While chocolates, hearts, and flowers may be the way to some girls’ hearts, books are definitely the way to ours. If books fill you with a warm, happy feeling too, here are five that you might want to check out, download, or purchase for yourself or your sweetie.
And if you are interested in hearing us talk about one of these in real time, just click the podcast at the bottom of this post!
There is a reason this book made it on to nearly every “Best Of” list last year—it’s quite simply a remarkable gem of a book. With her unique gift for plucking the extraordinary from the every day, Offill doesn’t just offer up moments from a marriage but gives us glimpses of the diamonds hidden in the rough patches as well. Offill’s structuring of the story can be the reader’s hard work. Through her careful curation of snippets from the marriage at the heart of this novel, Offill leaves the reader asking on every page—how do these pieces fit together? what does this mean here?—yet these tenuous but important questions serve the story she is trying to tell. Marriage isn’t a straight narrative so much as a thousand shimmering moments—beautiful, terrible, and strange—and she lays them all out for us in this gripping, lovely book about what it means to take this particular trip.
You know how we feel about immunizations. Ellen wrote a great post about herd immunity and its current threat from the anti-vaxxer movement here. But this book doesn’t so much argue for vaccines as wrap itself around the very concept of innoculation itself. Biss’ pace is unhurried as she weaves personal anecdotes in with history, literature, and scientific research. The result is a captivating read on a subject we cannot escape right now. I cannot escape one of her quotes: “We owe each other our bodies.” An unputdownable piece of non-fiction that will keep you thinking long after you have turned the last page.
This book broke my heart a couple of years ago, but it never left me. It’s truly one of my favorites of all time, but it’s not easily summed up or laid out. Krauss, the wife of the literary superstar Jonathan Safran Foer, has a weighty literary talent of her own and she embues all of her gifts on telling this beautiful love story of a boy named Leo who loved a girl named Alma. That she lets this love story travel back and forth in time and be told from many angles is just a gift for the reader. This is a book you will cherish.
For a big, honking tome like this with a beautiful, intricate story to boot, you could totally be spot on in thinking, “Really, Erin? You serious?” Well, those who love the literary heavy hitters are already gonna be on board with this wide open, lyrical book, but even if you are just looking for a great story, trust me when I say that this book is for you. It starts as a father’s love story. Marie-Laure loses her sight at six years old and her father, a talented locksmith in charge of all the locks at the Museum of Natural History, uses his abundant gifts to help her learn to manage her blindness. By the power of Doerr’s narrative gifts, it morphs into something else entirely. There is so much good stuff in these pages and Doerr plays well with every character and theme he introduces. It may not be great literature, but it is a damn fine read and that is enough to keep you warm on a cold winter night.
This is the one book that I am telling everyone to read right now. It’s such a great all-around literary experience from the plot that sucks you in to the characters that pull you through to the questions it keeps asking you. I could go on and on.
In fact, you can hear me (and Ellen) go on and on about this book and other things too in our latest podcast. Just click it below!
Okay, just kidding. Seriously, to any offspring reading this: JOKING! Do not memorialize your naked body on any digital medium.
But all kidding aside, there’s a much more savory path to fame, stardom and riches on the world wide web: Twitter.
Well, maybe money and fame is stretching it a bit, but you can at least rub bandwidth with the stars.
For instance, famous people can read your humble little 140 characters and share them because THEY THINK YOU ARE BRILLIANT AND FUNNY!
Has this happened to the Sensible Moms? So kind of you to ask! In fact it has. Behold! P!nk retweeted my little gem:
Yep, P!nk (or her publicist) thought that wee tweet was worth sharing with her almost 22,000,000 followers. By the way, that was tweeted in January 2014 and it is still bouncing around the Twittersphere. We got a notification a couple of days ago:
Now before you go hounding me for my autograph, here is some perspective. Thirteen hundred retweets may not be a lot if you compare us to the likes of Justin Bieber who can get 100K shares even when tweeting forth banality. But, we are no Biebers (thank goodness!) so it’s still pretty cool.
Poetic.
But enough with the humility, let’s get back to my awesomeness. When you have teenage daughters, it’s a rare occasion when you get to impress them. When this Twitter magic happened, I gripped my phone, jumped up and down, and shouted, “I have one degree of separation from P!nk!”
I was met with blank stares.
They were gratifyingly impressed when I explained the P!nk love, but my thirteen year old revisited my original announcement: “What did you mean by, uh, separate degrees?”
I replied, “You know, like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.”
Blank stares again.
You know those times when you feel the crushing, pulverizing blow of parenting failure? This was one of those times. Now that the days of Cinder Elmo are behind us and we can all enjoy real movies together, how had I never bestowed the knowledge upon them that Kevin Bacon is the center of the entertainment universe?? I blame math and word problems.
So I explained that back in the dark ages of 1994, before Vine and Buzzfeed and all of the magic that is the internet, humans actually had to come up with ways to entertain themselves while sitting around and conversing with each other . . . in person. LegendWikipedia has it, that while watching Footloose, three Albright College students, Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, and Mike Ginelli came up with the concept that every actor was associated with Kevin Bacon by six degrees of separation or less.
Never mind that I had to use the internet to find that information. What is truly fascinating about this history lesson is that in the pre-www era, the game could be pinpointed to the creators, and talk shows like The Daily Show were actually interested in interviewing them and crediting them. That is crazy talk. In this age of “entertain me NOW!”, ideas are churned out, stolen, rehashed, and tossed to the side as old news in a matter of 24 hours. Talk shows use blog and Twitter fodder on the daily, but they go out of their way to NOT give credit by doing things such as cutting off watermarks. Our culture is becoming a memed homogenized mush.
But in the middle of my “demise of civilization rant,” my daughter interrupted with this poignant question, “But how did EVERYONE know about it without the internet?”
I can only say that there weren’t many channels so our TV viewing was more focused, the guys were interviewed, and people talked. I guess the news spread the same way everyone in my grade school, as well as the rest of the country, thought Mikey of LIFE cereal fame died from drinking Coke with Pop Rocks. I’m sure some parent has paid their child’s Ivy League bill just so they could grow up to answer these sort of burning questions. Those researchers are the true patriots, my friends.
But back to the Bacon! I had to explain to my kids what the “degrees” were. I am loathe to admit it, but Wikipedia did it better than I ever could. For the love of Persia, they did it in algebraic equation form! Excuse me while I recover from the vapors.
Those actors who have worked directly with Kevin Bacon have a Bacon number of 1.
If the lowest Bacon number of any actor with whom X has appeared in any movie is N, X’s Bacon number is N+1.
I know, right?! Don’t worry, I got eye rolls from my kids, too. At least you don’t have to live with me, but I am about to redeem myself.
While giving them examples–if Kevin worked with Bob and Bob worked with Betsy, then Betsy has two degrees of separation from the Bacon–I found out the most magically magical thing. If you type in ‘Bacon Number’ and a celebrity’s name into the Google search bar:
You get their Bacon number with an explanation of the degrees of separation:
You do know what this means, don’t you? I am THREE degrees of separation away from Kevin Bacon! ME! Don’t bother to Google it though, because apparently there’s this chick, Ellen DeGeneres, who has a higher search value than me. I’m crafting my email of complaint right now.
So the moral of this story is to embrace the Twitter! And I have a fabulous new way for you to do it: The Big Book of Parenting Tweets.
This book is the brain chick of Twitter Master, Kate Hall, and Cartoonists of Truth, Science of Parenthood. Remember the “Quotable Quotes” and “All in a Day’s Work” features in Reader’s Digest? This collection of tweets reminds me of that because they’re pithy, funny, and completely relevant to your life.
In the spirit of this season of gratitude, we admit that we are two very lucky girls. While we may occasionally want for smoother skin, deeper pockets, and a great blowout once in awhile, we know we are both carrying around golden tickets every single day. One thing we are especially grateful for is our book club. Think of them as the First Generation Sisterhood, though we have never felt motivated to upgrade or move on to newer, shinier models.
I mean, seriously, how cute are they?
We are also thankful for the books and for what they add to our everyday. Our favorite tomes have shown themselves time and time again to be the lovely grace notes on top of an already pretty sweet life. We are ever so grateful for all they, and of course the lovely ladies who like to talk about them with us, have brought to our life.
This is our actual book club book this month and while we found this an easy read, it was an emotional one as well. Centered around a modern family with everyday problems—balancing work and home, dealing with a moody tween, marital problems— this story could be any of ours until the mother Jolene is deployed to the war zone as a helicopter pilot. Jolene’s letters home are set beside glimpses of life back home as her husband Michael attempts to keep their life rolling taking care of their two girls. When tragedy strikes, we are fully invested in the casualties on both sides.
Why we like it: While this is a relatively simple book (great for the carpool line or waiting on a sideline), the characters and the relationships are so reminiscent of the lives we are all living that we feel all the feels. Messy, perfectly imperfect people populate the pages of this novel much as they do our own lives and yet Hannah has the supreme gift of not just offering a window on their world but claiming it as our own as well. Her narrative transports us all along on the journey with this family and you’ll feel transformed for having taken the trip.
Erin gobbled this one right up. She even took it backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. Nothing says “must read” like a willingness to cart those extra ounces up and down a mountain. In any case, the novel opens as stay-at-home mom Allison’s life is about to go off the rails. She goes to her childhood best friend’s book signing one night and has a little too much to drink. Mere hours later, she is involved in a fatal accident in which a child dies. The air you take into your lungs in the big gasp in the beginning takes this whole well-paced novel to be released. This may not be high literature, but it is a captivating read that makes you think. Like we said, you are gonna want to take big bites of this one.
Why we like it: Kline so gets the modern marriage and her characters are beautiful flawed creatures that live, breathe, and, in this novel, create a story that doesn’t just pull you in but threatens to take you under. It’s really, truly unputdownable.
We are just gonna come right out and say it: Tana French never disappoints. If you have never read her, just dive right in and you will not be disappointed in this detective tale of a teen boy murdered at a prestigious boarding school. But there is a caveat: if you are a true fan (one that has read all her novels and waits with baited breath for each new book), this one won’t take top billing in the special brand of mystery detective thrillers she has created. But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t read it: there is still much to love in this new novel. First of all, familiar characters are back in Frank Mackey, his daughter Holly, and detective Stephen Moran. Second, like always, French is the master of this genre in so many ways. She paces her stories so well and her characterizations and her plots are memorable and special. Buuuuutttt, she departs a little too far from that which makes her truly great here. In all of her other novels, she has a main storyteller which not only highlights her supreme characterization but serves to be the hook and line to secure you tautly to her tale. In this novel, she tells the story from too many points of view and the multiple young teen narrators aren’t as captivating as her detectives have been in the past. The result: French still gets you to bite but it’s just not quite as satisfying a meal.
Why we like it: Tana French. Period. She’s that good. Even her “not as good” is heads and tails above the rest. Honestly, just read everything she’s written and see for yourself.
This novel consists of three stories about three women, connected by the same characters and places over different periods of time, beginning with the most recent events and going backward. It is almost magical how the stories of the women’s quests for faith, love, acceptance, and meaning are intertwined. What is not so magical is the beginning of the book. Maddy–prickly and unlikeable– kicks off the narrative. She is like fighting through the brambles to get to the sun, but continue on because it will all be worth it and it will all make sense. This novel takes you on a wild ride to examine love in all its forms: parental, forbidden. romantic, unrequited, and unreasonable.
Why we like it: We are suckers for the concept of “sliding doors,” the seemingly small fate changing moments that make all of the difference, and this novel has enough sliding doors to fill a Home Depot. The complexity of the plot makes this a book you’ll think about long after you finish it.
In a nutshell, this is a tale of two girls who have both been left alone in the world by fate. Their stories are the backbone of the book: one taking place in the here and now, the other in flashback. While this book more solidly belongs to Vivian and her experience on the orphan train, Molly’s modern day tale of abandonment anchors this historical novel and lets us not forget that we still struggle with how to handle the children left behind.
Why we like it: Spunky characters, gripping plot lines, and the real-life history lesson woven throughout make this book a compelling, easy read.
Right off the bat, Erin has to disclose that she is a huge Sittenfeld fan. Prep, American Wife, Man of my Dreams—liked ’em all, but this is an author that you love or hate, so read this recommendation with that in mind. In this novel, Kate (AKA Daisy) and her twin sister Violet have the gift of sight, ESP. It’s a gift that Violet celebrates and Daisy (now known as Kate) hides under a bushel basket. The story centers around Violet’s premonition that an earthquake is coming that is going to devastate the region and the fallout of her announcement for both the media and their relationship.
Why we like it: Sittenfeld peppers all of her novels with pop culture references, and this book is no exception. It makes reading a little like finding gems in the sand: a delightful surprise in an already pleasurable experience. Also, CS nails the complexities of the family bond. Her characterization has always been a strong suit, and she reveals in the Violet/Daisy bond why family can not only be great but also grating as well.
We really like adolescent lit, especially when it’s this smart, well-written, and, well, peculiar. If Tim Burton was a Grimm brother, this might be his baby. After his grandfather’s death, Jacob is left only with grief and some old photos. As he takes off on a trip to his grandfather’s birthplace, he has no idea what he has stumbled upon or where it might take him. The rest is heart-thumping, jaw-dropping fun.
Why we like it: Yep, this one is dark, imaginative, and strange which would win our love all by itself. But it also has some hairpin turns and plot twists that will leave you breathless.
Based on a real murder trial out of Georgia, this book could have easily turned into a schmaltzy whodunit or TV trial special. But Paris Trout the man was such a powerful force of bigotry, his crime so heinous, and his inability to admit his guilt so complete, this story is lucky to have found such a powerful literary hand to guide it.
Why we like it: Pete Dexter uses his powerful gifts with language to place us in that time and place. In the end, we might not ever understand the man Paris Trout, but we know him in a real way and we are forced to deal with him and the destruction he has wrought. Dexter never lets us forget that this really happened and what that means for all of us.
Following up a great read like Bee Season, Goldberg could be expected to falter and, to be fair, not everyone liked this book. But here’s why you should read it: it’s an engrossing read, Goldberg is a beautiful writer, and this is a novel that doesn’t take the easy way out. As the story goes, years ago, a terrible thing happened in the woods: one girl didn’t make it out. The different versions of what did or didn’t happen drive the plot and you are left to wrestle with the fallout. The failings of memory, the casual cruelty of children, and the inevitability of time figure as prominently as the girls at the center of the story.
Why we like it: Goldberg’s talent for language and characterization will move you. You’ll want to spend time in some of her metaphors. Everything in this novel might not be tied up with a pretty bow, but it is ultimately a gift to any reader.
Ten years ago, a kind but wily acquaintance was giving me the hard sell. He was leaving the neighborhood Cub Scout pack and moving on with his son. He was looking for a replacement/fresh meat/gullible sucker to take his place. I was strong and full of good reasons why I was not the girl he was looking for. He listened intently to every word I said and nodded his head in quiet acknowledgement. But as he was leaving, he handed me a note and said, “read this when you have time.”
Well, to this day, I think of him as the Lex Luther to my Supermom persona. On that little note, he had written the following:
Let’s just say that his little note was the kryptonite to all my arguments. I have been happily traipsing, backpacking, hiking, biking, and canoeing the outdoors with a gaggle of boys (and girls too) in tow ever since.
But that doesn’t mean that I was ready for the job I had undertaken. I love the outdoors with a passion, but you know what they say about passion making you blind, right? I have gotten lost on familiar mountains more times than I can count. I would send up flares when the Diet Coke supply got a little low in the house, so my wilderness skills weren’t exactly honed yet. And the extent of my nature knowledge was mostly stuff I learned off of Snapple caps and from my own well-intentioned but equally clueless mom.
But the truth is that experience is a fine teacher and ten years in, you can feel safe sending your kids into the woods with me and giving them actual knowledge about the outdoors. We might get lost but we will have a darn good time getting there. I would have loved to have had the following book with me in my early days of figuring it all out and you will too.
The Truth About Nature: A Family’s Guide to 144 Common Myths about the Great Outdoors is a book you can sip or gulp. Organized by season with a fun myth rating system kids love, it’s a book that can serve as a reference when needed or a nightly reading staple just for fun. It’s a versatile, accessible read and how you read it will depend heavily on why you are reading it. Just know that once you open its pages, it’s hard to put it down.
My seven year old is currently obsessed with this book and goes around asking his friends things like, “Fact or Myth? Frogs freeze” or quizzing unsuspecting guests on whether they think that bats are blind. We read it in little bits each night as part of our nightly ritual and he can read it by himself but prefers to hear me say “No Way!” whenever a deeply entrenched myth of mine is debunked. But this book’s greatest value by far is the way it excites about the wonders of nature. Even lukewarm couch potatoes won’t be able to escape the allure of all the “too strange to be true” facts and fun experiments you can do at home.
So this is my note to you: Read this when you have time. I hope it changes your mind about nature and kids and kids in nature the way that other little note changed mine. If you want to take kids hiking, camping, or even just out in the great outdoors known as your backyard, you can make a great time even better if you bring this book along. Consider this the kryptonite to all your arguments about why you can’t get your kids away from the TV and on to a trail.
The fall colors are waiting. Enjoy some time with your family in nature today!
-Erin
For the launch of this book, there is an exciting contest going on right now with the publisher where you can enter to win a school visit and free books!
Grief takes you places. These can be dark, hard, lonely places where a tsunami of emotions threatens to pull you under. When you are moving through that forbidding space, you may be looking for anything that can bring a little light into the dark corners. We like what T. H. White’s Merlyn says in The Once and Future King:
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder in your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewer of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it.”
We would only add to that: read a book. In particular, read these books. Whether your heart is broken or just bruised, these beautiful writers are exactly what you are looking for when you are grieving or loving someone who has experienced loss. These books about grief and loss are so much more than just a record of what was lost. Each of these books in their own way not only remembers lovingly the person who is gone but the journey the writers took after the losing.
These are postcards from the edge. Whether you need to take them on your own journey or send them to someone who is traveling this road, they are worthy of the trip.
With so few books dedicated to the experience of grief, there are even fewer that examine that place of grief that opens up after the loss of a friend. This one stands out not just for its beautiful writing, but for its brutal honesty in the face of such a loss. Patchett documents her long, loyal, and tender friendship with fellow writer Lucy Greeley, but also the painful wreckage left behind in the wake of Lucy’s death from a heroin overdose. While Patchett’s book is a wonderful piece about female friendships and their power and place in our lives, it is also forever a snapshot of a friend reeling from a profound loss. Patchett’s twin gifts for beautiful narrative and candor make this not just a fascinating read but a comforting one.
We should all be loved so well. Calvin Trillin adored his wife and this book is a lovely tribute to the woman he lost. In the midst of the story of his long, happy marriage to an exceptional woman, Trillin reveals the deep chasms in his life once she is no longer in it. Fortunately for us, there is light in the shadows. Loss of his beloved is painful, but Trillin’s story shines with the light of a love that has survived the ultimate separation. Beautiful writing and a great subject make this book a must read.
Didion’s memoir of the year following the loss of her husband is quite a trip even if it goes to a place we never really wanted to go. Alternately funny, desperate, wise, and endearing, Didion braves the landscape of grief with raw honesty. Despite the terrible story she is forced to tell, Didion never succumbs to her subject. Her writing captures grief’s new terrain—the exhilarating, nauseating roller coaster of it—with an unflinching eye. She casts aside all attempts to make her travel through this dark space easier. Grief is hard and we do no favors to minimize the challenges on the path. Didion won’t let platitudes or any other attempts to minimize her pain dissuade her from the hard work of grieving. This is an eyes-wide-open view of death from the perspective of a loved one left behind.
In the throes of grief, sometimes you just need someone to be there with you. Meghan O’Rourke wants to walk beside you. Deeply intimate and personal, poet Meghan O’ Rourke’s memoir of her mother’s cancer from her diagnosis to her death talks about all the painful emotions associated with losing a mother. So frank and open about what it really feels like, O’ Rourke focuses the full power of her poetic art onto the experience of her loss. The result is a piece of writing that connects the reader to the author in a uniquely powerful way. O’Rourke is a fellow traveler offering a hand along the path. It’s one worth taking.
This is the newest book to the oeuvre of books about grief but it is certain to become one of the most treasured. In the same vein as the authors we mentioned above, Donaldson does not flinch, fold, or fail in the face of tragedy and loss. Instead, she reacts with grace, humor, and beautiful writing.
We do not necessarily want to follow her on the journey that starts with the loss of her beloved 12 year old son Jack in a flash flood, but we cannot help ourselves. Donaldson beckons us not just to follow her, but to know her, to know Jack, to know them all, as they walk through the valley of death. Within the first few pages of the book, we are traveling with her, feeling her pain, descending a little into that dark, sad place and then emerging again as she relearns how to laugh, love, and feel again. This is a story about moving through grief and you feel that as you read.
Anna’s story is also a story of deep faith in the face of that which rocks one to the very core. Her poignant, painful, and sometimes funny anecdotes don’t just paint a picture of grief but gives it clear edges and hard corners. This new framework that grief imposes leaves her struggling to find in this new dark place the God that has always sustained her. But her straightforward open-hearted approach to this journey helps her see the new big God who is walking beside her in this place. Her frank writing shares Him with us.
Three years after the loss of her son, Anna Whiston-Donaldson has crafted something beautiful out of the crazy, sad space left behind after the loss of her son. “Rare Bird” is exceptional in its power and inimitable in its voice. It is a rare and beautiful find on a dark road.
Here is a quote from the book that we love.
Please take the time to visit a library, fire up your Kindle, or go to Amazon right now and read the full power of her story.
Have you gathered your pitchforks? Put them away! We’re pro volunteering, we swear! Volunteering makes this world a sweeter place to live and we strive to encourage giving hearts in our children. BUT (you knew there was a but), sometimes we feel like the butt of some cosmic PTA joke because nothing is ever simple.
Erin:Some sweet lady. . .
Ellen: Yeah right. More like a PTA pitbull in disguise.
Erin:Anyway, some caring mom ropes you into just one simple task . . .
Ellen: And wham, bam, punk you Ma’am; you’re teaching fifty fifth graders how to craft origami roosters with their eyes closed.
Erin:I wish what I got snookered into was THAT simple.
6 Ways the PTA Punked Us
Erin:I’ll go first.
1. When we first moved to Maryland from Maine, I joined the local MOMS Club. With three kids under three, I was in a desperate, weakened state. So when one of the other moms asked me to host an event for the group, I said yes: ANYTHING for adult conversation. One problem: having never actually been to an event, I had no idea she was basically just asking me to host a playdate at my house. I organized a Teddy Bear Picnic to end all picnics. There were teddy bear snacks and teddy bear crafts AND it was held at our local nature center. It was a little over the top and I was president in less than a year.
2. I raised my hand to help pick up the cabbages for an annual dinner our school hosts. Before I knew it, I was negotiating contracts with local wholesalers, coordinating the pickup and drop-off of over a hundred cabbage heads, AND THEN spending the better part of a week steaming said cabbages. The aroma that clung to my clothes, hair, and soul was just a bonus.
3. I filled in for a sick Cub Scout den leader one week. Within a year, I was up to my eyeballs in scout stuff not only as the den leader, but as the committee chair as well.
Ellen: I know it’s my turn to list my three, but I “got nothin’.” I always go into things with eyes wide open. For example, I know I always stressed out over yearbook deadlines, but that was more because of my flawed personality than a volunteer punking. I knew what the job entailed, I just never saw a deadline I didn’t like to push.
Erin:Oh really, Miss “Eyes Wide Open”? Three words: Vacation. Bible. School.
Ellen: What? Just because the church placed an ad in a major paper, unbeknownst to me, that led to a surprising 20% increase in enrollment? Just because my volunteers were stretched paper thin BEFORE the lice outbreak fiasco descended upon us? Just because everyone loses their mind at the mere whisper of “lice”?
Yeah, I was punked. But it doesn’t really count because it wasn’t the PTA.
Erin:Well, my Scout example wasn’t the PTA either. As a matter of fact, the Teddy Bear Picnic doesn’t really fit either.
Ellen: We are doing a terrible job of proving the PTA is a scourge. This post should be “6-ish Minus 3 Ways the PTA Punked Us.”
Erin:You know who does a fantastically funny job of roasting the PTA? Jen Mann in her new book “People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Competitive Crafters, Drop-Off Despots and Other Suburban Scourges.”
Ellen: Oh my goodness, her chapter about the school carnival is hilarious! But this book is so much more than a roast. I have a little secret. I often have a hard time making it through comedy type chapter books because they are choppy and I am not a fan of the short story genre. I love to read blogs, but I like my books to be real books. I like depth, breadth, and length.
Erin:That’s what she said.
Ellen: I had no problem being pulled through this book because there was a cohesive narrative thread that reminded me of the writings of Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling. I couldn’t wait to see what tale the next chapter would tell. It felt on the whole like a mildly satirized autobiography, not blog posts stuck together.
And you are in luck because it is on sale today! We were lucky enough to get advanced copies, but we’ve already bought more for our sister-in-laws and other people we think highly of (you will know who are soon!).
And all kidding aside, go volunteer for your own PTA-type organization today. Not only are you enriching your kids’ educations, you’re earning your stripes and gathering a lifetime of anecdotes. Maybe you can write your own book one day.
Pumpkins may be pushing pool noodles from the shelves, but there is still summer to be had! The sun is still blazing, our legs are still sticking to the car seats, and more importantly, there are still some great beach reads to be devoured.
Now when we say “Beach Reads” we are not talking about bare chested studs astride white stallions. We’re talking about novels that are easy to get lost in—the ones that leave you wanting the next page and sad when they are over. They are easy, enjoyable reads with interesting stories and rich character development.
Actually, they’re just good, solid books perfect for any time, but why not use a last hurrah to summer as the perfect excuse to load up your Kindle or pile up your nightstand?
While the intrigue may not be so deep that you are profoundly shocked, this sweeping saga still pulls you through the pages and leaves you deliciously wondering from time to time. But the real charm of this novel lies in its richly sculpted characters and relationships. Williams examines class standing, prejudice, and the complicated nature of female relationships in a truly satisfying way. Set in the socialite scene of the 1930s, this novel is as glamorous as it is gritty as it plunges into the treachery of family secrets and true love.
This is the perfect Hollywood success story with the gilt of perfection delightfully rubbed bare in a number of places. You’ll love the quirky main character, Ruthie, the screenwriter with the tragic back story, whose real heart and soul inspire you to cheer for her from the very first page. How can you not love a character whose grandmother will follow her across the country to help her realize her dream? This book has it all–love, betrayal, and a delightful comeuppance. This peek behind the Hollywood curtain will have you missing 30 Rock a little less.
This is the story of planning a wedding day, a real wedding day rife with disasters, not the stuff of princess dreams. Money is no object, so everything should be falling into place, but everything is actually starting to unravel. At the heart of the story is The Notebook, the instruction manual the bride-to-be’s mother wrote for her before she died. This tale is at times wistful and sometimes heartbreaking, but it is written with a light touch and is always entertaining. At first it seems like each character has his or her own side story going on, but it soon becomes apparent that each tale is part of the messy tapestry woven when two families join through marriage. It is the multiple points of view that make this novel as tasty as a slice of wedding cake.
This book was so popular among Erin’s family and friends LAST summer that it took us a year to track it down.
Totally worth the wait.
A legal thriller that would feel right at home next to your favorite Grishams and Turows, this one will keep you guessing and turning pages until the end. Landay may delve into some of the fears and insecurities of modern parenting and he may write very believable, relatable characters, but ultimately you will devour this one because it’s a good old-fashioned whodunit and that’s always a good read.
Erin laughed, cried, and ignored her kids for three days to finish this one in the big, sloppy gulps it demands. You know from the beginning that there has been a terrible tragedy at the local school’s Trivia Night, because Moriarty leaves little crumbs at the end of each chapter. But that’s not the story here. This is NOT another legal thriller.
A big, sprawling character study of modern moms, it may be. An ironic, funny take on modern parenting, it definitely is! It’s also a rollicking good time. You’ll laugh and cringe at just how right Moriarty gets all the characters hanging out in the school parking lot. A great read to get you ready for back-to-school while still soaking up that last joyful moment of summer indulgence.
Enjoy this summer book list and your last few days of summer!
The good ol’ summertime is a fantastic time to slow it down and really smell the roses. So to speak.
Erin:It’s also a perfect time to have it smack you in the face just how fast your babies are growing up. We just had our LAST first lost tooth over here. I know. Sniff. Sniff.
Ellen: Wow. Try saying “last first lost tooth” three times fast. But even with five kids, you’ll eventually get to the end of firsts, it just takes longer. So get over yourself. My youngest is thirteen, so if your youngest is what, seven? That makes it about how many years ago since our last first lost tooth?
Erin:That would be six years ago. You’re doing some mighty powerful math over there. But really, you’re making my point. You forget things as the years go by. I feel like I should toss this golden nugget on top of the mound of memories I already have started but, truth be told, with five kids that mound’s starting to look more like a mountain of crap than a pile of precious memories.
Ellen: Here’s my dirty little secret. I have two kids and never filled a baby book past the second month. Stop judging because this was way before Instagram, Facebook, and, for my first child, digital cameras.
Erin:Gasp! Just kidding. The same is true for me.
Ellen: You should see our boxes of old photos, bins of artwork, and meaningful scraps of paper that look more like guinea pig litter than mementos.
I cannot bear to disassemble this corner. There is stuff dating back to second grade and my girls are going into 11th and 8th grades. I need help.
Erin: I have those bins too, except multiplied exponentially because, you know, I multiplied exponentially.
Then, of course, there are also the Facebook updates and blog posts that we have been using ever since surfing the net became a thing. That stuff all counts in recording the story of our families.
Ellen: We hope. If only the Internet had been around in the beginning or was designed for finding things in the future. How on earth are my kids ever gonna find all my witty status updates or see all the photos I uploaded to my profile in five years, let alone twenty?
Erin:But there’s hope and a way to sort through the multimedia mass. Those scraps of paper with those funny quotes can be liberated from the drawers. Those beautiful photos (even those hanging out on Instagram and Facebook) can be pulled out from the boxes under the bed. Even those handprints plastered on paper plates and all the other artwork can resurface and find a place in the light again.
Ellen: Stop locking their childhoods in a closet! Set them free! We have discovered an easy way to collect, preserve, organize, share, and print out those memories for all eternity or, at the very least, Grandma.
Blinkbuggy to the Rescue!
Blinkbuggy is a new online website dedicated to solving our memory mess and yours. Blinkbuggy offers simple yet powerful tools to tell your family’s story from first step to last first tooth to prom to graduation (It’s a’ comin, people! Insert another loud and snuffly sniff sniff here).
It’s just as important to get the funny shot as the money shot.
In addition, Blinkbuggy’s easy-to understand controls for privacy and sharing offer assurances that Aunt Tillie and Grandma have plenty of access to “The Story of You All” but college recruiters will not.
Furthermore, it’s so easy that these self-proclaimed Lazy Girls can get on board. With a Blinkbuggy app for iPhone already available and an Android app available by year’s end, it couldn’t be easier to get the funny quote or picture right where it belongs right away. We love that there’s room for funny quotes and sweet notes to nestle beside our ubiquitous but wonderful pictures.
We wouldn’t want to forget the ten year old’s obsession with big band music that made us wake up every morning ready to ration sugar and donate our hose to the war effort.
Blinkbuggy’s memory pages are easy on the eyes too. They mimic the look and feel of an Instagram feed and offer multiple ways to view the memories you have stored.
They really put our old boxes and bins to shame. We like all the viewing options really, but they are still, you know, on the computer. While this has solved our big issue of gathering all the scraps and bits together into one nice neat little story, that story’s only as good as our internet connection. Sometimes you just want to hand your old roommate or your grandfather a lovely book to look through and Blinkbuggy has some great options there too.
Partnering with MILK books, Blinkbuggy offers three options for printing from your memory feed: an archive-ready album, individual framed prints, and cards. We are of course excited about these pretty things, because we love all things graphic and creative. However, the real reason you should hustle over and start your own memory feed today is that finally all the pictures you take, your kids take, and heck, your husband takes can all be collected in one place. This is truly a feat because sometimes you find gems like this one on your husband’s phone.
The Mom Stays in the Picture . . . For Once
But what we love even more is the way Blinkbuggy works for our families now. We are so beyond anything baby that we can barely even stand the word “potty-training”, but we are still sentimental and sweet on our kids.
We are also real. With five teens between us, we have a healthy relationship with technology. Everybody has Instagram accounts and most of them have Facebook accounts as well. They all take their own photos on their phones and iPods.
What Blinkbuggy makes so easy with their upload from Instagram and Facebook feature is that our kids and their photos can become part of our story-telling as well. These photos are the adolescent equivalent of all those macaroni necklaces and construction paper projects we have stuffed in the drawers.
We will look back someday and be grateful for these literal snapshots of their lives. For now, we’ll just be grateful that Blinkbuggy is proving that nobody is really beyond a baby book. Because as we all know, they’ll always be our babies.
This is a sponsored post but we are true believers in this product or we wouldn’t tell you about it.
In a little over a month, my fourth kiddo will cross over to the dark place known as Tweendom. This means for those of you keeping score at home that I will soon have a house bursting at the seams with teens and tweens. Please send reinforcements in the form of Diet Coke and chocolate.
I jest, but there’s truth here too. These years leading up to and including the teens can be challenging for you, your kids, your sanity, and your bottom line. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guidebook or ten to help you navigate these unfamiliar and sometimes hostile waters?
Well, here they are! We are not promising that these books will solve all your problems but they are the perfect parenting books to help you through the tween and teen years.
This is not a parenting book, but a book about the act of modern parenting itself. We’ve come a long way, baby, in terms of how we view and tackle this very fundamental task and Senior’s take is just fascinating.
Chock full of impressive research and held together by anecdotal stories of families, this is quite frankly my “Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman” book. Surprisingly easy to read and so so smart, this book reminds me that yes, parenting is hard, but it’s the thing I’ve chosen as my most important work.
I find myself revisiting this book time and again not only to remind myself that “mothering isn’t just something I do, it’s who I am” and to find solace in the fact that I am so very not alone on this road.
This IS a parenting book and frankly anyone who spends any time around any boys age 11 through 18 needs to read it. With over 200 interviews with boys and strong research guiding her conclusions, Wiseman draws the adolescent boy in sharp relief and gives us not only a true picture of the more complex lives of boys, but some ways we can help them through the next few years.
My favorite insight is that we do boys a disservice by dismissing their emotional lives as simple when they most assuredly are not. There is even a free e-book for boys themselves to read about what to do in difficult situations.
I know what you’re thinking: Wiseman is kind of a superhero. Or a superstar. In any case, she has written a book that can save you and any special boys in your life.
And Wiseman works a similar magic for girls. I read this book when I first started teaching middle school and it fundamentally changed the way I looked at girls, their friendships, and their struggles with each other and themselves.
Wiseman offers sage, sound advice for how to guide girls towards treating themselves with dignity and grace and treating each other fairly, but there is so much more than that in this book. Understanding girl power plays, how boys fit into the big picture of girl relationships, and the different roles girls play really helps anyone who knows or loves an adolescent girl guide her to her best, most authentic self. Thanks again to the wonderful and very wise Wiseman.
I often scribble pearls of wisdom from what I’ve been reading on whatever scrap I have available. This quote from this book has become my talisman over the past few years:
“As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children’s. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek…”
― Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Boys
Michael Gurian shares his larger vision of how culturally we are failing boys by not acknowledging and thus not meeting their biological and spiritual needs. Ellen and I both love books with a strong scientific bent that are also easy to read. This book meets those criteria and yet exceeds expectations too. It will be a beloved helpmate on the hormone highway you are now traveling.
This is a riveting read. Honestly. Bursting with excellent, updated scientific research about how girls develop, how their brains work, and how this all affects how girls relate to themselves and each other, this is as unputdownable as nonfiction gets. Ditto everything I said about The Wonder of Boys but yet uniquely wonderful in its own way. Magic.
Anyone who has been anywhere near a middle school lunchroom knows that The Drama Years is the perfect title for a book about girls navigating the difficult tween years. This book is one of the best I’ve read for helping you and your daughter through it.
Haley Kilpatrick is the founder of GirlTalk and she is on a mission to end the drama and change the outcome for our nation’s young women. Sharing her own personal anecdotes from middle school and drawing on conversations with middle school and high school girls about what actually happens and what helps, Haley Kilpatrick has created a book with real insights and a clear path for helping. You will love the real, honest talk and the great, usable advice.
This is the newest book on my bedside table, but I have already recommended it so many times that I’m out of digits to tell you all the reasons I love it. But here are five.
First, Michelle Icard establishes herself from the very first page as a woman you can trust and want to share this journey with you. Warm and empathetic, Icard is also funny and real. You’ll wish you could invite her over for tea or, in my case, Diet Coke.
Second, as the creator of Athena’s Path and Hero’s Pursuit, social skills camps for middle school boy and girls, Icard has tons of real, practical solutions to share for lots of common middle school issues.
Third, I love this book’s central theme of shifting your parenting to the role of assistant manager. It’s such a recognizable, perfect metaphor for how your role needs to change during these years and she explains just how to do this perfectly.
Fourth, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received about parenting this age was to remain neutral when receiving information. Icard has given a great name to this strategy, “Botox Brow”, and she weaves in stories, examples, and advice for how to pull off this essential coping skill.
Fifth, Icard likes kids, even middle schoolers. We have that in common. She shifts the paradigm and the assumption that there is something wrong with kids at this age. Kids are just fine, but the way we have been dealing with them at this age has to change. She then goes on to give a ridiculous amount of ways to do help do this.
Honestly, I could go on, but you should just fire up the old credit card and order this one for yourself now.
So there you go: a collection of parenting books to keep you company through the next few years. Short of an endless supply of calorie-free chocolate, it’s the best option.
by Jenny Offill
by Eula Biss
by Nicole Krauss
by Anthony Doerr
by Emily St. John Martel
In fact, you can hear me (and Ellen) go on and on about this book and other things too in our latest podcast. Just click it below!
:
by Ann Patchett
by Calvin Trillin
by Joan Didion
by Meghan O’ Rourke
by Anna Whiston-Donaldson
by Jennifer Senior
by Rosalind Wiseman
by Rosalind Wiseman
by Michael Gurian
by Michael Gurian
by Haley Kilpatrick
by Michelle Icard