I’ve read a few books lately that I really liked. And I’ve started a few others that I couldn’t get into at all.

Books I’ve Liked Lately

The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt

I absolutely loved this memoir by Jon-Jon Goulian. He’s an androgynous male who writes about the experience of figuring out what that meant for him and adjusting to the larger world around himself in the face of it. Although at first glance it might seem like a memoir with a limited niche (how many people truly struggle with sincere androgyny, after all?) it’s actually got a wide appeal in my opinion because ultimately what it’s about is figuring out how to learn who you are and how to fit into the world around you. That’s something that we all have to figure out. The author’s incisive, sometimes self-deprecating, wit actually had me laughing aloud which I can’t say I do often when reading a book at home alone. Loved it.

Luna by Julie Anne Peters

This is another story about finding and defining yourself but this one is a young adult novel. I’m not even really sure why I picked it up but I ended up kind of liking it. It’s about a transgender teenage boy during the stage when he’s beginning to dress as a woman. I think what made me like it, though, is that it’s told from the perspective of his younger sister who is the only one at first to know the boy’s secret. This unique perspective made an otherwise “whatever” book a lot more interesting to me.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

This is another young adult book and to be honest the only reason I picked it up is because I needed something to read while I was at the airport and the selection at the newsstand in my terminal in LA was really limited. I ended up liking it, though. It’s about an era in which all of society is divided into five factions that each values a certain virtue (like amity or candor) and at the age of sixteen the members need to pick the faction that they want to be a part of. It’s the story of one main character who makes that choice. So I guess I’m on a theme these days of reading these “how do I define myself?” books!

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

This is a collection of fictional monologues about the fiery passion and difficult lives of teenage girls. It touches on topics both small and large. I didn’t like every single part of it. And it’s something that I think would be a lot more fun to see performed on a stage than read in a book. That said, I liked the gist of it and enjoyed reading pieces of it here and there. It was tough being a teenage girl and this book reminded me to celebrate and honor that toughness.

Books I Couldn’t Get Into

Summer Friends by Holly Chamberlin

I picked up this book because I wanted a light summery novel to read on the plane to LA. I actually did read the entire thing so I can’t say I totally didn’t get into it. But I’m pretty indifferent to it. It’s about two friends who were close in high school and then lost touch for twenty years and now they’re becoming friends again. It’s about their journeys through lives, the differences in the choices they made, etc. It’s not a bad book just not exceptional for me.

Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War by Hal Vaughan

This is the story of Coco Chanel and I really, really want to read it because it covers a “secret” period of Chanel’s during the WWII era. It sounds intriguing. However, I can’t seem to get more than a few pages into it before I get bored. It’s too heavy-handed or dense or something. I may try again. We’ll see.

A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard

This is the true story of someone who underwent the terrible experience of being kidnapped and then held captive for eighteen years. She was treated horrible, had two children in captivity … it’s a powerful story. And I wanted to learn more about it but I just couldn’t get into the writing. I seem to be really restless with reading lately and if something doesn’t capture me immediately then I move on to something else. I think I’d rather see a documentary on this one than read the book.

Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward

This is a book by the wife of Patrick Swayze that shares what it was like to spend twenty months with him undergoing intense cancer treatment and passing away. I just tried starting it this morning and I couldn’t get into it. It actually seems like a good book but for some reason I just can’t get the cheesy Dirty Dancing Swayze out of my head and it makes me not like the story that much. I think I’ll try again before returning it to the library, though, because the bias seems weird and sill.

So, that’s what I’m reading. What’s on your nightstand?

Tags: books, reading

To my Twitter friends that know me as CrochetBlogger from Crochet Concupiscence … this is my other blog. This project isn’t specifically crochet but is intended to serve as inspiration for crochet, for writing, for life …

I have been struggling this week, lacking inspiration and motivation, getting ideas and then feeling too tired to implement them. I’m not quite sure what is causing it. Maybe it’s because my sister was here for a great visit and then she left and now I’m a little lonely. Maybe it’s because I’m a third of the way through the draft of a book and that’s when I tend to hit a slump and every word becomes a struggle. Maybe it’s the weather or the season or the time of year … I’m not sure. But what I do know is that the usual tricks aren’t working and I am in dire need of a project that can re-inspire me and re-invigorate me and re-focus my attention. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years it’s that if my mind is going crazy reeling around on itself in unhappiness then what it needs is to be occupied with something.

I do have projects going on (like that book, of course) but I needed something new today, something immediate and different and yet easily do-able. Something that would get me out of the house but not require me to spend a lot of money or energy. So I decided to start a project I’d been planning on starting for awhile – the task of reading new books on topics that I normally ignore. I always get the same types of books (memoirs by women going through some type of major life experience, non-fiction about writing and crochet, selective fiction). While this is wonderful, it’s not really broadening my horizons or challenging my mind or inspiring my life to read the same types of things again and again. I need a fresh spark.

So I headed to Twitter and asked my awesome Twitter friends to Tweet me some random 3-digit numbers. Then I took a list of the ten numbers I’d received and headed to the library. The idea was to head to the Dewey decimal numbers with those numbers I got from Twitter and get whatever books I found with those numbers on them, no discriminating. This served the immediate purpose of getting me out of the house and focused on a little adventure to see what I would find at the library. And it serves a longer-term purpose of providing me with new reading and research material to help inspire new things in my thoughts and my life.

Here’s what I came home with:

1. A book on The Buffalo Soldier Regiment. Thanks @Pomquat for Dewey decimal number 356!
2. History of Japanese Community Party. Thanks to @nerdJERK for #329.
3. Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became. This one is about the women of Brearley School class of 1968 and how they were affected by being born in the 50′s but going through the 60′s/70′s cultural revolution. Thanks @offgridlife for Dewey decimal number 356!
4. The Gardens of California. Thanks @Lacy61 for #712.
5. Mind by John R. Searle. Relates to philosophy. Thanks @crochetmomma3 for #128.
6. Vindication of Love.: Reclaiming Romance in the 21st Century. About how society has a cynical, jaded perspective and how to bring romance back to our view of the world. Also #128 from @crochetmomma3.
7. Lives of the English Poets. Thanks @jamietoohey for #928.
8. Stargazing with a Telescope as well as Human Vision and the Night Sky. Thanks @CrochetAllDay for number 522.
9. A Smithsonian book all about shells as well as a book called Octopus and Squid. Thanks @adanishheart for #594.

Tags: books, reading, reading inspiration, reading project

Not too long ago I mentioned a site here on the blog called Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone. It’s a photo-rich site of images showing books in various locations. Now I’ve come across another site very similar to this one that I’ll have to add to my RSS feed.

The site I’m loving is very simply called Bookshelf Porn. As the name suggests, it’s a site for people who adore looking at books. It shows images of books on shelves in all kinds of interesting ways. The image above, reposted from the site, is one of my favorites – open a closet door and find stacks and stacks of books!

I’m not sure quite what it is that draws me to these sites. They’re just pretty pictures and take only a moment to look at. I guess it’s that appeal of seeing books out there. You want to know what other people are reading. You want to see if anything in the stack is something that you’ve read before. You want to see what books catch your eye.

Or I do anyway.

Do you know of any other book sites like these?

Tags: book lovers never go to bed alone, books, bookshelf porn, reading

Over the years, we’ve heard so many people complain that the Internet is bad for our children. People aren’t reading enough books anymore, they say. Kids are writing in txt. And I’ve always pretty much thought it was hog wash.

Now there’s some science to back up my feelings. A recent article from LiveScience starts off:

“Widespread Internet use will actually improve the reading and writing skills of the world’s population, most experts agreed in a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.”

The article goes on to discuss a survey that indicates, among other things, that a lot of people believe that the Internet is actually making people more literate than ever before. And you know what? I buy it.

Has book reading declined over the years? I’m not sure. I think that a case could be made either way. But what I do think is true is that there are more people, especially young people, who are reading a variety of different material on a daily basis thanks to the accessibility of information on the Internet.

We have access to more information than ever before. Kids who would never have watched the news before have a general idea of what’s going on in the world because of updates on various sites including their favorite social networking sites. Kids who never would have written long letters to their friends are constantly articulating things to them online and via text messaging.

Yes, undoubtedly there are some drawbacks (as there would be with anything). Text and IM may hinder spelling abilities. At the same time, you have to admit that the fact that your computer tells you when you’ve spelled something wrong makes it a lot easier to see your errors and learn how to fix them. So, pros and cons, maybe, but I’m in the camp of people who thinks that the more people who are reading – whether they’re reading books or reading Twitter status updates – the better.

What do you think about this issue?

Tags: internet, readers, reading, smart, Technology, web 2.0

One of the things that I love about writing on this blog is that I don’t limit myself to a specific topic. Diary of a Smart Chick is just about all of the random things that tend to capture my interest. I think that’s how real people are – we get intrigued by tons of different stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a box. That’s what makes us unique; it’s what makes us who we are.

Because I like so many different things, I tend to read a lot of different blogs. I don’t stick to one topic. I like stuff that’s kind of off the wall. Here’s a glimpse into some of the stuff I read regularly just to keep myself interested in the world around me:

1. Weburbanist. I love to check out the weird and interesting things that are collected on this blog. This stuff is creative, weird, eye-catching and compiled in a way that makes it even more compelling. This is the site that introduced me to steampunk and to storage container housing. I loved the recent post on patching buildings with Legos.
2. Live Science Strange News. I love reading about advances that are being made in science. From nanotechnology to crazy medical discoveries, this stuff is interesting. I particularly love the “strange news” channel of this site which gives you all kinds of info on stuff that is almost unbelievable and yet apparently true.
3. Retro to Go. This great little blog collects information on all stuff retro. I love checking out the furniture, fashion and other fun stuff that they highlight on this blog.
4. Weird Asia News. This blog shares all of the odd news that is printed in Asian newspaper. I just get a huge kick out of some of the things that are shared here.
5. SF Girl By Bay. I used to be a big fan of Apartment Therapy until I discovered this San Francisco-based design and style blog. It’s got a funky edge to it that I adore and yet offers info on so much pretty stuff.
6. Lomography Blog. This is a photo topic that I’ve recently started to take an interest in so I’m enjoying learning more about it from the blog. Cool stuff.
7. Fail Blog. I’ll admit that I don’t check this site out daily but I always get a kick out of it when I do. I think I love this blog for the same reason that I love typos. I love the mistakes that people make that show off our humanity and provide humor for our lives.

Tags: blogs, random topics, reading, weird blogs, what smart people read

I just finished reading a memoir that was a quick read but one that was really interesting. I love memoirs because they give you insight into someone else’s way of life but also tend to provide things that you can relate to in order to make the story feel like your own. That’s exactly the case with this memoir which is technically about growing up in the grips of a spiritual cult but ultimately about learning how to figure out who you are outside of the experiences you had growing up.

The woman who wrote the book, Jayanti Tamm, was born into Sri Chinmoy’s spiritual cult. Because procreating was forbidden but she was born anyway, he determined that she was brought into this world as his Chosen One. Growing up, she held a special place in the cult that placed a barrier between her and the rest of the world. She didn’t ask her parents or teachers for advice or material things; she had to ask her Guru.

As you can imagine, she eventually found herself disillusioned with the cult beliefs that she had been brought up to believe. Most of the memoir is about the experience of growing up in the cult and the transition from being an unquestioning child follower to a confused, unsure, questioning young adult.

Towards the end of the memoir, Tamm leaves the cult for a time and ultimately is kicked out of it. What we see here is the inner turmoil that one goes through when leaving behind the ways of childhood. Of course, most of us have not grown up in situations so extreme as cult life. Nevertheless, many struggle in smaller ways to reconcile their adult beliefs with what they were taught as children. That’s how this book manages to be relatable to us even though it’s specifically about cult life.

Interesting read!

Tags: books, cartwheels in a sari, cult, diary of a smart chick, jayanti tamm, memoir, reading

I try to read books that cover a diverse range of different topics and styles. Mostly I choose books that are relevant to the topics that I am currently most interested in or most affected by. However, sometimes I find myself picking up books that are not related to anything that I’m doing or dealing with it right now. And sometimes those end up being the most important touching books that I read. That seems to be the case with a book I just read called Comfort: A Journey Through Grief.

This is a short book that can be a quick read if you want it to be. It’s the true first-person account of a woman who lost her five year old daughter to a sudden illness. It is about what it was like to live through the three years following her daughter’s tragic death and to come out on the other side of that, wounded and forever changed but still alive and ready to live again. It’s a tough read in the sense that it is highly emotional but it’s an easy read in the sense that it unites the writer and reader through common human emotions.

There are many things that I love about this little book but I think what grabbed my attention most of all was the writing style that was implemented in it. The author uses primarily short sentences and also uses a lot of repetition of the same facts. Sometimes these facts are repeated in the same way and sometimes they are a little bit different. The combination of repetition and short sentence structure ends up being really powerful

One of the things that happens when we lose someone is that our lives become limited to the bare minimum of things that we must get done to survive. We don’t do any extras; we barely even shower or eat. The short sentence structure of the book reflects this minimalization our lives go through during this time. And something else that happens is that we go over and over events in our minds. Sometimes we replay them word for word, again and again, trying to gain some meaning from them. Sometimes we see them through a new lens, repeating them in our minds with a new level of understanding or a new perspective on what happened. The author doesn’t actually come right out and say that these are the things that she is going through but the structure of her story reveals this side of grief.

I am not currently dealing with a major loss. I am not currently struggling with the family issues that arise when such a loss occurs. However I was still touched by this book. I can only imagine how powerful it would be for someone who was going through a tough time. This one is highly recommended!

Tags: ann hood, book recommendation, book review, books, comfort, grief books, reading

Just wanted to share that my article on inspiration to try new things (“It’s Never Too Late“) was featured in a terrific blog carnival called “inspiration and motivation“.

If this topic interests you, check out some of the other great articles in the carnival. Topics included:

• The law of attraction
• Leadership
• Creativity
• Forgiveness and acceptance in tough situations
• Happiness in your life and career
• Staying positive and finding fulfillment
• Health issues such as stress management
• Change

And there were also some inspirational quotes which I love. I hope you enjoy them as well!

Tags: blog carnival, inspiration, links, motivation, reading, smartchick

Yesterday’s book mention was Love Sick, a memoir about a woman’s struggle with sexual addiction. Today I’m mentioning another book by the same author, Sue William Silverman, although I haven’t actually read the book yet. I learned from one of my email newsletters this morning that she’s just published a memoir writing guide and that she’s starting a blog tour today to promote that new book. It sounds really interesting so I figured it was worth sharing in spite of the fact that I haven’t yet read the book.

Silverman is the author of two different memoirs (Love Sick, of course and her first memoir – Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You – which is about her experience of sexual abuse). Her writing, at least as far as I’ve seen so far, manages to take the beautiful language that you find in good fiction and personalize it with her own story. I imagine this makes her book about memoir writing a good one.

The new book is called Fearless Confessions. She’s doing a blog tour all month long where she will be featured on different blogs. These blogs will offer giveaways, chats with the author, etc. Details are available here. Today’s blog that she’s on is the terrific WOW – Women on Writing Blog where there’s a video trailer for the book as well as a comments section giveaway.

Tags: blog tour, fearless confessions, love sick, reading, sue william silverman

I have just finished reading a book called Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction which was written by Sue William Silverman. It is the first person story told as a day-by-day account of her four weeks spent as an inpatient in a sex addiction recovery treatment program. Through each day, she reflects upon the personal history that brought her to this place.

It’s an interesting memoir. Interesting is not the right word. Gripping is a better description of it.

Silverman shares the story of what it’s like to grow up in an abusive home that turns you into a victim of your own desires. She shares the experience of being a sex addict and what it did to her marriage. She shares the tales that pique the interest of the voyeuristic side of the reader.

More importantly, however, Silverman shares what it is like to be going through treatment for addiction. She shares her relapses and her fears about not getting better and her thoughts and feelings about being a person who needs to be treated for this particular problem. It gives insight into the experience of all addiction, not just sex addiction.

Powerful memoir!

Tags: book review, books, love addiction, love sick, reading, sex addiction