The Willpower Instinct

My first post in over a month is about willpower and it’s still early January.  You probably think it’s going to be one of those New Year’s Resolution posts, don’t you?

Well, it’s not that kind of post.

It is, in fact, a book review!  Of Kelly McGonigal’s newly released book The Willpower Instinct:  How Self-Control Work.  Why It Matters. And What You Can Do to Get More of It for the BlogHer book club.  Which to be honest, January is a pretty good time to read a book about willpower and self-control even though I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year. 

I read this book with some trepidation as I don’t normally read self-help books .  And, yet, as I read The Willpower Instinct, I found myself nodding my head in agreement, puzzling over a lot of the truths about self-control, dog-earing pages, and writing little notes in the margins like “my mom should read this.”  Ultimately, I determined that as far as self-help books go (and yes, it is a self-help book) it was pretty darn fascinating.  It reminded me of one of my favorite grad school classes.  McGonigal’s writing was insightful, engaging and relevant whether or not I think that I personally have willpower challenges.

While I read the book on warp speed since I was on a schedule for the BlogHer book club, the author, a Stanford University psychologist who teaches a course called “the Science of Willpower,” suggests that the book be read in in increments over a longer period of time and that readers gradually implement the advice she proffers and undertake the self-control exercises.  I think her advice is sound.  I enjoyed reading this books much that I think that I’m going to go back and read it again if I don’t pass it on to someone else first.    In spite of only reading it for what I shall call academic reasons, I found myself identifying areas where I fail at self-control (looking at boots on Zappos) and areas where I succeed (exercise).

 

Dr. McGonigal says that people love resolving to change.  If you're one of those people that loves making resolutions but struggle with the follow-through, perhaps taking a gander at The Willpower Instinct might help you make your New Year's resolution a true lifestyle change.  Or, if you want to just enjoy the fun of resolutions, you can join one of the Blogher Bookclub's discussions of The Willpower Instinct.  After all, you don't have to make a change to talk about changing.

 

And for the record while I was compensated by Blogher for this review, the opinions expressed are entirely my own -- always are and always will be!  Now that's a resolution that doesn't take much willpower...

 

A Book Review: Born Wicked

Living with young people, I find myself often reading Young Adult literature. Truthfully, when it's well-written I really like the genre as a whole and read YA books just because they're fun. I read the Harry Potter books, for example, ages before my kids were ready for them. I suspect I'll be reading YA books when my children are grown-up (which feels like it might be next week at the rate time seems to fly by...but I digress).

Recently, the first installment of a new YA book series fell into my hands courtesy of the Blogher Bookclub. Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood is a story of three young witches living in New England in the late 19th Century. The US, in which they live, is not that of our history but one run with religious fervor by a Taliban-style Brotherhood who fear the uprising of witches. Young women are forced to declare their intentions at age 16 either to marry or join The Sisterhood--a convent of seemingly pious women who serve and support the men of the Brotherhood. Women live in constant fear of being named witches and sentenced to an asylum or labor on a prison boat without the ceremony of a trial.

Cate Cahill and her two sisters Tess and Maura are motherless teenagers whose father, still grief-stricken over the death of his wife years before, has abandoned his children to the care of servants and their own devices. Cate, the eldest and our narrator, was charged on her mother's deathbed with the protection of her younger sisters. The three girls also happen to be witches. As Cate approaches the age of intention she worries what the future holds for her sisters who have difficulty restraining their magic if she marries and is forced to move from her family home.

Oh, what tangled webs! If I rated this book on my personal Twilight (1) to Harry Potter (10) scale of young adult fiction, I’ll give this book a 7. I passed it on to Mary Rollins who is reading away at it – it has lots of romance, a bit of mystery, a good-sized helping of magic and a pinch of The Scarlet Letter. It doesn’t have any vampires which I find wonderfully refreshing. And, now I’m waiting expectantly on the edge for Book 2.
Just so you know, I was compensated for writing this review for the Blogher Book Club. The opinions, though, are entirely my own. Always are, always will be.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

My own weird sisters (and me)...Cordy, Bean, and Rose.
No wait, that's not right: Gwenda, Lynda and Cindy
(okay so isn't it weird that really
only my family calls me Gwenda AND
I felt the need to put that in my photo caption because I'm
with my sisters??) .

New book I love: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. Maybe I loved this book because it’s about three sisters and I’m one of three sisters. Maybe I loved this book because they’re Episcopalians and I’m an Episcopalian. Maybe it’s because this family defines itself by its love of literature and, well the Williamsons are a book family. When all other conversation fails, we seem to always come back to our favorite books. Oh, and that the setting is in a small college town and their lives seem to revolve around a higher education calendar. No, that doesn’t hit close to home or that caring for aging parents is part of the theme.


The Weird Sisters is now my favorite book of 2012. Written by Eleanor Brown, the Weird Sisters is a bewitching tale of three sisters who have grown up with a Shakespearian scholar father and a loving but distracted mother. The sisters each named for one of Shakespeare’s characters, now grown, have all returned to the family home ostensibly to care for their mother who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. In truth though, her illness is really a much needed excuse to escape from their own lives. Their return home is punctuated with saucy sarcasm and mysterious quotes from the Bard.

Like the Andreas sisters of The Weird Sisters, I also have strong feelings about having returned to my home town.  I often find myself apologizing for living in Lexington where I was born and raised. Sometimes I think my life should have been, somehow bigger, that I should have landed far from home and be living a glamorous life, riding the subway to work, sitting in a beach house somewhere writing my novel as I stare out over the waves with my dog’s head on my foot. And yet, I find myself here in the Bluegrass, living where I can step out my front door and hear my high school band practicing and my children are attending the same cotillions that I went to and have teachers with whom I once went to school. To me, it sounds small and yet, my life doesn’t feel that way. And even on the bad days when I’ve argued with someone or had a stressful day of real estate, it still feels big and rich and full of good things. To me, the landscape of horse farms and hills isn’t any less beautiful for my having seen it a thousand times before and the opportunity to make a difference in the world, here, is no less important than the difference I could make in another place. It’s really all about peace, isn’t it?  And, yet, I always have to clarify to people that I "chose" to move back home, that I "could" have lived somewhere else. 

The Weird Sisters isn’t The Life of Pi or even The Help in becoming a literary classic that defines an age or a culture but, I highly recommend it as a great read. If you ever had a sister, ever moved away from home, ever moved back home, ever read any Shakespeare or if you just like a really good book, put The Weird Sisters on your what to read next list. You might find, like I did, that it leaves you with a lot to ponder about growing up and where you fit into your family.

By the way, I was compensated for this review as part of BlogHer Book Club, however the opinions expressed are entirely my own. Just as they should and always will be…

Happy reading!

The Underside of Joy: a book review

Sometimes a book hooks me on the setting. Sometimes I find a novel pulling me in with great characters or an amazing plot. The Underside of Joy by Sere Prince Halverson had it all -- a descriptively wrought setting that had the scent of redwoods and damp moss in the air, characters I wanted as my neighbors and a storyline I could discuss for days.

Years ago, I was part of a funny little Bible study at my church. We were all moms with young children and we met weekly. We were a fun mix of people, I think, well-educated but few of us had really read the Bible before on a regular basis.  We were all pretty much never afraid to say what we really thought even if it was irreverent and possibly sacrilegious. We seemed to have several discussion themes we came back to frequently, one being that there's no quick fix for anything, another that we as parents have a tendency to super-size things, and finally that joy was something different from happiness. Possibly that last theme was one of my favorites and derived directly from my go-to Carl Jung observation that there is no coming to consciousness without pain.



And there you have The Underside of Joy. Ella Beene is happily married to a wonderful man with two adorable children from a previous marriage living in an impossibly sweet town in Northern California. They seem to live a charmed and messy life full of nature hikes, great sex and organic food. In her happiness, Ella lives totally in the moment blissfully blind to anything that threatens the contentment of the life she has built with her husband and step-children -- did I mention that they are adorable. All of that changes in an instant and Ella is forced to look at the reality of her life, her family and what love really means.



One of my favorite parts of The Underside of Joy is the kind way that the author treats all of the characters. While told from Like real life, sometimes there isn't a bad guy. And as much as we sometimes want and need to blame someone else, that's not the way of responsibility or the way of love. 

I think I finished reading The Underside of Joy a wiser and more hopeful person than I started it.  And yes, I know it's fiction but a story doesn't have to be true to tell Truths.  Quite possibly, The Underside of Joy will be one of my favorite books I read this year.  And, don't be fooled by the girlie flower on the cover.  I handed the book to Marc when I finished it at the lakehouse.  He read it in less than 24 hours, handed it back to me and said, "I hope the next BlogHer Book Club book you get to read is as good as this one."

Just so you know, while I was compensated for this review for BlogHer, the opinions expressed here are always and entirely my own...

Why Women Need Fat: A Book Review

Hooray, butter is not the enemy!!


The last diet book I read was Skinny Bitch. It was about four years ago and for the life of me I can’t remember why I read it. Perhaps I had some crazy notion that I was just one grapefruit away from looking like Kate Moss. I think it was the title I couldn’t resist though. So last week I read Why Women Need Fat for the Blogher Book Club. Who wouldn’t want to read a book called Why Women Need Fat? It has an even more irresistable title and arrived in perfect time to help shape my New Year’s resolution to eat closer to the earth!

Why Women Need Fat written by William D. Lassek, M.D. and Steven J.C. Gaulin, Ph.D., has a subtitle that says it all, How “Healthy” Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever, these guys go in depth to explain why so many women today weigh more than their mothers and grandmothers did. And, how changes in the food industry over the last few decades have contributed to American women’s increasing waistlines.

Why Women Need Fat is a great alternative to the seemingly endless supply of diet books that lead us to believe that we could all look like a runway model if we just gave up a particular food group, say carbs??? Refreshingly, Drs. Lassek and Gaulin preach that there’s no quick fix for losing weight! And, that dieting/starving ourselves is counterproductive to maintaining a long-term healthy body size. And perhaps, more importantly, this book is a great reminder that we are not all meant to look like Heidi Klum. I won’t bore you with all the scientific and well-researched data in this book, but I will say it’s worthwhile read even if you aren’t trying to lose weight. The authors explore myths about the “healthy” fats and talk about approaches to determining your natural weight. Their research supports what we know from those skinny French women – natural food in moderation does not make you fat.

And, now we can officially celebrate that butter is not the enemy and instead go throw away our nasty soybean oils!



Just so you know, I was compensated for this review, however, the opinions expressed here are always my own.

The Magic Room by Jeffrey Zaslow

We're back to books here at At Home in the Bluegrass.  This time, I just finished reading The Magic Room by Jeffrey Zaslow -- another Blogher Book Club selection for January.  I don't think we have a magic room in Lexington -- a destination bridal store like Kleinfeldts in New York or Becker's Bridal, the subject of the The Magic Room, in Fowler Michigan.  You'd think I would know if we had one but I bought my wedding dress by driving to Louisville with my best friend Stacey and trying it on at Dillard's -- we had a good time but i wouldn't call it magical. And, I picked it up myself and had it fitted on my own. Based on the Magic Room, that was wrong. Apparently your mom is supposed to go with you unless she's dead...

While The Magic Room: A Story about the Love Wish for our Daughters seems to play off the popularity of the current reality TV obsession with bridezilla shows, The Magic Room is a tonic for the overkill of Say "Yes" to the Dress and our wedding day obsessed culture.  Zaslow, in an excellent narrative, follows a number of women's journeys to the altar and their stop at Becker's Bridal. Rather than focusing on the shallowness and vanity of the wedding machine, he writes about love in its varied forms--between husband and wives, parents and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren. It refreshingly reminds us of how much more does and should go into a marriage. I thought that The Magic Room was going to be a girlie book. It wasn't. I was a bit weepy on page two although that passed and I steeled myself for the remainder of the book. More than likely I'll be passing this little gem along to my husband. Why? Because he has a daughter. And, more than being a book about finding a perfect dress, The Magic Room chronicles the trials of running a family business and provides a fascinating look at how much our families and our attitudes toward marriage have changed in the last eighty years. Just so you know, I was compensated by Blogher for writing this review, however, the opinions expressed here are always my own!

Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore

Here at At Home in the Bluegrass, I like reading books. Lots of books. And sometimes, I like to let you know about books I’ve read!


I had the good fortune recently to have a new historical novel land in my lap -- Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore by Stella Duffy. I have to confess I have a secret love of historical novels, especially those about women whose stories are merely outlines in recorded history and of whom we know little. Theodora of Constantinople (did you just say "who?") was the wife of Justinian I, 6th century Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Quick synopsis: Theodora rose from being a young child actress/prostitute of the Hippodrome to marry the Roman Consul Justinian who a few years later become Emperor, she the Empress and one of the most important and influential women of the Roman Empire -- a real life rags to riches story but one so infinitely colored by politics, sexuality, religious discord, and clever marketing you might think you were in the midst of a medieval reality show.

I knew only a little about Theodora and 6th century Byzantine history before I read Stella Duffy’s new novel. What I did know came from a scattered remembrance of the Byzantine Empire acquired during a few history and religious studies courses. Having that knowledge was helpful although I still found myself looking up various terms. Even without a complete understanding of the historical backdrop, the story of Theodora is riveting. Fleshed out by the author from a framework of conflicting sources written in Theodora’s own lifetime, her life’s detail portrays a controversial woman ahead of her time – an early feminist? A woman concerned with the welfare of women and children? A religious convert? A consummate actress? In spite of having rights severely limited by law, Theodora was able to make many of her own choices and appears to have had far greater control over her destiny than women for centuries to come. She was both respected and revered, and like most powerful women of history -- accused of scandal, witchcraft and heresy. Theodora’s story, which would be factually scandalous in any era, is perhaps even more intriguing in context of the timeless questions it raises about politics, power and religion.

I have heard that Theodora is soon to be an HBO series. I suspect it will have all the pageantry, passion and style as the Tudors!


And, just so you know, I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but the opinions expressed here are completely my own!  Always are, always will be...