Review – High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Care

High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Careby Christina Lasich, M.D.

From the back cover -

With all the medical concerns facing women today, a healthier spine might not be at the top of your list – but it should.  Back and neck pain interferes with many women’s busy lives, but a remedy for it is easier than you might think.

Christina Lasich, M.D., draws on her many years of experience as a spine rehabilitation specialist to bring you High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Care.  Through hilarious cartoons and short, easy-to-read, informative text, Dr. Lasich shows you how important good spinal health is to your overall well-being.

Women of every size, shape, and age will benefit from Dr. Lasich’s sound, proven advice.  Say good-bye to your sore neck and aching back and hello to a stronger, healthier spine!

My thoughts -

I received this book from the publisher to read and review on my blog, and I have to admit, I was a little nervous to be doing this.  This is the first time anyone’s requested this of me, and of course I wanted to do a good job.  Well, I’m happy to report that I really enjoyed the book so I am definitely excited to post about it and introduce everyone to this concise and wonderful little book.

I actually learned a lot from this one.  I personally don’t suffer from any serious back pain, but I do have definite aches from time to time, and reading this book helped me pinpoint when I have more pain in my back, what might be causing it during those times, and what I might be able to do about it.  There was a lot of information in this book that I would never have known – such as how important healthy foods are for your spine health, how awful cigarette smoking is for your spine (I don’t smoke, but I had no idea it had a direct correlation to spine pain!), and how terrible it is for your back to be sitting in one position all day long (I’m talking to you, all you people with desk jobs, and yes I am sort of one of them).  There were also a lot of simple things that women can do to alleviate spine pain for the long run, such as sleeping with a pillow between your legs, going for a proper bra fitting, and even taking short walks throughout the day.

In addition, each section ended with specific exercises that you should do to lessen the pain for the short term, pictures included.  These sections were especially helpful, as I think it’s very easy for women to do something if they have concrete instructions.  Better still, these exercises are nothing fancy, not difficult by any means, and they can even be done while watching TV during a commercial break or something.  This book is very short, less than 100 pages, but I think that works in its favor because it’s easy and quick to get through, and there is not a lot of scientific, medical terminology that may turn some people off.  It is definitely geared toward women, which is nice because Dr. Lasich makes it very clear that men and women’s bodies are built differently, especially in regards to the spine area, so women need different and more specific information regarding spine care. 

I really enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it.  I’ll be happy to pass it along to any of you bloggers, especially if you have back pain and could really use the advice.  Just comment on this post to be entered, and if you’d like to be entered twice go ahead and post about the giveaway on your own blog.  I’ll probably choose a winner sometime next weekend (June 6-8).

Thanks again to Dr. Lasich and Kathlene Carney for sending the book to me and allowing me to review it!

Review – He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut

He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know by Jessica Valenti

From the back cover -

Double standards are nothing new.  Women deal with them every day.  Consider the following examples:

• He’s a Hipster, She’s a Ho
• He’s Gay, She’s a Fantasy
• He’s Angry, She’s PMSing
• He’s Independent, She’s Pathetic
• He’s Successful, She’s a Showoff
• He’s Dating a Younger Woman, She’s a Cougar

Women are held to a different standard than men.  And mostly we just put up with it – but we don’t have to.  Jessica Valenti offers 50 solutions to 50 of the most pressing double standards that women confront.  With sass, humor, and in-your-face facts, she informs and equips women with the tools they need to combat sexist comments, topple ridiculous stereotypes, and end the promotion of insidious double standards.

My thoughts -

The good news is, I feel like this book will be really helpful for younger feminists, middle school, high school, or college women, who are just beginning to understand the ways sexism permeates their every day lives, and who are just beginning to have those light bulb moments where they realize feminism is important for EVERY woman.  This book will help those women expand their developing feminist thinking, understand how the larger world really does discriminate against women in almost every situation, and have a better idea of how to deal with these double standards when faced with them in daily life.

The bad news, however, is that I wasn’t the biggest fan of this new one by Valenti.  I am a huge fan of hers, I love her website (Feministing.com) and love her first book, but this book honestly did not provide me with any information I did not already have.  There’s a reason she chose to write about these double standards – they are SO pervasive, so obvious, such common experiences of most women that to not know about them and understand them would be a problem as a woman living in today’s world.  While I appreciate what she did with this book, I simply didn’t get much out of it.  Valenti explained everything well enough and used very current examples, but her “what do we do about it?” sections also fell a little flat for me.  Her most common solution was “call people out on their bullshit” or “don’t let someone treat you this way”.  While both those suggestions are important and should be done, I wouldn’t say either of them would actually solve these real problems or teach a more ignorant individual about the importance of NOT using a double standard.  At the same time, what else can one person really do except educate the people they know?… not much, I suppose. 

So while I think this new one by Valenti is an important contribution to feminist literature, it simply was not one of my personal favorites.  I’d still recommend reading it to anyone eager to learn more about feminism, and especially anyone who does not believe double standards exist… this book will help clarify the very real fact that these double standards do in fact infect our lives on a daily basis.

Two more challenges

As if I’m not already signed up for enough challenges, I decided to do two more.  I am rationalizing this by the fact that all the books I’m going to read for both challenges are already on my TBR shelves, and I really just need an excuse to read them.  That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway…

The first one is Trish’s Classics Challenge.  I’m going to go the simplest route, and just read five classics.  Here are my selections -

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The second one that I’ll be joining is the Raved-About Reads Challenge.  I will be reading ten books that I have heard a lot about from many different people, have been meaning to read for a while, and have just not yet gotten to.  So here’s my list for that one -

1, 2, and 3. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

4. The Sister by Poppy Adams

5. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

6. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

7. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

8. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

9. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

10. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

The great thing about this second one is that it’s ongoing, with no deadline, so I don’t have to worry about making sure I read these ten by a certain time, and if I get sidetracked and start reading everything else I want to read, that’s totally ok.

Winner of Change of Heart

Congratulations, Framed and Booked!  You win a copy of Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult!

Please send me an email with your mailing address to heather.oroark@comcast.net as soon as you can… I’d love to get the book sent our by Thursday, so let me know! 

I’m definitely looking to give away the other Picoult books I have sitting on my shelves in the next few weeks… so everyone, keep your eyes peeled for those.

Review – The Middle Place

The Middle Placeby Kelly Corrigan

From the book jacket -

For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything.  At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, a couple of funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column.  But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as George Corrigan’s daughter.  A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan.  He greeted every day by opening his bedroom window and shouting, “Hello, world!”  It was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to.

Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place – “that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap” – comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents’ care.  But she’s abruptly shoved into coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast – and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear.  And so Kelly’s journey to full-blown adulthood begins.  When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly’s turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her – and to show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up.

My thoughts -

I picked this up on a whim at the library, I was browsing the “new books” section and it just stuck out to me as something that looked really interesting.  I also tremendously enjoy memoirs, so I thought what the heck.  I’m glad I grabbed it, because this book was pretty wonderful.  Even though I’m not a parent myself, I could really relate to a lot of Kelly’s feelings.  I, too, am a grown woman most days, handling my marriage, job, finances, and everything else just fine, but when something awful happens the first thing I do is call my mom, because I know she can make anything better.  I can’t help it, it’s just instinct, and I can only imagine that when children come into the picture, my urge to go to my mom with every problem will only intensify.  Besides that, I quickly fell into Corrigan’s comfortable, easy writing style.  I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend while reading her memoir.  The chapters alternate between present day (2005 is the time period the book is mostly about) and random points throughout her childhood.  This structure makes you really involved in the current situation, as well as really curious about her childhood and what made her family the way it is today.  Overall I’d highly recommend this memoir and I’m very happy I decided to read it.

8.5 stars.

Review – Change of Heart (and a giveaway!)

Change of Heartby Jodi Picoult

From the book jacket -

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart.  Now her life is a waiting game.  Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice.  In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.

For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises.  The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world.  In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything.  Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June’s eleven-year-old daughter, Claire.  But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.

Father Michael’s decisions as a young man led him to devote the rest of his life to God.  But when he comes face-to-face with Shay, he is forced to question everything he’s been taught to believe about religion, about good and evil, about forgiveness, about himself.

Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it?  Is what we believe always the truth?

My thoughts -

I have to say, I enjoyed this latest installment by Picoult better than most of her other books.  The subject matter was very touchy/interesting (can a man sentenced to die for two horrible murders actually be the Messiah in disguise?  And can you give a piece of yourself, a physical piece, to atone for a brutal wrong you have committed?) but I really got into this story.  And with all Picoult books, things aren’t always what they seem, and there’s new information that comes to light toward the end of the book that makes you rethink all the opinions you had formed throughout the story.  I won’t give anything away, of course, but I do recommend this book, especially if you are a fan of Picoult already.

One more thing – I am a Christian, a believer in God and Jesus and the Bible.  But I also am a person who does not think the Bible is meant to be a literal translation of the word of God.  I am a rational person and I know from learning history that the Bible was not written by God himself, or even Jesus, or even, in some cases, by people who knew  Jesus.  A lot of it is stories told from person to person and finally captured in writing years later.  So the portions of the book about the Gnostic gospels were particularly interesting to me.  I actually may do further research on this topic (it’s VERY rare for me to do any type of research about something I’ve read in a book.  Usually when I’m done with a book, I’m just done).  I don’t think Picoult meant to say anything negative about organized religion, I simply think she was doing what she always does, writing a book that attempt to question commonly held beliefs and values, and make people rethink what they know as fact.

9 stars.

Read Christina’s review here, Julie’s review here, Devourer of Books’ review here, Di’s review here, Darcie’s review here, Natasha’s review here, Lynne’s review here, Susan’s review here, Jill’s review here, and Lesley’s review here.

** Because of my overflowing bookshelves and my feeling that I’ll probably not pick this book up again in the future, I have decided to give it away!  Please leave a comment on this post by Sunday, May 24th at midnight central time to win.  If you blog about my giveaway, you will receive TWO entries!  Also, I’m thinking about giving away the rest of my Picoult books later on (I have 5 others) so watch out for those in the near future.  Good luck everyone!**

Weekly Geeks 4 – Social Issue

This week’s theme: Choose a political or social issue that matters to you. Find several books addressing that issue; they don’t have to books you’ve read, just books you might like to read. Using images (of the book covers or whatever you feel illustrates your topic) present these books in your blog.

When I saw this week’s theme, I knew right away which social/political issue I wanted to write about:  feminism.  Feminism is extremely important to me, I wish we’d come far enough in our society to recognize that women are people deserving of equality just as the other 50% of the population, but unfortunately America is still not perfect in that respect.  We’ve come a long way from the pre-suffragist, early 1900′s, but not far enough in my opinion.  Something that I am very passionate about is studying feminism and looking at the world through my gender-focused lenses.  To do this, I frequent several feminist blogs such as Feministing, Feministe, The Curvature, and Pandagon, to name a few, and I also try to read as much feminist literature as I can.  Here are some examples of books I have read and enjoyed:

I actually just read and reviewed this book the other day.  SUCH an important contribution to feminist thought.

I read this collection of essays in college, in a women and gender studies class that I was taking.  Some wonderfully talented and amazing women contributed to this work (Anna Quindlen is one) and I really enjoyed reading it.  Here is the Amazon info.

This is another one I read recently.  Jessica is the founder of Feministing.com and has a great way of making feminism seem like the most obvious choice in the world, especially to younger girls who may not already be exposed to some of her ideas.

Now onto a few I haven’t read….

This is Valenti’s new book, and one I just ordered from Amazon the other day.  It promises to be just as good, if not better than, her first.

This one is on my current TBR pile, and I actually have it lined up pretty soon as a selection for one of the challenges I’m participating in.  It’s another collection of essays, which I’m always a fan of.

This is one of the many books by bell hooks that I’m interested in reading.  I’ve read a few essays by her, and they are always thought-provoking and intense.  She writes a lot about the intersection of race, class, and feminism, so she truly deals with a lot of the stuff that many feminists don’t want to delve into.  I’m hoping to read something by her very soon.

Well that’s about it.  I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s weekly geeks about important social issues.  Like I said, there are a lot of issues that are important to me, so I’m sure a lot of you bloggers’ posts will interest me!

Review – The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

From the inside cover -

First published in 1963, The Feminine  Mystiqueignited a revolution that  profoundly changed our culture, our consciousness, and our  lives. Today it newly penetrates to the heart of  issues determining our lives — and sounds a call to arms against the very real dangers of a new feminine mystique in the economic and political  turbulence of the 1990s.

Three decades later,  the underlying issues raised by Betty Friedan strike  at the core of the problems women still face at  home and in the marketplace. As women continue to  struggle for equality, to keep their hard-won gains,  to find fulfillment in their careers, marriage and  family, The Feminine Mystique  remains the seminal consciousness-raising work of  our times.

My thoughts -

This book is one of the most important feminist works of all time, if not THE most important feminist work.  It took me awhile to get through, because Friedan researched the heck out of this thing.  It’s full of statistics, citations from literary journals, interviews with real women, and quotes and stories from popular books and magazines.  I’m so glad I finally got to this book, though, because it is so incredibly important.  Reading Friedan’s book makes you wonder where in the world we’d be without it.  She has made such an important contribution to women’s lives today that there simply aren’t enough words to effectively describe how crucial this book was/is.

Having said that, it’s remarkably sad to me that many of the issues she was sure would be solved by the 80′s are still serious issues today.  She cites Roe v. Wadeas a monumental step for women’s rights, but that decision is now being questioned and attempts to revoke it have been made, and will continue to be made, by politicians and judges on both sides of the political spectrum.  Friedan talks about how gaining access to child care and financial resources for women to further their educations and professional training is one of the first step to women’s freedom, yet today we still struggle with both these obstacles.  Only the middle and upper classes can afford quality day care for their children, and most women cannot even dream of having the financial ability to go back to school after having children.  Sexual harassment in the workplace, the glass ceiling,  and the great pay divide still trap professional women to this day.  Even worse, the word “feminism” now has such a negative connotation associated with it that most women, professional and otherwise, are completely turned off from using it to describe their personal beliefs.  It’s hard that these are still such pressing problems, in 2008, but as long as there are still people working toward solving them, I have not given up hope.  Millions are women do continue to be inspired by people such as Friedan, and the modern feminist movement reflects that.

My favorite part of The Feminine Mystique is the epilogue, when Friedan explains how she started NOW (the National Organization for Women) and made it such an unbelievably powerful and successful organization from nothing.  This section is the most hopeful of the book, although one can see how many of the issues are still here today, it is also evident how much NOW has accomplished in its relatively short history, and what an amazing woman Friedan really is.

10 stars.

 

 

Review – Matrimony

Matrimony by Joshua Henkin

From the book jacket -

From the moment he was born, Julian Wainwright has lived a life of Waspy privilege.  The son of a Yale-educated investment banker, he grew up in a huge apartment on Sutton Place, high above the East River, and attended a tony Manhattan prep school.  But more than anything, Julian wants to get out – out from his parents’ influence, off to Graymont College in western Massachusetts, where he hopes to become a writer.

When he arrives, in the fall of 1986, Julian meets Carter Heinz, a scholarship student from California with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship.  Carter’s mother, desperate to save money for his college education, used to buy him reversible clothing, figuring she was getting two items for the price of one.  Now, spending time with Julian, Carter seethes with resentment.  He swears he will grow up to be wealthy – wealthier, even, than Julian himself.

Then, one day, flipping through the college facebook, Julian and Carter see a photo of Mia Mendelsohn.  Mia from Montreal, they call her.  Beautiful, Jewish, the daughter of a physics professor at McGill, Mia is – Julian and Carter agree – dreamy, urbane, stylish, refined.

But Julian gets to Mia first, meeting her by chance in the college laundry room.  Soon they begin a love affair that – spurred on by family tragedy – will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, spanning twenty years.  But when Carter reappears, working for an Internet company in California, he throws everyone’s life into turmoil; Julian’s, Mia’s, how own.

Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millenium, Matrimonyis about love and friendship, money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith.  It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality.  What happens when people marry younger than they’d expected to?  Can love survive the passing of time?

My thoughts -

While I can’t say that this is my favorite novel of all time, I did really enjoy and appreciate Matrimony.  The way Henkin drew out the characters and really delved into them was incredible.  I finished the book feeling like I’d just spent time getting to know new friends, that’s how much I enjoyed and understood these characters.  I sort of feel like the book lacked plot.  Obviously, I understand that this was not a plot-driven novel in any way, and at the same time there was a definite plot to the book, but there were times when I honestly just wanted a little more to actually happen.  But I guess the slight lack of happenings make this book more real… for most of us, there aren’t constant events every other day; our lives are a series of relationships, friendships, and other interactions, and rarely do we have big time “plots” in our lives.  So I suppose I’m a little torn about that; while I did want to see more of a story to the book, I appreciate how close to reality it actually was in not having such a huge story to it.

I don’t want anyone to think there’s not a story at all, though.  There definitely is, and it’s a great story, of very interesting people and what seems to be a normal, loving marriage, and what happens when family, career, education, friendship, and marriage all intersect.  It’s really a great book, it unfolds so wonderfully, and like I said, you really, truly get to know and love these characters.  I’d definitely recommend this book, but the problem is that I just know this type of novel is not for everybody.  Personally, I’m glad I read it and I’m happy to recommend it to all of you.

8.5 stars.

Read Dewey’s review here, Care’s review here, Lisa’s review here, and Julie P.’s review here.

Review – Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

From Amazon.com -

Jacob Jankowski says: “I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.” At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn’t always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn’t a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn’t write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob’s life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the “menagerie” and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and… he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August’s wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there’s trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the “revenooers” or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena’s and Rosie’s pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it–and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely.

My thoughts -

Hands down, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.  I was utterly captivated by this story, by Jacob’s story, by the amazing animals, especially Rosie the elephant, the crazy Uncle Al and the even crazier August, and the enchanting Marlena.  This is obviously a story about a circus in the midst of the Depression, but it’s more a story of a young man’s coming into his own, a young woman scraping for her independence, and the absolute and total love and loyalty an animal can show for a human being, and vice versa.  Parts of this book were difficult for me to take in, I have a VERY difficult time reading about animal cruelty, and Gruen spared nothing in her descriptions of how some of these animals were treated.  But at the same time, those descriptions were important to the story because they made the whole thing that much more realistic.  Of course I know nothing about circuis life, or the 1930′s, but I truly felt like Jacob was a real person, narrating his real memoir of his life as a young man. 

And the ending… man, what an ending.  This novel tied up so neatly I almost couldn’t believe it… but it was so beautiful that I could, because I wanted so badly for things to turn out right.  I strongly recommend reading this book, it will captivate you as it did me, you will fly through it, and you will be glad you met Jacob and heard his story, because it is such an amazing one.

10 big, bright yellow stars.

Read Trish’s review here, Julie’s review here, Jeane’s review here, Care’s review here, Kristen’s review here, Natasha’s review here, Di’s review here, and Jaimie’s review here.