Upcoming Book Reviews --

Frances McCue's The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo (Samuel and Althea Stroum Book)


Cristin O'Keefe's poetry collection Everything Is Everything


Dorothy Barresi's American Fanatics (Pitt Poetry Series)


The Least of These: Poems by Todd Davis


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Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident & Courageous Daughter

Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters by Joann Deak (published 2003)


If you have a daughter coming up to the "tween" phase or in the tween phase (ages 8-12), this is a book for you as it helps explain all the things girls are going through and offers ideas on how to parent through these new waters.  

For me the book is worth it for just for the section on girl friendships and how exploring those relationships.  It discusses cliques, fitting in and how some girls use "camouflaging" as a way to protect themselves while they go through what can be an awkward stage of development.

The goal is help your daughter not lose her self or her voice in the process of this change.

Anyway, I read the book in just a few evenings and actually enjoyed it with its examples and shorter sections written in a very easy to read and digest style.

Highly recommend for anyone with a daughter between 8-12 or read this before your daughter becomes a tween!  Probably a better way to go!

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Summer Reading! Poetry!

I am so behind sharing my summer reading list with you.

Here are the book of poems I am currently reading (or have read):

Allen Braden: A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood (The VQR Poetry Series)

Elizabeth Austen: The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press Chapbook)

Rachel Contreni Flynn:  Tongue

Alexandra Teague: Mortal Geography 

Arda Collins:  It Is Daylight (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

Karen Finneyfrock: Ceremony for the Choking Ghost

Robert FanningAmerican Prophet

Jennifer K. Sweeney:  How to Live on Bread and Music



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Summer Reading List!

The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life by Twyla Tharp - I highly recommend this book.  This is my second time reading it and I love it. While she is a dancer, her words help all artists with routine, inspiration, ideas.  Probably one of my all time favorite books.

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The Artistic Mother: A Practical Guide to Fitting Creativity into Your Life by Shona Cole.   A great book for people who want to try new ways to create such as photography, collage, and even poetry gets a mention!  I love that she wrote this book while being the mother of 5 (five!) kids.  Inspiring!

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The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us: Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons (I'm enjoying this!)

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Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World by Mary Pipher  (Finished!  Loved this.)  It's interesting because it goes into how after Mary became a huge success and so well-known with Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, she basically had a nervous breakdown.

For anyone who has dealt with anxiety or can become easily overwhelmed, this is an incredible look at how for some of us, there is "too much" and we can feel or get overloaded.

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Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein  (had a hard time getting into this and set it down, will try to pick it up later...)

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Mini Reviews -

The Alchemist's Kitchen  Poems by Susan Rich - I keep this book on my desk because it's inspiring to me as a poet to reach to it and read a poem or two before I start my own writing.  I saw Susan pop up on a lot of blogs this weekend at AWP, so I'm guessing that a lot of you will have this book on your desk too.  Enjoy it. It's her 3rd book of poems and really a great mixing of subjects and themes throughout.  A very satisfying read.

RECOMMEND!


Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk  Robyn Okrant - I am a huge fan of these "one-year memoirs," where a writer decides to do something for a year then reports on the results in hopefully a smart and witty way.  I'm only into the first chapter of this, but am already enjoying it.

She wanted to try living her life by doing everything Oprah said she should do.  She blogged about the experience here, and it looks like she's onto a new project called Ready.Set.Wife.

Still reading, but I think this will be a RECOMMEND book if the author continues the same style and wit she has established early on in the book.


Do-Over!: In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments   by Robin Hemley.  Here's another "memoir" with a similar take, Robin Hemley decides to return to all the events in his childhood that didn't go well.

If you've never read Robin Hemley, he's both an incredible writer, and funny.  He wrote my favorite short story "Reply All" about an email that takes on a life of its own. I heard him read it and my stomach hurt from laughing so hard.

Anyway, Do-Over is in Robin's witty, insightful style and is right now the book I don't want to end.  I am actually refusing to read the last couple chapters because I do not want to stop reading this book.  I will be sad when it's over.

RECOMMEND!  - This book has just been a joy to read.  Robin's a fantastic writer and I love the situations he ends up in.


Autobiography of Andre Agassi: OPEN  I'm kind of embarrassed to post this one here as 1) I'm not really a fan of Andre Agassi  2) This is my second famous-person memoir I've read in two months (um, the first being Howie Mandel's Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me - I know, it's not even confession Tuesday and I'm tossing these things out), but I have to tell you, I am a sucker for reading books that show how one person got to the place he or she is at in life.  I am always curious to what came into play, the person's hardwork vs. luck, their motivation, desires, passions.

But honestly, while I finished this book, towards the last couple of chapter I was ready to whop Andre over the head with his "I hate tennis.  No, I *really* hate tennis" mantra and crybaby attitude for not making his own choices in life.  Still, I finished the book and let me tell you it was LONG.  When you begin a book and the narrator says, "I was 7 years old..." you know, you're going to be there for a while.

I'll summarize his life for him:  forced to play tennis as a kid (all his brothers and sisters were, he was just the best and the last chance for his dad to have a tennis pro son), went to a tennis school where he got terrible grades, rebelled, drank, became pro at 17, started losing his hair, married Brooke Shields, did meth, got off drugs, divorced Brooke, married Steffi Graf, had 2 kids, opened a school for troubled youth.

Anyway, I liked it enough to finish it (read:  I was curious about how an athlete gets hooked on drugs as that seems insane to me and also how he ended up with Steffi Graf because I'm shallow that way), but the NY Times liked it more than I did.  I'll just say, there's 8 hours of my life I'll never get back.

PASS ON THIS - I can't say I can recommend unless you are a huge Andre Agassi fan and really want to learn the inner details of how his life played out.

Review: Marrying George Clooney: Confessions of a Midlife Crisis by Amy Ferris

My Favorite Memoir of the Year--

Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis by Amy Ferris (Seal Press, 2009) $16.95

Not all authors can combine humor, heartbreak, candidness, and the ability to tell a great story, but Amy Ferris does this. In her new memoir, Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis, she shares the details of her own mid-life menopause, quitting smoking after 32 years, married life, as well as the having to care for her mother who is suffering from severe dementia.

The book begins with an insomnia-filled Amy up at 3 a.m. googling old boyfriends. How could I not love a book that offers that gem in the first chapter? Written in short vignettes, I could not put the book down once I began reading it. Each section offered a new surprise, laugh-out-loud humor, and definitely some guffaw-moments, such as the section "Ragtime," which may have you asking the males in your life some intimate questions to the more poignant section "Kathy," about the death of her best friend.

Ferris’ book does what many other memoirs don’t do, it tells the truth. Not just the good stuff, but the complex emotions we feel and the ridiculousness of daily life happening around us. Ferris is not afraid to be candid. She shares her private thoughts as well as her nighttime fears from believing she has some incurable disease to answering an email at night to a friend’s concerns about death in saying she’s “more afraid of being forgotten. Her honesty offers a calmness to the reader in that we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.

The book is unique in its format—different fonts, font sizes, italics or boldness throughout its pages. At first, I thought this layout would be distracting while I read the book, but what I realized was how the quirkiness of the book’s appearance only adds to the anecdotes Ferris tells and mirrors the distinctiveness of her writing and voice.

Ferris is wise, hilarious, and has successfully created a book that draws the reader into her world of junk drawers, insomnia, and the intricacy of relationships. Marrying George Clooney was a highly satisfying read from beginning to end and I would add that it was definitely the best and funniest memoir I read all year. Highly recommend.

29 Gifts - Cami Walker

29 Gifts: The Website




I first heard about 29 Gifts on an "Inspiring Women" radio show. It was early in the morning and I wasn't exactly sure what I was listening to. What I learned was the woman being interviewed had been diagnosed with MS and her spiritual advisor gave her the suggestion of "give a gift each day to someone for 29 days..."

I was intrigued by this idea and when I purchased the book, I wasn't sure what I would get. If it would be an instructive manual on gift giving, a self-helpy how-to-change-your-life guide, or something else with a memoir spin. I was thankful to learn it was something else, that in fact, this is Cami Walker's story of how she overcame some challenges in her life brought on by MS, too many medications, her own thinking, and took back her life by focusing on giving to others.

The memoir soars along giving you backstory on Cami's life as well as sharing the gift she gave each day (for 29 days) and how it worked out. The book is easy to follow and has an interesting spin on how when we focus our thoughts on others we can start to forget our own troubles.

Throughout the book, I never lost interest and found Cami's candor refreshing and her story, unique and told with spirit and character. I finished the book in two days. It's a great read if you're looking to be inspired a bit and it might even be a new New Year's resolution for you to add into your January. The idea of giving a small gift each day (a gift that does not have to be material) is something that could be added into everyone's life and really, that small step just might make this world a little better place.


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Other thoughts--

This makes a great gift (hostess gift, birthday gift or otherwise).


The 29 Gift Website:

There is also a 29 Gift website to track your own progress and document your own attempt at 29 days of giving gifts. I joined this website to document my own gift giving (I'm on day 11) and the community of people who are doing this is diverse and supportive.

The only knot I get in my stomach about this website is the boutique section where you can buy an "Affirmation Mirror" that reads "I am a gift" for $14.29. The website says that 20% of the proceeds go to making the world a better place, but it doesn't really say how. I guess I shouldn't be surprised in this world marketing and toys to go along with the movie, but I just don't want to see such a good idea of giving become a money-making opportunity for those behind the scenes. But I guess I can understand how it expanded to that, and well, the 29 Gift journal is kind of cool (though I do wish I could see or know exactly how the money is being used as they are not a non-profit organization).

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Final Thoughts--

Definitely Recommend: 29 Gifts! the book (a great read!)

Recommend: the website for the blog aspect to document your own attempt to give 29 gifts.

Not sure I recommend: the website's boutique. I still need to learn more about where the money is going...