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Category: Parenting & Family

Review: The Mommy Files by Jen Klein

[ 18 ] August 25, 2010

Reviewed by Poppy J.

The Mommy Files by Jen Klein is written for new moms as well as experienced mothers who simply want to learn more about their babies. The author has not forgotten anything. She begins at the first moment that the pregnancy is discovered, and move along to when the child is independent and ready to explore the world on his or her own.

The book reminds new mothers that they can’t do it all, and should not be so hard on themselves when they come home with their new babies from the hospital. The Mommy Files provides information on working outside of the home, developing a network of other mothers through playgroups, and time management skills. Klein also emphasize that it is important to create time for oneself as a new mom, and that this is often put aside, because new mothers are naturally absorbed with their babies.

The Mommy Files offers simple advice for managing it all, and shares “She Knows Secrets” for the reader to note when waiting for the birth and managing the hectic days afterwards. For example, the author speaks in authoritative voice on the issue of cosleeping and discipline, and the readers will get many sides of the issue from the book so that they can make the best decision for their families.

After a decade of working in several NYC law departments and teaching, Poppy decided she enjoyed writing full-time. She currently works as a freelance writing consultant, and lives with her husband and sons on the East Coast.

This book was provided free of any obligation by FSB Associates. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Blog Tour: "Balancing Acts" by Zoe Fishman

[ 0 ] March 31, 2010

Please join Zoe Fishman, author of Balancing Acts, as she tours the blogosphere with TLC Book Tours!

Reviewed by Poppy J.

Balancing Acts begins with four college acquaintances meeting again at a ten year college reunion. Each is looking for love, wanting to find herself and wondering how she will improve the quality of her life. The women are Naomi, Charlie, Bess and Sabine, and they all decide it is time for a change (each for different reasons). Charlie has just the right catalyst for the women when she suggests that they attend her yoga classes and reconnect with themselves and each other. Charlie has opened up a business with a few other partners, and offers yoga classes to the public. Balancing Acts centers on the classes, the women’s different reactions and the new relationships they develop by opening their minds to something new.

The story initially seems to be based on the premise that all of the women are not on the same footing socially and emotionally. In actuality, Bess has designs to write a story about the women to show that they have not followed their dreams and sold out on their plans for the future. Her intention is to show that she has done better than these women have, even though she is pretending to bond with them both in and out of the yoga class.

Throughout Balancing Acts, Bess learns that she is not so unlike the women that she seeks to expose in her article. Each chapter is named for the women featured in the story. They chronicle the lives of the women, and show how they find or reject the idea of love, and describe how they make sense of the fabric of their lives.

Balancing Acts also tracks the progression of the women’s journey towards loving themselves through learning about, performing, and understanding the art of yoga. There are a few predictable turns in the story, but the ending is first rate. I’d recommend this book to women of any age –  it is definitely a winner.

Please visit Zoe Fishman’s website and follow along with her blog tour!

This book was provided free of any obligation by Harper Paperbacks. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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"Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying (Among Other Things)" by Abby Sher

[ 0 ] February 26, 2010

Reviewed by Carly M.

When Abby Sher was little, she had a habit of singing songs to herself in a particular way. She also had a habit of collecting certain bits of garbage that she saw in the street and kissing certain things just the right number of times. Most of all, Abby had a habit of praying and praying and praying.

In her memoir, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying (Among Other Things), Abby Sher recounts in detail her experience of growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her story starts just before her father’s death, when Abby is on the brink of entering adolescence, unsure of anything around her. She finds peace and comfort in a few little rituals and habits that she’s picked up, like kissing and counting and praying. Before long, however, even Abby has to admit that there’s something strange about her behavior.

As Abby grows up, she faces the changes and traumas of life by adopting more and more rituals. Her faith in God and belief in the power of prayer takes on a frantic life of its own as Abby begins to feel more and more responsible for all of the events in her world. Her heartbreaking struggle to control and fix and save everyone and everything leads her down a rabbit hole of manic behaviors, until Abby finds herself trapped in an adulthood marked by compulsions, rituals, restrictions, and self-punishment.

This memoir is so wonderfully written that you can’t help but slip right into Abby’s world, even as she eventually faces an eating disorder and a compulsion to self-mutilate. It may be hard to understand how someone could end up as trapped in their own head as Abby did, but the author has spun such a compelling tale out of her micro-madness that I sat down and read this book from cover to cover in one sitting.

I’d strongly recommend Amen, Amen, Amen to anyone, even if the concept of obsessive-compulsive disorder is completely alien. I feel like this memoir offers and important, and rare, glimpse into this all-too-common condition and the lives of those who live with it or deal with it in other people. This was my first encounter with Abby Sher, but now I feel I know her so well that I can’t wait to encounter another of her books.

Carly lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her husband and their two cats. Her favorite thing to do is to curl up by a window with a library book. When she isn’t reading, she’s usually writing on her blog at www.beingcarly.com.

This book was provided free of any obligation by Scribner. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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"Abandoned and Forgotten: An Orphan Girl’s Tale of Survival During World War II" by Evelyne Tannehill

[ 0 ] February 23, 2010
Reviewed by Scott B.

In an essential supplement to published accounts of World War II, Evelyne Tannehill tells her tale from the perspective of a German civilian during and after the conflict. Born Evelyn Rapp in January 1936, Eva (her family’s name for her) recounts the brutal life that was her fate in the German province of East Prussia – part of Poland ever since the end of the war – from her earliest memories to her departure for the United States just after Christmas of 1951, about three weeks shy of her sixteenth birthday.
But mostly, Abandoned and Forgotten is the story of three years in the life of an orphaned girl and the experiences that emotionally scarred her for life.
Eva’s family ran a farm in the village of Niederhof, next to the village of Steglitz, a short train ride from the decent-sized city of Elbing (now Elblag) near the Baltic Sea. She was the youngest of five children of a German mother and German but naturalized U.S. citizen father. After the rise of Hitler and his serious shaking of the war sabers, her father attempted to flee to the United States by virtue of his citizenship. After some debate, he finally decided to move the family in 1938. By that time, Hitler had closed the borders and it was too late. 
This sealed their awful fate.
The harrowing account is divided into four sections and an epilogue. “The Germans” is the wonderful childhood experienced by Eva with her family, complete with storybook holidays and summers at a cottage on the Baltic Sea. “The Russians” is synonymous with a life of hell, terror, and rape for the East Prussian Germans who were not able to flee the approaching Russian soldiers hell-bent on revenge. “The Poles” brings only a slightly better existence to the local Germans and a life of discrimination and de facto indentured servitude. “The New Germans” tells of repatriation (finally in the fall of 1947)—not always happy for the now orphaned Eva—and reunion with her aunts and an uncle in the American sector of West Germany.
After her mother’s death in the summer of 1945, Eva’s search for love and acceptance dogged her for the rest of her life, and she was not able to find it—anywhere—except when she eventually married for the second time.
Evelyne’s prose is extremely simple but quite functional—and readable. She shows complete honesty in her accounts of the motivations, actions, and characters of other people—and of her own.  Only photographs of the people and places featured in the narrative are missing from this very poignant and often painful tale.
Please visit the Abandoned and Forgotten website for more information.

Scott, now a copy editor by trade, is a once-and-future Latin teacher. He pursues his passions for brain plasticity, jazz piano, and golf in southeast Massachusetts. He lives alone with Cicero, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Ella Fitzgerald.

This book was provided free of any obligation by Author Marketing Experts, Inc. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Friday Cravings

[ 0 ] January 15, 2010
So my pick this week is once again from PaperBackSwap.com! I’m finding it to be quite a treasure trove. Perhaps I should change the name of this column to PaperBackSwap Finds…
Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! The books do not have to be new or upcoming releases. Leave a link to your own post in the comment area and link it back to Luxury Reading. If you don’t have a blog, just list the book and the author.
Pick of the Week
It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five year old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. 
Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris’ honor is tested.
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