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The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus: How to Go Down on a Woman and Give Her Exquisite Pleasure (2nd Edition)

mandy — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:00:00 +0000

The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus is described by the author as a sex-positive, no-nonsense explanation of cunnilingus. The book includes information Violet Blue acquired from guidebooks, the internet, and surveys she sent to people from diverse backgrounds in the United States, Europe, and Canada. The text includes snippets from these interviews interspersed with educational information, hand-drawn illustrations, and erotic stories.

Blue does a great job of taking a pro-sex, feminist stance on the subject of cunnilingus in most instances, noting the shame that many women feel about their vaginas and apprehension that some women might have being the recipient or giver of oral sex. She discusses possible shame and discomfort in a supportive manner and makes sure to point out that the goal of any sexual encounter is too-often focused on orgasm and not the enjoyment that the individuals derive from the sexual contact. She provides common-sense strategies for overcoming fears about giving or receiving cunnilingus that I think are applicable for both men and women.

There are a few instances in which negative societal views of women’s sexuality are subtly reinforced by the language the author uses. For example, when discussing waxing, Blue refers to pubic hair as “the offending hair” and states that vaginas are a “woman’s finest feature.” While there are a few wording choices that may play in to poor body image or shame associated with sexuality, overall The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus is intended to help individuals feel empowered by their sexuality, and for the most part it accomplishes this.

The author also approaches the book from a non-heteronormative worldview, discussing cunnilingus in the context of same and opposite sex encounters, and even the pictures illustrate both same sex and opposite sex couples. While the book attempts to be as inclusive as possible, it falls short in a few instances. The author periodically makes global statements such as “sex is all about reciprocation,” which fails to take into account the myriad types of sexual relationships people have (for instance, stone butches may not wish to have reciprocal sexual encounters). Still, the attempt to write for a diverse audience is commendable and the attention paid to disability and oral sex is laudable.

My favorite section was the tongue techniques section, which provided tips I hope to add to my own oral sex tool kit. Other techniques are discussed in the book, including: genital massage, the use of sex toys, S/M strategies, and anal penetration. Blue acknowledges that not every reader will be interested in all of the varieties of sex play that can be incorporated into oral sex, but nonetheless provides a variety of information for differing sexual appetites. One additional great asset of this book is the section on suggested erotic books, videos, and the sex store resource list at the back of the book.

The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus delivers what it purports to: a non-judgmental, pro-sex guide to going down on a woman. I wish more attention had been paid to the techniques than the anatomy and safe-sex sections; however, I also recognize the importance of this information in any guidebook. This is a book I am happy to add to my personal collection and I am sure that many readers will benefit and enjoy its content as well.

Written by: K. Payne, April 23rd 2011

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

mandy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Deltina Hay

Quill Driver Books

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. In The Social Media Survival Guide, Deltina Hay walks you through the basics of using the most popular social media tools and helps you to devise your own strategy to meet your online objectives and hopefully save you time.

An added bonus, this book comes with a very useful CD to help you prepare your own social media strategy plan so that you can add the tools that best suit your needs and expand your social media presence. The CD worksheets and forms are also indispensable for maintaining records and keeping your online information consistent. The Social Media Survival Guide is intended for "do-it-yourselfers, resourceful business owners, motivated authors, innovative publishers, and directors of IT or marketing departments.” However, I could easily see some young self-starters using this book and CD to carve out a niche for themselves among older, more technically-limited business owners.

The Social Media Survival Guide is divided into fifteen chapters and appendices for code lovers with a burning desire to install WordPress or create an RSS Feed or widget from scratch. The book begins with your social media strategy plan, which you will repeatedly return to, and it offers seven sample strategy plans, which are especially helpful if your own profile mirrors one of the samples.

The book can be divided into three different parts. The first applies to the general public and addresses tags, or key terms; RSS feeds and blogs; building a WordPress site; and Pod, Vid, and Webcasting. The entire book is more useful if you have a WordPress blog or website because the subsequent chapters refer to how this Content Management System (CMS) can easily accommodate a large range of social media tools. The second part addresses Social Networking (Facebook) and Micro-blogging (Twitter), Social Bookmarking (Delicious) and Crowd-Sourcing (Digg), Media Communities (image-, video- and document-sharing) and Widgets. Although I thought I knew everything in this section, I still gleaned some useful information about some features on the ever-changing Facebook, and the section on document-sharing is definitely worth a look, particularly if you work in publishing. However, the author should have focused more on StumbleUpon rather than Delicious, whose future is uncertain.

The last section would be most useful to business people, but it’s still worth the read to learn about the other available tools. This section covers the Social Media News Room, other Social Media Tools (geo-tagging, event tools, etc.), Integration and Streamlining Tools, the Future of Social Media (Web 3.0), and How to Measure Success (Analytics, Search Optimization, etc). Deltina Hay uses easy-to-follow language throughout The Social Media Survival Guide. The chapters follow a logical order, and the book itself will serve as a great reference guide if only for eighteen months; by then the social media landscape will transform itself yet again.

After reading this book, which was initially overwhelming, I can honestly say that I learned a lot. I’ve also seen the limitations of Blogger as a CMS and have already made plans to change my blog over to WordPress. However, I wish that the publisher had fleshed out the Vid and Webcasting section and provided a script, as was done for Podcasting.

In the end, I found the book at 450 pages was too long for anyone who was not taking a course in social media at a college or university. Although the author is thorough, I believe that the publisher might be better off to break this text into three separate books to make it more palatable to the social media enthusiast. Otherwise, I fear that this textbook might stay on a to-do list until it’s old news.

Written by: Heather Leighton, January 17th 2011

Do Something!: A Handbook for Young Activists

mandy — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Vanessa Martir, Nancy Lublin, Julia Steers

Workman Publishing Company

Got kids? Do they have time and energy? Do they care about something? Anything? Then get them Do Something!: A Handbook for Young Activists. Buy it, give it to them, sit back, and feel good about having made a difference in the world. Or at least planting the seed.

Do Something! is a very smart book. Lublin begins by helping kids identify what it is they actually care about by having them take a series of quizzes in the first chapter. As long as your kids can read and count, they can make their way through the book entirely on their own. My eight year old daughter and her ten year old sister actually fought over the book, finally settling their dispute by assigning different colors of ink to determine whose answers were where.

Once your child has identified the area or areas they are most likely to be active in, they are given ways to figure out exactly how big the issues are in their own community, what specific kinds of issues there are, and how best to tackle them. Knowing her audience well, Lublin does this by asking the reader to draw brain maps and take surveys and play games throughout the book. She supplements with ideas of her own and examples of other kids who have worked on some of these very same problems. The book reads more like a journal than anything else, and kids will have fun completing the tasks as they come up with their own strategies to implement.

The chapters walk the reader through identifying their hot-button issues, researching the details, crafting a plan, implementing it, and assessing their results. The book can be used over and over again as a way to organize fundraisers or raise awareness of particular problems ranging from bullying to animal rights to disaster response. Lublin empowers kids to make a difference without being prescriptive. The genius of Do Something! is that it validates each child’s personal feelings about what is important and breaks down the steps of acting on those feelings to make activism of any kind perfectly accessible.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, January 14th 2011

How to Make Soap Without Burning Your Face Off

mandy — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Raleigh Briggs

Microcosm Publishing

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.

Overall, I’m quite impressed by the layout and design of the zine. It is entirely handwritten with doodles and sketches, staying true to its DIY roots, but is aesthetically pleasing and easy to read. The zine begins with a brief history lesson, followed by important information on working with lye and a crash course in working with fats and oils. Towards the back of the zine, Briggs provides two basic soap recipes, along with some additional tips and tricks on customizing your soap with colorants and additives. The actual instructions are laid out in a flow chart type format spanning two pages.

While I find it visually appealing, I’m not convinced it’s the best way to present the information. If I were to have this handy while making soap, the layout would be difficult to quickly glance at and consult. The zine touched on many different aspects of soap making, but due to its concise nature, I found myself wanting additional resources to consult. Something I would have liked to see included would have been a short list of links, blogs, or favorite books to check into if the reader wanted additional information. Another useful addition would be a few recommendations on brands or places to order your soap making materials online.

I look forward to my first soap making attempt and thanks to Briggs’ zine, the task is much less intimidating and seems fairly straightforward. And I feel confident that I will emerge from the experiment with my face intact.

Written by: Liz Martin, December 30th 2010

Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It: The D.I.Y. Guide to the Good Life

mandy — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Billee Sharp

Cleis Press

Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It is packed full of just about as much information as the title suggests. The book is generally a fun and easy read, with crafting suggestions and healthy recipes. It is not, however, the bible I’d hoped it would be. While there are many recipes for making your own toilet bowl cleaner, there’s little helpful advice on things like how to garden. Rather, the focus is simply on the benefits of gardening.

One of the great things about Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It is that Billee Sharp is adept at making things most people would scoff at seem perfectly reasonable. For example, Sharp makes dumpster diving seem as viable an option as buying a chair off Craigslist—and not just for furniture. In the chapter entitled “Freeconomics,” Sharp gives suggestions for dumpster diving for food, organizing community programs that will help neighbors share their unwanted items in lieu of sending them to the dump, and twists on the tried and true clothing swap (which she has renamed “Naked Lady Parties”).

There is one line in the book that tainted the rest of the read for me. In chapter four, “Homely Habits,” Sharp makes it clear that she’s not the best at wielding a wrench, which is fine. But then she writes that when her husband is out of town she keeps a roll of duct tape on hand because, “Even if I can’t fix stuff, I can hold it together with duct tape.” This is one of the least empowering things I’ve ever read, and coming from a book that claims to put power back into my hands, I found it to be pretty jarring.

In addition to a little feminist boost, Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It desperately needs an index. There is so much information about baking, fixing, and growing in order to save money in the chapter about finances, but one may never find some gem they hoped to reference without spending cash on post-its to mark the pages.

If you’re a novice thrifter or a newbie to reducing, reusing, and recycling, Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It will have more helpful hints than you'll know what to do with. But if you’ve fixed a chair or composted recently, there may not be a lot of new information here for you.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, September 21st 2010

Boys Lie: How Not to Get Played

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Holly Eagleson, Belisa Vranich

Health Communications

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. In their defense, the authors stress that their book is “not a manifesto against guys,” but rather a way to help smart girls deal with the “messy truths about guys and relationships.”

While I recognize that teenagers are exposed to an overwhelming amount of (mis)information from their peers, the Internet, and other sources, I wonder if the negative connotation of the title could have been neutralized in some way. Boys Lie is divided into seventeen chapters entitled Lie #X. The authors cover everything from contraceptives and how to protect yourself against STI's to love and sex in the digital age to the physical and emotional abuse that, sadly, goes on in teen relationships. The authors take statements (lies) that young men regularly tell young women to get them to engage in activities they might not otherwise be willing to engage in as the jumping off point for the topics discussed in each chapter.

For example, Lie #4 is “you can hook up with a friend without having feelings involved.” The authors include a list of different ways a boy might say a particular lie. In this case, he might say, “You can have sex like a man” or “Hook ups with friends don’t count.” The authors discuss what happens to the female brain when a girl is on a “booty call.” When women get physically close to a guy, the authors explain, they experience a rush of happy hormones and neurotransmitters that make them want to increase the frequency of the hookups. Since men don’t have the same physical and emotional reactions to a casual hookup, this creates a situation that often leads to the woman getting hurt and the friendship ending.

Lie #16 is “you need someone to keep you in line.” This chapter is about physical and emotional abuse, and is disturbing in its exploration of the destructive patterns that surface in teen relationships. The authors point out that one out of three teens has reported being the victim of physical or emotional abuse by a romantic partner, and one in five girls has either been involved in a violent relationship or threatened with violence by a partner. According to a recent study, violence against girls on television has increased by 400 percent over the past five years, and digital abuse (e.g., monitoring a partner's online behavior, constantly texting someone to keep tabs on them, and pressuring someone to engage in digital sex) is also on the rise.

Boys Lie includes statements girls can use to counter boys' lies. If you’re a teenager or a parent, this book is a must read. In an ideal world, Boys Lie wouldn’t be necessary, but we have to live in the real world.

Written by: Gita Tewari, July 6th 2010

Get Opinionated: A Progressive’s Guide to Finding Your Voice (and Taking a Little Action)

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Amanda Marcotte

Seal Press

A few years ago, my uncle, the family’s token conservative, sent me a copy of Dinesh D’Souza’s Letters to a Young Conservative, probably to irk my mother. Despite my inclinations, I decided to give it a try. The first chapter of Letters is masterful, beginning with a lecture D’Souza gave at Columbia University, at which he was greeted with crowds of angry, rioting, liberal students bent on silencing his conservative point of view. D’Souza recalls fighting his way through bullhorns and posters saying things about “capitalism” and “imperialism.” D'Souza presented this situation as a testament to the sorry state of modern liberalism. Although today this sequence may remind us of a Tea Party rally, the image of the crazed young liberal beating drums and waving signs is one that’s hard to shake.

I thought of D'Souza's Letters while reading a new book on modern progressivism, Get Opinionated by Amanda Marcotte, editor of Pandagon and regular contributor to RH Reality Check and Slate's Double X blog. Both are fiery calls to action from well-respected authors. Unfortunately, both are also a little light on facts and evidence.

Marcotte clearly sees her goal as motivating liberals—ostensibly young liberals—to become more politically aware and take steps in their own lives to see their ideals realized. “Consciousness raising isn’t just for identity politics,” she tells the reader, urging him or her to leave comments on blogs to foster intellectual discourse. Marcotte says that to counter anti-government histrionics from conservatives progressives need to put forth “positive, truth-based counter-arguments to raise people’s consciousness.” If only Get Opinionated practiced what it preaches.

The problem is that Marcotte isn’t arming her readers with strong arguments. Instead, Get Opinionated teaches readers that hyperbole will suffice when it comes to shaping political beliefs. If Marcotte urges her readers to go forth and debate, then she should also explain that they should be equipped with serious arguments and evidence, which some progressives aren’t.

Marcotte acknowledges that liberals often have a PR problem. Addressing the war on drugs, for example, she reminds us that stoners don’t make the best spokespersons, stressing that, instead, sensible drug policies are best fought for by someone who looks good in a suit, doesn’t smoke pot, and will discuss the social and economic ramifications of mass incarceration. But while Marcotte notes that a reasoned liberal makes a stronger case, she doesn’t always follow her own advice.

“Deep down inside, we all wish people read and thought about subjects in a little more depth,” she writes. But when it comes to offering a framework for addressing more touchy subjects, Marcotte has a harder time presenting sober, nuanced opinions. Take, for example, her discussion of terrorism. The language used in discussions about terrorism is tricky, with liberals often confusing their emotions about Bush's misadventures in Iraq with the separate issue of terrorism. Marcotte herself falls victim to the dangers of emotional rhetoric. “The most likely explanation for the unnecessary histrionics at airport security is that they’re part of the ‘frog in boiling water’ strategy of introducing a stronger police state,” she writes. Such an argument echoes the kind of wacky conspiracy theories that keep liberal opinions from being taken seriously. Perhaps Marcotte is right, but such accusations need evidence. Presented only as speculation, they are no better than Fox News claiming Barack Obama is a socialist.

Political debate should not rely on ad hominem attacks, but that good idea is frequently overshadowed by the ways in which Marcotte fires at conservatives. A great blogger, journalist, and feminist, Marcotte is just the person to demonstrate the sexist implications of social conservatism. Instead, she intimates that socially conservative men get turned on by talk of “family” and that they spend an inordinate amount of time “monitoring the status of their teenage daughters’ hymens.” These accusations are counterproductive, sidetracking the debate from the actual reasons social conservatism harms women. Marcotte risks alienating potential supporters of women’s rights by giving a distasteful comment while setting a low bar for political debate.

Marcotte is at her best when she argues that “You Don’t Have to Be a Stinky Hippie to Care about the Environment,” the name of her first chapter. She paints an enticing picture of a life in which Americans ride bikes, grow gardens, eat less meat, and save energy in myriad ways. But most liberals already accept that America needs to reduce its carbon footprint. So even though this is a strong point, it is by far the most conventional.

What Marcotte misses in her book is that liberal thought today still lacks a coherent and well-reasoned approach to national security. It’s too bad she took a reactive stance rather than the positive goal of creating a new, liberal approach. It is precisely because Marcotte repeatedly invokes the power of conversation, debate, and good information that the lack of careful reasoning in the book is so strange. Get Opinionated is clearly Marcotte’s own vision of liberalism, one that she hopes will inspire others to think and talk. However, she should demonstrate how to formulate intelligent and persuasive opinions, not just encourage her readers to get political.

“I want badly to say that reading this book means you’re already on the right path, but humility forces me to declare that it is only marginally deeper than Jon Stewart’s book featuring naked pictures of historical figures,” Marcotte says. She could argue that Get Opinionated was all in good fun, that this review is overblown because she wasn’t that serious. But publishing a book has responsibilities, especially when it purports to represent a liberal viewpoint. Marcotte is smart and could have done better. Instead, she may have accidentally given D’Souza new fodder for a second Letters.

This article was created by Campus Progress.

Written by: Pema Levy, May 5th 2010

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

admin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Esther K. Smith

Potter Craft

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? Esther Smith's instructional how-to book, The Paper Bride, goes over absolutely everything you need to make a wedding the way you want.

The Paper Bride starts with a cute proposal idea—a ring hidden in a book—and moves onto alternative ways to let people know you are engaged: postcard, magnets, or even traditional save-the-date cards, but with funky envelopes and mailers. Smith comes up with out of the ordinary ideas for invitations and bridal showers. Not a fan of finger sandwiches? How about a liquor shower, where each guest brings one bottle for the party and one bottle for your liquor cabinet. The book truly sticks to its name, even showing off a paper wedding dress.

Smith's background is in letterpress, so she goes into great depth about making your own books and journals, and even has a chart for doing calligraphy yourself. If you have never done paper crafts before, don't worry: Smith goes over each step in detail, and provides diagrams that even a first time DIYer can follow. In the back of book, there are templates for making envelopes, boxes, program fans, and coasters. Some of the crafts are offbeat, like making paper flowers, while others are great even if you aren't planning a wedding, such as making your own photo album.

The great thing about The Paper Bride is that Smith emphasizes putting your own style into your wedding. If you're not into the traditional white wedding, then you can design your paper goods to reflect that. No matter what type of wedding you're having, this book has something you can use. But as Smith reminds her readers, the wedding day should not be the pinnacle of the relationship: “it will be wonderful, whatever happens, but it shouldn't be the happiest day of your life. You don't want the rest of your life to go downhill from there. You want to live happily ever after!”

Written by: Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, April 4th 2010

Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Delfina Vannucci, Richard Singer

AK Press

Mahatma Gandhi famously urged his followers to “be the change you want to see in the world.” It sounds so simple: Be kind, listen well, mediate conflicts, and treat all living things with respect. But as anyone who has ever worked in a community or civic organization knows, power plays are common and Gandhi’s counsel is easy to ignore.

Delfina Vannucci and Richard Singer’s Come Hell or High Water is a pocket-sized pamphlet meant to help anarchist organizers avoid the pitfalls endemic to social change efforts. The lessons are clearly written—and supplemented by hilarious line drawings. They’re also applicable beyond anarchist circles. Indeed, this practical manual offers easy-to-follow guidelines that can be applied to all kinds of situations, from the workplace to the affinity group.

For example, anyone who has ever participated in a so-called collective has seen how difficult it is to share power. Time and again, we see a charismatic leader rise to the top, becoming the de facto spokesperson and decision-maker, while everyone else scurries to assist him or her. Despite lip service about all members being equal, in practice, this rarely if ever happens. “When the ideal of egalitarianism is allowed to flounder unattended to,” Vannucci and Singer write, “it can devolve right back into the patterns that most of us knew in our lives outside of collectives: Hierarchy, mistrust, looking out only for oneself, and sometimes even underhanded scheming.”

Their solution? Pay attention to process, encourage debate, be sure all individuals and factions get a chance to air their positions, and then vote. While consensus is important, they conclude, voting allows dissenting opinions to be recorded and lets all sides vent their ideas before a final tally. They also offer a check list of behaviors that erode participation: Tolerating people who act exasperated or impatient, as if less-popular members are wasting the group‘s time with questions or contending opinions; slandering a member of the group behind his or her back between meetings; using intimidation tactics to keep opposition at bay; condoning behavior that lets a few activists act wounded or victimized by criticism; making oneself indispensable and not sharing information; treating others as though they are silly or stupid; and injecting fear by projecting dire consequences if things are not done a particular way.

While concrete examples of these practices—and how they destroyed a collective or came close—would have made the pamphlet even stronger, anyone who has attempted to plan an action, organize an event, or create something new will recognize the destructive demeanors outlined in Come Hell or High Water. Making the Diva or Dictator aware of his or her actions—and making clear that such behavior is unacceptable—Vannucci and Singer write, is key to developing a new paradigm. They also argue that collective process doesn’t mean that people have to agree with each other 100 percent of the time. Instead, learning how to disagree without rancor and engaging in civil discourse despite disagreements is a good starting point in recasting the world. As Gandhi made clear, progressive advancement requires imagination and creativity to envision alternatives to capitalism, war, oppression, and hierarchies.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, April 2nd 2010

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

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sascha Rothchild

Plume

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). Instead, Sascha tells her story by explaining how the various events, influences, and personal insecurities in her own life led to her choosing a relationship that seemed to fill her needs, but resulted in feeding her flaws.

Sascha’s unabashed honesty about herself, especially exposing her quirky personal demons, is highly admirable. Regardless of whether you agree with her viewpoints, you can’t help but revere her accurate self-assessment and the courage it took to write this book. You also can’t help but relate to her inner struggles with self-perception, including weight, looks, and identity. It’s normal for women to have insecurities in these areas, but Sascha takes the exploration further by discovering how her insecurities led to poor relationship choices. Looking to resolve her issues, she’d try to find a sense of security through relationships.

We all tend to choose a partner who counteracts our shortcomings in some way or another, which is why you can’t help but relate to the author. However, what is most interesting about the book is how she focused on the fact that her unhealthy relationship with herself was not only the root cause of her divorce, but also the cause of her marriage (and other failed relationships) in the first place.

By the end of the book you feel like you know Sascha personally. Her influence will cause you to stop and reflect on your own life, the relationships you’ve had, and how your own insecurities may have caused problems in ways you never before realized. I assure you this is a good thing. If we could all look at ourselves with blatant honesty (not harshness nor kindness, just what is) then we would all be better people. We spend too much time pretending to be what others think we should be, lying to ourselves, and trying so hard to measure up that we lose sight of our own needs and happiness. That’s what happened to Sascha.

By sharing her journey of self-discovery (and divorce) Sascha helps readers to more truthfully look at their own lives. Meanwhile, the read is an excitingly entertaining journey. Be prepared to finish the book in one sitting. It’s a fast read, but mostly because you can’t put it down until you've finished it.

Written by: Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum, April 2nd 2010

Tune Him In, Turn Him On: Using Intuition to Find and Keep the Man of Your Dreams

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Servet Hasan

Llewellyn Publications

Relationship advice can be a tricky and sensitive topic at times. Over time you learn not to take it from anyone except a small number of entrusted friends. In Servet Hasan's Tune Him In, Turn Him On, the author takes a new approach to dating men: actively developing and applying your intuition. Those of us who rely on our gut feeling and are into spiritual activities, like opening our chakras and visualizing auras, may appreciate Hasan’s blend of spirituality and boy guidance.

I found this book to be geared toward younger women who are feeling lost in their love lives and insecure in their relationship abilities. Hasan offers gentle exercises that give the readers support and energy during difficult moments when they want to stop obsessing over a guy and start focusing on their deeper selves. For example, one of her meditations includes letting go of old relationship baggage by visualizing suitcases filled with past memories floating down a river until they are out of sight. Another exercise is a more traditional golden light meditation that helps readers replenish their inner core and connect with their relationship goals.

I found some of Hasan's confident generalizations about “all men” limiting. These generalizations didn't always make sense to me because I've met men who are “naturally born talkers” or who have admitted they are in love, contrary to Hasan’s assertions. It could be that the book is tailored to help seduce a certain type of man or for women mainly focused on marriage. Either way, creating more distance between the genders with the “us” against “them” perspective and reinforcing heteronormative ideals in the dating game is not something that I happily took away from this book.

Overall, Hasan covers all the dating basics and pushes readers to really think about their own love goals, whatever they may be: opening up to someone new, dating, or marriage. She spends several chapters talking about how women should work on their relationships with themselves before going out to find 'the man of their dreams'. Hasan even guarantees that once you fall in love with yourself, your ideal man will come to you, instead of you having to go out and search for him.

Written by: Cinthia Pacheco, March 22nd 2010

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

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Alex Mitchell

New Holland

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. Nonetheless, the food would probably taste better if it were real.

While titles that start with phrases like “The Girl’s Guide to...” make me move forward with trepidation, chary of each frilly, gender-specific tip that is sure to be found inside, The Girl’s Guide to Growing Your Own seemed safe. I mean, it’s about gardening. Alex Mitchell, the saucy British journalist-turned-gardener who wrote the book, does an excellent job of presenting practical information and keeping the girly kitsch to a very tolerable level. I even giggled periodically. Really, giggled.

Squashing the usual excuses for not getting a garden started, Mitchell starts her book off telling the reader how simple growing really is. She describes soil types in easy to understand detail and outlines just how little equipment (and space) you actually need to get going. One of my favorite suggestions was to use the wine shipping crates that are often discarded by liquor stores. They’re a good size, portable (if you want to bring plants in for the winter), and deep enough for most roots. Mitchell also points out that their “imprinted logos give them a certain élan.” And if you can pick up your planters with your booze, you might just save yourself a trip to a garden center.

The Girl’s Guide to Growing Your Own stands apart from other growing manuals for a number of reasons. First, it’s readable. This book is not for a seasoned grower who is trying to find out why her lemon trees are looking peeked or those who can pour through dry textbook pages full of words most of us don’t understand. The Girl’s Guide to Growing Your Own caters to the novice, and does it well. Because it’s divided by seasons, you can use a free ten minutes to browse your seasonally-appropriate section and get ready to grow. The book introduces new gardeners to valuable gardening lingo, where to buy manure, and—here’s the kitsch—a plethora of cute growing containers available to the growing girl.

Freely poking fun at her own obsessive nature—from the aesthetics of her planters to the trees she dotes on and the many short breaks she takes from work to ogle flora and fauna online—Mitchell takes the bulk of the work out of getting started. She even gives plants ratings of one to four hand trowels, which indicates whether “you couldn’t kill it if you tried” or it’s “fussy but fabulous.” Pages of soil and seed concoctions are broken up with recipes for your new produce (including alcoholic beverages), and the book finishes up with a quick guide to diagnosing common edible garden enemies.

From this experience I have learned girly books can be useful, and also that because spring is (nearly) in the air, I should start planting my tomato seeds. Now I am hopeful.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, February 15th 2010

Living Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:53:00 +0000

Edited by Nina Lesowitz, Mary Beth Sammons

Viva Editions

The most wonderful part about the idea of practicing daily gratitude is that any person can do it. Unlike many concepts, like faith or prayer, which tend to be examined via certain religions or spiritualities, thankfulness is pretty universal. Living Life as a Thank You illustrates extensively how incorporating gratitude into one's life can draw enormous benefits for everyone.

This book serves up ten chapters full of stories about how learning to be grateful has changed people from all walks of life. Each chapter carries a theme, ranging from "the power of gratitude to make a difference in the world" to "gratitude in times of transition." Each chapter begins with an introduction, musings on the particular theme, then follows with seven or eight snippets from real people telling the specifics about how they have come to have gratitude play a strong part in their lives—some from epiphanies, some from years of training.

Throughout the book there are exercises, suggestions, and tips on how to bring gratefulness into your life, including a "gratitude tool kit" with proposals for ways to say thank you every day, how to make a "gratitude dream board," and how to adjust your schedule to make time for focusing on thoughts about what you are grateful for. There are also inspirational quotations peppered throughout the book, which I, as a bit of a quote-aholic, found myself writing down to give to others.

I've tended, in the past, to get turned off by "inspirational" books that speak of concepts too abstractly, but one of the reasons I really appreciate this book is that it brought a broad concept down into concrete stories that I could relate to. One of the editors, Mary Beth Sammons, is a popular blogger, which was interesting to discover because the whole book reminded me of the short, focused, pondering style of blogs. Reading this book felt very much like sitting down with a bunch of people from a variety of backgrounds and having them simply speak about what they are thankful for and how they got to having gratitude so strongly in their life.

For many years I have kept a personal list titled "Things That Make Me Happy"; it consists of small things that make me smile or feel uplifted. During rough times, I pull it out and read these tiny reminders of how amazing life truly is. Living Life as a Thank You argues in favor of this idea and adds how practicing gratitude every single day has the immense power to give us greater personal happiness, make us more satisfied with the present, help us celebrate triumphs, and make us generally healthier in body and mind. I found myself marveling that something so simple can do so much to change the outlook of our life, and I am grateful I was reminded of this by reading this book!

Written by: Lesley Kartali, November 24th 2009

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

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:06:00 +0000

By Mick Berry, Michael R. Edelestein

See Sharp Press

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. Each person reveals moments of stage fright, how they worked to get rid of it, and how it fed their performance. David Burns, who leads workshops to help people conquer stage fright, describes how some of his clients overcome their fear. His strategy is to simply put them on stage and point out how their fears are controlling them. Reading about what so many performers have gone through is what is ultimately valuable about this collection.

Maya Angelou proved poetic in her interview, eloquently embracing her anxiety until this day despite some fifty years of bearing it all. I love Jason Alexander’s mantra of having strength, courage, conviction, and joy. He uses it as a personal reminder that because he is privileged to have the talents he has, it’s best to share them with the world.

The ideas shared by the interviewees help to ease the tensions of having to perform in public. Putting the ideas into action, however, might be another issue entirely. As a musician who has not played a show in nearly two years, I found this book to be a much needed wake up call. Hardly anyone can perform perfectly from the beginning. Performers have to allow themselves to feed off the “butterflies” to become better.

A running theme is the comforting fact that "the crowd is not out to get you." Either you will be liked and you will continue to perform or you will bomb—but life will go on either way.

Written by: A. Mariel Westermeyer, November 16th 2009

Garden Anywhere: How to Grow Gorgeous Container Gardens, Herb Gardens, and More—Without Spending a Fortune

admin — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:05:00 +0000

By Alys Fowler

Chronicle Books

Gardens are a form of autobiography. - Sydney Eddison

Alys Fowler is British. Her book, The Thrifty Gardener, has been a hit in England. Garden Anywhere, the re-titled North American version, deserves the same success in Canada and the U.S. as it has across the pond.

Fowler started gardening as a teenager. Now roughly 30, she goes against the grain of British gardening—or so it seems. Her sartorial look—given to shades, plimsolls without socks, and a print shift that a First Nations artist might have designed—is somewhat neo-hippie. A shot or two of her dumpster diving for salvage to fashion into, say, a cold frame—a handiwork at which she demonstrates her grace and mastery of the power drill—captures her method and manner. This is very distant from Better Homes and Gardens.

As unorthodox as Fowler might seem, she’s no Sunday putterer. Trained at the Royal Horticultural Society, The New York Botanical Gardens, and the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, she’s earned her gardening rep. Currently, she’s head gardener for the BBC’s TV programme Gardener’s World. That’s a cornucopia of gardening bona fides.

Garden Anywhere therefore contains ace gardening knowledge, such as “Knowing your light conditions is half the battle,” and “The single key to a stylish garden is love—it’s that simple.” Other information and advice abound, from dealing with pests (organically!) to hand and power tools to building a worm box to surviving the garden centre (“never spend money where it’s not needed”) to pruning and composting. One of my favourite tips, because of its sheer joie de vivre, is to “avoid dull municipal planting” and instead “plant bedding annuals in great masses and allow them to run riot”. Her advice on sowing drifts of bulbs shares the same spirit.

However unconventional she may seem on first glance, this spirit places Fowler in the tradition of British horticulture, with its roots in early-modern Romantic thought, and in American practice of the period, which strongly influenced British gardeners. The result is tend the garden, sure, but let it grow thither and yon, too, as its vegetal imagination shapes it. This view is contrary to the controlled French outlook, monumentalized at Versailles, wherein reason and order are the objects of verdant desire. I confess to a general Francophilia (movies, paintings, street demonstrations). Yet when it comes to gardens, the British way, which encourages the surprising and unpredictable, is, IMO, the superior path.

Fowler’s persona, prose style, and content are all a serious delight. Plus the book is au courant _in its contribution to the slow food movement. This makes _Garden Anywhere of great use and pleasure and puts its author right up there with such British heroines as Jane Austen and Vanessa Redgrave. In addition, the book is creatively designed by Carl Hodson. Its pages are variously intermingled pastel colours: olive green, pink, lavender, blue—just like a garden. The illustrations by Aaron Blecher are friendly. The many photographs by Simon Wheeler serve to illustrate the text while often being artistic, notably a helicopter shot of Fowler hard at work and nearly lost in her garden.

Is there a shortfall to this book? If you live in dry conditions and need to xeriscape, that genre isn’t covered. Fowler’s British, after all, and has gardened there and in New York. Other than this desert lacuna, Garden Anywhere is as chockablock as anyone could expect. If you need one gardening reference, or if you have many, this excellent book belongs on your shelf—or rather, in your soil-encrusted hands while you ponder whether to plant bush beans or pole beans in that wedge of dirt over in the corner near the forget-me-nots beside the wild rose behind the chard.

Written by: Neil Flowers, September 26th 2009