I listened to Jenny Lawson’s hilarious and crazy memoir a few months ago on audiobook that I borrowed from the library, and I immediately knew I would love to feature it for BlogHer book club. A little background – Jenny is the author of the popular blog The Bloggess, and honestly I had never followed it before she wrote this book. But I started seeing a lot of positive reviews across the interwebs, and since I’m always looking for light and funny audiobooks, I gave it a try. Oh man. It’s a trip. She says she’s saved the best stories of her life for this book, and many of them really are hard to believe. At times I was just…
Continue Reading »

This was on my to-read list ever since one of my favorite book bloggers said that it reminded her of East of Eden and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both of which are my jam. Now that I’ve read it I can bestow my confirmation on such a high claim. It’s a multi-generational family saga of immigrants, starting around the 1870’s and following them over the next century. Those kind of books really work for me even though their format can be so different from one another. This one is a pretty straightforward history-telling. No jumping around in time or changing of narrators or any other tactics like that. The sentences are short and to the point. There are some…
Continue Reading »

I’m someone who thrives when I have goals and a plan in place to get there. Not just for the big stuff like my family, education, and career, but for little things like hobbies too. I know that this is the only life I have, so I am constantly trying to improve it – not in an I’m-not-satisfied kind of way, but in a make-the-best-of-things way. When I found out about the book My Life Map by Kate and David Marshall I was intrigued. It said it was especially geared toward people on the brink of big decisions or life changes, and although I feel somewhat settled right now I wanted to see if it would have any benefit for…
Continue Reading »

“Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly.Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”  – Liane Moriarty *** Alice thinks she’s 29 years old – she and her husband Nick are desperately in love, renovating an old house, and she is pregnant with her first baby. Her sister Elisabeth is her best friend, and life couldn’t be better. In reality, she has just had a head injury at the gym and can’t remember…
Continue Reading »

“I had always felt that any dog I took care of would’ve done the same for me if it could, and in fact by rescuing them they filled my heart in such a way that I was rescued right back.” –Julie Klam *** I’m a dog person through and through. We have three of them, and I’ve talked about them several times here, but I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that they are all rescue animals. My husband got his dog Eddie as a puppy in the shelter, and I got Cleo as a 2-year-old from the same place. Oliver was a stray from the street with a limp that we really shouldn’t have taken on, but then we saw…
Continue Reading »