Yes please

Today I finished (oh, and started) Amy Poehler's new book, Yes Please. I adored it. She is sassy and wise, and I defy you to read this book without wanting to become her best friend. A position that has already been taken. By Tina Fey. Sigh.

Here are a few of my favorite parts.

On writing:

"You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. That is what I know. Writing the book is about writing the book."


On career:

"Too often we are told to visualize what we want and cut out pictures of it and repeat it like a mantra over and over again. Books and magazines tell us to create vision boards. Late-night commercials remind us that "anything is possible." Positive affirmations are written on our tea bags. I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it. Treat your career like a bad boyfriend."


On work:

"You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look."


What are you reading? Anything you'd recommend?

Taschen

Do you guys know about Taschen, a German publisher of amazing coffee table-worthy books on art, design, and travel? The Strand has a special mezzanine devoted to Taschen books, and whenever I browse I always want to take them all home with me (it's probably a good thing I don't actually live here). They're mostly pretty affordable (except when they're not), and they're beautiful.

When we were in Brussels, we happened to pass a Taschen store, and CM and I were mesmerized by the variety of books. I'm dying to visit all the stores. Don't you love bookstores?

If I was planning a Taschen Christmas, here's what I would buy my loved ones:


For Mama Bossy:

Design for Obama
A collection of posters from the 2008 campaign.











For Papa Bossy:

Early Travel Photography
The photographs of Burton Holmes, who took incredible travel photos at the beginning of the last century.









For CameraMan:

Audrey Hepburn
CM's favorite.












For myself:

4 Cities
Pocket-sized guides to Paris, New York, London, and Berlin. Why don't I own this already?

Which ones would you put on your wish list?

Of-the-month

It is practically impossible to choose presents for my mother. She doesn't wear things like scarves or jewelry. She's only mildly excited by bath products. Her cupboards are full to bursting with dishes and kitchen gadgets. For birthdays and Christmases, I tend to fall back on the standard books, CDs, and DVDs, with the occasional tickets to something thrown in.

Last Christmas I tried a variation. I gave her one book and told her it was the first monthly installment of a Book-of-the-Month Club. There's no formal club, of course—I've just been sending her a book I like once a month through Amazon. We tend to have a lot of the same tastes in books, and I love choosing what to send each month. Sometimes we talk about what we've read and sometimes we don't, but I like knowing that we have these shared books in common.

I'm enjoying my DIY Of-the-Month Club, but I'm intrigued by these other, more organized clubs as well—perfect for gifting (or treating yoself).

Birchbox: For $10 a month, you get a box of deluxe samples of beauty products every month. Perfect for the girly girls in your life.

Bacon of the Month: Yes…just…yes. Perfect for the bacon lovers in your life. So, everyone.

Mistobox: Delivers special artisan coffee samples every month. Seems like a good way to enable the caffeine addicts in your life.

Harry & David: The original Fruit-of-the-Month Clubs. I used to ask for this every year for Christmas, and every year my mother would remind me that I am never anywhere for 12 months straight to receive crates of fruit. (This is, oddly, the same argument CM gives for not letting me get a kitten.) So practical. Sigh.

Three great books about food

My interests/obsessions tend to go in phases, taking my reading habits right along with them. This interest in food and how it intersects with health seems to be lasting longer than usual. Should your interests follow suit, may I recommend the following:

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

This is the book that started it all for me, and I can say without an ounce of hyperbole that it was life-changing. We have completely transformed the way we eat (with the exception, of course, of a couple pastry-filled European months) due in large part to this book, and both of us feel (and look) better as a result. Read it. You'll like it.

Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach

It's no surprise that I love this cookbook, since I adore the blog of the same name and often find the best recipes there. The recipes are organized narratively, and the book is full of no-nonsense tips and tricks to get dinner on the table more often. This will be our go-to for a very long time. 

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler

I just finished reading this book on the plane to Houston, and I found it charming and immensely inspiring. It's written almost entirely in prose (and what beautiful prose it is) with some recipes thrown in, but the book is itself one big recipe for how to cook at home easily and well. The minute I finished it I wanted to start it again.

What's inspiring you these days?

Bossy Book Club

My first week at Glyndebourne, I was sitting alone at an outside table at Bill's in Lewes, basking in the sunshine, devouring a caesar salad, and reading the Elizabeth II biography on my Kindle. A man stopped in the street, pointed his index finger at me, and said, "Shame on you! Get a real book!" In shock, I stammered a couple sentences in my defense, but he was having none of it. He kept arguing and threw in a few more "Shame on yous" for good measure before leaving me to my dinner and my reading.

What can I say? I love real books in my house, but when I'm traveling I prefer my reading material digital. Shame on me.

Inspired by Tara, I thought I'd share a few exceptional books I've read this summer. Don't worry—all of them are available in non-digital form, in case you want to avoid being shouted at in the street.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
This lush novel somehow manages to be both epic and immensely personal. It tells several intertwining stories, beginning in 1962 on the Italian Riviera and traveling to modern-day Hollywood. The compelling story is exquisitely written. It's the one I'll be talking about to everyone I know. Highly recommended.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
A young wife goes missing on her 5th wedding anniversary in this thriller narrated by both the husband and the wife. The pacing and plotting are exciting and the characters are completely fascinating. You might stay up way too late reading this one.

The Mansion of Happiness by Jill Lepore
This is a sprawling non-fiction book that explores all stages of life through specific historical accounts. Which sounds really boring, and I'll admit it took me a chapter to get into it (the book starts with a too-long explanation of the Mansion of Happiness board game), but once I did I found it  totally riveting. Each chapter is a story unto itself, so I recommend reading it in small chunks over a longer period of time. As a bonus, you'll have lots of new trivia to break out at dinner parties.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) is possibly the funniest person on Earth, so of course I bought her book in hardcover so I can read it many times and maybe loan it out to people when they're sad. I laugh out loud pretty much every time I read her blog, and her book did not disappoint. This is not the book to read while riding public transportation, unless you want people staring at you while you unsuccessfully try to stifle your snorts of laughter.

What have you loved reading lately? I'm always looking for more recommendations.

Seven months in (and counting)

I read a lot of books about marriage. Some are scientific, some are anecdotal, some are gimmicky, some assume if I'm reading that my marriage is already in trouble (and it's my parents' fault), some are optimistic, some are fatalistic, some prompt me to start conversations with CM, and some get tucked away in the back of my brain for the future.

Whenever I drop this into a conversation, long-married people seem to find it universally hilarious. The idea that reading about marriage might help me to preemptively protect my own prompts much eye-rolling and wry chuckling. Maybe it's evidence of my youth and naïveté—I'm fairly confident that in my parents' entire 38-year marriage (yes, 38!) neither of them has ever picked up a marriage self-help book. But then again, they've also never experienced the shockingly swift unraveling of the one relationship they thought was indestructible. I have. I know that fragile sometimes masquerades as strong, that red flags can look like good omens from close up, that "till death do us part" does not guarantee lifetime happiness. I know, and CM knows, too.

So I read. I read now, while we're solid, loving newlyweds, in the hope that I'll build habits and patterns that will carry us through someday in the future when we're shaky and hurting. I read about other marriages, and in so doing I spend time analyzing ours—what's great about us, what we could do better.

Lately I've been worried that we don't spend enough time really talking to each other. We talk on the phone multiple times a day, of course, particularly when we're apart, but those conversations mostly consist of stories from our days, work talk, to-do lists, etc. During our engagement, we worked our way through a book of 100 questions to discuss before marriage (in lieu of pre-marital counseling, which is hard to do when the bride and groom are on separate continents), which helped us get to know each other even more deeply than we had in the first three years of our relationship. Now our conversations are mostly pedestrian, and although I treasure the day-to-day I also wish for the occasional profundity.

Yesterday over breakfast CM started telling me all about a book he's reading, called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. He's finding it fascinating, and I realized as he was telling me about it that I didn't really know exactly what makes someone an introvert or an extrovert. CM has always identified himself as an introvert, but I didn't think I could even accurately define the word. This led us down an internet rabbithole which ended with both of us taking one of those personality tests online, a short version of the Myers-Briggs. I had taken one in college, I know, but I couldn't for the life of me remember the result. Well, according to the test (and the one we took after that, just to be sure), it turns out we're both introverts. In fact, we both got the same type: INTJ (that stands for introversion, intuition, thinking, judging—you can read a description of the type here).

I, for one, was shocked that we were identified as the same type. I've always thought we were similar as in compatible—we like the same stuff, we get along easily—but that we processed and reacted to things totally differently. After a thought-provoking discussion of our results, I'll admit that I seem to have gotten that wrong. We are so much more similar at our cores than I thought we were, and though it might seem silly to take an internet quiz this seriously, I am finding great joy in discovering our alikeness. This one conversation, simply illuminating something that was already true, has caused a real tilt in perspective.

So I think I'll keep reading, and analyzing, and asking questions, and demanding truth and depth. And though it may be naïve of me, I'll continue to be delighted when I discover just how much I don't know.


Interested in some light marital reading material? Might I suggest:

No Cheating, No Dying: One couple tackles a year-long marriage improvement project. Here's a teaser.

Spousonomics: All about using economic principles to make marriage better and more efficient.

Committed: An exploration of the history of marriage by the author of Eat, Pray, Love.

In which I come very late to the party

Saturday night I was hanging out with the Lonely Wives Club and we were discussing books, like you do. I just finished State of Wonder (good, but not as good as some other Patchett) and was looking for something new to read. Both of my girlfriends recommended The Hunger Games, and it turned out one of them had the first book in her car, so I took it home with me at the end of the night.

This morning, I finished…the THIRD book of the trilogy. Good lord, people, those books are thrilling. When I got to the end of the first book, there was no question of taking a break, or pacing myself for the next one. The second book was downloading onto my Kindle immediately.

For whatever reason, I've been avoiding these books. I think in my head I was grouping them in with the Twilight books, which I have absolutely no interest in reading (although, given this recent turnaround, ask me in a month). But The Hunger Games books are extraordinary. With superb plotting and fascinating characters, it's thought-provoking, suspenseful stuff. And even though it's supposedly written for young adults, the writing is excellent. So many times when reading a book with a great plot, I get distracted by clunky writing and inelegant turns of phrase (I'm looking at you, Stieg Larsson), but that's not a problem here.

My point being, if you're one of the few also coming late to this party, don't wait any longer—read these books! (You might want to clear your schedule for a day or so.)

Bossy Book Club

I've been reading up a storm lately, mostly in the bath. As exciting as life is these days, sometimes it's nice to dive into the lives of characters who aren't planning a wedding or a transcontinental move (oops, spoiler alert… more on that soon, I promise). Here are my recent faves.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
I love World War II stories, but most of what I've read and seen has dealt exclusively with the European War. This is a biography of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who joined the Air Force in 1941 and ended up a POW in Japan. This was a recommendation from a friend, and I'm so glad I listened. Zamperini's life story is epic and inspirational, and this book was impossible to put down.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson
Larson wrote one of my favorite books of all time, The Devil in the White City, so I bought his new book (another World War II-related read) as soon as it came out. He has a talent for making non-fiction as compelling and readable as any novel. This one is a portrait of Berlin in the years leading up to the war, through the eyes of the bookish American ambassador (as well as his slutty daughter, who was, um, "special friends" with half the upper-level Nazis). I loved it.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
I picked this one up because it's on this list, which I'm reading for #76 on the Bossy List. This book reads like a classic, which I guess it is, although I have to admit I had never previously heard of either the book or its author. It's a small story, but ambitious in its own way. I was fascinated by the quirky philosopher of a narrator, and it felt like the kind of book I might return to every few years. I'm glad I discovered it as an adult instead of being assigned to read it in school.


I'm stocking my Kindle for the first week of the honeymoon, which we are planning to spend in unending laziness. What should I make sure not to miss?

Nerd alert

I have something terribly important to discuss with you.

Have you seen this?

Apparently J.K. Rowling is making a big Potter-related announcement at 12 noon London time on Thursday, June 23. The publisher says it's not a new book (BOO!), but there are plenty of theories to go around. I particularly like this one.

What do you think? What will it be? And will you get up early on Thursday to find out?

I am somewhat unreasonably excited about this. Don't judge.

Bossy Book Club

Since the show opened, I've had far more of this lovely thing called time. Also energy. I've been experimenting with various ways of using up said time and energy, and what's been appealing to me the most lately has been reading, preferably while eating soup. (One advantage a Kindle has over a regular book is that soup can very easily be cleaned off the screen. I'm not even joking.) I've read a few books recently that I have adored, and I thought you might like to know about them so that you can read them, too.

Just Kids by Patti Smith
I'll be honest with you, I wasn't completely clear on who Patti Smith was when I started reading this book. I had a hazy "rock legend" impression of her, and a quick perusal of her Wikipedia site revealed that I had actually heard some of her songs, but I wasn't driven to read her book because of a great love of her music or anything. A friend I trust recommended the book, so I bought it. And just loved it. I was inspired by how generous Smith was to the people she wrote about, and so forgiving to all who have crossed her path. She's also a simply beautiful writer. Read this, I think you'll be inspired, too. Also, here is a picture of her at Comte Ory opening. How cool is that?

Spousonomics by Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
This book sounds like it's going to be dry and boring; it's all about using economics theories to improve every aspect of your marriage. It turned out to be completely engaging, fascinating, and most of all, funny. Also, we (CM read it too) learned things that will have actual practical applications in our marriage, like how to divide household chores, and how to, er, keep the passion alive, if you know what I mean. You can also learn lots on the Spousonomics blog.

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton
Oh, I love memoirs. I will probably never write one, due to my happy, uneventful childhood and subsequent happy, uneventful adulthood (also because I have a terrible memory and never kept a journal), but reading them gives me great joy. And this is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. The storytelling is gripping and the pacing is impeccable. I want to visit the author's restaurant, but mostly I just want to be best friends with her. (Gabrielle, call me.)

What books have you enjoyed lately? I'm always taking suggestions.

Incidentally, I think I can cross off a list item!

89. Get in the habit of reading non-fiction.