I am just back from vacation where I had the chance to do a little (a very little) writing as well as catch up on some reading. I found a book in the remainder bin at my local grocery store and the premise really appealed to me. I thought it would make for some fun reading while away: "Realizing she needed to do serious work on her junk food/junk sex–littered lifestyle, Alter, a recently divorced thirty-seven-year old freelance writer, decided to spend each month of the coming year following the advice of a major women's magazine without question. She picked nine titles focusing on a how-to ethos more or less aligned with her own demographic:Elle, Marie Claire, O, Allure, Self, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, InStyle and Real Simple. Each month she'd work on a particular damage zone—diet, social fears, clothes, relationship snafus, cooking, sex, etc.—and follow the advice of her chosen magazine as earnestly as possible. Meanwhile, she'd also begun dating a new guy, which brought up relationship challenges her magazine mentors loved to address—spicing up the sex, learning to cook instead of eating out and deciding if his birthday present meant a marriage proposal was imminent. While she ends up feeling positive about the self-improvement her magazine experiment has brought, she knows if she hadn't been ready and willing to change, all the advice in the world wouldn't have helped."
Up for Renewal by Cathy Alter was a pretty personal, honest telling of a woman at a destructive crossroads in her life who turns to the advice in magazines to help her turn her life around. The book chronicles her year of self-discovery and, ultimately, her self-actualization.
I love books that have a happy self-help ending, and it was interesting to read how this particular author found hers.
xoxo,
bex
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