Tag Archives: self-help

Up for Renewal

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Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over by Cathy Alter

First line: “The noise was overwhelming.”

It’s a hard knock life for a single girl in her late thirties. Alter decided to do something about it, and found advice not on a therapist’s couch, but screaming out from the cover of magazines. How to Get A Man and Keep Him, How to Be Thin, How to Get the Room of Your Dreams. What are magazines, really, but calling cards for a better, glossier life? She pledged to take the advice of a set of magazines, Glamour, Real Simple, In Style, O the Oprah Magazine, among others, and do whatever the mags told her within a given monthly goal, including better health, adventure, sex and so on. Not only is the premise catchy, but Alter delivers on witty, well-written prose that doesn’t pull any punches. In real life she may suffer from a bad case of TMI, but in the pages of a book about magazines, we’d expect no less than some scandalous dirt on her life. 

For: Self-help and magazine junkies who’ve wondered if you can really improve your life for the cost of a subscription. – Malena Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

the Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing Book-Sharing Guide to Life

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the Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life by Kathy L. Patrick

First line: “If you saw me today in my full Pulpwood Queens Book Club regalia featuring hot pink, leopard skin, and a diamond tiara, you might not immediately think of me as a bookseller.”

With the average American reading one book a year, I have to admit I like the idea of the author’s ingenious salon/hairdresser concept, Beauty and the Book. And I’d much rather hear about a good book while trapped in a salon chair than the hairdresser’s love life. I’m probably not the only one. The book is just as inspired, part memoir, part self-help book, tossing such pearls of wisdom as “If life hands you a lemon, make a margarita.” Who can argue with that?  What sets the book apart is Patrick’s love of books and her quick pick for any given situation. She has enough recommendations to fill your book club for the next ten years. As the first line indicates, she started her own book club spawning chapters all over the States. In fact, a little tiara-wearing, book-sharing is exactly what we need more of. Patrick’s personality is probably contagious, so no one in her company feels blue for long. Her book can offer the same remedy.

For: Spawning your own book club and a cheerier outlook on life. - Malena Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

More Notes from the Universe

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More Notes from the Universe by Mike Dooley

First line: ”So-o-o-o-o-o-…How’s it going down on earth?”

Dooley-as-Universe (aka God) speaks to us in a playful, uplifting manner that, well, we might expect from a kind doting-dad sort of God figure. These mostly one-paragraph, one-pagers are little reminders about being who you are, loving yourself, not beating yourself up (or others) and reaching for the stars, because, according to the Universe, it’s yours for the taking. Dooley was featured in The Secret, and if you’ll remember the premise of that worldwide bestseller, it was basically, ask and you shall receive. Whether or not you believe in the “secret”, these humorous notes from beyond do wonders for the spirit. Most of them sound like messages my grandmother who raised me would have said. I think we all need more positive post-its, don’t you?

For: Feel good advice on days you do and you don’t really need that extra nudge. – Malena Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting

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Lopsided by Meredith Norton (Viking / On-Sale: June 16) 

From the publisher: Lopsided is not your ordinary cancer memoir. Meredith Norton chronicles every step of her experience, starting with her bizarre symptoms while living in Paris to moving back home to California and living with her compulsive parents and their five television sets. Irreverent and incredibly funny, Norton rails against self-pity and victimhood and rants about the innumerable copies of Lance Armstrong’s cancer survival book pressed on her by well-meaning family and friends.

Alongside the harrowing portrait of her treatments, Norton offers equally amusing memories from her offbeat life. We see her childhood time during a somewhat racist ski trip, a family reunion at a Florida alligator farm, and her life in a tree house with a neighbor, who, despite being vegan, hates mice enough to taxidermy them into miniature versions of racecar drivers, Jesus, a UPS delivery man, and Sally Jesse Raphael.

Buy it at Amazon.

How much are you worth every minute?

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In my early corporate days some self-help guru was advising people to track the time they “wasted” on frivolous activities by determining what the net value of each minute is. I believe at the time I made so little it would’ve only made me want to work less by doing the figuring, but you know big corporations thrive on just this type of statistic. Sure, you get a little behind when your server crashes at work, or say your wi-fi signal is too weak to actually work in bed, ahem, but Amazon purportedly loses a whopping $31,000 per minute that their site is down. Ouch. Very ouch.