What's making us happy: A guide to your weekend reading and viewing.

This week, we witnessed a gray whale give birth, learned how to stay on track with New Year's goals, and found a way to declutter.

Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang

I did not want to have to explain this book to everybody, but I find myself in the position of being able to bring you this wonderful novel that is a little hard to explain. The book is Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang. It is a historical fantasy novel, and it's been compared to Philip Pullman's book, The Golden Compass. It's kind of easy to see why, as the novel takes place in a fictional Oxford University.

This book has a system of magic, which is so special and so well told. In