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This looks interesting - The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir
Twilight
No, it's not great literature and yes, it is that good.
Sheri Menelli is offering downloadable copies of her book Journey into Motherhood: Inspirational Stories of Natural Birth for free. Get your copy here.
Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters, by Bill Tancer.
Bill Tancer loves data, and in his job he gets to work with a lot of it. He works for Hitwise, a company that analyzes online information, particularly search terms and online traffic. One of the examples that he gives in the book is that searches for prom dresses spikes in early January. He could come up with no explanation for this data, so he spoke with insiders in the prom dress industry, who were equally as clueless - they target their marketing for April and May, since most proms take place in late May. Finally, after sharing his data at a conference, a magazine publisher clued him in to the fact that teen magazines publish prom fashion issues in late December - a fact that, I'm sure, the prom dress industry needs to know.
While this book is in the same category as The Tipping Point
Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More
I listened to the audiobook of Walsh's It's All Too Much
The Tatum Family blogger reviews several great books on pregnancy and childbirth.
Molly Reads reviews three books I own and have read (though not necessarily blogged about):
Childbirth Education: Practice, Research and Theory
Milk, Money, and Madness: The Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding
Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care
Audition: A Memoir, by Barbara Walters.
This book is really interesting, not so much because Barbara Walters is that fascinating - in fact, her constant low self-esteem and indecisiveness gets to be a bit wearing on the reader - but because she knew so many important, famous, and infamous people. In fact, I would suggest this book to someone older than me, as her career spans decades which I know little about, having been too young to experience them firsthand, and too old for them to get much coverage in history class.
Via Birth Pangs, a "laborious work of non-fiction" titled Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth
How to Write a Children's Book and Get It Published
So obviously this book is helpful if you want to write a children's book, but I also learned a lot about the history of children's literature and the publishing industry. There is also a helpful list in the Appendix of recommended children's books in each category which may be useful for parents.
In honor of National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day:
Death of a Dream: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Newborn Loss
This is a great book, aimed primarily at caregivers - doctors, nurses, family members, etc. It has details - written in easy-to-understand language, though - about the medical causes of miscarriage and stillbirth, including genetic factors, placental abnormalities, and so forth. Gives clear suggestions for support people as to what to say and how to act. This book would be helpful for parents, but I would most recommend it to doulas and nurses.
A Woman Doctor's Guide to Miscarriage: Essential Facts and Up-To-The Minute Information on Coping With Pregnancy Loss and Trying Again
, by Lynn Friedman, MD and Irene Daria.Goes into a lot of detail on the causes and prevention of miscarriage, particularly recurring miscarriage, with smaller chapters on grief and trying again. Has a neat section at the back of women's stories.
Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby
by Deborah L. Davis.Explores in detail the grief process and the emotions that parents may be going through. Focuses mostly on the emotional aspects with very little information about the physical process, and focuses primarily on stillbirth rather than miscarriage. Helpful for anyone, though.
Molly's Rosebush
, by Janice Cohn and Gail Owens.This is a really simply, touching book about miscarriage for children from the perspective of the older sister. It makes a great analogy that just as some seeds don't sprout, and some eggs don't hatch, some babies don't get to be born.
Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
This is a very interesting and enjoyable read about really, really rich people and how they live. It stands in sharp contrast to The Millionaire Next Door
As previously mentioned, I am reading through the Jack Ryan novels:
Red Rabbit
The Hunt for Red October
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
My HG-sister Diana of Birth at Home in Arizona writes a review of Managing Morning Sickness: A Survival Guide for Pregnant Women
Your Pregnancy Recovery Guide
It won't harm your baby if you cannot or choose not to breastfeed.
When you decide to discontinue nursing, you can either taper off gradually or stop cold turkey. Each way has its advantages.
So, while this book may be helpful for some moms, I can't recommend it without reservation.
Patriot Games
I think I'm going to read through all of Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, in storyline order. Need something to get me through this long, hot summer.
Read lately:
The Rookie Mom's Handbook: 250 Activities to Do with (and Without!) Your Baby
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
There are lots of books that tackle broad themes, that analyze the world from great remove. This is not one of them. Blink is concerned with the very smallest components of our everyday lives - the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress. When it comes to the task of understanding ourselves and our world, I think we pay too much attention to those grand themes and too little to the particulars of those fleeting moments. But what would happen if we took our instincts seriously?
Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise
, by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. - Written by sisters, this book (along with Suze Ormod's The Courage to Be Rich, and Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston) was one of the inspirations for The Fly Lady's system. I personally find the card file concept to be overwhelming, and not as thoroughly explained as could be, but I do use a tickler file for almost everything and heartily recommend it.The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
, by Alan Greenspan. I thoroughly enjoyed this book - as much as I read of it. At 544 pages, at a certain point I decided that it was just taking too long to read and I had other, more pressing things to do with my time. The first part of the book is an autobiography of Greenspan, but really it reads as a politico-economic history of the last fifty years. The second half of the book is a discussion of the current state of world economics. This book is fascinating, but not for everyone.
Please, somebody send this headline witter a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Girlfriend Accused of Stabbing Man with Scissors
sTORI Telling
Ok, I'm not a fan, but I checked it out because I can't resist a catchy title. Interesting (I read it in less than 24 hours), but not brilliant, much like Tori Spelling's acting.