Woman Tribune » Books & Authors

Book Review: “Pinterest For Dummies” by Kelby Carr and Giveaway

Holly — Sun, 20 May 2012 09:42:44 +0000

Pinterest has, seemingly overnight, become the hottest new social media website. I have been an avid pinner for the past several months and I absolutely love it. I can, and have on many occasions, spent several hours on Pinterest, and whenever I introduce the website to someone, I always warn them of its amazing ability to lure you in and keep you entertained until you realize that there was something you were supposed to be doing. It’s hard to believe that Pinterest was initially launched in 2010, only because it is just now becoming so popular, but it just goes to show you that in the internet world. it may take years for what you are doing to catch on, but it could very well have the ability to catch on in a big, big way.

Naturally, like just about every other popular activity and subject that urges people to need to know each and every possible thing there is to know about it, Pinterest now has its own For Dummies book. It’s official, guys, Pinterest has arrived, and the time to hop on that bandwagon is now.

Pinterest For Dummies was written by an innovative and just plain awesome woman who is part of a group of people who have the potential to benefit greatly from the magic that is Pinterest: bloggers. Kelby Carr is the founder and CEO of Type-A-Parent, a popular social network and blog, and the Type-A-Parent Conference, which I annually hear tons of terrific things about. Her penning this how-to book makes absolute perfect sense.

I thought I had Pinterest pretty much figured out, and to my credit, I do know what I’m doing when it comes to working the website properly. I can pin images, repin images, I know about the comment capability that almost no one uses, and I know that the like button exists, which I have come to realize through my usage of the website, is used by people who are too embarrassed or lazy to repin an image but still want to make sure people know that they were there. It was while reading this book, however, that I realized I could use a few pointers when it comes to using Pinterest in order to self-promote my own projects and really make an influential difference ind doing so. Turns out I didn’t know everything. Imagine that.

Pinterest For Dummies has the answer to any Pinterest-related questions or concerns you may have. From how to set up an account and start pinning to the many devices you can access and use Pinterest on and controlling your privacy settings, it is all covered. In addition to the whole self-promotion aspect of Pinterest, I was also very interested in getting tips on using Pinterest as an organization tool, effective mood board, and event planning tool. My life has recently changed in some very drastic ways. My partner of six and half years became my fiance in mid-April and in the beginning of February we bought our own home. I am now in the middle of creating a warm and inviting home that signifies who we are and starting the very beginning stages of wedding planning simultaneously! Lo and behold, I not only found out the easiest way to organize the many things Pinterest can inspire, but I also learned how to make a board a collaborative project and read about how it can also be used as a shopping list, a bookmarking site, and even using it to support a cause. There’s a whole lot of valuable information in this book.

The last two chapters of Pinterest For Dummies are also great resources. Chapter 11 lists 10 companies that are using Pinterest effectively, including Etsy, Lowe’s Whole Foods, and Better Homes and Gardens. Chapter 12 lists 10 power pinners that if you have a Pinterest account, you should be following. I was pleased to find out that I already follow the majority of the people who were listed and I definitely agree with the recommendations. The 10 people listed in this book have already been inspiring me on Pinterest exponentially throughout the past several months that I have been using the website.

Giveaway

If you just started using Pinterest and want information on how to make the most of it, if you don’t yet have an account but are thinking about joining the countless people already using the site, or even if you believe yourself to be an expert Pinterest user, I am confident in saying that you can benefit from reading Pinterest For Dummies. So how would you like to win a copy of the book for yourself? To enter, use the Rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received a copy of “Pinterest For Dummies” for review and the opportunity to host this giveaway as part of a promotional program with Global Influence. No other compensation was received, and opinions are my own.

#PhotoaDayMay: What You’re Reading

Holly — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:50:29 +0000

I am currently reading the novel Sister by Rosamund Lupton, for the second time. I got this novel on a whim for my Nook, pictured above, after seeing it appear on Oprah’s Summer Reading List last year and reading some absolutely glowing reviews of it. It is a thrilling and intense read; I was actually surprised with how much I really enjoyed it because I didn’t expect it to be as good and as captivating as it is. Even though I obviously know how it ends, since I have already read it once before, I am enjoying it just as much the second time around, which is pretty impressive in itself.

If you want to join in, check out the May Photo a Day Challenge List.

#PhotoaDayMay: Someone That Inspires You

Holly — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:28:12 +0000

My love and passion for writing, and the reason why I ever became interested in flexing my own writing muscles, is rooted in poetry. This style of writing has always appealed to me, since as far back in my life as I can remember. In poetry, there are no rules; you break lines when you want to and you use punctuation when and if it feels right. No one can tell you that you wrote a poem the wrong way because there’s no such thing as the “right way.” When poetry became most important in my life, to the point where it was very much my lifeboat as I was kind of mentally spinning out of control, I wasn’t one for following rules. You can easily see how this partnership, poetry and I, came to be. Poetry is the rebel of the literature world. It is an emotional style of writing for people who are often overflowing with raw emotion.

That is what Anne Sexton exemplifies to me. Her writing is raw and exposed emotion woven in and out of all of the complexities, stubbornness, and adamant declarations and confessions that she made about and because of herself in the work she produced throughout her life. The honesty that she had with herself through the sorrow and mental desperation she experienced nearly overwhelming to me, and extremely compelling. Even as I took this picture, I couldn’t help myself from skimming through the pages and finding some of my favorite Anne Sexton poems to re-read (“Love Letter Written in a Burning Building,” “Admonitions to a Special Person,” and “45 Mercy Street” if you’re looking for recommendations.) But it is that frankness that Anne Sexton had with herself and her writing, and the unapologetic way she saw the world and the people around her that inspires me to create more, and to not be so afraid of my own obstacles with happiness and general mental instability, because maybe the ugly way that I sometimes view the world will be beautiful to someone reading about it through my words.

If you want to join in, check out the May Photo a Day Challenge List.

The Joy of Books [Video]

Holly — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:14:56 +0000

Books have always been extraordinary and magical to me. When I start reading a new book, I see it as an invitation to experience someone else’s life while letting any stress in my life fade away, even for just a little while. We are allowed into the heads of characters in books; we have the opportunity to learn what makes them tick and what their weaknesses are. We get to see life through their eyes and then take the wisdom they leave us with and apply it to our own realities. It’s really astounding.

Sean Ohlenkamp’s absolutely remarkable video The Joy of Books shows just how magical books can be, in a more physical sense, by crafting some amazing stop motion animation and seamless editing.

According to the video description, the creation of this video was made possible with the help of nearly 30 volunteers who spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto. The music in the video was composed by Grayson Matthews and is available on iTunes.

Book Giveaway: Win a Signed Copy of “All About Vee” by C. Leigh Purtill [Closed]

Holly — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:37:06 +0000

I first read All About Vee by C. Leigh Purtill back in 2008. It arrived just before the beginning of summer and I picked it up expecting a light, girly read I would breeze through in just a few, short days, and then promptly forget most of the details within right after writing the review. My first impression of this book, the brightly-colored cover and teenagers holding hands with huge smiles plastered on their faces, pointed to precisely this series of events. When you have read and reviewed as many young adult books as I have over the years, you learn that you can indeed judge most books by their covers and know what to expect from them. The key word here is ‘most.’ But this particular book turned out to be so much more than that.

Veronica May is the main character in All About Vee. She is a kind and caring young woman and friend, she is outgoing and confident, and she is a gifted actress who travels from the small town in Arizona she grew up in with her father to Los Angeles, California to become a successful actress. Veronica is optimistic about her move to LA and the career she has plans of launching there, but she soon learns that in LA, the talent you have in your chosen profession matters less than how thin and attractive you are. And Veronica is a plus-size young woman of 217 pounds.

As C. Leigh Purtill recently wrote in an article we republished a few weeks ago, Veronica May’s self-confidence wasn’t just tested by the people she came into contact with in the book, she is in fact still being discriminated against because of her size by a number of people who have read this book since it was published in 2008. Veronica doesn’t suddenly get to LA, realize she’s “fat”, and then go on a crash diet or start popping diet pills and working out six hours a day, seven days a week with hopes of turning her body into a size 0 so the powers that be within the entertainment industry finally give her the time of day and a job. She doesn’t give up on her dreams or on herself by considering herself “less-than” because other people tried to make her feel that way.

Veronica struggles throughout All About Vee, but because she doesn’t struggle in the ways a lot of people expect her to or how a lot of people think plus-size women should struggle, a lot of contempt has been placed on the shoulders of Veronica May. But in all of the ways people have disliked her character, those are precisely the reasons why I have loved her and why she has stuck with me throughout the years.

Giveaway

It is for all of these reasons why I am super excited to have been given the opportunity to give away a signed copy of All About Vee to one lucky Woman Tribune reader.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

“All About Vee” has been recently re-released as the first installment in C. Leigh Purtill’s new series, “Fat Girls in LA.” The ebook is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

“Who does that fat girl think she is?”

Guest Contributor — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:00:09 +0000

This post originally appeared on C. Leigh Purtill’s personal blog. Republished with permission.

That’s the strange comment I’ve read on some reviews of my novel, All About Vee. Perhaps not quite as harsh but certainly I’ve read comments that express that sentiment.

Why? I always wonder. Why would a reader be upset that my mc, Veronica May, a plus-size actress struggling in Hollywood, has confidence in herself? Plenty of other characters in other books know they are good at something, whether it’s acting or painting or sports. So what’s the difference between them and Veronica?

Her size.

There’s an attitude among a lot of people that overweight women shouldn’t be happy with themselves. They should want to look thinner. They should not like who they are. They should feel inferior to others. Many readers who pick up Vee expect that Veronica will be sad or have low self-esteem and that, over the course of the book, she will learn to love her body the way it is (or change it and then be happy and get the guy!). They don’t expect that the problems she has in the book are ones that other people impose upon her.

I’ve often told readers how I came up with my story about Veronica and her friends, Val and Ginny, the original 800 page book that was called Fat Girls in LA. I had been walking on my lunch hour in Beverly Hills and saw a lovely young woman waiting to cross the street. The neighborhood was filled with agencies for film and TV and this girl was overweight. I wondered if she was an actress looking for an agent – or maybe she was a model or a writer. I thought about who she might be, where she might have come from.

And I thought about being a fat girl in LA. You can never be too thin in this town, no matter what your profession. Even if you’re a writer and you’re attractive and thin, they can promote you better than if you’re not. Everyone, it seems, wants to be thin here. But what if you came from a town where no one cared? What if you were really good at what you did but you also happened to be overweight? Why should that matter?

Behold, the Vees were born. Three plus-size gals from Arizona who were best friends and who wanted to make their lives more exciting so they moved to Hollywood. Veronica was the actress and she got all the best roles in her small town – why shouldn’t she be positive about her talent? Why shouldn’t she assume she could get roles here in LA? Ginny was the writer and Val was the model. They all suffered discrimination here. Their friendship was tested. Their self-confidence was challenged.

I think a lot of readers who have problems with Veronica’s positive self-esteem have struggled with it themselves. They may want her to feel as they do and are disappointed that she likes herself the way she is. They may have had people in their lives tell them they need to lose weight in order to be hired – or loved. Make no mistake: Vee does not think she’s the best at everything, that she’s beautiful, that she should get every guy she meets. That’s the assumption readers place on her just because she’s a good actress. She struggles too. She just doesn’t struggle with what you expect her to.

She’s just like you.

“All About Vee” has been recently re-released as the first installment in C. Leigh Purtill’s new series, “Fat Girls in LA.” The ebook is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can also check out our full review of “All About Vee” here.

None yet, check back soon!

7 Steps to a Happy Marriage, a Guest Post by Jenna McCarthy

Guest Contributor — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:26:46 +0000

I am all about books that talk about people and relationships realistically. I think most everyone who is in a long-term relationship appreciates the refreshing, true-to-life, and therefore often hilarious outlook that these books bring, where you’re reading and suddenly you’re nodding your head or find yourself laughing hysterically because you can relate to the perspectives on life and love and on frustration and housework so much. So much. In fact, when this happens, I take the opportunity to read some choice segments to my partner, followed closely by “See? That’s what you do! You do that!”

Well, Jenna McCarthy’s soon-to-be-released book, If it Was Easy They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married, seems to be THAT. BOOK. I haven’t read it yet (although I will be soon and I’ll be posting a review, so be sure to check back for that!) but the book trailer alone was so, incredibly relateable. Here, take a look:

That whole part where her husband is standing in front of the refrigerator while asking her if they have lettuce and milk and such? Happens to me all. the. time. In fact, I think my partner thinks that I rearrange the contents of the refrigerator at night just so he won’t be able to find anything.

Also, don’t forget to google Zestra after you watch it… or better yet, check out the link on Jenna’s homepage, http://www.jennamccarthy.com/.

I am super excited to read Jenna McCarthy’s book, but in the meantime, here is a guest post she wrote about the seven things you can do to ensure you’re living in marital ecstasy.

7 Steps to a Happy Marriage

by Jenna McCarthy

I have a remarkably happy marriage, and people ask me all the time how I got so lucky. (Not as often as they ask me about autism, vaccines and Jim Carrey, so let’s get something straight before we go any further: Not. Her.) I used to wonder if it had something to do with pheromones or having relatively low expectations, but after eleven years of wedded bliss I am pretty sure the key is some combination of kindness, respect and my ability to read a road map upside down divided by my husband’s skill at tuning out my nagging.

Okay, fine. We got lucky.

Busloads of studies have attempted to figure out why roughly every other marriage fails miserably. Turns out, the success stories share a few similarities beyond the obvious stuff like “they don’t have sex with other people”. Here, then, are seven scientifically proven* steps to marital ecstasy.

Be thinner and better looking than your husband

Make sure he does more chores than you do

and try to talk less than he does

Don’t watch a lot of chick flicks

Gnomio and Juliet

Don’t win a best-actress Oscar

Limit your booze consumption (both of you)

Become or urge your partner to become a farmer, nuclear engineer or optometrist

Prefer having the car windows down

So there you have it. I do not suggest trying to master all seven steps at once. For instance, if you stop doing housework altogether (to try to tilt his portion of the ratio toward more), you’ll have a lot of extra time on your hands which you may want to spend drinking alcohol. Remember, there’s no rush here. Till death do us part is a really long time**.

*I may have bastardized the language a bit in some cases but the facts are mostly accurate.

**I stole that line from If It Was Easy They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married, which I wrote (and please note that it says the blah-blah-blah man you married, not the one I married. My husband likes it when I point that out). You can find out more about me, my books and how I survived tanorexia on my website.

None yet, check back soon!

Book Review: Here, Home, Hope by Kaira Rouda

Holly — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:00:09 +0000

Restlessness is a human condition. As human beings, we strive. We strive to do more, to be better, to feed our souls, to attain happiness, to do what truly fulfills us, and to meet the standards we set in place for ourselves. Restlessness knows no gender, age group, or class. It’s universal. However, if you happen to be approaching a milestone age, like age forty, when you grow restless and bored and develop an urge to do something more with your life, many are quick to attach the midlife crisis condition to you.

The midlife crisis as a jumping off point to a story has become redundant and trivial to me; as if someone needs to be reduced to their hormones and intimate mental processes in order to have the audacity to expect or to create meaningful fulfillment in their lives. Women’s thoughts, emotions, and actions are already too often reduced to their hormones and basic bodily functions; for instance, if a woman is angry with her husband or boyfriend, one of the first responses most women will receive from him is in the form of a question, ‘Are you PMSing?’ Nevertheless, the midlife crisis is precisely what Kaira Rouda chose to force onto her main character, 39-year-old doting wife and mother Kelly Johnson, in her latest novel Here, Home, Hope.

It’s summertime and Kelly believes that this summer is destined to be just like the previous summers before. Her two sons are at summer camp in Maine, her husband is immersed in his career as a prestigious and accomplished attorney, and she will be left to stay around her middle-upper class, pruned and perfect neighborhood that comes a little too close in description to the suburban neighborhood of the show Desperate Housewives. She will lounge around her million dollar home while watching marathons of Law & Order and gaining her annual six pounds. However, this summer is different.

Kelly has just undergone a mammogram and while she received a negative diagnosis, it was the kick in the pants she needed to look around and take stock of her life. A stay at home mom who quit her job when she had her first child, leaving behind something that she loved to do and with it, her passion, two children who do not need her as much as they used to, a bout of depression, no real hobby besides her prized hydrangeas, and a whole lot of envy for her two friends who seem like they are living the perfect existences, Kelly’s newfound restlessness is combating by splurging on clothes and overspending on her hair, sporadic psychiatrist appointments that she is embarrassed to be seen at, a list of aspects of her life that she wants to change written down on Post-It notes and scattered throughout her house and the inside of her car, and a sense of determination that leads her to take on way too much.

After reconnecting with her two close friends whose lives she has envied–strong, professional and accomplished businesswomen who also look flawless and put-together–she realizes the reality of their lives is quite a different story.

Charlotte, a real estate agent who is described (on numerous occasions) as thin and by extension, beautiful, continues to achieve success in her career while raising her two twin daughters and, as Kelly finds out, a deteriorated marriage that ends in an affair and eventually moving in with her new boyfriend. Charlotte’s new boyfriend, however, just so happens to be the husband of Kelly’s other friend Kathryn. Kathryn has focused on her career throughout adulthood, climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder and breaking through the proverbial glass ceiling. Every aspect of Kathryn’s life is about to change; she has been let go from her job due to cutbacks, she and her husband are divorcing while he moves in with Charlotte and her two daughters, and to find balance in her sudden tumultuous life, she retreats to a ranch in Montana, leaving her teen anorexic daughter Melanie in Kelly’s care.

When Charlotte scores the listing of the house across the street from Kelly’s from a family who have just split up, she gives Kelly the idea for a new business of her own–home staging. She jumps into home staging in the same way she takes on interfering in the personal lives of her friends and then promptly judging them to the point of lashing out and then avoiding them for days after they confide their secrets and life decisions in her; she immerses herself in it to the point of nearly drowning.

Kaira Rouda laces several important issues throughout Here, Home, Hope and when you decide to bring up these incredibly complex issues that affect millions of people throughout the world, you take on a certain level of responsibility. If you cast off these issues as not being as serious or as detrimental as they really are, you are immediately discounting the struggles and in some cases, the lives of those who have fallen victim to them.

For instance, when Kelly is doing a walk-through of the house across the street that she is staging, she hears someone in the house that turns out to be Bob, the man who had put the house up for sale after his wife left him. He is falling down drunk and when he hears Kelly in the house, he goes downstairs to talk to her. It takes him just a few minutes to start talking about how her husband and his soon-to-be ex-wife should get together so he could have Kelly and then proceeds to force himself onto her until she can just barely make a narrow escape from the house and run home. I believe that it is Rouda’s ignorance of just how traumatic this is to most women who survive having a man force themselves onto them. Kelly’s character even goes on to question whether she had been assaulted at all and simply wakes up the next morning and goes about her day as if nothing had ever happened. The only effect of this experience in Kelly’s life is that she wants to sign up for self defense classes in the future, which is mentioned maybe twice and then dropped. When I first read this part of the book, I began questioning whether Rouda simply became bored with her story and instead of walking away from it for a few days to clear her head and pick it back up with fresh eyes and new ideas, she opted to write something tense and give Kelly just another problem to deal with, but never took on the responsibility that came with writing about this issue.

Rouda then proceeded to do the very same thing with anorexia, casting aside every ounce of responsibility that comes with writing about the disease and condensing it into an issue that she ends up glorifying.

While taking care of Melanie for the summer and attempting get her to start eating healthier, Kelly enlists the help of Beth, an old friend from college whom Kelly and other friends had ostracized due Beth’s own anorexia. Turns out that this woman is now healthy, happy, married with a new baby, and has a passion for helping anorexic teens. To be fair, Beth is written moderately realistic, but Kelly herself is incredibly weight obsessed and towards the end of the novel, two passages left me feeling absolutely sick.

“Afterward as we cuddled, Patrick complimented me on losing weight. I told him that having an anorexic around had prompted me to think about eating healthier through watching portion sizes and writing things down.”

“I did a little dance in front of my full-length mirror and thought again about permanently adopting Mel and inviting Beth and her family to come live with us. I need to keep the people on the road to healthy eating around me. This could be way better than Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. I could save money and spend it on clothes.”

Yeah, because anorexia is the basis of healthy eating.

Rouda’s novel is straightforward women’s fiction. That is the main reason why I was interested in reading it. I’m a fan of women’s fiction and I feel strongly about supporting female authors. Most of my favorite books are from the minds of astounding, strong women and I know the diligence and perseverance it took in order for those women to be heard and ultimately respected for their work. I think that because I feel so strongly about supporting female authors and doing my part to make sure that women’s fiction is not seen as irrelevant since a good number of publishers have been scaling back on the amount of women’s fiction that they will publish due to it not being seen as a viable market, that I was ultimately let down by Kaira Rouda in a big, big way.

Rouda attempts to make Kelly Johnson into a humorous and relateable character. While many women can identify with feeling restless in their lives and absolutely needing some or even all aspects of their lives to change in extreme ways, Kelly herself is barely relateable to most any woman not belonging to the upper-middle class lifestyle. I found myself rolling my eyes at Kelly’s actions quite frequently, from her mid-day shopping trip to a designer shop to her $295 “emergency blonding appointment.” A lot of the problem areas residing in Here, Home, Hope could have been avoided if it were looked at with a lens of reality and went through a few more drafts of editing while questioning her own ability to write and follow through with extremely important social issues.

I received a digital copy of Here, Home, Hope in order to write this book review as part of a blog posting campaign with the One2One Network.

I received a digital copy of “Here, Home, Hope” for review as part of a blog campaign through One2One Network. No other compensation was received, and opinions are my own.

None yet, check back soon!

“Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living” Chapter Review, “Meal Planning: Not Just for the Control Freaks”

Holly — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:23:06 +0000

When it comes to housekeeping and generally knowing my way around the kitchen, I am not nearly as knowledgeable as I probably should be; especially when you consider that I have been out in the real world for quite some time now. I’m not saying that I don’t know how to keep a place clean and well-kept, because I definitely do, but that is pretty much where my talents come to a full stop. My grandmother is not impressed. Not at all.

I have been attempting to learn more about this whole cooking for myself business for a while. It has been more successful than I had initially thought it would be, but that could also be because my partner, who has grown very much accustomed to preparing all of our meals throughout the past five years, has been the person taking me by the hand and easing me into the kitchen. I’m nearly ready to stand on my own now, though, especially after reading chapter 20 of Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living by Heather Solos.

I was recently able to check out the chapter about meal planning and it started out with an uncanny little story that described my adult life thus far. Solos even knows that my kitchen table is the household dumping ground and that we don’t eat at it, practically ever. I have no idea how she knew this, but I’m telling you, it was a little freaky to read. But then something amazing happens–Solos gives hope to neglected kitchen tables everywhere and tells you that the time to clear the clutter off and actually start using it for its intended purpose, and that is to eat real food that was prepared in the kitchen and not in the kitchen of a take-out restaurant. Kitchen tables unite!

We all know that preparing meals at home and sitting around the kitchen table is important and beneficial to everyone at that table. Not only does it ensure that you are getting vitamins and nutrients that your body needs through prepared foods made from actual ingredients, instead of fats and a whole host of fillers that do very little good to your body, but it also gives you a chance to unwind, relax, enjoy a meal and enjoy the company of your family while also getting closer to them. We also know that getting into this mindset and into the routine of actually following through with our intentions is not as easy as it may seem in our heads. So, what Heather Solos does in this chapter is she starts with very basic, beginners knowledge of the kitchen and of food. Very basic knowledge is about all I have in this area, so I appreciated having a resource that didn’t throw terms at me that I then had to go and look up the meaning of before continuing on with the chapter. She then goes on to introduce new ideas as well as reminding you of just how beneficial traditional concepts are in the kitchen. Not to mention, this woman explains how one roasted chicken can last for up to three days worth of dinners and just how important (and easy!) it is to learn how to make soup. This is amazing to me.

More than anything, this particular chapter within Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living is practical. It is 16 pages full of relateable and truly useful information. I have obtained a great deal of inspiration and ideas for meal planning, especially since she includes three 5-day weeks of meal ideas, as well as a recipe for stock and for basic meatloaf. While I could have done without feeling as if I had been warped into an episode of Bewitched with the very blue, very retro illustrations and font usage within this book, the content within was beneficial and I’m sure that if I can manage to master the basic meatloaf recipe, my partner will be thanking the food Gods for Heather Solos’ recipes and tips.

Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can also see Heather Solos blogging and answering your everyday living questions at the Home-Ec 101 blog.

I received digital access to “Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living” chapter 20, “Meal Planning: Not Just for the Control Freaks” for review through One2One Network. No other compensation was received, and opinions are my own.

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Celebrate National Poetry Month with a Poem a Day

Holly — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:00:42 +0000

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? I didn’t until just recently and now that I know, I’ve already located the various collections of poetry books I own on my bookshelf and plan to go through some of my favorites. It has been a long time since I’ve read some of my all-time favorite poems and hey, why not discover some new ones in the process?

To celebrate National Poetry Month, you can subscribe to the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day emails. Daily poems are selected from newly-published poetry titles and you can also browse the archive of the past daily poems that have been spotlighted.

If daily emails aren’t your thing, or if you have an iPhone, you can download the Poem Flow app which turns poems into gentle reading animations. The app is free for 20 poems and additional poems cost less than a penny a poem.

Want to read a really amazing poem right now? Here is one of my absolute favorites!

Love Letter Written In A Burning Building
By Anne Sexton

I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for vodka and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not. Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The night gowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed — well, the sheets have turned to gold –
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn’t yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren’t yielding to pitch
I’d tell the whole story –
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-nipple story –
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black and a red powder seeps through my
veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see, meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian
street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.

How will you be celebrating National Poetry Month and what is one of your favorite poems? Share it in the comments!

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“Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection” Book Giveaway Winner

Holly — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:26:32 +0000

Thanks to everyone who entered our giveaway for the home improvement and organizational book from Buttoned Up, Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection.

Getting organized can be an on-going struggle, especially if you’re an HGTV junkie and automatically begin to compare the miraculously-decorated and organized spaces on television shows, in magazines and even in photos that bloggers and friends post online of their own homes.

Pretty Neat is full of stories, anecdotes and interviews from such a wide variety of (mostly) women who may work in completely different fields, have completely different families and lifestyles, but all have clutter and the feeling of domestic inferiority. It is also full of tips to take control over your home, your clutter and your life. It’s like showing you inside the lives of many different women who aren’t so much unlike yourself and then presenting you with some clarity and helpful tricks to combat each and every clutter-filled aspect of your life. Some of these tricks are even complete shortcuts, giving those who may visit you at your home the illusion of a polished, un-cluttered and completely clean and organized space, but don’t know that you have a pile of mail three weeks old that you still haven’t sifted through inside a desk that you are completely okay with having there. Just as some interviews within the book with women focus on the disorganization in their lives, there are much more that offer helpful tricks to steal and use yourself to create just organized enough spaces.

The entire concept here is to get your home–and yourself–in order to create a space that you can be happy with on your own terms because it is what you truly want and not something that someone else may want for you. That is one sentiment that I could not agree with more, not just when it comes to finding peace in your home and tackling clutter whether it’s in the kitchen, the living room, or even in your work area (you’ll also find an entire section within this book dedicated to helping your organize your workspace, desk and even your inbox!), but also when it comes to the choices we make for our lives. Finding peace and happiness in who we are is an amazing and radical step in practicing self-acceptance and that is something that no one can ever take away from you once you have it.

Pretty Neat was written by Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch, the creators of Buttoned Up, a website full of tips and tools for getting imperfectly organized, and line of organizational products.

Pretty Neat is available now in book stores and on Amazon for about $10.

Now onto who will be receiving a copy of Pretty Neat for free!

The winner of our Pretty Neat giveaway is Jennifer T. who left comment number 24!

Congratulations!

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“Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection” Book Review and Giveaway (Closed)

Holly — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 10:40:08 +0000

This giveaway is now closed.

I am by no means a “fan” or even a dedicated or avid reader of Heather Armstrong’s blog Dooce, but when she posted pictures of her newly-decorated study, I wanted to travel to Utah for the sole purpose of kicking her in the shins–and then running away as fast as possible because I know she works out regularly and I do not. This is not a poor reflection of Heather Armstrong, or her miraculously-decorated study that I can only hope was completely trashed within 10 minutes after taking those pictures. This is within me and I have very much the same reaction every time I dare to go to HGTV’s website or sucked into any one of their television shows. Instinctively, my mind reverts to “Why doesn’t my house look like that?” Then I go and get all down on myself while at the same time flying off into fits of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder-fueled housekeeping and organization.

I refuse to believe I’m alone here. In fact, I know I’m not after reading “Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection”, a book full of stories, anecdotes and flat-out confessions from a myriad of women who have known the feeling of domestic inferiority.

“Pretty Neat” comes from Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch, creators of Buttoned Up, a website full of tips and tools for getting imperfectly organized, and line of organizational products. The entire concept of the book is to throw away the expectations you have for your home in terms of perfection and more importantly, in terms of the expectations you have put on yourself because of outside influences.

I was able to apply a lot of aspects of this book to my daily, personal life, starting with the introduction which talks about “org porn.” Yes, org porn, something defined by the authors as “that glossy, airbrushed fantasy world where everything is pristine, serene, and perfectly in order, sort of like Playboy, but with chore charts and name-plated cubbyholes.” My first thought was just about every single show you (and I) have seen thousands of times on HGTV and other, like-minded, make you feel bad about your home and your housekeeping and organizational skills programming. See, I’m not the only one who thinks those television shows are a reincarnated version of the devil!

Another great, big aspect I immediately identified with personally was putting tremendous pressure on myself in terms of housekeeping, organization and the overall presentation of my home while always seeing my grandmother’s face when I notice something happening in my home that she wouldn’t stand in hers. Things like even one dish being left in the kitchen sink until the next morning, an unmade bed and a spotless bathroom. Yes, my grandmother’s bathroom is completely and utterly spotless and it has always been that way. Growing up, me, my father and younger sister lived right next door in a half double home to my grandmother and aunt. I was in her house every single day, multiple times a day and I have never, not once in my life, entered her bathroom to see one thing out of place. With a 33-year-old man, two cats, a litter box that always, always has a small amount of litter at the entrance from the two cats jumping in and out of it, and way too many bath and body products, I cannot imagine my bathroom even remotely resembling a space without something out of place. This in itself has always been enough to send me off into a wild fit of cleaning and organizing, but never following through until the next time I go off into another fit of cleaning and organizing. Maybe that’s the trick. Follow through. Or, as I picked up from this book, simply realizing that every single thing being in place in my bathroom is not something that truly bothers me because it is a personal preference that came solely from me, but from the way my grandmother kept her bathroom, and therefore not something that is worthy of driving myself out of my mind over.

“Pretty Neat” is full of stories, anecdotes and interviews from such a wide variety of (mostly) women who may work in completely different fields, have completely different families and lifestyles, but all have clutter and the feeling of domestic inferiority. It is also full of tips to take control over your home, your clutter and your life. It’s like showing you inside the lives of many different women who aren’t so much unlike yourself and then presenting you with some clarity and helpful tricks to combat each and every clutter-filled aspect of your life. Some of these tricks are even complete shortcuts, giving those who may visit you at your home the illusion of a polished, un-cluttered and completely clean and organized space, but don’t know that you have a pile of mail three weeks old that you still haven’t sifted through inside a desk that you are completely okay with having there. Just as some interviews within the book with women focus on the disorganization in their lives, there are much more that offer helpful tricks to steal and use yourself to create just organized enough spaces.

Giveaway

So now that you’ve heard me go on and on about “Pretty Neat”, I should probably tell you that we are also giving away a copy of the book to one lucky Woman Tribune reader.

Required Entry

To enter for a chance to win a copy of “Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection” by Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch, leave a comment on this post telling us what area of your home or life that has become the biggest source of organizational stress.

Extra Entries

Please leave a comment for each additional entry.

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Tweet about this giveaway. Feel free to use the following tweet or write your own. [Can be done once per day, leave a link to your tweet in your comment.]

Win a copy of “Pretty Neat”, a practical organization book for the masses from @WomanTribune http://ow.ly/4c6M2 ends 3/20

This giveaway ends Sunday, March 20th at 11:59PM EST. This giveaway is open to all U.S. residents over the age of 18 at the time of entry. The winner will be chosen via random.org and contacted by email; they then have 48 hours (2 days) to respond to that email or another winner will be chosen.

Full Contest Disclaimer

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of “Pretty Neat: The Buttoned-Up Way to Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection” in return for my review, as well as the opportunity to host this giveaway. All opinions expressed throughout this post are 100% mine. This review and giveaway was made possible through the Global Influence Network.

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Book Review: Put On Your Crown by Queen Latifah

Holly — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:00:12 +0000

Queen Latifah is a fabulously respected, savvy businesswoman. She is an Oscar-nominated actress, a Grammy winner, a Cover Girl, and a self-made entrepreneur. She has been an inspiration to many women and young girls throughout the years as she has proven time and again that you can become a successful woman without compromising yourself or your standards in order to fit into some magic mold society insists you must fit into.

Queen Latifah has been a positive role model when it comes to body image and body acceptance. That in itself was the reason why I was excited to read her newest book, Put On Your Crown. The book, she says, is “a wake-up call to empowerment”, written predominantly for young women after noticing the severe lack of self esteem held by young women, which she believes is an epidemic throughout the U.S. She wrote this book for those young women who need to know that as you learn and grow from the experiences of your past, you can use them to turn yourself into a strong, confident woman.

Put On Your Crown is not a typical self help book. It is not a book of pages upon pages of bullet points on how to miraculously find self confidence and start treating yourself like a queen. It is not written in a tone that screams “I’m a professional and I have all the answers, so listen to me and your life will become awesome!” While it could be classified as a self help book, the premise of Put On Your Crown has to do with moments in our lives that essentially make us who we are and how to take those moments and, regardless of how devastating or surreal, use them to better our lives and appreciate what we have in our lives.

Queen Latifah shares pivotal moments in her own life that fall under one of eight topics, which she has set up as chapters throughout her book. The moments range from the way her parents had treated her and her brother the same without leaving one of them left out, to the openness of her family and their unwavering support throughout her life, to finding out who her true friends were after she had become a celebrity, to the times she worked herself too hard and had burnt out when she was trying to launch her recording studio and then again when she had to appear for photographs and interviews, to becoming very wealthy and suddenly finding out she had gone completely broke, to going to see her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and to the sudden and tragic death of her brother. These moments, as well as many others that have shaped Queen Latifah into the woman she stands proud as today, are listed under the categories of success, beauty, money, love, fear, loss, strength and joy.

As she reflects on her past and the moments she has had in her life that have made her who she is today, she lends not only the stories of these moments to the reader, but also advice and compassion. Essentially, this should have been a great book for young women. The premise of the book is good, the morals of her stories are fantastic and she does touch upon very important topics, such as drugs, prostitution and violence breaking out everywhere in her hometown and telling her readers about her mother, who is also her best friend, who has always been a teacher and who has also committed herself to helping young people who were plagued by drugs and violence and has helped them. Realistically, I found this book to be filled with tiny, redeeming morsels among a book that, as a whole, I found dry, repetitive and boring. The hardcover edition of this book is small and at 197 pages where, if it were laid out in a standard 8×11″ book would make up even less pages, was pretty painful to get through. While I don’t have too much time to sit down and read a book to begin with, I could easily get through something of this size in a few days. Instead, Put On Your Crown took me a month to read and most of that time I spent staring at the book when I did have time to sit down with it, willing myself to pick it up and keep on reading.

I can definitely appreciate the tone of her book; it was not written by a psychologist or a trained professional, but straight from the source. Queen Latifah writes solely in her own voice, as you would imagine she would speak to someone who was talking to her in-person. While I typically enjoy what Queen Latifah has had to say in the past (not including her recent comment about how we need to stop “beating up” Chris Brown, of course), I think this book would have made a better blog–something a great deal shorter. I do not think that she had enough content to fill a book with, since I found her going back to the same stories, anecdotes and scenarios several times throughout the book and it got boring pretty fast.

Despite my boredom with Put On Your Crown, I was looking for something specific within its pages. I wanted her to elaborate more on body image and body acceptance. As a full-figured woman who has actually made a career for herself in Hollywood, she is widely seen as a role model for young women who has not given in to society’s need for thinness. Very early in the book she dedicated a section of her book to the topic, that topic being entitled Real Women Have Curves. She speaks about the pressure to lose weight that she felt throughout her career, frequently being told to lose weight by studio executives, but she had remained adamant on keeping her figure. As long as she was healthy, she liked her size. End of story. That is the Queen Latifah I was looking for. On the second-to-last page of her book, she erased that entire section on how much she liked the size she was and didn’t want to lose weight. In writing to her 19-year-old former-self, she writes, “Dana. Do you know who you are? Guess who you get to be! And guess what, you even get to lose weight!”

I’m sorry, but excuse me? Did I read that correctly? Wait, I went back and looked and yes, I did! For a woman who has solidified herself as a champion of body acceptance to end an entire book she has just written on that note is not only a letdown; it is absolutely devastating for any young woman who feels she is not pretty enough or thin enough and picked up this book thinking it would be something different.

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Book Giveaway! Win a Copy of Foxy by Pam Grier [CLOSED]

Holly — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:24:43 +0000

This giveaway is now closed.

I recently had the opportunity to review the recently-published memoir, Foxy, by the ever-fabulous Pam Grier. Whether you know her from her roles in Coffy, Foxy Brown, Jackie Brown or Showtime’s The L Word, chances are, you have heard of Pam Grier and you have marveled at her ability to truly become the character she is portraying, either in film, television or even in theater.

Pam Grier didn’t come from a wealthy or already-famous family; she was raised in very modest surroundings in Colorado, her father was serving in the Air Force and she was moving around every two years at a time where segregation was at an all-time high. She had a dream to go to college and while trying to earn a living in California, where she had moved to attend UCLA film school and to become an actress. It is only because of her determination and extremely hard and merciless work that Pam Grier is the recognizable and admired woman she is today.

Now is your chance to get to know the Pam Grier you may have not known before and to get an intimate look inside her childhood, her upbringing and the road she traveled to move up within the entertainment industry. We have 5 copies of Foxy to give away thanks to the Hachette Book Group.

To win a copy of Foxy by Pam Grier, all you have to do is leave a comment telling us what movie or television show you loved seeing Pam Grier in. [REQUIRED]

Since Pam Grier has been appearing in film and television since the early 1970′s, this shouldn’t be too hard of a challenge and if you need some help jogging your memory, check out her entire portfolio on Internet Movie Database.

Additional Entries: [Leave a separate comment for each additional entry.]

Leave a comment telling us why you want to win a copy of Foxy.
Blog about this giveaway and about Foxy with a link back to this post and to our full book review.
Tweet about this giveaway. Feel free to use the following pre-written tweet or write your own and leave a comment with a link to your Twitter status.

Win a copy of Foxy by Pam Grier from @WomanTribune: http://tinyurl.com/2ecdloa 5 winners! ends 5/5

This giveaway ends Wednesday, May 5th at 11:59PM EST. This giveaway is open to all US and Canadian residents over the age of 18. The winners will be contacted by email and have 48 hours (2 days) to respond with their mailing address. If I don’t hear back from the winners within that time, another winner will be selected.

Full Contest Disclaimer

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Book Review: Foxy by Pam Grier

Holly — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:40:18 +0000

Pam Grier is known for a lot of things. She is known as a truly gifted, hard-working, dedicated and passionate actor. She is known for being at the forefront of the blaxploitation scene, for her role as Coffy, Foxy Brown and for Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, a role, it turns out, that Tarantino wrote specifically for her. She is also known as Kit Porter, the ex-alcoholic and known singer who turns her life around and truly re-discovers herself within a group of supporting and loving friends, who just so happen to be lesbians, in Showtime’s The L Word.

I knew Pam Grier mostly as Kit Porter, being much too young to have known her work as she was just a twinkle in a B-movie producer’s eye, but I was still thoroughly excited to get to know Pam Grier, the person and the actor, when I had the opportunity to review her newly-published memoir, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts. That in itself shows how Pam Grier transcends generations; her vast portfolio truly contains something for everyone, regardless of their age or their personal entertainment preferences.

Grier begins her memoir naturally, in the early years of her life–years 1949 to 1970. She grew up with her father serving in the Air Force, which allowed her family to see and experience everything this country, as well as other countries, had to offer, but at a time where people of color were forbidden to experience something as simple as public transportation. She recalled a specific experience when she lived in Columbus, Ohio at a time where segregation was at an all-time high and her family had been given a lovely place to live on base, but only because upon meeting her father, his superiors thought he was Caucasian, when he was really biracial. When they found out that her family were people of color, they promptly told her father that he would have to make other living arrangements off base. It was at this time, when Pam Grier was just five years old, where she realized that being a person of color came with many obstacles and she and her family ran into the racial wall throughout her childhood.

While Grier and her family moved every two years because of her father being active in the Air Force, she had always considered Colorado home, although she did spend some time in Wyoming on her family’s farm, which was also where she climbed onto her first horse and fell in love for a lifetime. While living with her Aunt Mennon, a compulsive, irresponsible and generally angry “wild child”, in the projects of Denver, Colorado with her mother, father and brother, as well as with her cousins, she was six years old when she was first raped by her three male cousins in the home when her mother was out and her aunt had left the children unattended. She was saved by the telephone repairman, who had come into the house and barged into the room when he had heard what was going on, after an appointment to fix the telephone wiring had not been canceled. Grier never told a soul about what had happened to her, not fully comprehending what had happened. After being raped, she developed a stutter and consistently went out of her way to make herself unattractive to the boys, and to men as she grew older.

Her introverted behavior didn’t stop until she was much older and after losing her stutter, her introverted-self returned when she was raped again at eighteen years old, while out on one of her first dates with a family friend. Again, she didn’t tell anyone what had happened to her, this time, in fear of her family going out and killing her attacker and her need to keep peace within her family, as her parents divorced and she saw her mother struggling to complete her nursing degree.

After competing in and winning a beauty pageant, purely for the prize money she needed to fulfill her hopes of going to college to study film and to become an actress, Grier was offered the chance to move to Hollywood. She took the plunge and moved to California, quickly snatching up as many jobs as she could possibly work, as well as attend groups and meetings with UCLA students studying film on campus, although she was not a student.

While dating now basketball household name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who when she met him was just named Lew, Grier landed her first acting job, a “B-movie”, The Big Doll House. After completing that movie, she was immediately hired by the same people behind the first movie, for her second, Women in Cages. It was also at this time when Lew, now Kareem, was consistently pressuring her into converting to Islam and to be an obedient wife he could take care of; but Grier never wanted anyone to take care of herself, being a driven and strong-willed woman with goals of her own that needed fulfilling. She and Kareem inevitably split when he gave her an ultimatum to marry him, or else he would be marrying a Muslim woman who had already been prepared for him–and he would be marrying this woman on Pam Grier’s birthday of all days. Needless to say, she declined his offer, as painful as it was, because regardless of how open her mind was to the idea, the more she read the books Kareem had given her about converting and what would be expected of her, the more she thought that the religion was degrading and oppressive towards women and Kareem married a woman he did not know for his religion.

Pam Grier mentions a great deal about the importance of the women’s liberation movement and her mother sending her information on the movement and the advancement of women. She also mentions a cameo appearance Gloria Steinem made on The L Word, asking who has fought harder for womanhood than Gloria Steinem? But these statements in conjunction with one particular statement really left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Almost off-handedly, Grier mentions her sexual relationship with a man as a grown woman and says that women should wait to have sex until they can be with a good man because if they don’t and have too much sex at a young age, they will be too stretched out for sex to be pleasurable. This is actually rather offensive, since feminism has a great deal to do with sexual liberation, as well as liberation from the patriarchy. To warn that you will be too stretched out for it to be pleasurable feels more like a back-peddle from feminism and sexual liberation. While this may seem like a very tiny issue and may not even catch the attention of most who read her memoir, it is still embedded in my mind and it’s still rubbing me the wrong way.

Grier has been involved in long-term relationships with many men who had not been worthy of not just her, but of any self-respecting woman and after reading about her experiences watching boyfriends like Freddie Prinze Sr. and Richard Pryor fall down the long and dirty road of deadly drugs and self-destructive behavior, you have to respect a woman for following her logic instead of purely her heart and knowing that as much as she wished she could save the men she loved throughout her life, that sometimes you have to let them go and make their own decisions and having to be more of a mother than a partner to a man is something no woman should be expected to do. It was when she was in a relationship with Richard Pryor, who at the time had been doing so much cocaine that it was present in his seminal fluid, that Grier was told by her gynecologist that she would have to stop having a sexual relationship with him unless he wore a condom or she could die because the cocaine was showing up inside of her and was destroying her reproductive organs. Throughout Foxy, Pam Grier consistently proves to herself that she is stronger and more self-aware than she could ever possibly give herself credit for.

Pam Grier is a survivor. A survivor of repeated sexual assault, as well as a survivor of cervical cancer that she found she had when dating a man named Phillip who let his mother live in poverty, having to carry one light bulb from room to room when she needed to see around her house while he was raking in millions, and who also stood Grier up after she had come out of surgery. But Pam Grier consistently triumphed, throwing herself into winning the fight of her life and consistently shining in every finished product that emerges where we are able to see her dedication and hard work pay off. Grier is an underdog; a woman who came from very little, but with one dream and a great deal of hard work, she succeeded in what she set out to do in her life and she just keeps on shining.

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Buy Used Books and Get a Free Tote from Powell’s

Holly — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:37:38 +0000

Powell’s Books is an independent book store with six physical locations and a remarkable online presence. They are always doing what they can to help authors, readers and the planet. They are partnered with Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit program that works with publishers, paper mills and printers to make positive and green transformations within the book industry, like using paper that is recycled and/or certified by the Forest Stewardship Council instead of endangered forest fiber.

But that isn’t all that makes Powell’s green they also purchase Clean Wind Power, offsetting 165,000 pounds of CO2 each year, they have been using bio diesel fuel in their delivery trucks that make daily rounds to Powell’s stores and warehouses since 2006, every Powell’s employee is awarded a discount on bus passes, available as a pre-tax deduction, encouraging all of their employees to use public transportation for their work commute or they can be given an annual bicycle maintenance subsidy. In October of 2008, Powell’s began work on a 100kW solar project at the NW Portland warehouse, which is one of the largest solar arrays in Oregon, with 540 photovoltaic panels supplying approximately 25% of the building’s electric needs. And that’s just the beginning because Powell’s has a whole lot more greening planned to take care of everything from waste prevention to purchasing recycled products.

Needless to say, Powell’s Books is a pretty awesome, green company you can feel proud to buy from.

So why don’t you buy from them tomorrow while an awesome Earth Day promotion is going on? That’s right–an awesome promotion to celebrate Earth Day!

Until April 22nd, buy any three used books at Powell’s and get a free reusable Powell’s tote!

Buying used books instead of brand new books helps the planet because publishers don’t have to keep printing new copies of books and you’re conserving the copies already in circulation. If no one is reading a particular book you want to get your hands on, why not get it and of course, when buying used books, you can get them for a fraction of the price they normally sell for, which is a huge plus! Another great thing about Powell’s is that I have bought several used books from Amazon and more often than not, they are totally beat up and I’m lucky I could even read some of them, but with Powell’s, I never received a copy of a used book that wasn’t almost new.

And who couldn’t use more books, right? So get to buying and get your free Powell’s tote!

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Spreading the Love of First Periods–My Little Red Book Giveaway [CLOSED]

Holly — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:10:52 +0000

This giveaway is now closed.

Back in February 2009, I was introduced to a book that broke rules and exposed secret lives. It was a book of acceptance and stripped away stigma constantly being enforced on girls and women today. It was a book all about first periods.

Have you ever noticed that all commercials for menstrual products focus on how discreet their product is and because their product is easier to hide than their competitor’s from onlookers and those you may be around who could possibly suspect that you have your period, is the reason why you need to purchase their brand instead of their competitor’s? It seems that whenever the topic of menstruation comes up in our society, we immediately are told that we must be discreet about it? It’s rather odd that something that happens within the bodies of (almost) every single woman in the world is still associated with something that needs to be shoved to the back of the closet and is still something that women are told by society is dirty or vulgar.

There is no shame in menstruation and when I had the opportunity to read and review My Little Red Book, an anthology of more than 90 short stories, essays and recollections from women and teens all over the world, I celebrated exactly that.

My Little Red Book has become a New York Times best seller, which is refreshing and exciting, knowing that there are enough people out there who are ready to give up the stigma surrounding menstruation and who are buying this book for themselves, for their daughters, granddaughters and friends; and now I want to spread the love. Thanks to Hachette Book Group, I have the opportunity to give away 10 copies of the new edition of My Little Red Book.

To win a copy of My Little Red Book, all you have to do is leave a comment telling us about your first period. [REQUIRED]

Don’t worry, I know that there are some people out there who don’t want to divulge that information or who feel out of their comfort zone in doing so, so feel free to provide as little or as much information as possible. You can say something like ‘I was 12 and I was skiing while on family vacation.’ See? Easy! Also, for those of you who want to enter to win a copy of My Little Red Book but have never experienced having a period (hello fabulous men out there!) just leave us a comment telling us who you want to give this book to if you win it, or of course, if you’re keeping it for yourself. There’s no shame in being a man and wanting to read this book, after all!

Because we are giving away 10 copies of this book to 10 different winners, there is only one method of entry into this giveaway.

This giveaway ends Wednesday, April 14th at 11:59PM EST. This giveaway is open to all US and Canada residents over the age of 18. The winner will be contacted by email and has 48 hours to respond with their necessary information. If no action is taken and I don’t hear back from you, another winner will be picked.

Full Contest Disclaimer

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Book Review: The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer

Holly — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:57:17 +0000

This review can also be seen on the Pajama Mommy Community.

College admissions counselor Eugenia “Genie” Michaels is in her late-thirties–one of only two women admissions counselors in the office of Thoreau College over the age of thirty-five–and has been the committed, unwavering rock for her boyfriend of four years, Hugh. Hugh Spencer is a cleaned up, bordering on downright prissy English man who, yes, does resemble Hugh Grant; he teaches English at Thoreau and is also an aspiring writer. Genie and Hugh, while not married, work much like a married couple, as couples who have been together a certain number of years often do, and while working feverishly through the night on his novel, Hopeful, Kansas, while keeping a day job, Genie did not bring up the possibility of marriage to Hugh and opted instead, to simply wait, thinking that her patience would pay off in the end, in the sum of a romantic proposal.

Hugh finally makes it big, becoming a celebrity while his novel, Hopeful, Kansas tops the best seller lists. While on a book tour he is interviewed on national television by Barbara Walters, where she prompts Hugh to propose to the love of his life. The only problem is, he doesn’t propose to Genie.

While still in shock after not hearing from Hugh after watching him propose to someone else on national television beside Barbara Walters, Genie’s best friend, the loud, mouthy Patty Pugliese, who no one in Genie’s family seems to be able to stand, comes to Genie’s rescue. Well, sort of. As Patty shows up with tequila in tow, Genie calls Hugh to get some answers and is faced with his awful truth; that he had never said he was committed to Genie for the four years they were together and worst of all, that he had never been sexually attracted to her. Getting very little answers at all, Patty edges Genie into The Sleeping Beauty Proposal; instead of having to go through the shame and embarrassment of telling those she loves and other inquisitive minds that instead of proposing, Hugh had actually dumped her, she would let people think whatever they wanted and not correct those who assume Genie and Hugh are engaged. In short: Genie will pretend to be engaged to Hugh; but before Genie can actually agree to this, Patty starts fielding phone calls coming in to congratulate Genie, telling everyone that Genie is thrilled and excited about her upcoming nuptials.

As her mother and sister rush to “help” Genie plan her upcoming wedding, her brother introduces her to a beautiful house he and his colleague Nick have just finished working on, before it goes on the real estate market. Throughout the book, Genie and Nick have a flirtation going on that you can’t help but root on and as we see Genie go deeper down the rabbit hole in regard to Nick, we see just how fast Genie’s charade of her faux-engagement may backfire.

Sarah Strohmeyer has successfully written some of the most compellingly real characters I have come across in chick lit, possibly ever. They are characters who often take themselves too seriously, who question themselves, who stumble and who struggle to pick themselves back up again. Genie is a character who can easily be any number of women I know; women who merely do not know what they are capable of or who are too afraid to dig deep within themselves to find out. Her best friend Patty is a best friend I firmly believe we all would love to have; someone who continuously pushes us, but is always there when you’ve stumbled, and Hugh symbolized that mistake every woman has made at least once that they can look back on and laugh about–and thank their lucky stars they got out when they did.

The Sleeping Beauty Proposal is an incredibly fast-paced read that will make you laugh out loud and shows women everywhere that they can do whatever they want; like purchase their own home, go for that big promotion (and get it!) and buy their own diamond rings without having to wait for a man to either do it for them, buy it for them, or give them permission.

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Book Review: Devilish by Maureen Johnson

Holly — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:25:36 +0000

Jane Jarvis and her best friend Allison are true blue friends ’till the end who always have each other’s backs and who can confide anything in each other. Attending Saint Teresa’s Preparatory School for Girls, the two are used to sticking out in a crowd, but now in the most positive way, being quirky in both their attitudes, as well as in their looks, so when the school holds their annual Big-Little celebration where Bigs (upper classmen) pair up with Littles (lower classmen) with the means to be more or less mentors to these younger girls, super confident Jane is immediately fearful for her less-confident friend, who she knows gets very nervous in any situation, not to mention an entire school event that, in essence, is based on your popularity.

During the Big-Little celebration, Allison seems to have it all together after showing Jane that she had received a cupcake in her locker with a note asking her to be a Big to an unnamed freshman. But Jane’s initial fears for her friend are reassured after Allison, waiting for her Little to come up and introduce herself fails to show, she throws up all over one of the freshman girls coming in her direction after nearly every other senior girl had obtained a Little. After Allison runs to the bathroom, Jane runs after to be there for her best friend, giving up any chance of getting a Little of her own. While trying to console Allison, who has barricaded herself inside a stall, a new sophomore student named Lanalee asks about Allison and after Jane tells her that Allison did not get a Little, Lanalee offers herself up, saying that she wasn’t able to get a Big anyway.

Lanalee seems to have appeared on the scene at Saint Teresa’s Preparatory School for Girls just in time. She is cool, calm and collected and even the most popular of girls in the school are fascinated with her, after she tells them a story of coming from another school primarily made up of rich socialites. She instantly becomes a great friend to Allison and to Jane alike, but Allison is spending less and less time with Jane and Allison starts to worry about this girl who she thought she had known so well; especially after Allison comes to school with her usual unruly hair cut into a short, dyed-red bob and is rocking an entirely new, obviously expensive wardrobe with matching, equally expensive accessories. Allison’s entire situation becomes even hairier to Jane when she follows Allison out of a small cafe, to see her go directly to Jane’s ex-boyfriend’s Elton’s house, who is now Allison’s new boyfriend.

As a series of weird and random events take place, Jane is left wondering what has happened to her friend to have made her become this completely new person she hardly recognizes (or sees) anymore. As her curiosity grows, she meets a very strange and at first, even somewhat stalker-like freshman named Owen and after ignoring him for a while, she realizes quickly that she needs Owen–because he happens to know exactly what has happened to Allison and is one of very few links Jane has to piece everything together. It is with Owen’s help that Jane comes to find out that Allison has made a deal with the devil–literally and it all started with that single cupcake in Allison’s locker on Big-Little Day. Now, it’s up to Jane to save the best friend she knows is still hidden inside of this new, but not-so-improved Allison, even if it means sacrificing herself.

I had Devilish sitting on my bookshelf for a little while before picking it up to read. I thought it was yet another young adult beach read; something that I would read through in a few sittings and be done with, it not really leaving such a lasting impression. Needless to say, I was wrong. The cover of the book is superb, especially since it does hold a great deal of meaning for the story itself, but you don’t know that when you first pick it, giving it that intriguing feel before you read it and a much more complex, full-circle feeling after.

It is an intelligent, fast-paced, thrilling read that will keep you turning the page again and again. This is the first book I have read by Maureen Johnson, but I am beyond intrigued and very excited to pick up another one of her books. She truly has a gift for playing with suspense and keeps you thinking and laughing throughout the entire book. Johnson’s characters, even her evil, do-no-gooders, are fun and will keep you switching sides on who to root for because you really like these diverse and very well-rounded characters.

Devilish was very much aptly-timed for me, just finishing it right after Valentine’s Day and not knowing exactly why I was craving cupcakes so much; it took my partner asking me what I expected from reading a book every day with a delicious cupcake pictured on the cover. While Devilish did initially present itself to be a not-so-remarkable read that I’ve read a thousand times before, it was anything but. I surprised even myself with how much I truly enjoyed this book.

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Book Review: Dream Life by Lauren Mechling

Holly — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:41:09 +0000

Although Dream Life is a sequel to Lauren Mechling’s first book, Dream Girl, Dream Life is the first book I have read in the supernatural journey that is Claire Voyante’s world. That being said, Mechling first and foremost succeeded in creating a book that you can pick up and jump right into, without needing any back story from the first publication in the series.

Claire is a typical high school girl with a not-so-typical gift; ever since her grandmother, Kiki, gave her an onyx and ivory cameo necklace, Claire has been having black and white dreams that are major tips in solving some pretty influential mysteries. To make Dream Life even more intriguing, Claire isn’t just solving mysteries around New York, she (albeit, mistakenly) aligns herself with a secret society of do-gooders called the Blue Moons, who give her quite the mystery to solve–find a missing pink iPod that holds the secrets of a new and absolutely huge project to save the Brooklyn Bridge from real estate developer slimeball, Sink Landon.

Admittedly, Dream Life was a little slow to start for me, which I attribute to not reading the first book and really not knowing the who knew each other so well. However, the book surprised me with its ability to catch–and keep–my attention to the end. Claire is a remarkable and rememberable heroine that you find yourself rooting for in her entire series of problems, not just with solving mysteries, but also rifts with her friends, her complicated boy troubles and dealing with her eccentric parents. Through reading so many young adult books and seeing the amount of quirkiness young adult authors portray in their parental characters, it is my belief that YA authors write parents with the exaggerated qualities they had in parents growing up, with a myriad of additional attributes they wished their parents had and Dream Life had that ten-fold with a Paris-crazed mother with a love of the Zodiac and her parents’ insane Paris-themed house parties. But most of all, I fell in absolute love with Claire’s grandmother, Kiki, who reminds me of every genuinely close friend I have ever had that I could divulge anything to without feeling a hint of judgment.

Lauren Mechling not only presents a fabulous mystery novel that captures the attention of young adults and older adults alike, but also is the first author since the creators of Sex and the City to turn New York City into a character in itself. Being the wannabe-fashionista that I am (read: If I had money, oh the clothes, shoes and accessories I would buy), I really enjoyed the fashion appearances in this book as well. Kiki’s hand-me-down vintage dresses Claire wears and the footwear described in her best friend Becca’s wardrobe are enough to make even the savviest of fashionistas swoon.

I loved being given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall in Claire’s life; from her stance as a Half Moon in the Blue Moon society, solving a mystery that proved me wrong when I thought I had everything figured out, to finally figuring out who she is as a person and knowing her own level of morality, which makes Claire completely and utterly real.

I would recommend this book to anyone craving a serving of hilarious, page-turning, on-the-edge-of-your-seat read that lets you breathe a sigh of relief when you think things can’t get much worse.

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Book Review: Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

Holly — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:20:29 +0000

I must preface this by saying that I know very little when it comes to cooking, never mind French cooking. I know enough to prepare something with very simple instructions, but for the most part my partner does the majority of any cooking that involves more than boil water, add noodles, wait until noodles are tender and cover with sauce. In addition to my lack of culinary expertise, I also knew very little about Julia Child when starting this book, so one could assume that this would not be a book that I would be interested in, if not having to force myself through. However, I surprisingly took to this book very well because you don’t have to know pretty much anything about cooking, French cooking or Julia Child to enjoy the humor and biting cynicism of Julie Powell and her ability to bring you on the journey, the upheaval, the frustrations and the victories that became her life.

Julie Powell was just a temp secretary working at a government office full of Republicans in a post-9/11 era where, among other things like filing, she answered phone calls about people’s ideas for the September 11th memorial that had not yet been placed where the World Trade Center towers once stood. Living with her husband, three cats and what one could assume to be a minor drinking and chain-smoking problem, she worked a thankless job and lived a mundane life in a crappy apartment. She lived the life so many people are currently and will continue to live–getting by without doing much of significance.

But that’s where we get Julie Powell’s life all wrong. Of course she did not mean to do something of so much significance, but she did strive to do something. While being told she had a condition that would make it difficult to impossible to have a child after the age of thirty, and being twenty-nine, she set out on a mission to restore her ambition, change her life and save her soul… by cooking all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I.

As she details her way through dish after dish, through long and excruciatingly-detailed pages on the insides of marrow bones and how to really go about stealing the lives of lobsters before turning them into delectable French cuisine, Julie & Julia is the kind of book you pick up on a rainy day when you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, so you don’t and allow yourself to relax the morning and early-afternoon away in bed with a good book.

A memoir was the perfect thing for Julie Powell to write, being an honest and often self-deprecating woman who bears it all and isn’t ashamed of it. However, on this same note she did write in the author’s note that throughout the book she did just make things up but of course, does not touch on what is made up and what is true-to-life. That did not necessarily have a negative impact on my overall enjoyment of this book because as I found myself laughing during certain passages and then wondering if that had really happened or not, I realized that if it had, well, that would have been hilarious and if not, then Julie Powell is equipped with a great and witty imagination–And she is.

Her blog that inspired the book, the Julie/Julia Project gained a great deal of media attention towards the ending months of her project. She prepared dinner for newspaper columnists she had admired and even missed the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to do it. Her blog garnered a great deal of attention from people whom she called bleeders that cheered her on and also pleaded with her not to make aspic-and-anything ever again.

More-so than the art of French cooking, I was more intrigued by Julie Powell the woman. I enjoyed her anecdotes and expletive-filled tangents about her boring and thankless job, her varied and equally satisfying and satisfied friends and of course, a husband in which she portrays to be the textbook definition of perfect. While I had seen the trailer for the movie before picking up the book, I was actually quite thrilled to see that the real Julie Powell was not as wholesome as Amy Adams portrays on the silver screen.

Julie & Julia is a satisfying journey of discovery full of laugh-out-loud tales and lists of foods I am certain I will never let grace my dinner plate.

None yet, check back soon!

C. Leigh Purtill’s Bookish Experiment has Kicked Off (and We’re Excited!)

Holly — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:31:12 +0000

C. Leigh Purtill, the author of both Love, Meg and All About Vee (both of which we absolutely loved!) has just kicked off a bookish experiment that we couldn’t be happier about. Purtill’s novel, All About Vee was not written to be it’s own short novel; Vee was actually just another character in a bigger book entitled Fat Girls in LA and it goes without saying that while the book did include appearances of the other characters throughout All About Vee, the book itself was just what you could assume from the title–All about Veronica May.

Now we get to hear the stories of all of the girls we were introduced to in All About Vee with Purtill’s bookish experiment which will release a part of the sequel, The Rise of Ginny Cooper every Monday in January. Best of all, especially for people who already spend way too much money on books, The Rise of Ginny Cooper is completely free and is available for download exclusively at The Story Siren, a huge website dedicated to young adult books, reviews, author interviews, contests and more.

Download your free copy of The Rise of Ginny Cooper part 1

The Story Siren is also giving you an opportunity to win a signed copy of the first book in the series, All About Vee. From now until January 25th, anyone 13 years of age or older can enter to win the signed copy of the book here.

None yet, check back soon!

Book Review: The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell

Holly — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:39:01 +0000

Laurie Sandell’s The Impostor’s Daughter is very much unlike any memoir I have read before. Firstly, it is a graphic novel, which I hadn’t expected, having not read a thing about the book before opening to the first page, and secondly, her story speaks so honestly that quite a few times I re-read a page thinking ‘Did she really just say that?’

A great deal of daughters have complete and utter adoration for their fathers; coming from an unconventional, single-father home myself, I know the feeling very well. Laurie grew up hanging on every syllable her father told her about his life; from being a former green beret, to having studied law at NYU and receiving his PhD from Columbia University to serving as an economist and adviser to Henry Kissinger. To say the least, Laurie’s father was an entirely and completely important man; she obviously stemmed from pure greatness! But it wasn’t until Laurie was in college and when applying for her first credit card, she realized she already had one… she soon found out that her father had taken out several loans and credit cards in her name, ruining her credit when she realized maybe all of her father’s stories of grand achievements and a life lived hard wasn’t all he said it was.

While her father was the essence of the word “con man,” Laurie’s life was indeed full of excitement. She spent four years exploring the world, traveling to Israel, Japan, Jordan, Paris, Mexico, Egypt and Thailand. She took on many roles including being a stripper in Tokyo, seducing a woman in Israel and she grew addicted to Ambien and found herself in a downward spiral which included passing out in the bathtub night after night after an Ambien/wine cocktail. She, understandably, also had many man troubles.

Sandell started working for the very famous women’s magazine Glamour interviewing celebrities and it was in Ashley Judd where she found a wonderful friend who also ended up saving her life, suggesting she enter rehab. And so she did. It was in rehab where she had the opportunity to address the problems in her life that stemmed from her father and his lies, figuratively and then personally and she has also been sober for some years now. She slowly but surely pieces her father’s life together, meeting with members of his family with whom he had alienated himself from years prior and seeing as much of his big picture as she could.

I could not stop reading The Impostor’s Daughter. I opened it, started reading and did not put it down until the next morning, when I was completely finished. I have read the book twice, both times taking me no more than two sittings and during the first time, I actually carried it with me to the bathroom a few times. It is a story that has yet to get old and I definitely foresee myself reading it again–It is that good. I really respect the course that Laurie Sandell has taken in her life, whether it be good, bad or destructive because she did wind up on her feet and rebuilding an impressive professional career. She had the nerve to air her family’s dirty laundry not because she wanted to have something over her father, but because her story is one that needed to be told and was a pleasure to experience however briefly and she did it successfully, with wit and honesty.

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Join Grand Central Publishing in a Live Interview with Sherri Shepherd

Holly — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:25:14 +0000

Sherri Shepherd of The View fame and also star of her own multi-camera comedy series on Lifetime, Sherri, can now add ‘author’ to her resume.

In celebration of her new release, Permission Slips, Grand Central Publishing will be interviewing Sherri Shepherd live on Blog Talk Radio on October 29th at 1PM EST. You can listen in and/or chat with other people listening to the interview on the Grand Central Publishing’s Blog Talk Radio page and you can also call in with any questions you have for Sherri by calling during the show at 646-378-0039.

Mark your calendars and make sure to tune in!

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Book Review: You Deserve The Royal Treatment by Stacey Joiner

Holly — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:00:23 +0000

Stacey Joiner is a Licensed Massage Therapist and Certified Yoga Instructor, but she only entered that line of work after realizing what her path in life was and what she, in her heart, truly wanted for her life. She wanted to help people and with the release of her book You Deserve The Royal Treatment, she gives the people who have the pleasure of reading her book the inspiration to do the same.

Women have this natural instinct to nurture those around us, whether it’s our husbands or partners, our children, our parents or other loved ones we surround ourselves with, although we often don’t make time to nurture ourselves. We make sure the people around us happy, fed, clothed, that our houses are clean and decorated, we bake cookies for our children’s bake sales and we strive to perform above-par in our careers and satisfy our managers and bosses. We lead very hectic lives and if there’s one thought that crosses our minds the most often, it’s that days need to include more hours so we can do more every day. Women are keen to putting more pressure on ourselves than we are often able to deal with. When I had first started to read Stacey Joiner’s book, I had felt this way. I was working for a person who did not appreciate the hard work that I put in day after day, many more hours than I had first agreed to work, and all of this was at the expense of what I truly wanted to do with my life career-wise.

Stacey Joiner cuts through every excuse every woman has ever used to not treat herself like royalty; to not make time for themselves, to not relax with a mug of coffee or tea and enjoy the fall leaves that are changing color and falling from the trees in your backyard, to not take a relaxing bath, to not take an hour before bed and read a book, to not treat yourself to a massage that could save your sanity. While living in New York City after September 11th and in the transition from corporate citizen to owner of a massage and yoga practice, Stacey Joiner experienced first hand what chaos ensuing around you could do to your stress levels and overall to your life; she also distinctly experienced what women think when they see another woman taking the initiative to take care of themselves, their well-beings and their mental stability; she knew that what the doctor ordered for her at that time was a massage to relax herself while all of her problems, obstacles and impending triumphs stayed exactly where they were. When she told her mother that she was going for a massage, she thought she was crazy, but Stacey knew exactly what she needed–and she was right; that self-care made it possible for her to perform greatly in her practice and tend to the other priorities in her life.

At the end of every chapter of You Deserve The Royal Treatment is a section entitled ‘Your Royal Duty;’ at the end of the first chapter are instructions to log onto YouDeserveTheRoyalTreatment.com for a free, two-minute audio meditation, which I strongly recommend you do. As for the rest of the Your Royal Duty Sections, she gives a yoga pose–it’s name, what doing the yoga pose will do for your body and for your mind, and bullet points instructing you how to perform the pose. However, even if you currently don’t do yoga or aren’t familiar with it, reading this book is still, as far as I’m concerned, a royal duty in itself.

Stacey Joiner hits the nail on the head again and again, but if you only take one thing away from her book, let it be that if you don’t take care of yourself first, how would you ever have successfully tend to all of the priorities in your life? When you neglect your own needs, illness, anger, resentment, disappointment and frustration invite themselves into your life. Joiner is changing the mindset and in turn, the lives of women for the better just by giving them sound advice that Joiner herself had learned throughout her life and is now spreading the good word to women everywhere. She stresses the truth in the fact that it does not matter how much or how little money you have in your bank account, if you live in an extravagant house or a studio apartment, if you’re single or married, if you have no children or have nine, nothing can stop you from making the most of your life and truly living royally. In case you were wondering, from the time I finished You Deserve the Royal Treatment, I have since ceased working for a person who does not appreciate the hard work that I put in to their business and I have begun working, albeit a little too much, but doing what I truly want and love to do.

None yet, check back soon!

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