The Social Media Survival Guide: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web

If you’re like me, you have a blog and a Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, YouTube and Flickr account, but when someone starts to talk about CMS, metadata, Squidoo lenses, or the semantic web, you quickly tune out. We’re all aware of how vital the social web is for reaching new audiences, but we’re unsure of which tools are best suited to our online objectives, or which tools are the best investment of our time.

How to Make Soap Without Burning Your Face Off

The ever-present danger of burning one’s face off is, in fact, one of the reasons I have hesitated to take up the hobby of soap making. Raleigh Briggs’s How to Make Soap zine helped to make the process seem less daunting and intimidating. While the zine is relatively short, at ten pages, it is chalk full of useful tips and information for beginners. The overall tone is lighthearted and fun, with a sprinkling of sarcasm and a wee bit of sass. Briggs does a wonderful job maintaining the cheery air, yet is still able to stress the importance of following all safety precautions and explaining some potential dangers of working with lye. Lye is a key ingredient in soap making, and if not handled with respect and caution, can be quite harmful.

Boys Lie: How Not to Get Played

I was of two minds while reading Boys Lie: on one hand, I appreciated that Belisa Vranich and Holly Eagleson have taken the time to research and write a “cheat sheet” giving young girls a “BS detector” and helping them separate the good apples from the bad ones. On the other hand, the title of the book might lead one to believe that the authors think all boys lie in order to have their way with girls.

The Paper Bride: Wedding DIY from Pop-the-Question to Tie-the-Knot and Happily Ever After

Weddings are expensive. CNN Money states that, even with the recession, the average cost of a wedding in 2008 was $21,814. Paper goods, like invitations, save-the-date cards, and guest books can add up—so why not make them yourself?

How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage

It’s not like someone would seek out this book looking to find advice on how to damage their marriage, but it definitely piques the curiosity of anyone trying to understand how easily a marriage can go awry. How to Get Divorced by 30 is Sascha Rothchild’s personal tale of her short-lived marriage. Surprisingly, it’s not a man-bashing book picking on her ex-husband (some of his faults are mentioned, but not focused upon).

The Girl's Guide to Growing Your Own: How to Grow Fruit and Vegetables Without Getting Your Hands Too Dirty

I’ve been keeping a full, vibrant, productive garden in my head for about two years. In my mind there are rows of beets, shoots of garlic, bushes of raspberries, clusters of strawberries, and vines of beans. Every plant flourishes year-round and is never plagued by weeds, bad soil, the first freeze (or any of the ones that follow), and definitely never suffers like I do from the hot, hot August Texas sun.

Stage Fright: 40 Stars Tell You How They Beat America’s #1 Fear

The collection of interviews presented in Stage Fright is a well-rounded accumulation of several years of interviews with various publicly known speakers. Ranging from politicians to a timeless poet to comedians, this collection is rich with insight from the people that have spoken publicly and professionally for decades. Mick Berry questions interviewees about when, why, and how they conquered their stage fright.

Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2: A DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture

First published in 2002, Alex Wrekk’s Stolen Sharpie Revolution has served as a resource for untold numbers of people both in and outside of the zine community.

Boyfriend University: Take Advantage of Your Man and Learn While You Can

In 1994 I was sitting around a bonfire in my combat boots and a thrift store granny dress, drinking homebrew and wondering how many years it had been since I’d used a razor, when someone handed me a pamphlet from the 1930s about how to be a “good wife.” And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—it was demeaning and yet terribly serious all at once, and we laughed with a combination of horror and relief that the world had changed so much since our grandmothers were young.  This particular memory came flooding back to me when I received _[Boyfriend University](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/

My So-Called Freelance Life

Goodman has been freelancing for sixteen years at the time of publication. From the jump, her writing is accessible and fun. The follow-up to the somewhat well known The Anti-9-5 Guide: Practical Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, Goodman is once again onto something. What other how-to guides (repeatedly) use phrases like “get this freelance party started”?

The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers

As far as dream jobs go, being an organic flower farmer ranks right up there with travel writer, cake baker, and rock star. As Lynn Byczynski thoroughly explains in The Flower Farmer, growing organic flowers for profit is a completely reasonable and realistic career choice that anyone can accomplish. Byczynski, who has been growing flowers commercially for 20 years, takes the reader step-by-step through the beginner stages of flower farming.

CosmoGIRL! Make It Yourself: 50 Fun and Funky Projects

CosmoGIRL!, the little sister of Cosmopolitan magazine, has just released it's own make-and-do book of DIY projects for crafty teenage girls. “Hey _CosmoGIRL!_s,” reads the prologue, “You may not know it, but you're the most positive, can-do, pro-active group of girls that has ever walked the earth. I know that may sound like a big statement, but it's true. You're smarter than ever, you're more independent, and no one can trick you because you see right through it.” So what kind of craft projects followed this empowering statement? Why, “Boy-Of-The-Week” panties, of course!

The Anti 9-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube

Offering variations on the theme of independence + passion + thrift = making it, Goodman combines personal experiences, interviews with women doing it their way, statistics and strategies to inspire and prepare us for better living outside the cube, or inside, if that’s where we currently happen to be. Themes include devoting more time to a pet project, getting a more flexible work schedule, working abroad, finding your dream career, breaking into your dream industry, learning to build a house, fight wildfires and do other unladylike (ahem!), non-secretarial things for a living.

Full-Time Woman, Part-Time Career: Launching a Flexible Business That Fits Your Life, Feeds Your Family, and Fuels Your Brain

As an independent woman who has considered on more than one occasion the seemingly pie-in-the-sky idea of starting my own business, I tore through Karen Steede Terry’s Full Time Woman, Part Time Career with as much élan as I tear through anything chocolate. I hoped to uncover a treasure-trove of secrets that could set me on the path to a great new career beginning. I was not disappointed, but after reading, I am acutely aware of the energy and persistence necessary to start up a small business.