L is Hooked on Slice

Okay, okay, I know.  I’ve completely caved to the Bethenny Frankel hype.  I’m completely hooked on her show, and now am reading her books.  Pathetic! 

 

For those who don’t know, Slice TV has tons of reality crap – Real Desperate Housewives of insert city name here, Bethenny, Party Mamas, Project Runway, Little Miss Perfect gag, etc. etc. It’s basically train wreck TV and I just can’t stop watching!

 

So when Bethenny’s latest book came out this March, I had to put it on hold at the public library.  No surprise, there wasn’t much waiting for the book when it came in.  A Place of Yes lists 10 rules for getting everything you want out of life (in fact I think that’s the book’s subtitle) and is all about approaching everything you do from “a place of yes”, or positivity and empowerment.  The book addresses various noise issues we have, like food noise, money noise, childhood noise, etc., and encourages us to address our past hurts, failures, and patterns so that we can move forward and get the wonderful life we’ve always wanted and deserve.  Bethenny’s approach in showing us how to do this, is to parade her life story before us, so that we can learn from her mistakes.  Well, as entertaining as Bethenny’s life is, she’s no expert psychologist, and so her knock-off pop psychology fails to fully deliver. 

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Bethenny.  I love what’s she’s doing with her line of Skinnygirl Margaritas and healthful eating message, and her show is just good, plain fun.  It’s the chance to peak through someone’s curtains, into their home, to see all the horrors and triumphs of their lives.  It’s tabloid viewing at its best!  But when it comes to writing a book to help people (namely women) improve their lives, well Bethenny should have stuck to what she knows best – food.  Because as much as I enjoyed reading about her life, there wasn’t much meat on the bones of life-altering, meaningful messages this book supposedly offers.  As a neighbour once said to me of these types of books, “you have to take the meat and leave the bones.”  In other words, take what’s important, what speaks to you and leave the rest.  Unfortunately, I left a lot of this book because rather than being full of advice it really was just all Bethenny all the time.  Quite entertaining, fans will definitely enjoy this book.

 

Guilty pleasure -- check.  Lessons learned or adopted? -- not so much.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

 

TBR = 5

WPL = 15

Gail Vaz-Oxlade as the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon

* a very apropos cartoon from http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts

 

Wa wa wa waaaa.  I love Gail.  I devoured her Debt-Free Forever book, implemented her suggestions and have since changed my life immensely (2 credit cards paid off with just my line of credit to go, and all that in only 6 months!!).  So as I got to thinking about saving for retirement and will I have enough, I decided to read her latest book, Never Too Late: Take Control of Your Retirement and Your Future.   Now, I’m no math whiz but I do feel confident that I understand investments enough to choose wisely for myself, but as I read Gail’s book, I started to hear the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon in my head:  wa wa wa wa waaaaa.  Now perhaps it’s just that I’ve been ill lately and unable to grasp all of Gail’s knowledge, but I really struggled to get through this book and came out the end feeling like I didn’t know nothin’ about money and investing.  So the confidence boost I was hoping to get, and the tips on improving my portfolio I was hoping to take from the book fizzled quickly.  Gail was just too technical for me. 

 

If you read the book and make better sense of it than I did, please enlighten me.  Or perhaps I’ll tackle it again later this summer when I’m back in fighting form.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

 

TBR = 5

WPL = 14

L Takes a Walk Down Memory Lane

Some weeks ago I stumbled across news of a most epic proportion.  Sweet Valley High, that teen romance series I so loved so much as a kid may be made into a movie.  Yup, Jessica and Elizabeth might just be coming to a big screen near you.  YAY!!!  Okay, so I am that much of a geek that I had to hunt down a copy of the first ever book in the series, Double Love, so I could re-read it and remember what all the fuss was about.  And remember I did, but mostly just what a geek I was at the age of twelve.  Sigh.  I was first introduced to the Wakefield twins when my sister started buying the books.  My sister, ten years older than me, was not much of a reader and I think she thought these short little books would peak her interest enough to actually get her reading.  It wasn’t long though before I got my twelve-year-old hands on the books and fell in love with the series and the characters – who didn’t love Elizabeth?  Okay she was just a little too goody two shoes, playing victim to her evil twin who I abhorred, but really, Jessica did have all the fun.  And then there was Todd.  Sigh.  I always fell for those boy-next-door heartthrobs….

 

Rereading Double Love, I realized just how much of a geek I was back then as whole sentences read so familiarly it was like I’d just read the book … but then I had read and re-read the first dozen ad nauseum because sister dearest was such a slooowww reader, that I could read five books to her one, and she wouldn’t buy more until she read the ones already purchased, so I had no choice but to read them again and again and again (I actually remember reading one of the books out loud to her, as she was working on a quilt, thinking this would help her get through the books faster.  I mean, really, who would quilt when they could read about Jessica’s latest shenanigans?) 

 

Anyway, Double Love introduces us to the Wakefield twins and their classmates in fictional Sweet Valley, California, a land of perpetual sunshine and beautiful people.  Head cheerleader Jessica likes Todd, captain of the basketball team and is desperate to get him to ask her to the upcoming dance, even though whenever Todd calls their house or runs into the girls in the halls of Sweet Valley High, it’s Elizabeth he wants to talk to.  But Elizabeth doesn’t like Todd, so Jessica is free and clear to go after him … right?  What follows is the usual teen heartache as Elizabeth and Todd navigate the rocky road to romance.

 

Considering there are about a couple hundred books written in the series and all its spin-offs, I won’t be continuing this trip down memory lane, but I will be looking forward to the movie, which I hear is being written by Diablo Cody who also penned the screenplay for Juno so I couldn’t be more excited!!

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

 

 

TBR = 5

WPL = 13

L plays catch-up

Just when I think it’s time to set aside the J.D. Robb books, out comes one that reminds me just what I love about them.  Treachery in Death is J.D. Robb at her best, weaving in just about everything I like about the series and characters.  Eve Dallas is at her kick-ass best, and Roarke is her ever steady, loving, supportive post with just enough print time of his own to make reading this book extra enjoyable.

 

Eve’s stalwart partner, the ever steady Peabody, Detective Delia has overheard a couple of dirty cops plotting death.  While Eve generally stands for murder, this time, she must protect the blue line and route out a squad full of the dirtiest of dirty cops – cop killers. 

 

While I generally don’t like knowing who-done-it right off the bat, Robb makes it work in this latest installment to the series, which is a satisfying read of one-up-man-ship between opposing lieutenants.  It’s good cop verse bad cop at Robb’s finest and a very satisfying read.

 

Till next time, happy reading,

L J

 

 

TBR = 5

WPL = 12

The Color Purple

 

I read Alice Walker’s pivotal novel The Color Purple for a Women’s Studies course called Gal Pal’s: Women and Friendship.  I saw the movie, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, many years ago so vaguely recalled the story.  The book is a beautifully written epistolary novel about the struggles of four women spanning several decades in the early 1900s.  Celie, the female protagonist, tells her story first in letters addressed to God, then later to her sister Nettie.  The story begins when Celie is twelve, and pregnant with her second child by her father who has told her she better not tell anyone except God, or it would break her mother’s heart. 

 

Celie’s children are taken from her at birth and she is soon married off to local widower, Mister, in need of a woman to clean, cook and look after his children.  Tragedy strikes when Mister preys on Celie’s younger sister Nettie.  Not wanting Nettie to go through what she did, Celie helps Nettie get out, but is soon left alone to undergo abuse and neglect by Mister and his bratty children.  The years pass, and Mister’s oldest boy brings home a bride, the feisty Sofia, who refuses to be a battered wife.  This is Celie’s first opportunity to realize women do not have to be slaves to their men.

 

Although Celie is brutalized by the men in her life, she finds solace in the female friendships she forms, the “sisters” she bonds with and who together transform each other’s lives, giving Celie the much needed strength to fling off male oppression and stand on her own two feet as a strong independent woman.

 

The Color Purple is a truly wonderful read about the strength of female friendship and the redemption and reconciliation that can arise from true hardship.

 

Till next time, happy reading,

L J

 

 

TBR = 5

WPL = 11