A Gaggle of Book Reviews

This review is part of a MotherTalk Blog Tour

The Natural Superwoman: The Scientifically Backed Program for Feeling Great, Looking Younger, and Enjoying Amazing Energy at Any Age is a new book by Dr. Uzzi Reiss (OB/GYN) and his daughter Yfat Reiss Gendell. Dr. Reiss is an Ob/Gyn in private practice Beverly Hills, CA who works with about 6,000 women a year to find natural solutions to women’s health issues. Ms. Gendell is the partner in a literary agency she co-founded, as well as being the co-author of several other health and non-fiction titles. The premise behind The Natural Superwoman is to build on the information in the previously published book, Natural Hormone Balance for Women, and help women be healthy and feel good through diet, exercise, and supplements.

The Natural Superwoman is a very eye-catching book: it has a bright pink cover with gold accents, an eye-catching tagline, and several questions on the back which guide you to “Feel like you again with Dr. Reiss’s groud-breaking program.” Inside, the book is broken into easily-digestible segments, with quizzes popping up every few pages to help you identify trouble areas, and then text to help educate you. The first part of the book focuses on lifestyle changes, part two on bioidentical hormones, part three on balancing mood, and part four on living disease-free. The sections are well-designed and set up so it is a very approachable book – easy to access the information you are looking for, and then get hooked by the text and keep reading.

When I am reviewing a non-fiction book, the first places I look are the resources and index. If a book doesn’t have resources to back it up, and an index that will help you find information quickly, then it isn’t a good resource. At the beginning of The Natural Superwoman, the authors say that a full list of changeable resources was available online, but they do include footnotes and some resources within the book. The index within The Natural Superwoman makes it very easy to find an area of the book that you wish to revisit. The layout of this book makes it very easily approachable and more likely that you will want to keep reading after finding your original answer.

I was prepared to dislike The Natural Superwoman, and I ended up very impressed. Due to our dietary restrictions, my own health issues, and my children’s health, I have done quite a bit of research into supplements and nutrition, and we have surrounded ourselves with others who have done that research as well. I wondered about the quality of information from an M.D., as well as questioning how well a man would understand the needs of a woman’s body. Dr. Reiss credits his wife for helping him understand reach epiphanies about bioidentical hormones because of her experiences, which makes him seem much more approachable. I had also assumed that Dr. Reiss would be affiliated with the source of bioidentical hormones, but he doesn’t even suggest only one answer – he refers readers to compounding pharmacies. After reading The Natural Superwoman, I think it is a valuable resource for women, and a good introduction into thinking differently about health and nutrition.

While I don’t agree with all of the information within The Natural Superwoman, I do agree with a lot of it. If you are looking for a place to start research on non-pharmaceutical options for improving health and mood, this is a great beginning. If you want to learn more about how hormones, vitamins, and minerals work together, The Natural Superwoman is a very useful guide. Much of the information in The Natural Superwoman has been published previously in other, less-mainstream books; it is wonderful to see an approachable book that extols the virtues of Vitamin D and Fish Oils! I recommend checking out a copy of The Natural Superwoman – it is easy find a part that speaks to you, and the writing style will keep you engaged.

This book was read as part of the MotherTalk Book Club and Salon, fostering great discussions with readers

The Middle Place talks about that time in your life where you are both someone’s child and someone’s parent. Author Kelly Corrigan is specifically talking about that time when you are new to parenting and you still feel a strong identity to “home” being where your parents live, and instinctively calling your parents to get their approval. As we start The Middle Place, Kelly is living on the west coast with her husband and two young daughters, while her parents live on the east coast. Kelly has just started into the world of balancing being a loving, attentive daughter and a loving, attentive mother.

Kelly weaves a beautiful story about her love for her family through conversations, emails, thoughts, and flashbacks to her childhood. While she has a very close relationship with her mother and two older brothers, she is very attached to her father, George. Greenie (or any of her father’s many nicknames) is an exuberant, gregarious, and optimistic man who loves his youngest child (and only daughter) very much. There’s a sweetness in the father-daughter relationship that lacks the strain inherent in mother-daughter relationships. Just as I think awwww when I see my daughters with my husband, I felt Kelly’s strong love for her father throughout the book. In fact, as soon as I finished it, I called my dad and my step-dad to tell them I loved them.

While all of us deal with being in The Middle Place when we start having children, not everyone experiences the crisis Kelly and her family went through. Kelly was diagnosed with breast cancer, and then a short time later her father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Kelly’s family had rallied around her, flying out to California to help her and to care for her young daughters Claire and Georgia. However, because of her own treatments, she can’t fly back to the east coast to rally around her father as he goes through similar cancer treatments. George and Kelly have so many deep connections, and while phone conversations helped, you could still feel her sadness over not being physically present.

I’ve known several people with breast cancer, and known even more dealing with other forms of cancer, including my grandmother and her husband. Reading The Middle Place really showed me the emotional and physical cost of the cancer treatments, but in a personal way, not dry and clinical. Kelly’s writing evoked laughter and tears as I read about fun times in her childhood juxtaposed with her reactions to chemo and radiation. While I knew intellectually that it was possible for me to get breast cancer, I felt very removed from the possibility. It wasn’t until I read The Middle Place that it really clicked for me. I could really relate to an author who was my age, with young daughters, brown hair, and glasses, plus a father who really enjoys life and nicknames! This isn’t a memoir that will scare you, though – it was actually quite comforting that Kelly, who admits to being “not stoic”, could deal with everything that was thrown at her. If she can manage to juggle everything, we can probably handle a couple of balls in the air, too.

Kelly has written a memoir that will live in your heart. It feels like I’ve known her family forever, and I kept wanting to scream, “me too!” about all the 1970s and 1980s memories. However, my brother never bought a snake! While my chronic illness isn’t cancer, I have been laid low for 2 years, and I could also understand when Kelly wanted to do things but couldn’t, and hated disappointing her daughters, husband, and parents. The Middle Place is written so beautifully, it intermingles the serious with the silly and the painful with the playful. Cancer is serious business, but Kelly reminds us that no one can be serious constantly.

I am becoming a big fan of memoirs, and this one is fabulous. The Middle Place is engrossing, engaging, and Kelly Corrigan and her family really leap off the page. I really enjoyed her tone, when she was positive and when she was not, it all felt very honest. This isn’t just a memoir about breast cancer, it’s also a tribute to a wonderful family and a beautiful father-daughter relationship. I highly recommend reading The Middle Place, and then taking your dad out for coffee!

This book was read as part of the MotherTalk Book Club and Salon, fostering great discussions with readers
The front cover of Persian Girls: A Memoir by Nahib Rachlin has a quote from a Boston Globe reviewer saying that the “memoir reads like a novel”, which I felt was very accurate. Nahib has provided us with a peek into her world, spanning over fifty years, and immersing us in the culture of Iran and her family.
Nahib pulls us quickly into her world, showing us her split childhood – life with her adopted mother for her first 9 years, and then life with her birth family. Nahib’s birth mother, Mohtaram, was very fertile, she agreed to give a child to her sister, Maryam. It was when Nahib turned 9 that she was considered “of age”, able to legally marry, and that is when her father came to get her. When her father took her from her adopted mother, Nahib lost an attentive mother, she gained a sister and confidante.

Nahib’s relationship with her older sister Pari is incredibly moving. Both girls loved American movies and the idea of new freedoms for women. I look at my daughters, and hope for them to continue their close relationship – one like what Nahib and Pari had. There were many times as I was reading Persian Girls that I wished I was reading a novel, and that the author could guarantee me a happy ending for everyone involved. The relationship between Nahib and Pari was so intense, and yet fraught with obstacles. Their middle sister, Manijeh, was their mother’s favorite, and the obvious favoritism made for a lot of rivalry between them. As time passes, and physical distances between them increase, the bonds between them change and strengthen.

The Iranian Government and its changing laws cast a shadow over the lives of Nahib and her family. Every choice they make has to take the laws and social mores into account. Nahib’s brothers go to college in the US, which is seen as a very modern thing to do. However, her two older sisters are married traditionally – in arranged marriages. While all families worry about appearances, in Nahib’s father seemed to worry even more than usual. His job as a lawyer seemed tied to how his family is perceived, and he must balance the traditional and the modern.

Parts of Persian Girls feel like a mystery, and one that cannot be solved. Without an omniscient narrator, we only know what Nahib has experienced or discovered. I wish I could see into the heads of many of the characters, but there is an intimate feeling reading one person’s memories, one person’s truth.

Nahib states at one point in Persian Girls that she feels like she doesn’t belong in either culture. I know that feeling is common among many ex-patriots, but I have to wonder if the problems in US-Iranian relationships made her transition more difficult. I found myself identifying so much with Nahid, finding many universal truths within her words, no matter your background.

I highly recommend Persian Girls to anyone who enjoys memoirs and non-fiction, as well as to anyone who enjoys women’s fiction or literary fiction – it really is a memoir that reads like a novel. It pulls you in, with vivid imagery of Nahid Rachlin’s world. Watch out, though, once you start it you won’t be able to put it down easily! I look forward to reading Nahid Rachlin’s other books.

This review was written as part of a MotherTalk blog tour, and books were received from the publisher for review. Please also check out my review of book 4 – The Final Warning!

James Patterson’s third Maximum Ride book, Maximum Ride #3: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, is just as thrilling and engrossing as his first two books in the series, (reviewed below). How could you not want to read about the lives of 6 kids with wings who are trying to escape evil scientists and save the world? It’s engaging, exciting, and impossible to put down – you need to know what happens next! As soon as you start, you’ll be sucked into the lives of Max, Fang, Total, Nudge, Iggy, and Gassman.

As with the first two books in the series, Maximum Ride #3 is about teenagers Max (a girl) and Fang (a boy) trying to save their “flock” of four other children who have been genetically engineered to fly. These kids have real wings! They are trying to keep away from the general media, as well as from scientists bent on destroying them. In this third book, Max and Fang have some disagreements about how to lead the flock, and also how to save the world. Unlike many series, this one pulls you in more and more with each successive book.

Max wants to keep a low profile as the kids fly to different places to save the world from the scientists. Fang, however, wants to get some grassroots support for their cause. Fang creates a blog, and tries to get kids around the world to help him. The flock splits in two over the disagreement, but nothing can cut the ties between the flying kids. They are forever tied together in a fight against the Erasers (creatures and robots engineered just to “erase” someone’s existance), and because they are all flying kids.

I love that Max is a girl, and that she is the leader. Girls in charge and kicking butt (quite literally in this case, destroying horrible creatures set to eliminate them) are something I love in teen/tween books, especially as the mother of 3 girls! There are a ton of fantasy books with boys as the main characters, but not very many with girls who are taking charge of everything! The world needs more people like Max – she’s a great role model for tween/teen girls! (It’s a good read for anyone else who needs a bit of female empowerment – Maximum Ride 3 isn’t just a great young adult book, it’s a great book, period.)

I recommend reading the whole Maximum Ride series – if you’re in the 10-100 age range, go along for a great ride! (and make sure you have all 3 near you – you want to read them all at once!) While you’re reading them, make sure you check out the website for the series – it’s incredibly cool, and it will definitely lure you into the world of Max, Fang, Angel, and the other bird kids.

In the first book, the eponymous Maximum Ride is a 14 year old girl who was genetically modified (along with 5 other kids) to be an avian/human hybrid. They are tall, lean, have super-fast metabolisms – and they can fly! Max and her “flock” (3 girls/3 boys) are being hunted by the Erasers – a human/lupine (that’s wolf) hybrid that were built to kill.

In James Patterson’s first book of the series, Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, the Flock is living in a home together when the youngest, Angel (6) disapears. Max divides the flock – 2 stay home in case Angel comes back (Gazzy (8yo boy) and Iggy (14yo boy, blind and good cook)) while Max, Fang (14yo boy), and Nudge (11yo girl) go to the School where they had been kept in cages to rescue Angel. The story flips between Max’s first person storytelling, and third person from the members of the flock separated from her, but it flips seamlessly.

The Angel Experiment is a fast moving book – there isn’t a lot of break in the action! You find out all different exciting things about each of the members of the Flock, and you quickly become an enthusiastic supporter. The characters stay true to themselves, a clear sign that James Patterson’s success with adult books didn’t fly away in the night when he started writing for the Young Adult audience! The chapters are very short – only 2-5 pages, so they are great for reluctant readers, as well as for folks who can only read in short bursts due to multiple interruptions (oh, like Moms for example!).

Maximum Ride: School’s Out Forever continues the story of Max and her flock. The flock is continuing in their attempts to evade the Erasers and save the world. The flock gets a few weeks rest and are able to attend a “normal” school, where Fang gets kissed and Max goes on a date! They also search for their parents, using files they have stolen from the people who changed them and experimented on them.

It’s really interesting to see the Flock try to integrate into a regular school – Iggy and Gazzy still like to try to explode things, Max is still twitchy about being anywhere for too long, Fang is still not very talkative, and Nudge is talkative enough to make up for several people. At one point, a Max, phase 2 is introduced – could she really take the place of Max? School’s Out Forever succeeds where so many other books fail – you aren’t sure which is better, the original or the sequel! An absolutely engrossing, page turning book.

Maximum Ride #3: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports is the third, wonderful book. It absolutely keeps up with the pace and quality set by the first two books.

Don’t let this series’ classification as Young Adult keep you from reading it – it should be engrossing to anyone. The level of death/scariness of being followed is too high for my 9 year old daughter, but many kids her age or a bit older would be just fine with it. It really does qualify as a 10-100 age range book!

Make sure you check out MaximumRide.com for updates on a movie, a video of Max soaring over New York City, and a lot more. Don’t forget to check out Fang’s blog!

Update: The Final Warning: A Maximum Ride Novel, book 4 is now available for pre-order. Check out our review!

This review is part of a MotherTalk blog tour, and I received the book from the publisher to review.

I had a list of books to review this summer, and also a list of books I was looking forward to – several of my favorite authors had new releases this summer. Often the books to review become books I look forward to – the description grabs me hard enough that I can’t wait to read it. Sometimes the book itself lives up to that expectation, and sometimes it doesn’t. Flirting in Cars by Alisa Kwitney far exceeded that expectation, and left me grateful for a rainy, relaxing day where I could just sit and read without having to put the book down for very long.

Alisa Kwitney creates wonderful characters – a single mother named Zoë who is estranged from her Orthodox Jewish family, her fourth grade daughter named Maya, and love interest named Mack. These characters, as well as the secondary characters, jump off the page – reading Flirting in Cars feels almost like you are sitting down with Zoë, chatting about her life. Zoë and Maya leave New York City for a year to move to a very small town 2 hours away so that Maya can attend a school specializing in helping children with Dyslexia learn and feel self-confident.

I’m the mother of a child with learning disabilities (including trouble with reading), who is about to go into the fourth grade. Flirting in Cars gives one of the most accurate depictions of a child of this age – the mix between longing to be independent (Maya loves the long school days and time spent working with horses) and the need for closeness (after the move, Maya is afraid, and wants to cuddle in her mom’s bed). It’s a really difficult age to portray, and I think Alisa Kwitney deserves a special accolade for Maya’s character.

After Zoë and Maya move to the small town, Zoë’s fear of driving becomes a real problem. New York City’s excellent public transportation and taxis let her live easily without driving. However, in a small town she needs a driver to get groceries, to meet Maya for lunch, and for all her other errands. Luckily, she’s a freelance writer, so she can work from home on her laptop, but she ends up needing a driver a lot. Mack starts as her driver – he also works as a driving instructor (who wants to teach Zoë to conquer her fears and learn to drive), and several other jobs, like most folks in the small town.

When Zoë starts investigating some land deals within the town, and the possibility of corruption and ecological damage, she starts to really become invested in the town. The tugs within her between small town and big city pull hard within her. The added dilemma of her relationship with Mack (fling or serious? is the age and class difference important?) also wrenches inside Zoë. Flirting in Cars lets us into the lives of these characters as we devour the book, unable to put it down until we find out what will happen next.

I loved Flirting in Cars, and while I really want Alisa Kwitney to write a sequel, I will also keep an eye out for her next book. I’m loaning my copy of Flirting in Cars to a friend this afternoon, and highly recommend you go buy a copy or request it from your library – it’s a great summer read that you will enjoy – I doubt you’ll be able to put it down easily!

My oldest daughter turns 9 tomorrow – four short years from 13. In 9 years I will have 3 teenaged girls in the house. Yikes. I watch my friends who have teenagers, and wonder how they can keep themselves, their teens, and their other children happy and sane all at once. It looks so overwhelming from the outside. But then, when you are pregnant with your first child, watching someone with 2 or more children looks overwhelming, too. I know we all grow into our roles, but I worry about peer influence and what types of teens my daughters will become.

I was nervous about reading Joseph Nowinski’s The Identity Trap: Saving Our Teens from Themselves, because quite honestly I just want to stick my head in the sand and believe my girls will stay little forever. However, I signed up for this MotherTalk tour so I could learn about ways to help my girls so they don’t need to be saved from themselves.

The Identity Trap is not a quick or easy read. It isn’t a dull textbook either, though. Rather, it is a mixture of case studies of various teens and notes to help parents with teens in those situations (plus a great index!). Nowinski offers guidelines and FAQs to help the parent of a teen through various situations, to help guide teens away from a negative identity and towards a more constructive expression of emotions.

Some of the case studies are extreme and disturbing – a teen is upset about his family dissolving and his dog dying, and he ends up being charged with murder. I’m sure the most shocking stories are included so parents can see a worst case scenario. However, I found it jarring to read extreme (to me) case studies and then little boxes that say “Heads up!” with a bit of advice. Further, the advice and recommendations seemed rather like common sense:

“Heads up! When it comes to punishment, less is more!”
“Heads up! Talk about yourself!”

“Heads up! Learn about what’s going on in your child’s life…”

I plan to keep this book on my shelf and share it with friends who actually have teens. Right now, it seemed to be giving me information I already had – keep talking with your kids, know what they are doing, parent gently, pick your battles, and allow some rebellion as long as no one gets hurt.

I really like that Nowinski tells parents not to assume that their child is mentally ill – teens do things that can look like mental illness when they are actually totally age appropriate. I also like his attitude within the book, and I am sure that in a few years I’ll need a reality check about what behavior is OK and what behavior needs help. Having a wonderful index is also a huge plus – it is easy to look up certain behaviors and learn more.

I would definitely recommend reading or skimming The Identity Trap if you have teens, and picking out the information that is most useful for your family. You may not need the whole book, but by checking out the table of contents and the index, you’ll be able to get the content you need quickly.

This review is part of a MotherTalk Blog Tour was quoted in the July 16, 2007 issue of Newsweek and is also quoted at the Parenting Beyond Belief website!

I may have mentioned before that I’m not a big non-fiction person. But when the opportunity came to this secular, imperfect person and homeschooler to do a blog tour with MotherTalk for Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion, I was hooked. Admittedly, I’m always a sucker for a free book, but this one called to me in a way that few non-fiction books call to me. When I received it and opened it, it was almost impossible to put down!

Parenting Beyond Belief is a collection of essays edited by Dale McGowan. It says in the introduction it is not a full-scale parenting book, but yet it still contains some of the parenting strategies I think are most important: caring for a baby/child’s needs, allowing yourself to say “I don’t know”, and respecting a child’s questioning nature.

I was (mostly) raised as a Unitarian Universalist, which is pretty close to being a secular church. I liked being able to say I went to church, and when I was an adult it felt good to say I was taking my kids to church. I love the sense of community, and the sermons that keep me thinking – not about a deity, but about current issues and philosophy rather than theology. My favorite UU congregations have welcomed questions and not had much to do with theology. It can be hard to find a fabulous congregation, though (but if you’re in Austin or Central Connecticut, let me know, I can give you a lead..), and so right now we are parenting without a congregation as backup. Plus we have many more Christian friends now than we ever have – and the girls have participated in several Christian homeschool offerings. I wanted to read about how to back up my feelings and beliefs, and how to discuss them with my children.

The reason I found Parenting Beyond Belief difficult to put down is that it is not a dry instructional book – rather, it is a series of personal essays and stories about how parents have dealt with different issues with their children – the Pledge of Allegiance, death, discussing what friends say about their religion, and much more. I completely agree that with discussion and by exposing children to different beliefs/ideas, the child’s mind will grow and hook onto the beliefs that feel right to them. However, you need to explain your beliefs/ideas to the children too – discussing in a way that sometimes feels uncomfortable (ie: decomposition after death). I am left with the feeling, after reading this book, that as long as I explain my morals, and am willing to answer even the hardest questions, my girls will be OK. Just as my girls love to try to figure out how a drill/VCR/computer/etc works, and want to take it apart to figure it out, they will do the same thing with beliefs – WHY is a great question. My girls love the scientific principle and proving things scientifically – good training for leading a questioning life.

As for the layout of the book, each essay is put into a category, and the categories serve as chapters. The essays are wonderful, and the book pulls out some fabulous quotes to put in the margins. There are point/counter-point essays (on Santa!), which leave you to decide for yourself. The whole book feels like a manual on how to make your own decisions – but a manual that you want to keep reading. If you are a parent leading a secular (or UU) life, and you want to help guide your children through their questioning, this book is a must-read. In addition, at the end of each chapter there are a lot of footnotes and additional resources for further reading/investigation. There are also some great discussions on finding and building community. If you want more ideas for answers, beyond the basic “do to other people what you want them to do to you” morals and ethics and caring – please go buy Parenting Beyond Belief or check it out from the library. It made me feel like I had a reference book that I could reach for when I feel overwhelmed by some of the quasi-religious questions in the house, and that’s a great feeling.