result, she had friends all over, many of them close friends she kept in touch with. It was one of her friends who introduced her to someone who got her a volunteer consulting position with a new radio station in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, and she was off on the adventure of a lifetime.

Now she has friends there as well. She has been back many times and the end of the book is quite sad as she relates the modernizing changes that have come to Bhutan. Along the way, Napoli came to terms with her own life and realized what it is she needs to do to feel truly fulfilled.

I enjoyed learning more about Bhutan, including exactly where it is. This is the country that values its "happiness quotient" rather than its GNP. The people didn't get television until a few years ago; the unfortunate result is that they believe all of us in the U.S. live in huge, posh homes like the characters on "Desperate Housewives." They found it hard to believe that we aren't all rich and that Napoli's L.A. apartment wasn't much bigger than her digs in Bhutan. As it opens to the West, perhaps some of those misperceptions will be made clear, but they are certainly paying a price.

I recommend this book, but it won't be on my list of favorite reads for the year. ( )

Radio Shangri-la is the memoir of Los Angeles public radio presenter Lisa Napoli, who decides to take six months' leave of absence from the dream job she now dislikes to volunteer at Radio Kuzoo in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which is just starting to experiment with modernization after centuries of voluntary isolation from the rest of the world. This decision seems to have been made on a whim; indeed, Napoli does not appear to think very deeply about much of anything she experiences. This may sound like a put down, but it isn't: Radio Shangri-la is a breath of fresh air precisely because Napoli avoids the tedious navel-gazing that makes so many memoirs--especially those in which the author travels to an exotic, "spiritual" locale in order to discover the meaning of life--unbearable.

For instance, Napoli finds the giant phalli adorning many Bhutanese houses quite odd and tells us so, yet thankfully refrains from the nigh-obligatory commentary on the West's Jekyll-and-Hyde attitude toward sexuality versus the ostensible openness of the East. Similarly, Napoli concludes the chapter in which a high-ranking monk attempts to bilk her out of hundreds of dollars for a bogus "ritual purification" without mourning her shattered innocence--no "But how could a Rinpoche be just as materialistic as a Westerner" hand-wringing to be found here. Thanks to this approach, readers aren't left groaning over Napoli's inability to speak the local language or preference for familiar Western food: situations that so frequently become major pitfalls in similar memoirs.

Unfortunately, this approach also has its downsides. In particular, Napoli's failure to conceptualize her experiences as part of an overarching story makes for a haphazard, jumbled narrative in which intriguing characters and situations are introduced only to become red herrings when Napoli fails to return to them at later points in the book. What guidance did Napoli offer the staff at Radio Kuzoo, and how different is it now from the station she first encountered? What did the Bhutanese participants in the Smithsonian Folkways exhibition think of the American capital? Is the mysterious Phub Dorji, Napoli's highly-connected sponsor at Radio Kuzoo really connected to the royal family? Napoli never informs us. Indeed, Napoli frequently fails to introduce even the most basic background information for the individuals in Radio Shangri-La. Readers hear that "Star" said something in the studio one day, but we have no idea who "Star" is, and "Tshering" might be a nickname for Ngawang (one of the Bhutanese about whom we are told the most) or it might not; Napoli never clarifies.

Likewise, readers only know that Napoli is amused, frustrated, elated, or nervous because she explicitly states as much; the narrative itself gives no clues to her mental state. And her lecturing of young Bhutanese girls who want to emigrate to the United States comes off as sanctimonious, coinciding as it does with descriptions of just how arduous life is for everyday Bhutanese...especially in comparison to Napoli's own comfortable American existence.

That said, there's a wealth of interesting informational tidbits in here on Bhutanese history (both ancient and modern), architecture, religion, and culture, especially for readers who aren't familiar with the Himalayas. Although one wishes Napoli had paid a bit more attention to fleshing out her narrative, Radio Shangri-La is still a quick, interesting read about life in a place few Westerners have ever heard of. ( )

1. Pacing: quick paced due to short chapters, reads almost like a novel
2. Characterization: told in first person like a travel narrative, Bhutan almost plays a character because you learn so much about it and it has a huge impact on the author
3. Story Line (including the book’s context, type, genre, theme, and subjects): super unique topic about a foreign land that is not often talked about and the way that it shaped the writer, lots of history spread throughout, as well as the current status of the country
4. Language: conversational, mixed with bits of history and cultural information but still reads easily
5. Setting: Bhutan and Los Angeles
6. Special Notes: not any pics which would have been a great addition
7. Tone: hopeful

In Radio Shangri-La Lisa Napoli is struggling on the edges of depression, trying to find a way to reconcile herself with a life that isn't all she dreamed of. It all begins when she attends an experimental workshop on positive thinking. One day the instructor assigns the class homework, each night before you go to bed write down three good things that happened. As Lisa takes the assignment to heart her outlook on life and what she values begins to change.

Thus when the friend of a friend leading trips into the mysterious land of Bhutan offers to help her get a position starting up Bhutan's first ever radio station she doesn't hesitate but dives in head first. All she knows about Bhutan is that it is widely considered the Happiest Kingdom on Earth and measures the Gross National Happiness of its citizens, but she is determined to find out if the people there are really all that happy and how to achieve that for herself.

This was a very fun and light hearted look at the female midlife crisis. While Lisa works through some serious issues in the book you never doubt that she will come out shining in the end. The glimpse into the land of Bhutan is fascinating. The travel literature aspect of the book was phenomenal. I feel like I have actually visited the place myself and met the people. I love that she didn't try to sugar coat the situation in Bhutan or ignore the changes going on there, it made the book feel all the more authentic. I recommend this book as a great summer escape. ( )

Bhutan captured my imagination back in my son's freshman year at Stanford because of a connection with one of his Stanford faculty and the Royal family. He almost spent part of that summer there, but time and finances worked against him heading to the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. Had he gone, he would have been in Bhutan the same time Lisa Napoli first went there, to help with the fledgling youth radio station Kuzoo FM.

There was a lot I liked about this book, but it had little to do with the author's story and more with the country itself. I was fascinated by the story that was behind University of Texas El Paso's architecture being based on Bhutanese architecture. Who knew? I had to look it up to see the Texan interpretation of Himalayan style [ http://universitycommunications.utep.edu/campusimagebank/ ] And I, who absolutely love all kinds of graffiti and wall art, or native art that decorates homes in other country got a huge kick out of learning many homes in Bhutan has phalluses painted on them to ward off evil. Of course, that got a google search. Amazing. The unfolding of democracy, and the way auspicious dates were calculated intrigued me. Then there was the general beauty of the country. I spent hours looking at photographs.

As to Napoli's story itself, I had less infatuation. But she had a tale to tell, and told it well. (Many of my frustrations in reading were because this was an uncorrected proof, and there were some mixups with names of characters - real vs fictional. I hope those were straightened out before the book went to press.) Napoli's needs and life are very different from mine, but I still can appreciate her journey -- especially since she gave me a lift, via armchair travelling, to the beautiful kingdom of Bhutan.

Many thanks to readitforward.com for this book. I shall be passing it along via www.bookcrossing.com (http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9707127). ( )

Napoli's memoir of her love affair with Bhutan, the happiest kingdom on Earth, is exactly what a memoir should be: personal without being self-aggrandizing, informative without being overly complex or boring, and thought-provoking without being cloying.

Travel-writing-type-memoirs have left a bad taste in my mouth recently. Many I've read have focused more on the author's portrayal of self - particularly a hipster sort of too cool self - than they have on what I feel is the real point: a discussion of personal growth through an authentic connection with place. Radio Shangri-La, on the other hand, reminded me of why I used to love reading about a person's experiences traveling.

Napoli's motivation to travel to Bhutan as a consultant for a newly formed youth radio station was perfectly spontaneous. While she discusses her exigence - a dissatisfaction with life - she doesn't harp on it, which was something which annoyed me greatly when I tried (and failed) to read Eat, Pray, Love. Those who go on journeys as a way to up the ante in their life fascinate me, and I enjoy hearing about their general malaise which serves as an impetus for adventure. I do not, however, like whining. Whining, actually, is one of my pet peeves. Hearing those who have it pretty damn good complain about how ordinary and unsatisfactory their lives are gives me little twitches and a strong desire to bitch-slap. Napoli, thank Buddha, was not like this at all. Her comments on the why of going are short and to the point. Then she focuses on the real meat of the story - Bhutan.

Napoli's experiences in Bhutan are vivid: she engages the senses through descriptions of wondrous vistas, flavorful food, unique smells, and the heart of the people. My favorite part, though, would have to be the intriguing view she provided of the politics and history of Bhutan. Which is kind of weirding me out. At least the political part is. Generally speaking, I'm not in to politics. Most of the time I find them disheartening. But Napoli's explanations of Bhutan's move from monarchy to democracy fascinated me. She offered enough detail that my appetite was whetted, especially since this monumental change was not a grassroots revolution. Quite the opposite in fact, it was the monarch himself who incited the change much to the displeasure of the population who loved their king. I find this so intriguing that you can bet I will be reading more on the subject. ( )

Dissatisfied with her life as a radio journalist, Lisa Napoli takes a stranger at a party up on his random offer -- to visit Bhutan and lend some of her expertise to setting up the country's first youth-oriented radio station, KuzooFM. At the time, Bhutan was known as 'the happiest place on earth', measuring its success in GNH (Gross National Happiness) and limiting the influence of the outside world.

Over time, this changed, and through Napoli's memoir we get to experience the shifting social structure as it happened: democracy, access to Western television stations, modern music, and a growing sense of materialism in a country that was previously focused on family and spirituality. There is one interesting thing to note: even with the changes, Bhutan has retained its $200-per-day tourist tax for visitors wanting to enter the country. The country may be more open, yes, but they still don't want the hoardes of unwashed Westerners traipsing through their sacred spaces.

I'm glad I read the book to learn about Bhutan, which I previously knew very little about. However, you may have noticed that I haven't yet talked about Napoli and her time at the radio station. That's because I actually found that part of the narrative somewhat dull and self-indulgent. I'm very glad that Napoli was able to 'find herself' in the experience, and was able to discover her priorities in life, but unlike other 'travel memoir' style books I've read recently, there didn't seem to be a real point here.

She wasn't there on a humanitarian mission, so the book wasn't written to create an awareness of social injustice. She didn't do anything particularly remarkable, so the book wasn't written to chronicle how she rose from nothing to conquer to world. There are moments of excitement and flashes of brilliance, but on the whole, I wasn't quite sure what the point of the book happened to be.

On the whole, I was a little disappointed. The cover (of my ARC, anyway) is lovely, and the title is fantastic. I only wish I'd known the purpose of the book, rather than feeling like I was simply indulging a friend telling a bland travel story, and not really sure how to walk away without being rude... ( )

Bhutan, with its Gross National Happiness emphasis, its gorgeous and isolated setting, wonderful people, and sudden ascent into the 21st century, has intrigued me, so I couldn't wait to read this memoir by a woman who volunteered at a fledgling radio station in the country. And I loved learning more about this unique country.

Unfortunately, the writing didn't quite live up to my expectations; it just didn't grab me as much as I had anticipated. To start, the author writes about Harris and Matt, Benjamin and Sebastian. Are Harris and Matt the same person? What about Benjamin and Sebastian? I hate flipping back to try to figure out who is who. To be expected with Bhutanese names, but could have easily been avoided with the American ones.

The author is having a midlife crisis. She has chosen a career in modern media but seems to dislike almost everything about her chosen field. Something terrible happened to her when she was young, and it has understandably affected her later decisions, but too much of the book just seems like whining and I couldn't connect to her feelings. She hated the food in Bhutan and the stray dogs annoyed her, as though it were the dogs' fault they were strays, and couldn't seem to let either of those things go.

I did love reading about some of the Bhutanese people, the irrepressible Ngawang and her impressions of the United States, the Rinpoche who turned out to be not so nice. The author had advantages and accomplishments greater than the people she was helping, but it sometimes came across as her being a bit smug although I'm sure it wasn't meant that way. I liked this book and am glad I read it but didn't love it – the writing just didn't pull me in.

I was given a copy of this book by the publisher, for which I am grateful. ( )

Most people in the US would probably not have any clue where Bhutan was if you asked them. Heck, if you didn't mention that it was a country, they might not have any clue at all what you were talking about. So for the record, Bhutan is a small Asian country on the eastern end of the Himalayas, bordered by India and China. It is remote and difficult to get to, and that's just if you can afford to pay for the $200 a day tourist tax. It is probably best known for the fact that instead of Gross National Product, Bhutan measures Gross National Happiness. It is also occasionally known for the fact that for many years it did not have television (it does now). Despite these charming (from a Western perspective) eccentricities, it is still a largely unknown country to the average American. But for those of us with a taste for the off the beaten path, it is a place that holds immense appeal. And while I doubt I'll ever manage to get to Bhutan myself, reading about it is the next best thing.

Lisa Napoli was tired of her job at a public radio station in LA, burnt out aand frustrated by technology and its hold over our lives, when she met a man at a party who would change the course of her life forever. Through Sebastian, Napoli was offered an advisory position helping with Bhutan's new, emerging radio station Kuzoo FM. Despite her growing malaise with her job in the US, Napoli embraces this fantastic opportunity, takes a leave of absence from her job, and leaves for the Kingdom of Bhutan just as the country is poised on the edge of enormous changes. Transitioning from a monarchy to a democracy and from a media void to a media rich environment, Bhutan's age old traditions and feel were evolving.

Napoli captures a wonderful, sheltered land and what it feels like to be a visitor there but she doesn't shy away from the harder truths the Bhutanese are facing as well, including the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, the pull of American music and television, and the urbanization of the young. This is not just a travelogue about the sights and sounds of a foreign place. Napoli offers up slices of Bhutanese history, delves into the changing political scene, details the importance of Buddhism in daily life, and examines the changing customs that govern life in Thimpu.

But what makes this travelogue/memoir so full is that Napoli shares as much about herself on this journey as she does about the people and places in which she immerses herself. When she sets off on her first trip to Bhutan, she is clearly searching for something within herself. What this turns out to be is a peace with who she is and what she is doing with her life. She learns to be completely comfortable in her own skin and it shows in the confidence in her writing.

Her descriptions of Bhutan are vivid and enticing. The people she meets are warm and friendly. Her own search for self is not narcissistic and annoying but matter of fact and approachable. She is clearly changed by her trips to Bhutan and the way she's described it all makes the reader want to go and grow and learn and be welcomed with open arms too. If it's possible to fall in love with a place and a people through a book, then this is the book to make it happen. People who love travelogues will rejoice in this story. Readers who enjoy going along on a spiritual striving and seeing a life transformed will thrill to this read. It is rich and well-written and thoroughly enjoyable. ( )