Category: Write 31 Days

rocket city mom book reviews

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I have the honor of being the local book correspondent on Rocket City Mom (RCM), the #1 Online Parenting Resource in Huntsville, the Tennessee Valley, and North Alabama. I review and host a virtual book club on Facebook specifically for moms. Each book is selected because of its mom quotient: does it shed light on a topic of importance to moms? Will it be entertaining for moms, giving them a break from their day? Will it help them navigate the journey of this insanity called mommyhood? It’s a lot of fun and if you’re a mom you should check us out.

Today’s link list contains of three books that I have read and reviewed on the RCM website. If you’re looking for a good read, these come highly recommended.

  • Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes – this one helped me come out of the tailspin created by the arrival of the Buddy Man, 10 years into my marriage. A highly entertaining read; you will definitely laugh-out-loud. The perfect little book to pick up over and over again. It’s also great pick for someone who wants to start a reading life.
  • I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam – Laura (yes, we’re on a first name basis LOL) is my time management guru. With great tips on how to handle time, this book set me free.  But first it made me angry. I use this one as a reference, all the time.
  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple – a funny little novel about the quirky, and totally relateable (to me, at least) Bernadette. The story telling method is very unique: emails, letters, FBI interviews, articles, and an emergency room bill. Bernadette finds humor amidst a darker side of life and does it brilliantly.

Have you read any of these? I’d love to hear any recommendations for books that moms will love. Please share in the comments.

til tomorrow, enjoy life

P.S. No, I didn’t select these books because of the matching color. That was totally coincidental. I couldn’t believe it either!

Catch up on the rest of this series.

meditation on stories

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accessory blur book close up

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I have been thinking a lot about stories recently. Probably because I am considering a number of storylines for books and articles. Maybe because of what’s been happening in our society recently.

There’s no denying the fact that stories are very powerful things, for good or for ill.  Jesus told many stories that were so simple that kids could understand the stories’ lessons but so layered that theologians still wrestle with the stories’ meanings.

There would be no personal or global history without stories. I don’t know about yours, but when my family gets together, stories (sometimes the same ones) are told about my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, allowing me to know them in meaningful ways. Without written and oral story-telling, we wouldn’t know anything: from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, to the Pilgrims’ landing in New England, to the experiences of the Middle Passage or the Holocaust.

On the other hand, if there is no opportunity for certain groups, cultures, etc. to tell their stories or for their stories to be heard, we are left with the fabric of our human experience not fully woven.  And we can’t possibly understand them if we don’t listen to the stories.

I know I couldn’t.  We could start there: what don’t we understand? With what group do we disagree? How do we meet people where they are, if we haven’t a clue as to where that actually is?

It begins with listening to the stories being told around us. And searching for the stories that we need to hear.

til tomorrow, enjoy life

I’m writing for the 31 days in October about books and reading.

Catch up on the rest of this series.

book review: “the happiness project”

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At the beginning of 2011, I wasn’t in a good place.  I had a wonderful life (a pretty decent job, a wonderful husband) but I was feeling blah! My sister had just gotten a new puppy, Radar, but needing to go back to work. He was still too young to be left at home alone.  So, I drove up to nanny.  While I was there, she asked me if I had read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. I had not.  When she went to sleep, I stayed awake and read the first chapter: “Getting Started”. It set off the waterworks.

I am happy – but I’m not as happy as I should be.  I have such a good life, I want to appreciate it more – and live up to it better. I had a hard time explaining it.  I complain too much, I get annoyed more than I should.  I should be more grateful.  I think it felt happier, I’d behave better.”

She introduced a word that I had never heard of before: malaise – a recurrent sense of discontent and almost a feeling of disbelief.  That was what I was feeling.  I had to have this book! And I went out the next day and bought my own copy.

Every month, Gretchen tackled a new category: January – Boost Energy where she tried to form habits like going to sleep earlier and tackling a nagging task. And in February – Remember Love, she tried to give proofs of love and quit nagging.  So on and so forth.

At that time, I was convinced (note that I said at THAT time) I was a very logical person – a left-brain, definitely.  And Gretchen was approaching this very subjective topic of happiness in a logical, systematic, and determined way. I don’t know how to make you understand how much that appealed to me. It was definitely what I needed at the time.

The results of Gretchen’s work have become permanent fixtures in my life.

Her concept of writing personal commandments, “personal overarching principles that can guide decision making”, appealed and I have slowly developed my own over the years.  They include: Be authentic and Find the Peace. Her quote: “the days are long but the years are short” has been a refrain that I utter every week as I make it through the day.

Gretchen took her happiness project and focused on the details of habit formation in her next book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives.  That led her to seek to understand why it was so much easier for some people to form habits than others which led to her next bestseller, The Four Tendencies. I’m an Obliger and that knowledge has led to some amazing realizations in my life, albeit a conversation for another day.

You can’t go wrong reading any of these three books if you are interested in becoming happier and forming habits that have a decent chance of sticking.

til tomorrow, enjoy life

Catch up on the rest of this series – This Bookman: Meditations & Miscellany.