Weekend Reads: The Lesser Bohemians

A chance meeting in a pub leads to a story over the course of a year that fundamentally changes two people's lives and the lives of those around them. In The Lesser Bohemians, a young theater student arrives in London ready to explore an independent life. She happens to meet an actor who is older than her, and they seem to have an attraction that doesn't fade. Throughout the year, their relationship is explored and so are their pasts.

Although this is categorized as literary fiction, at the core of it this is simply a romance novel that explores the relationship between two people who appear broken, and for most of the book seem to be wrong for each other. What makes it suddenly turn into a literary novel is only the narrative voice used by the author. From the very first page, it is stilted, choppy and in some cases completely unintelligible (in addition, the entire novel never uses quotation marks for direct quotes, which annoys me to no end). The reason the author is probably doing this is to show the uncertainty and eventual growth of the narrator, however, having the first 100 or so pages written in this way will turn a lot of people off from finishing the book, even though the story underneath is simple and somewhat interesting.

The other issue with this novel is that the narrator is just not interesting. She's a kid sleeping with an older guy—although she learns a lot about herself through the relationship, she just ends up looking starry-eyed and smitten at the end, much like a eighteen-year-old would in that situation. What was actually interesting in the book was Stephen's story (which, by the way, you don't even find out his or Eily's name until two-thirds of the way in the book), his background, the abuse in his childhood, all of his secrets and how he became the man that Eily met. Eily's hinting of her own dark past doesn't really come out and doesn't pull you in like Stephen's story. While parts of the book are interesting, the writing style and the lack of something that makes Eily unique to tell her story may keep a lot of readers away.

Check out more information on this title and more information on the author. 

*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Weekend Reads: The Lauras

An escape. A road trip. A pilgrimage to understand one and discover the other. In The Lauras, a woman is faced with the need to get away from her life, and in doing so pulls her child Alex with her. The relationship between mother and child grows and develops as they hit the open road, both trying to find different things while still holding onto the best parts of their individual pasts.

Although the story is told through Alex, it is Alex's mom's stories that are prominent throughout the book. These stories about all the different Lauras (a generic name given to all of the transformative women in Ma's life) are sort of destinations on the map across the United States. In each stop that the pair make, there is a quest or a task that Ma must complete before she and her child can move onto the next phase of the journey. It is through these stories that Alex learns about Ma and her childhood, and intertwines Alex's own story of growing up in the present. All of Alex's needs and all of Ma's secrets play a delicate tug of war to provide plenty of interesting moments in the novel.

The one aspect of this book that seems to settle in the background until on a few occasions it is brought to the forefront is the fact that Alex wants to remained untethered by gender identification. The key to reading the story of Alex is to push yourself past the assumptions you make while you are reading the story. I know that I found it difficult to not put Alex in a box, based on the actions Alex took and things Alex thought throughout the novel. I had a clear idea in my mind who Alex was at the beginning, but as the novel went on, it morphed and I turned out second guessing my original thoughts about who Alex could be. I even skimmed the novel after reading it to see if the author provided any hint as to how Alex couldn't fall into at least one gender stereotype to give away the answer, but Taylor was great at crafting Alex the way Alex wanted to be portrayed. 

That's the whole idea of Alex's side of the story--if you want to respect Alex's narrative, you must give up trying to figure out whether Alex is male or female. Alex doesn't want it to matter to the story, so it shouldn't matter to the reader. With or without it, it's a good story of family, of adventure and the need to know whether the definition of home is within a place or within yourself.

Interested in reading The Lauras for yourself? You can find out more information about the book from Penguin Random House. You can also learn more about Sara Taylor by reading her bio.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Getting to the Next Big Thing with a Kick-Ass Life: A Tale of Two Self Help Books

Sometimes, you can get lost in your own life. You feel like you’re in a rut and there it just no way out. 

Tell me about it. 

I wasn’t going to just sit back and let life continue to pass me by, but I didn’t know how to stop it from happening. So I started to read Your Next Big Thing by Ben Michaelis, PhD. A few days later, I was just looking for another book to read and picked up 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life by Andrea Owen, CPCC. While it wasn’t intentional to read these two self-help books at the same time, I was interested to see which one would speak to me. Here’s how it went. 

The Situation

My situation is simple: I want to live in New York City, but I don’t know how to get there. 

Okay, literally I know how to get there. What I mean is that I want to be able to live successfully there—which means a good job. An apartment. Human connection. I’ve been working full time as a freelance writer since 2008. This job has had its ups and downs when it comes to the all-important paycheck, but it’s been in a steady decline for about three years now—to the point where even a simple Midwestern lifestyle is not achievable (translation: I moved back in with my parents three times in the past ten years). I’ve done what I can to perk it back up, but so far nothing has worked. That means I’m in a little bit of debt, and I don’t feel comfortable throwing caution to the wind by just packing up and leaving tomorrow. If I did, I wouldn’t need to read either one of these books. 

Everyone says: get a new job, save money for a year, go. Well, not here. That’s my setback. I would not be opposed to getting myself out of full-time freelancing if I had another option for a job even loosely related to my field (I hold a degree in English—it’s a wide, wide field). There’s nothing here but customer service positions—and I’ve suffered through that two and a half weeks longer than I thought I would before I got out of it. In New York, I would be more open to positions that creatively uses my creativity. And I’m sure there would be more options, even if that meant long hours, low pay or *gulp* back to customer service. 

I’ve wanted this since I was five years old. I thought I would go to college there. That didn’t happen. I thought I would move there after I graduated. That nearly happened, but didn’t. I just assumed that I would be there by now. I’m turning thirty in two and a half weeks (yikes!) and for some reason, that was my arbitrary deadline. Why would someone out of there 20s be stupid enough to carry all that debt and all that lack of courage to a city that can eat you alive with one wrong look? 

Still… sounds like a fun place to live. I still want it. That’s why I tried these self-help books. I wanted to know what I could do to change my mindset and change my situation to make this dream come true. 

What These Books Promise

Like any self-help book, these books do not promise an overnight turnaround. If any book did, it would be a worldwide bestseller and the rest of the self-help industry would go out of business. These books are a guide. They are a way to help you work through your own issues and, in time, figure out what it is you want and what you are willing to do to change your life around. 

Okay. I’m ready. 

But it takes more than just being open and ready (you may actually find out when you start reading that you are definitely NOT ready). Once you start reading either one of these titles, you will realize that it is not something you can do in a day. It takes time to let each of the subjects soak into your brain to really see any change. Personally, I don’t recommend reading any more than one or two chapters a day. 

52 Ways is a book that is meant to be more general in what you could attain. You are looking to get a fulfilling, kick-ass life. It teaches you how to discover what you truly want out of life, what’s holding you back and what you can do to fix it all. It covers everything from the curse of dieting to relationships and work issues. 

Your Next Big Thing seems to have more of a narrow focus according to the title, but really it is doing the same thing as 52 Ways. It is giving you the tools you need to discover yourself, find what you want and give you the confidence to take the next step in whatever it is you want to pursue. 

The Homework

Yes, boy and girls, these books ask for homework. There may not be any right or wrong answers, but making lists of values, what brings you joy, your nonnegotiables, and how you can best serve others is an important part of the process these books ask you to go through. These exercises help you understand what you truly have and want you truly want. Writing these things down provides tangible evidence about yourself and what you want. 

I’ll be honest—I didn’t write anything down. It’s not that I didn’t do the exercises, because I definitely did. But I closed my eyes and wrote them down in the space of my mind, not on a piece of paper. In my household, papers with words on them tend to end up as public property, and this is a very personal journey. So, aside from not having a physical copy of the homework, I did complete it. 

There are also requests in the book to make small shifts in your life. Some of the ones that both books have in common is to honor yourself, listen to the difference between your inner critic and your inner hero, love yourself and of course getting rid of the negative relationships in your life (for me, that feels like I would have to get rid of every single person I know. But that’s a problem for another day). Not everything can be done as soon as you finish the chapter. It’s all a marathon, not a sprint. 

The Approach

This is where the books really distance themselves from each other. If both books are essentially teaching the same concepts, the approach is what will be the appeal or the turnoff for readers. 

If you are looking for the more scholarly approach, Your Next Big Thing is definitely the book for you. This book has that familiar school chapter structure of: 

A) Here’s what you will learn,

B) The bulk of the chapter that teaches you that concept, and

C) Here’s what this chapter just taught you. 

This is helpful for those who like this type of structure or for those who may have already started working on themselves and want to go back to relearn certain strategies or concepts. It is a calm, caring, clinical approach that can (if you’re reading late at night) find you nodding off a bit while trying to read it. 

52 Ways is a whole other story. This is a book that doesn’t kid around—it wants to give you that needed kick in the ass so you can turn it around to have a kick-ass life. With chapter titles such as “Don’t Take Other People’s Piles of Shit” and “Quit Bitching and Moaning” you know there’s no fooling around reading this. 52 Ways is like that friend or family member in your life you hate going to advice for because they tell it like it is without a filter to spare your feelings. However, that person is always right, which annoys the hell out of you. 

I will tell you that I definitely responded to 52 Ways more than Your Next Big Thing. Why? Because every chapter made me feel something. Some chapters made me sad, some filled me with a momentary abundance of confidence. Some just pissed me off. But I felt something. And I could use that energy to learn more about myself and why I feel so stuck. 

The Verdict

Did either one of these books get me on the path to changing my life so that I can best achieve my goals and dreams? Both of them definitely got me motivated to create a big change in my life (though listening to the theme song to Who’s the Boss? can leave me with the same feeling), but as far a clear direction to start, I’m still a bit lost. I think I was looking for a more personal, definitive answer to my issues, which you can’t—and shouldn’t—expect from a self-help book. 

I know what I want—I know the options available right now to take that next step, but none of them seem right for me personally unless I’m willing to take a huge risk, which is not a “I’m afraid of failure” risk; it’s more like a “I could end up homeless” type of risk. I’m pretty much in the same place as when I started reading either one of these books. 

That doesn’t mean these books are not valuable to the general population of readers who are interested in making a change. These books can be great for those who are in a number of different situations including a career change, relationship issues, and discovering a passion that you may have left behind years ago. 

I don’t think rereading either one of these books in their entirety will help me get any more clarity, but I will be revisiting specific chapters are helpful in my situation. I realize that I may just be suppressing my own inner voice and waiting for another person to tell me what I should do—which is probably the source of my problems in the first place. 

See? I learned a lot about myself, I just need to keep working at it. So the effort to improve myself was worth it, even if I wasn’t magically lifted up on a cloud and placed into a Manhattan apartment with a steady income.  

**Disclaimer: Both of these books were free for me. I received 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life through a Goodreads giveaway, and I received Your Next Big Thing free through an Amazon promotion. 

Ups and Downs and Ups Again

It's been a rollercoaster weekend, that's for sure -- crashed the computer (again!) yesterday. But this time I didn't have to bring in any of my tech savvy family members. I managed to resolve the issue myself. I guess I had better learn how to do this stuff anyway, since I tend to get those nasty data recovery/fake antivirus things nearly every other month. Which means I am 100% finished with traffic exchanges. If I want more hits on my blog, I guess I'm going to have to do it the old fashioned way with excellent content.

It's also a little hectic in the home, getting things ready for a realtor to do their work. I thought living out of a few boxes was a slight strain on my life... now I know that living out of even fewer boxes to hide some of my clutter will be a triumph if I can get through it without a mini breakdown.

Now we are finally ready for the good news! I'm participating in a blog tour this week over at Book Review Bin. I'm reviewing and getting the word out about Zombie Candy (Annie Ogden Mystery 2) by Frederick Lee Brooke. I would love it if you stopped by and checked out my review and the Rafflecopter giveaway (find it in the sidebar). And don't forget to Google+, Like on Facebook and retweet if you can!

I'm Back!

Moving was a lot easier than it was last time. I managed to get everything taken care of on Friday and Saturday. Yesterday I started going through my boxes, but there are so many that I don't even think I've scratched the surface yet. But once it's all unpacked, there will be a place for everything. I promise!

The move was so efficient that I even fit a few hours of work into my day yesterday. I read and wrote a review of The Kids in Ms Coleman's Class #6: Twin Trouble. Talk about your blast from the past! But I enjoyed reading a nice short children's book for a change.

Now I have to go back to the daily grind, but at least it feels like it's going faster with all of this chaos around me.

Getting to Business

I've been writing a ton of articles lately. There is a wide range between topics, but I love researching. In fact, researching is the best part of writing because it seems to be the easiest part! I have a list of articles that I thought everyone should check out. There's some B2B topics and a book review for everyone to enjoy.

You can check them all out here:

Organizing Your Dental Practice
Choosing Construction Insurance Policies
Choosing Decontamination Methods for Hazardous Materials
Trekking Through the Vineyard: Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons
The Elements of A Paper Recycling Business
Installing and Maintaining Your GSM Antenna System

Very Quick

Back to work and 68 behind, so this is just a quick update to point you to some of my articles. One is a book review on The Complete Prose of Woody Allen and the other is an article that provides information on the Top 3 Traffic Exchanges. Useful stuff for those that work on the internet. Now it's back to work... all day... and all night. That's right. You're singing The Kinks now, aren't you?

New Review

I wrote a new book review. You can now read Antibodies: A Review. The book took me forever to read (I think about a month) and I really should have tried to make a little more time for it. Oh well, it's over and I'm on to poetry. Enjoy!!

New Review

I'm gonna keep this short because I have a really big pain in my left arm (typing too much, I guess) so here it is: my review for American Dreams: Fair Play. (also in my Book Reviews list on the right hand side of the page).

New Book Review

Here's my recent review of Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich. I read it awhile ago, but just had time now to write the review. Enjoy!