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Author, Writer, and Editor Lisa Adams | 'Society of Stepmothers,' 'S'mores: Gourmet Treats for Every Occasion,' 'Feshy's Dreamworld,' 'The Evil Sweater and Other Stories,' and 'Why We Read What We Read,'

Author, Writer, and Editor Lisa Adams | 'Society of Stepmothers,' 'S'mores: Gourmet Treats for Every Occasion,' 'Feshy's Dreamworld,' 'The Evil Sweater and Other Stories,' and 'Why We Read What We Read,'

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Category: Nonfiction

Born Standing Up

LisaOctober 28, 2010January 22, 2014

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Narrated by Steve Martin

I know this is probably incredible for a person who, like, reads all the time and writes stupid book reviews, but I think this was the first biography I’ve ever read! I just…don’t really care about the lives of famous people. So there it is. But this one was relatively interesting and very short. If you’re looking for a good starter biography, you might want to check this one out.

Story: Steve Martin reflects on his years (and years and years) trying to make it as a stand-up comedian. Martin details all the hard work, all the failures, all the practice, all the mean reviews—and then all the humongous success. This isn’t the story of Martin’s whole life, just his childhood and his years doing stand-up. His life in the 80s and beyond remains a mystery.

Writing: I know what you’re thinking—this book is going to be hilarious! Well, you’d be wrong. This isn’t a book of comedy; it’s a book about comedy, and the life of a person who’s famous for it. Martin is certainly a competent writer and a smart dude, but if you’re looking for knee-slappers, this is not the book for you.

Themes: Damn, it’s hard trying to make it as an artist. And when you actually do, it’s overrated.

Best thing about it: It’s always good to remember that even the most famous among us had to work their tails off for decades to get where they are. And it’s good to remember that success is a mixed bag.

I really enjoyed hearing about Martin’s adventures in California, since I know the places. And, as weird as this sounds, I was able to confirm that my husband’s pronunciation of Knotts Berry Farm is probably right, since Martin says it the same way.

Worst thing about it: Because the book is driven by an actual life, it can lack shape; there are times it feels like just a list of places and people. And, well, it would have been better if it were funny.

Audiobook insights: Definitely get the audiobook. It’s cool to hear a book narrated by a voice you know and a person you can picture. And it takes the edge off some of the boring parts.

Final thoughts: This has nothing to do with my book review, but my husband thinks he performed the same night as pre-fame Martin at a Pasadena comedy club back in the 70s. Pretty cool, no?

Dreams of Trespass (Morocco)

LisaMay 28, 2010January 22, 2014

Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi

If you’re like me, the word “harem” is inherently fascinating. But if you’re like me, you’re thinking about some kind of sex palace with hundreds of hot chicks dressed like Princess Jasmine. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi is quick to distinguish between “imperial harems” (the sex palace with the Jasmines) and “domestic harems,” which are basically Islamic homes in which women are more or less permanently cloistered. Domestic harems haven’t captured the Western mind in quite the same way as their imperial counterparts, but as Mernissi reveals, they are plenty fascinating in their own right. I read Dreams of Trespass in college and it’s always stayed with me—so much that I wanted to re-read it for my first A Book From Every Country selection.

In this memoir, feminist writer and sociologist Fatima Mernissi describes what it is like to grow up in a home where, simply put, women cannot go outside. But this particular frontier is only the most obvious of the many that Mernissi must confront as she struggles to understand the social and religious forces that govern her young life. Don’t be thrown by the word “feminist”—while Mernissi’s critique is a given, this is no whiny sob story. Dreams of Trespass is a masterfully written exploration of both the merits and injustices of a complex world.

Story: Fascinating. Paints a vivid picture of a way of life that is almost unimaginable to a Western reader.

Writing: Just lovely.

Best thing about it: Knowing Mernissi eventually got out.

Worst thing about it: Knowing some of the others probably didn’t.

Waiting for the Nastiness

LisaMay 19, 2008May 29, 2014

This post by John Heath, whatever it might say above

Taking a look at the bestselling lists from 2007 and 2008, I have not been surprised that they generally look a lot like those from previous years. But perhaps my pessimism is premature. So far in 2008 there has been one major, wonderful change in America’s bestselling reading: the comparative absence of bestselling political spew. We are already over a third of the way through the election year and there have been only four bestsellers specifically about American politics (remember, in that last presidential election year there were 40—did I mention that I read them all?). And these four take a distinctly different tone than those from the previous decade. Steven Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You) undermines conservatism through humor, not wrath; Glenn Beck’s conservative An Inconvenient Book can be wittily self-effacing. Even Newt Gingrich has climbed onto the bestselling lists by claiming we need Real Change and that America is not divided into red and blue (although, well, it’s still the Left that causes most of the problems). And the ultimate change-fan, Barack Obama, offers his now-famous optimistic take on the future in The Audacity of Hope.

These are the four bestsellers? These silly, hopeful, not-very-angry books? Get outta town.

We keep hearing that Americans are ready for change. Are the bestseller lists evidence that we are making it happen? Are these books a good indication of a change in the zeitgeist? (It’s a well-established law that every essay on culture must use the word zeitgeist—I held off until the last paragraph to keep you in suspense.) Does the success of a woman, an African-American, and a maverick in the primaries suggest we are fed up with acrimonious dichotomies offered us in 2004 in both our reading and our political choices?

We’ll see. Readers still have over half a year to start buying up the latest screed from the radio talk show hosts and New York Times pundits. Can we resist? My guess is that within a few months reasoned debate will be harder to find than Ann Coulter’s maternal instinct or Michael Moore’s copy of The South Beach Diet. But I’m hoping—really, really hoping—that I’m wrong.

The 2007 annual bestseller lists are here!

LisaApril 20, 2008May 29, 2014

Okay, they’ve been here, it turns out, for almost a month. But Publisher’s Weekly has this sneaky way of burying each year’s numbers in its voluminous archives, hiding their presence even from its own search engine. Very secretive, those folks.

PW publishes four different lists: Hardcover Fiction, Hardcover Nonfiction, Trade Paperbacks (both fiction and nonfiction), and Mass Market Paperbacks (fiction, often of the genre variety). Shall we start with the top fifteen Trade Paperbacks? (Click here for the full list.)

1. Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert. Rep. Penguin (4,274,804)
2. The Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseini. Rep. Riverhead (2,022,041)
3. Water for Elephants. Sara Gruen. Rep. Algonquin (1,450,000)
4. The Road. Cormac McCarthy. Rep. Vintage (1,364,722)
5. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Kim Edwards. Rep. Penguin (1,362,585)
6. The Pillars of the Earth. Ken Follett. Rep. NAL (1,310,419)
7. Love in the Time of Cholera. Gabriel García Márquez. Rep. Vintage (1,298,554)
8. 90 Minutes in Heaven. Don Piper and Cecil Murphey. Orig. Revell (1,273,000)
9. Jerusalem Countdown. John Hagee. Revised. Frontline (1,200,000)
10. Middlesex. Jeffrey Eugenides. Rep. Picador (1,000,000)
11. Measure of a Man. Sidney Poitier. Orig. HarperOne (1,000,000)
12. Skinny Bitch. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. Orig. Running Press (987,000)
13. Into the Wild. Jon Krakauer. Rep. Anchor (918,234)
14. Three Cups of Tea. Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Rep. Penguin (843,390)
15. The 5th Horseman. James Patterson & Maxine Paetro. Rep. Grand Central (707,340)

The majority of these are no surprise. Eat, Pray, Love. Yes, yes. The Kite Runner. Yes, yes. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter—last year’s number two. A third of these books are associated with Oprah in some way.

It’s numbers 8 and 9 that make me think things went a little wonky in ’07. I’m dismayed to see that 90 Minutes in Heaven—a book detailing a near-death experience and resulting life of devout Christianity—has actually gained in popularity (it was #9 last year), now selling a total of around 2 million copies. Funny how James Frey gets skewered for fabricating parts of his memoir, yet anyone can write these “visit to heaven” books with no proof whatsoever of their authenticity—and no one seems to care!

Sure, 90 Minutes in Heaven could have been a flukey favorite, but number 9 suggests instead that America’s religious curiosity is all aflame. The purpose of Jerusalem Countdown, written by some nutjob pastor, is to demonstrate through biblical prophecy how America’s prickly issues with Iran may lead to the Apocalypse. And people bought 1.2 million copies of it.

Of course, the presence of religious books on an annual bestseller list can also indicate a general case of the societal willies. In troubling times, even the confused and indifferent start reading the darnedest things. The two titles here are so typical of our culture’s hysterical extremism: we want to scare the crap out of ourselves with looming conflicts both material and supernatural, yet be reminded that redemption is available with just a little faith. So different, yet so comforting: for even as his horrors spill from heaven, Pastor Hagee reminds us that a plan governs the universe and all our lives.

I’m sorry to see that no first-time novelists scored this year, though one certainly can’t begrudge literary author and relative newcomer Sara Gruen her number-three spot for Water for Elephants.

Best book on the list: The Road. Followed closely by Pillars of the Earth and Middlesex.

Worst book on the list: Jerusalem Countdown. I think I can safely say this without reading a single word.

Eatin’, prayin’, lovin’

LisaMarch 25, 2008May 29, 2014

Never has a woman embodied that old saying “when a door closes, another one opens” quite like Elizabeth Gilbert.

There she was, married and nesting, trying to get preggers, when she realized that women who really want husbands and babies probably don’t sob for hours every night on their bathroom floors. Three years and one nasty divorce later, Gilbert had lost it all. Broke and bereft, she had no idea where to go or what to do.

Then her publisher had a great idea. They’d give Gilbert an advance that would enable her to travel abroad for a year, writing the book that would become the mega-bestseller Eat, Pray, Love.

Some people have all the luck.

Gilbert segmented her trip—and her book—into three equal parts. The first stop was Italy, home of gastronomic and linguistic pleasure; next came India, where all the serious people go to connect with God; finally, Bali, to learn…erm…something about balance. If you’ve been trolling this blog for a while, you’ll know I was not particularly keen to read Eat, Pray, Love, but I will happily admit that the book was much better than I feared. Gilbert’s writing is witty and charmingly self-deprecating, and she has a wonderful way of drawing threads through the story that make the whole journey—or at least the resulting book—cohesive and complete.

The section on Italy will make you drool. Hell, it’ll probably make you fat. (Is there a volume of Eat This Not That for Italian food? It’s probably Not That! No, Not That Either!) Gilbert’s life in Italy is almost unbearably dreamy. She does nothing but whatever she wants, every day—mainly eating gelato and speaking Italian—for four pound-packing months.

Oh, it hurts not to be her.

But I stopped feeling so envious in part two, when Gilbert heads to India for four months of spiritual calisthenics. I’m sure her descriptions are all very insightful and magical…but if you are not especially spiritual or into meditation you may find this portion of the book boring. Or loony. I sort of wanted to pat her on the head the whole time and say, “Sure, lady. Mm-hmm.” (And I’m not the only one. I talked to two genuine grade-A middle-aged moms—the demographic voted Most Likely to Inhale This Book—and even they skipped parts of this section.)

Finally, Gilbert whiles away the final leg of her journey in Bali, and in her search for balance she’s back to her old witty ways. Her portrayal of the culture and characters of this tiny Indonesian island is both charming and fascinating. And by the end, the broken woman we met at the beginning of the story has become happy, balanced, and whole.

So I gotta say that overall I was pleasantly surprised. Hear me now—Eat, Pray, Love is a thoughtful and enjoyable book.

But I do have to bring up one teensy weensy little thing.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that so brazenly celebrated self-absorption. I know, I know—it’s the genre. It’s what Gilbert’s publishers paid for. I get it. Still, what is with female readers and their excessive navel-gazing? Unlike most literary works, which at least cover a number of characters and ideas, this book is literally about one person. It’s kind of about the pursuit of pleasure; it’s kind of about praying; it’s kind of about balance. But mostly it’s about Elizabeth Gilbert. In short, one of America’s very favorite reads for the past 61 weeks is about someone who spends a year doing nothing but thinking about herself. Is this the new American dream? Looking at our literature, it certainly seems that way. Too bad only the very very fortunate get paid for it.

Bestsellers that Count

LisaMarch 13, 2008May 29, 2014

This post is by John Heath. Yes, he deigned to write a blog post. Whatta guy.

Unlike my chatty colleague in crime, it’s been several months since I spent focused time with bestsellers. Let’s call it “Da Vinci fatigue.” Did you miss me? Hmmn. Well, let’s pretend you did, and that you’re excited that I’m starting to get the itch again. Maybe it’s the anticipation of the appearance of Publishers Weekly’s bestselling lists for 2007. Maybe it’s spring fever. Maybe it’s just that rash again (don’t ask). In any case, a few weeks ago I plunged right back into the bestselling pond. Well, okay, not so much plunged as put my toe in, scouring the bestseller lists so far in 2008. And it turned out the water felt awfully familiar.

Predictable names dominate the fiction lists: Patterson, Evanovich, Albom, Cornwell, and of course the unstoppable trio of Grisham and Roberts and King (oh my!). Fitness, diet, and cookbooks are still the rage. Spiritual guides clog many of the top spots, including the inestimable advice of Montel Williams. For those not interested in his Living Well, there are dozens of vampire tales for the living dead. Business guides flourish, of course, proving once again novelist Chris Buckley’s wisdom that the only way to get rich from a get-rich book is to write one.  The ephemeral joys of pop biography (Tom Cruise) and auto-biography (Steve Martin) continue to appeal. Adding increased auctoritas to a relatively mundane collection are such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird, Night, Green Eggs and Ham, and Good Morning Moon. Oh, and of course, there’s that perennial spellbinder, The Official SAT Study Guide.

But there are a couple major differences between previous years and the 2008 lists so far. One is the remarkable absence of political spew in an election year. (I’ll have more to say about what this may signify at a later date, but that’s actually a substantive issue and I’m trying to keep this as shallow as possible. You don’t want to dive too deeply too fast into this bestseller stuff.) The most striking deviation from the past is in the titles, and I think our Why We Read What We Read may have had a salutary influence on the industry. The publishing titans no doubt read our analysis and jumped into action. In our survey of bestselling books over the past 16 years, we noted that there was an odd reliance on the number 7 (see pages 40-1). But so far bestsellers in 2008 have provided an unprecedented and nearly algebraic variety: Three Cups of Tea (due out soon, its sequel: Eight Trips to the Bathroom), 4-Hour Work Week, The Five Love Languages, The Six Sacred Stones, 12 Second Sequence (no, it’s not about sex), The Thirteenth Tale, Nineteen Minutes, 21 Pounds in 21 Days, 90 Minutes in Heaven (which beats Nineteen Minutes by over an hour), and, pummeling all others in numerical dust, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The author of The Nine was apparently so confident in the number that he felt it could stand alone as a bestselling noun.

It’s nice to know we’ve made a difference.

Eat This Not That

LisaMarch 2, 2008May 29, 2014

Holy crap, what a dumb name for a book. I know it’s been on the bestseller charts for a while, but I’ve been ignoring it because 1) it’s a diet book, yawn and 2) its title is so exceedingly lame.

But last night John and I went out in the world and spied this little volume with our own eyes. And I realized when I saw the cover that this was not your typical benign-but-forgettable book of diet advice.

See, the title wasn’t just the result of a lazy or uninspired author. Eat This Not That is literally the point of the whole book: it provides specific suggestions for what to eat and what not to eat at some of America’s most popular chain restaurants. Try the chili onion rings, not the nacho cheese bacon poppers. Order the fried butter, not the ham-and-lard sandwich. In other words, eat this [unhealthy garbage] instead of that [even more unhealthy garbage]. The book features two pages for each establishment—Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Cici’s Pizza—providing a list of thises and thats for each beloved, nasty greasehole.

Boy is this the perfect “diet” book for the modern era. Only Americans could be so retarded as to think that eating a Big Mac instead of a Whopper with Cheese will help them lose weight (yes, this is actually one of the proffered suggestions). That people would seriously buy and recommend this book (it’s got almost five stars on Amazon)—and that someone in good conscience could publish it—absolutely boggles the mind.

The only merit to Eat This Not That, I would say, is that it exposes just how horrible and fattening this kind of food really is. Even I didn’t know that a plate of Denny’s pancakes packs a walloping 980 calories, and I’m pretty obnoxious when it comes to caloric awareness. The book also goes on to offer general suggestions for making healthier food choices, but frankly the main thrust of the content is so ridiculous that I can’t give Eat This Not That even the teensiest endorsement. But maybe that’s not entirely fair. After all, while dieting you could be kidnapped and forced to eat at Popeye’s, and then this book would be totally useful. Riiight.

Look, I’m not saying I never ever eat this type of food—I do—but never would I dream that it was going to result in anything but bulges and flab. The plain truth is that no dieter should even breathe the fumes of any of these restaurants, and the fact that thousands of people are buying a book like Eat This Not That shows we are nowhere near to facing, let alone solving, our ever-swelling obesity epidemic.

Three Cups of Whoop-ass

LisaFebruary 21, 2008May 29, 2014

You’d better think twice before slapping a fatwa on Greg Mortenson. Try to deny this dude his dream of educating Pakistani children and he will be all over your sorry terrorist-abiding ass. Oh sure, he’ll sit down with you, all civilized-like. But as soon as you’ve poured the tea, he’ll overturn the table and scald you with the requisite three cups, all the while screaming, “I’m gonna build you a school, mother****er!”

Oh, if only. Maybe that’s how the movie version will turn out.

Three Cups of Tea is a fine book. A fine book that could have used just a little spice. Journalist David Oliver Relin ably tells the story of unwitting hero Greg Mortenson, a mountain climber who gets lost during a K2 expedition and discovers not only a remote Pakistani village but his life’s purpose. Three Cups chronicles Mortenson’s efforts to build schools for the Middle East’s poorest children, thus fighting what he believes are the root causes of terrorism and religious extremism. Risking his life countless times, devoting himself in a way unimaginable to most of us, Mortenson is a remarkable and inspiring man who deserves every royalty he gets from this raging bestseller.

And yet this book didn’t quite grab me the way Reading Lolita in Tehran—to which it is frequently compared—did. I’m sure that’s partially because Lolita is about the transformative power of literature, and Three Cups is more vaguely about education—I dunno, math and crap. (I’m joking. I love math. But it doesn’t get me all misty.) It’s also, I think, because Three Cups is kind of a one-note inspirational experience, a reeeeaaaallly long Chicken Soup for the Soul selection. Mortenson is awesome. I believe it. But I believed it by page 10 and at that point there were still 320 pages to go.

That’s not to say I didn’t learn a lot. I learned about mountain climbing and construction and the Middle Eastern way of life (don’t rush it, man—the Pakistani chiefs are rather like the chilled-out surfers in my native Santa Cruz, though probably not as stoned). I learned that most Americans are into helping Buddhists but tend to shun the Muslims. And I learned that that’s just silly, because Muslims are poorer and will thus love you more when you lend a hand.

Okay, that’s not really the message of Three Cups, though the book says in no uncertain terms that Mortenson’s beneficent, education-bestowing presence in the Middle East combats terrorism and anti-American sentiment better than any military approach ever could. Passionate testimonials from all and sundry confirm the lasting dividends of both secular education and American lovingkindness, making the book positively pulse with a heartwarming (if heavy-handed) glow.

So: if you’re looking for an interesting plunge into another culture, a well-written chronicle of a real-life hero, Three Cups of Tea is the book for you. But if you’re looking for whoop-ass, even one cup of it, you’ll have to drink something besides Mortenson’s inspirational tea.

Help! I can’t finish anything

LisaFebruary 3, 2008

Don’t you hate it when you’re reading a bunch of books but none of them really do it for you?

That’s been my problem over the past couple of weeks. If only the books I’m reading were actually bad! Then I could stop—or (more likely) finish them right away and gleefully write them up in this blog.

So here’s what I’m slogging through:

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin—this is my “big bestseller” selection; it’s currently #6 on the USA Today list, enjoying its 47th week of fame. It’s about this dude, Greg Mortenson, who gets lost during a K2 climbing expedition and finds his way to a remote village in Pakistan. Befriending the natives, Mortenson agrees to return and build a school for the village children. Three Cups of Tea is the story of Mortenson’s personal journey from mountain-climbing hippie to nonprofit CEO, the story of what he gives to and learns from some of the poorest communities on earth.

There is nothing inherently bad about this book. The writing is quite good and the story is interesting, even inspiring, a la Reading Lolita in Tehran. But god-dang is it detailed. I’m halfway in and Mortenson still hasn’t finished his first school. It makes me feel a bit like I’m in school with a bad case of senioritis.

Next up is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Now I realize this is a cult classic. I also realized within about 10 pages that this was a cult to which I was never going to belong. I find the writing amusing (this is a good thing; I’m supposed to) and I always applaud the silly people who manage to make it in the arts. But I just don’t, can’t, care about anything that happens in this book. Just don’t. Just can’t. In the introduction, the authors write about rabid fans who’ve read this book so many times it has been dropped in puddles, baked in souffles, and incorporated into their nervous systems. My mind is boggled by such ardor. But I am happy for the authors all the same.

I’m also slowly climbing through The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, a real literary work with an excruciatingly clever organization scheme that I am legitimately enjoying. The problem here is that I actually have to concentrate on this book and I am fresh out of brain cells most evenings.

So instead I’ve been turning to Over the Hill and Between the Sheets, a lighthearted collection about sex and love in middle age, edited by Gail Belsky. I actually picked this up as research for a project I’m beginning, but it turned out to be a fine read, especially when I was feeling too exhausted for school-building, random silliness, or excruciating cleverness. Marriage, divorce, adultery, botox—all are covered here. But my favorite selection of the bunch is Stephan Wilkinson’s “Mechanical Failure,” a story about life—and sex—after prostatectomy, “the all-too-common operation performed to excise prostate cancer” that “often snips the nerve that provokes an erection” and shortens the penis, to boot. Wilkinson speaks with candor and good humor about his adventures with penis pumps, hypodermic needles, and ultimately choosing life over intercourse.

But I finished the book, sadly—no more avoiding the rest! Since it’s raining today and I don’t do football*, I will attempt to free myself from at least one of the literary rocks so assiduously lashed to my ankles.

* unless someone brings me tasty snacks

Wait, Avoid, Ignore

LisaJanuary 8, 2008May 29, 2014

Okay, so should I read Eat, Pray, Love? I know it’s #1 on the USA Today list right now. I know it’s been a bestseller for 50 weeks, and it’s surely going to be on the annual bestseller list for 2007. And I know that reading it will give me untold insights into the American psyche. Well, maybe.

But its name just totally bugs me. I know that sounds stupid, but I’m really into names, and this one is just…ugh. It smacks of A Female Journey, all serious and misty.

Am I wrong? Am I a jerk? Is this book wonderful? Please enlighten me!

Money for Nothing

LisaDecember 30, 2007May 29, 2014

In Why We Read What We Read, John and I discuss how many of the business/finance books of the 90s contain a spiritual element, a conviction that material success could (and should) be linked to emotional well-being. These warm ‘n’ fuzzy notions seemed to be petering out in the last several years, as evidenced by the giant sales of amoral hits such as Good to Great. Well, the success of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek may be proof that America is over the touchy-feelys once and for all.

It’s not like Ferriss encourages readers to make money by kicking lepers and killing endangered frogs. But a book of good, old-fashioned values this is not. Just so you know what kind of dude we’re dealing with, here are a few of Ferriss’ more questionable suggestions:

1) Trying to dream up an online business? Ferriss says sell whatever will sell—his own fortune (around $40K a month) comes from peddling sketchy nutritional supplements.

2) Trying to make the jump from office-based to home-based (and thus sun-soaked paradise-based) employment? Just deceive your boss by looking much more productive from home, and then work about two hours a day thereafter, collecting the same salary.

3) Tired of dumb, time-slurping chores? Hire an overseas personal assistant for a few dollars an hour to make travel arrangements, buy gifts, do research—you name it.

4) Want to do something extraordinary? Exploit the technicalities. Ferriss himself won the gold medal at the Chinese Kickboxing National Championships thusly:

Using dehydration techniques I now teach to elite powerlifters, I lost 28 pounds in 18 hours, weighed in at 65 pounds, and then hyperhydrated back to 193 pounds. It’s hard to fight someone from three weight classes above you. Poor little guys…[He continues] If one combatant fell off the elevated platform three times in a single round, his opponent won by default. I decided to use this technicality as my single technique and just push people off. (29-30)

To be fair, these seedy tidbits are sprinkled throughout what seems to be pretty good advice on a number of topics. First, Ferriss takes time explaining the mentality of the “New Rich,” as he calls them—which is to enjoy life now, filling it with hobbies and learning and “mini-retirements” rather than doing endless soul-sucking work to save up money for some long-distant and vaguely conceived retirement. (Hard to argue with that one.) He also offers helpful productivity tips for both employees and entrepreneurs, including specific techniques for preventing interruptions and severely limiting time spent on meetings, phone calls, and e-mail.

But the best way to make money and free yourself to do what you wish, Ferriss says, is to own a small, automated, online business that brings in the income you need (it doesn’t have to be a ton—just enough to pay your bills and make your “dreamlines” possible, whatever those may be). For best results, this business should sell a product costing the customer $50-200 and be marketed to a very specific niche. Ferriss provides detailed instructions on how to test out the selling potential of a product, then how to automate the selling process so that the lucky business owner has to do as little as possible.

Does it work? How the hell should I know? It sounds good, but of course the magic part is coming up with the right product to create, resell, license, or manufacture. Ferriss can’t help you there; you have to rely on your own imagination and expertise. In other words, most of us are screwed.

Finally, Ferriss uses the end of the book to provide tips for long-term world travel and residence and—most unnecessarily, I suspect—how to keep that spring in your step when extraordinary wealth grows boring and angst-inducing.

The writing is sarcastic and funny, though the book is a bit scattered, since it’s basically a manual for living like a man who places a heavy premium on regular world travel—which may not be possible or even desirable for those with kids, dogs, or airplane phobias. Still, it’s easy for the reader to pick and choose the chapters that appeal. The book also provides lots of cool online resources for everything from how to register oneself as a media expert to how to rate charities.

But ultimately, I have to predict that most readers will not achieve a 4-hour workweek or anything close after reading this book, and not just because they lack the courage to think outside the box. The 4-Hour Workweek is probably most useful for true entrepreneurial spirits and those who already have successful online businesses and want to automate them. Most of us slouches, I fear, will find the ideas exciting, the fantasy tantalizing, but the brilliant products—and the resulting cold hard cash—all too elusive.

A Brief History of My Copy of A Brief History of Time

LisaNovember 14, 2007May 29, 2014

Last month I ended up reading a lot of relationship-oriented books: the Nora Roberts, of course, but also Opting Out? and The Five Love Languages. Love is good and all, but I needed a break. A shift. A different perspective.

I needed Stephen Hawking.

I have had a copy of A Brief History of Time patiently waiting on my bookshelf lo these many long years. I picked it up sometime after its bestselling stint in the late ’80s, when it was touted to the masses as a bang-up effort to help “nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today”—questions about the origin and nature of the universe.

I never seriously considered that I would be too dumb for this book. I’m smart. I never took a math class I didn’t ace. I haven’t done physics since high school, but I managed to scrape out an A there too. I’m not one of those creative people who can’t do logic. I have lengthy delusional fantasies about my aptitude for engineering and astronomy.

Looking back now, it’s easy to see I was doomed.

The first couple chapters went all right. Hawking covers things like gravity, Newtonian physics, and general relativity, stuff I remembered well enough from high school to ring a bell. The uncertainty principle was new, but I basically followed along. Then came some horrifying stuff about particles, colored quarks, “spin,” and event horizons, and I started to wish I were dead.

But I knew the end had come when I got to page 121, where Hawking neatly summarizes the “important questions” remaining at that point in the book, questions like this one:

Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, so that even now, ten thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size. (121-22)

He doesn’t say so outright, but the implication is that a smart and engaged reader would be bursting at the seams with those same questions. My questions, it turned out, were more like “Why is this so hard?” and “When is this book going to be over?”

That was several weeks ago. Thereafter the book sat forlornly on the arm of my couch, and I pretended it wasn’t there.

My basic problem with Brief History, I realized, was that I actually don’t care why what Hawking says is true. He really doesn’t need to prove it to me. He could have written five pages of conclusion and it would have been more than sufficient. (Little did I know, Hawking actually did publish A Briefer (!) History of Time in 2005.) I just wanted to know what those physicists were up to. And now that I know, I’m sorrier than ever that I’m too dumb to be one, because it’s pretty much the best job ever: What you do makes so little sense to almost anyone that no one will ever know if you’re not really working. And it’s so geeked-out—the later chapters in Hawking’s book bear a remarkable resemblance to a conversation I once overheard about the theoretical powers of that Balrog-thing in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Still, still, I hadn’t fully admitted to myself that the jig was up. I kept thinking I’d get back to the book…sure I would!…just as soon as I managed to get more time. Just as soon as I could really focus on it.

Then my dog ate it.

She’s never eaten a book before. She’s never even sniffed a book before. Yet this time: tatters. And though I should have been mad—a book-eating dog is not the pet for two writers—all I could do was laugh. Because I realized that ripping that book to shreds is exactly what I’d wanted to do all along.

It’s only fair to note that the Amazon reviews rave about Brief History; everyone says it’s so easy and clear and fascinating and how you’d have to be a complete tool not to understand it (gushes one reviewer, “as a recent high school graduate, I can say with some level of certainty that the average person can understand 90% of this book”). I blame myself, not Hawking. So if you’ve got the interest and the moxie, don’t let my sad story dissuade you.

But I think I’ve learned my lesson—Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics is the closest I should come to reading about astrophysics. As my friend Alice used to write at the end of all of her chemistry lab reports:

Today I learned a little about science…and a lot about myself.

Malcolm—and Sourcebooks—in the middle

LisaOctober 28, 2007May 29, 2014

“Author hopes to elevate level of political discourse by illuminating legal issues surrounding hot-button topics,” claims this article in one of our local papers, The Almanac. The subject is Palo Alto resident Malcolm Friedberg, who’s edited not one but two books of essays on sensitive political issues (such as affirmative action and gay marriage) and “the key Constitutional questions involved.” Both books are titled Why We’ll Win, yet one volume is blue, the other red. That’s right: one volume includes only liberal essays, the other only conservative ones.

It’s a clever idea, but it kinda cuts down on the whole elevation-factor when a book like this contains only one point of view. I was all set to blame Friedberg—just another opportunist taking advantage of the fingers stuffed into America’s collective ears—but it turns out that splitting the essays into two volumes was not Friedberg’s get-rich scheme at all, but instead a decision made by his publisher, Sourcebooks.

This won’t strike you as notable unless you realize that Sourcebooks is our publisher too! And in Why We Read What We Read, we openly and passionately make the case that not reading or considering other points of view is catastrophically rotten for a whole variety of minor things such as people, democracy, and life as we know it.

Now I can’t blame Sourcebooks for this crafty two-volume scheme—of course they are right (sadly) that “books down the middle don’t sell.” And it’s only by putting out books that sell can any publisher afford to take a chance on no-name authors like us. But it’s still startling to see this practical reality in action.

It’s also startling to see a local author get a front-page story in The Almanac when we didn’t get so much as a blurb. What gives?

Opting Out?

LisaOctober 14, 2007May 29, 2014

When I was at the library getting something else I came across Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home by Pamela Stone. It’s not a bestseller (are sociological studies ever?), but I thought it might shed some light on a few books that are top-sellers—namely, would it confirm or deny the conservative trend that John and I found in relationship/romance reading? Are women leaving the workplace because they just want to be mommies, Dr. Laura-style?

Stone says no: “What I find behind these women’s decision is not a return to traditionalism. It is not women who are traditional; rather it is the workplace, stuck in an anachronistic time warp that ignores the reality of the lives of high-achieving women” (19).

Stone’s suspicions were raised—and her study begun—when the media began to target mothers leaving the workforce, spinning their “opting out” as a return to conservative family values. (I was completely unaware of this trend or the accompanying spin, but I’ll take her word for it.) When asked why they were leaving work, these women inevitably stated reasons of “family,” thus sending the message that even powerhouse women really just want to get home and have babies. Stone discovered through in-depth interviews with around 50 such women that “family” was just the simplest, easiest way to describe a web of reasons for quitting that was ultimately motivated by lack of flexibility in the workplace, even by reputably family-friendly companies. “Far from rejecting the true…feminist vision of an integrated life containing both work and family,” says Stone, “these women pursued and persevered in trying to live it” (215).

The vast majority of mothers in America have to work. Necessarily, Stone had to interview those few who really did have a choice: the affluent. And because of that, I’m not convinced that her findings would hold true throughout the country. The women who contributed to her study had been lifelong achievers who graduated from top universities and went on to pursue demanding and powerful careers. It is not surprising at all that such women would want to be professionals as well as parents. But do average women share those ambitions? That’s not clear.

Since I read this book primarily to supplement such profound works as Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, I was hoping Stone would explicitly discuss the marriages of the women she interviewed. Has there been a return to conservatism in the homes, if not in the minds, of the mothers who leave the workforce?

Stone didn’t talk about that in great detail, but what she did find was that previously egalitarian men became much less so once their wives were not working: many stopped doing any chores and avoided the unpleasant aspects of child-rearing altogether. I’m not sure that’s wrong—if you divide the labor between working-person and at-home-person, that’s kind of the deal you make—but it eroded the previous equal partnership between husbands and wives. Women no longer made money, so their vote and voice became less significant.

It gives me the willies. I would find it extraordinarily difficult to be financially dependent on someone else. That, as well as their (perceived) loss of status, was one of the most difficult consequences of quitting for the women in Stone’s study.

While I found Opting Out? finely written, and very interesting overall, I did question some of the author’s assumptions. For one, she seems to think that it is a woman’s right to be both a mother and a CEO of a company. One of the main points of the book is that women thought they had a choice whether to stay or quit, but they didn’t—they couldn’t really do both, even though they wanted to, because the workplace made it impossible.

But they did have a choice. They had a choice to have children in the first place. In terms of time commitment, having a child is basically choosing to have another job. Why would you ever think you could combine hands-on parenting with an intense and demanding career? And why would you think the workplace should change to accommodate that choice? Imagine if you went to your boss and said, “Say…I’ve decided to take another job at the same time as this one. Oh yes, I’ll be really stressed out and a lot less focused, but I expect you to give me flex time and special leave when I need to be at my other office. And of course you’ll continue to promote me as usual.” Your boss would probably call security and have the crazy person carried out of the building. So why is having a child any different? Most of us have to work, but some jobs just may not be compatible with kids. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all—at least not well.

Stone does say that the loss of talented female employees has put a strain on companies, inspiring some to instate more flexible “work-life” policies. If that’s the case, I have no problem with it. But if companies can get along fine without those policies—if it’s in their best interest to continue to demand those insane workweeks, and if they can find the people loony enough to work that much (which I personally don’t think anyone should do)—they should not have to change just because women want to have babies. I’ll say it again: Having children is a choice.

Isn’t it funny how our American belief in infinite potential is so deeply ingrained? It doesn’t just appear in cheesy New Age books. Even the smartest and most educated among us really, truly think we can do it all. But at some point it’s a matter of simple arithmetic. You actually can’t be a good VP, a good parent, a good spouse, a good friend, and a good citizen all at once. So you have to choose. Want kids? Take a less demanding job. Workaholic? Don’t have a family. Spend 12 hours a day training your cuddly cockapoos? Maybe you don’t have time for a spouse. Sure, it sucks, but until there’s a pill that can eliminate sleep, we all have to prioritize. There’s a reason I don’t have any hobbies or friends, and it’s not entirely because I’m boring and unlovable.

Secondly, Stone doesn’t really question the notion that today’s obsessive parenting style is 1) necessary and 2) good for children. Part of the reason that the interviewed women stopped working was that they felt obligated to take a leading role in their children’s emotional, intellectual, and moral development. While I completely understand and agree with this—god knows there’s not a teacher at Emma’s “national Blue Ribbon” public school who could tell you the function of a semicolon—I also think a serious line has been crossed in this regard. At-home mothers have simply gone way too far, not only scheduling their kids up the wazoo, but treating their children like endless little projects. Stone calls this “intensive mothering” and “the professionalization of domesticity.” I call it “bugging the hell out of Lisa Adams.”

But it’s not merely annoying; this behavior can actually be destructive and terrifying. And to illustrate how, I must tell you the Story of the Bake Sale.

The Story of the Bake Sale
A bake sale is a beautiful thing. Frankly, bake sales are one of the best things about America. You stand before a huge table laden with every conceivable cupcake and brownie. You lust and drool. You pick your favorite desserts and you stuff your face. Few things could be easier or more wonderful.

So I was practically peeing my pants in excitement over last year’s bake sale at Emma’s school open house. We had our priorities in order, so before going to Emma’s classroom, we went straight to the bake sale. But to our shock and dismay, we found that it had been…professionalized.

Instead of the endless spread of chocolatey goodness that characterizes any self-respecting bake sale, we found individually wrapped paper plates, each containing one cupcake and four nasty cookies and priced at ten dollars. TEN DOLLARS! The mothers of Menlo Park had taken everybody’s donations and redistributed, packaged, and priced them. We couldn’t pick and choose or pay by the item. So we bought nothing, enjoyed nothing, and stuffed our faces with nothing.

I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointing and wrong this was. ALL the volunteers had to do was leave well enough alone. But they couldn’t. And if these moms could screw up a bake sale so royally—one of the easiest and most obvious things in the world—I shudder to think what they are doing to their kids. I swear to god, not a week went by at Emma’s elementary school that didn’t feature a party or a pancake breakfast or an afternoon in the garden. These “intensive moms” effectively take their children out of the classroom, away from learning, and then get to gloat about what wonderful, devoted mothers they are. All so they can do something with the energy they used to apply to their careers.

While these dreadful scenarios may be peculiar to my community, I am sure that intensive mothering is a national epidemic. It’s clear that many (most?) women need more intellectual stimulation than normal parenting provides. Frankly, they need to be working! So I think Pamela Stone is right about this flexible workplace thing. With more part-time jobs and clever arrangements available to mothers, we can keep women both from opting out and becoming insanely meddling.

And that’s a good thing for all of us. Not because every woman has the right to raise kids and lead a company at the same time. But because we all have the right to a decent bake sale.

Hey baby, do you speak my love language?

LisaOctober 8, 2007May 29, 2014

Hooray! At last, a bestselling relationship-mending book I can get behind. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman hasn’t yet made an annual list, but it’s been kicking around the USA Today top-150 for the past four years or so.

Chapman’s premise, developed during his years as a marriage counselor, is that people have different ways of expressing and feeling loved. You might get all squishy when your special someone helps you with your origami, but your partner might be dying for you to make him a bologna sandwich. And if your relationship is suffering, most likely you’re expressing love in the way you want to receive it, rather than the way your partner does. So, if you want to turn things around, you have to determine your sweetie’s “love language” and start speaking it.

According to Chapman, there are five main “love languages”:

1. Words of affirmation (“You are a tidy little bon-bon!”)
2. Quality time (talking, shopping, escuchando los discos a la biblioteca)
3. Receiving gifts (don’t have to be expensive—it’s the thought that counts)
4. Acts of service (cooking, mowing the lawn, making that bologna sandwich)
5. Physical touch (holding hands, hugging, doing the nasty)

While most of us respond to all of those things to some degree, one probably stands out as our primary “love language.” And when our significant other speaks that language, we get the misty-eyes and the jelly-knees.

Five languages, five reasons to read

Here are the top five reasons I liked this book, especially as compared to other love-related mega-sellers.

1. Doesn’t simplify—accepts the complexity of humanity and the fact that we are all different. This book does not employ the one-size-fits-all mentality so common in the self-help universe. Each individual has his or her own “love language” and even own “love dialect,” which is a variation on one of the five main languages. The call to action here is not to pigeonhole your spouse but to understand and respond to his or her distinctive needs.

2. Gender-neutral. The Five Love Languages is not addressed to women only, nor does it put the burden on women to make relationships work. It doesn’t assume all women (or men) want or need the same things. Chapman even says “there are no rewards for maintaining stereotypes, but there are tremendous benefits to meeting the emotional needs of your spouse” (110)—even when they don’t fit traditional gender roles.

3. Doesn’t claim relationships are easy. Speaking an unfamiliar language is hard work, and doing it for a lifetime will take commitment and a real desire to do “something for the well-being of the one you love” (41). In fact, Chapman claims that the “in-love” period of a relationship—when everything seems so wonderful and effortless—is not really love at all. Real love, he says, “is emotional in nature but not obsessional. It is a love that unites reason and emotion. It involves an act of the will and required discipline, and it recognizes the need for personal growth” (35). But it’s not as boring as it sounds. Chapman promises that, if we make all this effort, true love “will be exciting beyond anything we ever felt when we were infatuated” (37). While I would argue that falling in love is a form of true love, one that makes the next, quieter stage of love possible—the simple and necessary admission that long-term relationships take work is almost foreign to bestselling relationship reading.

4. Describes happy spouses as having a deep connection. In Chapman’s world, the point of a relationship isn’t just to get along or accept each other’s differences. “Our most basic emotional need,” he claims, “is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct. I need to be loved by someone who chooses to love me, who sees in me something worth loving” (35). By meeting our spouse’s deepest needs, we forge a powerful relationship, not just a functional household.

5. Doesn’t even mention a “white knight.” I don’t think I can take any more of those.

Complaints? Instinctively, my main issue with the book would be how unnecessary it is. I would think that anyone who is even fractionally emotionally astute would know, from experience if not conversation, what made his/her spouse the most happy. And, unless that person was totally creepy or lazy, s/he would probably do it.

But I think I am wrong on this one. I have always found relationships extremely easy (not work-free, understand, but easy), so all this gooey emotional stuff and its associated effort are a snap. However, I am starting to think I am a freak (for this and the other ten thousand reasons). Given the enormous popularity of bestselling books like this, it seems a lot of people are not particularly emotionally perceptive and really don’t know what their spouses want. I find such a possibility mystifying, but this is far from the first time that I have been mystified by America’s needs. So I’m going to assume that Chapman’s is a lesson that needs to be taught.

And teach he does. He offers a variety of methods for sleuthing out your partner’s love language, mostly pretty obvious techniques such as “listening to what your partner asks you to do for him/her” and “observing your partner’s behavior toward you” (since people often give love the way they want to receive it). Once you have identified the hidden language that’s been mucking up your life, you just have to start to “speak” it. For each language, Chapman offers a list of suggestions for new practitioners. Most are reasonable, but some veer into the ridiculous, like this one for the “Words of Affirmation” people:

As you read the newspaper, magazines, and books, or watch TV or listen to radio, look for words of affirmation which people use. Observe people in conversation. Write those affirming statements in a notebook. (If they are cartoons, clip and paste them in your notebook.) Read through these periodically and select those you could use with your spouse. When you use one, note the date on which you used it. (56)

I mean, come on. Good at relationships or not, a person who needs to do this is bordering on mentally challenged. And imagine finding this notebook—wouldn’t it give you the creeps?

Some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, especially the stuff about sex (how many times in a paragraph can a person say “sexual intercourse”?), though thankfully it’s still a big step above the language in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

But these are minor quibbles. The book makes sense. And it explains to me why some relationships are just harder than others—having to do unnatural, uncomfortable things all the time is just plain more difficult and more apt to fail than doing natural, comfortable things. I’ve witnessed relationships like that, and unless there is a great amount of love and commitment on both sides, they simply don’t work in the long run. How reasonable is it to expect that a person who never needs to be touched, for example, can really make a physically-oriented spouse happy? Good intentions or not, people often revert to their old, familiar ways. And can you really blame them? In the book Chapman claims he rarely meets couples who speak the same love language. I’m assuming he’s saying that to send an optimistic message to his lonely readers (“you’re normal! you can fix it!”), but I read it differently: People who need the same things are much less likely to seek counseling.

Chapman’s moral is work hard and make your spouse happy. My variation is pick the right person to begin with, someone who needs what you need, and the work you do will be a lot more enjoyable—and the relationship a lot more likely to last.

But hey, that’s the opinion of a freak.

One Secret Too Many

LisaSeptember 18, 2007May 29, 2014

by John Heath

Let’s get this right out in the open—with all the hoopla surrounding The Secret, one of us had to read it. Lisa is still a bit annoyed that she had to read so many New Age books for Why We Read What We Read, so there was no real way I could get out of it when she asked me to take a closer look at the book.

Payback is a bitch.

The Secret may be the fluffiest thing I have read in three years, and that’s saying something, considering I made it through the first 50 pages of Embraced by the Light (I couldn’t finish—I made Lisa read that one too) and read Life’s Little Instruction Book cover to cover. It takes one basic, reasonable premise—that a positive attitude can make a difference in how one experiences life—and drives it to unfathomable depths of silliness. Actually, only the cosmological improbability and materialistic self-indulgence can fairly be called silly. There’s also a more insidious side, a moral repugnancy of The Law of Attraction that has been well discussed by many reviewers, as well as ruthlessly parodied on YouTube, Saturday Night Live, and even in entire books. To believe that everything—and this means everything—that happens in this world is the direct result of the universe responding to your thoughts is not just demonstrably false, but the height of narcissism, ethical obtuseness, and spiritual desperation. It’s enough to make one pine for the relatively harmless inanity of The Celestine Prophecy.

At some point, an honest reviewer has to throw his or her hands up in the air and concede that certain New Age and Christian fundamentalist self-help guides are beyond critique, at least as far as trying to keep an open mind about the people who are buying them. This book lives in that ether that can be reached neither by reason nor common sense. Either you are a believer or you aren’t.

So why have so many people chosen to believe (or at least buy) this book? Where’s the proof that thinking good thoughts about wealth and health, for example, will make you rich and strong? (Or, on the necessary flip side, that thinking negative thoughts will result in such obviously self-induced traumas as slavery, rape, inner-city poverty, the Holocaust, Katrina, and Darfur?) Well, this proof is entirely in the anecdotes provided by the author and contributors, who comprise nothing short of a pantheon of New Age Gurus, folks who believe (if we can believe them) that because they envisioned getting checks instead of bills, they got rich. (Cynically, it’s easier to believe that they got rich by getting people to write them real checks by convincing them they could get rich by envisioning checks in the mail.) Rhonda Byrne herself is the one who pulls it all together, the best-selling peddler of the Secret who links the masters’ words with interludes like this:

“Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are the primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.” (p.59)

It simply MUST be! Fat people aren’t just fat—they’re dumb, so dumb they think it’s the calories that put on weight.

Lordy.

Here’s something I waver about. Do these people really believe what they say? Have they convinced themselves they are telling the truth? Could they pass a lie-detector test? Does Rhonda Byrne really think weight gain or loss has nothing to do with food? I honestly can’t tell.

In the end, I guess it just boils down to your willingness to believe something incredible because someone tells you it’s true (and it would be so cool if it were true). Are you like that? I have a test. Here’s a list of the credentials of the contributors to The Secret:

  • Founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center and originator of the Life Visioning Process
  • Founder and CEO of Empowered Wealth, and founder of the Quadrant Living Experience, LLC, “a boutique firm that licenses and trains an international network of Quadrant Living Advisors.”
  • Chiropractor of the Year
  • Internationally known Feng Shui master
  • Co-founder of Totally Unique Thoughts (TUT), who sold over 1 million t-shirts and then transformed TUT into a web-based inspirational and philosophical Adventurers Club
  • Creator and Facilitator of the Wealth Beyond Reason program
  • John Grey (see our section on Mars/Venus in Why We Read What We Read)
  • Creator of Holosync
  • Founder of Live Out Loud
  • Founder and CEO of Motivating the Masses (and Motivating the Teen Spirit)
  • Developer of The Science of Success and Harmonic Wealth
  • Neale Donald Walsch (another best-selling author we discuss in our book)
  • And a guy who holds a doctorate degree in Metaphysical Science (?), who also is a certified hypnotist, metaphysical practitioner, ordained minister, and Chi Kung healer

I think it boils down to this. The world is divided into two camps: those who look at this list and laugh or shake their heads, and those who read it and wonder where they can sign up.

Don Miguel Ruiz at the altar

LisaAugust 28, 2007May 29, 2014

So we went to a wedding this past weekend, and I think it’s fair to say we had never been so thrilled to be at any wedding in our lives. Never mind that we had just experienced a hellish five-hour drive across California along with the fifty million other people who seem to have moved here when we weren’t paying attention. Never mind that we had hurriedly changed our clothes in the parking lot with nothing but the glare of a dirty car window in which to assess our unwashed reflections. Never mind that, due to a tragic backpack-switching incident, John was forced to wear flip-flops along with his formal attire. We had made it, dangit, and we were feeling good.

The ceremony began. It was one of those nice, benign, modern sermons, and I was spacing out a little, hoping the eyeliner I’d quickly applied lay somewhere in the vicinity of my eyelid. Then the rabbi started to talk about something that sounded remarkably familiar…

“As we go through life we make agreements,” said he. “Agreements that determine how we relate to each other…”

My ears piqued at “agreements.” Could he mean…? No, of course not. I chastised myself. Not everything in life is related to a bestselling book!

But then he said there were four agreements. And then he started listing them. And so I started poking John and giggling and yes, they are THE four agreements: Be impeccable with your word, don’t make assumptions, don’t take anything personally, and do your best.

It was hard for me to take the message seriously after that, but I know that many others (who weren’t familiar with the book) were in raptures about it afterwards. And sure, the four agreements do make a lot of sense in a marriage context. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing was a tad cheesy. Still, it could have been a lot worse: imagine weddings based on these other bestsellers…

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus:

“Today we come together to honor the bland coexistence of two aliens who have absolutely nothing in common. Let us begin the ceremony with a hug…”

The Da Vinci Code:

“This is an event in which we celebrate the joining of two people in holy matrimony…”

A wedding, thought the albino.

“On my left is a woman in a white gown…”

The bride.

Slowly, the woman at the altar turned to face the gathered crowd.

Holy mother of Jesus, thought the albino.

Then…the groom began to scream.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff:

“Bill, do you take this fern to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

I shouldn’t joke. Things like this have probably been done.

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