I was recently given the opportunity to review My Life Map for Blogher. Unlike most of the books I've reviewed, this was more of a journal, designed to help you map out your life for the next ten years.
The book begins by walking you through a series of questions about your past and your present designed to help you flesh out what was important to you during various stages of your life. You are then encouraged to fill in these time periods on the "whole life map" provided at the end of the book, visually representing your life up until this point. The map is divided into sections where you can write whatever you felt to be important during each "chapter" of your life in the areas of family, friends, work, learning, service, and playing.
After mapping out your past and present, you are then encouraged to begin to plan the next 10 years of your life. There is a chapter on each of the subjects containing more insightful questions about what you want and value, and a map at the end of each chapter where you can plan out that aspect of your life before adding it to the whole life map.
I found these exercises very interesting. I'm not much of a long term planner, but to begin to think about my hopes and dreams for the next several years (and even moreso maybe for the past 31) was a very useful task. The maps themselves were less helpful to me because I've never been a very visual person, but the questions posed in each chapter really helped to flesh out what is important to me and what I'm hoping to accomplish. I really liked the way it was organized too, and sometimes the very subjects made me think. Having to map out a plan for myself over the next 10 years in terms of service, playing, and learning reminded me how much I have sometimes neglected those aspects of my life lately even though they were very important to me in the past.
Overall, I enjoyed this book (even though I was a little skeptical at first), and really was glad to sit down and feed my reflective side a little bit. The specific questions helped keep even my cluttered and distracted brain focused. That's quite the task these days.
Disclosure: This is a paid review for Blogher. All opinions are my own.
Showing posts with label Blog Her Book Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Her Book Club. Show all posts
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Blog Her Book Club: The Rules of Inheritance
I'm not sure how to begin to write about Claire Bidwell Smith's memoir The Rules of Inheritance. My first thought is how absolutely stunning the writing is. My second thought is how hard it was to read, especially for someone to whom empathy is so automatic as it is to me.
And yet, and yet. And yet, I adored this book.
The Rules of Inheritance is a memoir of loss. It tells the story of a woman who lost her mother at 18 and her father at 25, who finds herself "unmoored" by grief, who loses herself in alcohol and relationships. It tells the story of a woman who doesn't know how to continue her life after such a tragic and inescapable loss. And yet she does.
The story is told in a non-linear manner, not progressing chronologically, but with vignettes organized according to Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. What is so fascinating about this to me is that they are in fact not chronological, that she moves through all these stages recursively, from acceptance back to bargaining to anger to depression, returning to each again and again.
This is a story of tragedy, but it is not a tragic story. It is about loss, but so much more it is about growth, about self awareness and self acceptance. This was a book which, for me, showed a path through grief. It isn't an easy path, but it is a path which leads somewhere beautiful.
And for me, above all, this is a book which reminds me what I love about language, reminds me of the power of words, of the way that the darkest moments of our lives can contain the utmost beauty. It's a book that reminds me why I love to read.
And why I love to write.
Disclosure: This is a paid review for Blog Her book Club. All opinions are my own.
And yet, and yet. And yet, I adored this book.
The Rules of Inheritance is a memoir of loss. It tells the story of a woman who lost her mother at 18 and her father at 25, who finds herself "unmoored" by grief, who loses herself in alcohol and relationships. It tells the story of a woman who doesn't know how to continue her life after such a tragic and inescapable loss. And yet she does.
The story is told in a non-linear manner, not progressing chronologically, but with vignettes organized according to Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. What is so fascinating about this to me is that they are in fact not chronological, that she moves through all these stages recursively, from acceptance back to bargaining to anger to depression, returning to each again and again.
This is a story of tragedy, but it is not a tragic story. It is about loss, but so much more it is about growth, about self awareness and self acceptance. This was a book which, for me, showed a path through grief. It isn't an easy path, but it is a path which leads somewhere beautiful.
And for me, above all, this is a book which reminds me what I love about language, reminds me of the power of words, of the way that the darkest moments of our lives can contain the utmost beauty. It's a book that reminds me why I love to read.
And why I love to write.
Disclosure: This is a paid review for Blog Her book Club. All opinions are my own.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
BHBC: Why Women Need Fat
I just finished reading William Lassek and Steven Gaulin’s book Why Women Need Fat (which my husband thought for a long time was called Why women need TO BE Fat, but that’s a different discussion). I have to say, I didn’t expect to be nearly as fascinated by it as I was.
It looked to me like it was going to be just another diet book, suggesting that we overhaul the way we eat in order to lose weight, but instead it was a carefully researched work of scientific and social commentary on the role of fat in our bodies and in our culture.
The basic premise of the book is that, due to a fear of cholesterol and heart disease that arose in the 1950’s, our diets have been overrun by vegetable oils. These oils contain Omega 6 fats, which were thought to be better for us than the saturated fats found in animal products. However, what has shown to be true instead is that these fats have replaced the MORE healthy Omega 3 fats, which are particularly important to women because of the additional requirements for these fats during pregnancy and lactation.
One of the most interesting ideas in the book for me was the idea that young women store these Omega 3 fats in their hips for years before they have their first baby, then run through these stores during late pregnancy and nursing. I’ve been taking a fish oil capsule sporadically, both for my nursling’s little brain and because I’ve read that it helps with depression, but knowing that my own stores are being rapidly depleted makes me want to be more diligent about it.
The book contains suggestions on how to use these findings to your advantage in terms of weight loss, but to me that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the findings themselves.
Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of this book to facilitate my review and am being compensated for my participation in this campaign. All opinions are my own.
It looked to me like it was going to be just another diet book, suggesting that we overhaul the way we eat in order to lose weight, but instead it was a carefully researched work of scientific and social commentary on the role of fat in our bodies and in our culture.
The basic premise of the book is that, due to a fear of cholesterol and heart disease that arose in the 1950’s, our diets have been overrun by vegetable oils. These oils contain Omega 6 fats, which were thought to be better for us than the saturated fats found in animal products. However, what has shown to be true instead is that these fats have replaced the MORE healthy Omega 3 fats, which are particularly important to women because of the additional requirements for these fats during pregnancy and lactation.
One of the most interesting ideas in the book for me was the idea that young women store these Omega 3 fats in their hips for years before they have their first baby, then run through these stores during late pregnancy and nursing. I’ve been taking a fish oil capsule sporadically, both for my nursling’s little brain and because I’ve read that it helps with depression, but knowing that my own stores are being rapidly depleted makes me want to be more diligent about it.
The book contains suggestions on how to use these findings to your advantage in terms of weight loss, but to me that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the findings themselves.
Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of this book to facilitate my review and am being compensated for my participation in this campaign. All opinions are my own.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Blog Her Book Club: The Magic Room
The more I have begun to feel like a person again, the more I have been able to get back into my favorite hobby, reading. So I was giddy when I was given the opportunity to read The Magic Room by Jeffrey Zaslow as part of the Blog Her Book Club.
What an absolutely lovely book. The Magic Room tells the story of a small bridal shop, Beckers, in Fowler, Michigan that has been passed from mother to daughter across three generations. The book intertwines the story of the Becker family and their relationship to the store with vignettes about brides who are shopping for their gowns.
When I first started reading it, I described it as "like Say Yes to the Dress, if Say Yes to the Dress were really sweet and less commercial." The more I got into it, though, I realized that it was about so much more than that. The moment of shopping for the dress, of stepping into the "Magic Room" of endless mirrors, was simply a window for seeing into the lives and loves of these women and their mothers (and sometimes daughters). The book's subtitle "A Story about the love we wish for our daughters" makes more and more sense as the book goes on.
The stories the book tells are touching and sometimes heartbreaking but never seem to reach the point of being cloying or manipulative. Whether describing a forty year old widow, a young single mom, or a girl who saved her first kiss for her husband, Zaslow seems to withhold judgment. The relationships are immediate, and the description is done with an extremely gentle touch. Woven in with these narratives, however, is an extremely smart sociological analysis of the direction that relationships are taking in our era, both in marriage and with our daughters.
The Magic Room is clearly a book with heart and with a brain both. It was the perfect book for me to read this holiday season.
I was provided with a copy of this book to review and am being compensated for participating in this campaign. All opinions expressed herein are, however, my own.
What an absolutely lovely book. The Magic Room tells the story of a small bridal shop, Beckers, in Fowler, Michigan that has been passed from mother to daughter across three generations. The book intertwines the story of the Becker family and their relationship to the store with vignettes about brides who are shopping for their gowns.
When I first started reading it, I described it as "like Say Yes to the Dress, if Say Yes to the Dress were really sweet and less commercial." The more I got into it, though, I realized that it was about so much more than that. The moment of shopping for the dress, of stepping into the "Magic Room" of endless mirrors, was simply a window for seeing into the lives and loves of these women and their mothers (and sometimes daughters). The book's subtitle "A Story about the love we wish for our daughters" makes more and more sense as the book goes on.
The stories the book tells are touching and sometimes heartbreaking but never seem to reach the point of being cloying or manipulative. Whether describing a forty year old widow, a young single mom, or a girl who saved her first kiss for her husband, Zaslow seems to withhold judgment. The relationships are immediate, and the description is done with an extremely gentle touch. Woven in with these narratives, however, is an extremely smart sociological analysis of the direction that relationships are taking in our era, both in marriage and with our daughters.
The Magic Room is clearly a book with heart and with a brain both. It was the perfect book for me to read this holiday season.
I was provided with a copy of this book to review and am being compensated for participating in this campaign. All opinions expressed herein are, however, my own.
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