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An incredible memoir and an incredibly positive story to read, I NEVER PROMISED YOU A GOODIE BAG:  A Memoir of a Life Through Events – the Ones You Plan and the Ones You Don’t, is also a self-help book for recovery.

All of us experience trauma and tough problems to solve and most often in hindsight these events help us learn how to cope and survive.  Jennifer Gilbert has taken a horrific event from her 20s and actively worked at recovery and finding happiness and joy in her life.  It was no small thing.

“Even in my fog of disbelief, I recognized that no one actually knew what I had gone through.  I had been picked – targeted, followed, and attacked with the express intention of murder.  It hadn’t been an accident.  And while I was being almost killed, I’d also been abandoned.  And altered, I’d learned that the universe had nothing good in store for me.  I’d been marked with a big V for Victim, and if something so terrible could happen to me once, why couldn’t it happen again?”

Gilbert went ahead with doing the work she enjoyed the most.  She was a very social person and had been busy organizing parties in her backyard and the neighborhood children into a summer circus.  And it was the focus on her work, celebrating life,that helped her recover and move forward.  She kept giving the gift of celebration to all the people and events that she brought to her business and then with the help of counseling and love of her family she was able to find her own celebration of her life and herself; discovering a treasure chest of joy.

Jennifer Gilbert’s website is  www.savethedate.com She is an events planner in NYC and she has won awards for her organizational skills, business management and entrepreneurial endeavors.  She is a type A and I think maybe even a bit hyperactive. She practices taking a relook and altering her ideas and thinking. I think my daughters would really benefit from reading her words and wisdoms.

I was incredibly moved by the following quotes, because it was similar to the traumas that I experienced over my childhood and 20s.   Deep down I have had to confront my feelings of unworthiness and shame, and I wonder why people feel so free to attack me and what it is that brings out their hostile, competitive, and negative junk.   Those feelings of what did I do to attract this to me are explored in depth.

“and if my life wasn’t a right, I concluded that it must be a reward, something that had to be earned.”

“For years after, I would work harder than I’d ever worked before just to prove myself worthy to others – to bosses, to clients, to men, to the universe.”

“ …no one who didn’t know better ever would have guessed the wells of shame that lay beneath.”

There is an unlimited amount of joy and we all have very different routes to find our happiness, but we must find and discover our own path and what makes us happy.

I was delighted to discover Gretchen Rubin’s dust cover comment.  A great recommendation. I have read Rubin’s newsletter/blog and followed her for number of years now.  Rubin wrote THE HAPPINESS PROJECT.

I could not put this book down – it is a positive, funny, and surprising honest memoir and I think you will enjoy it very much.  This book spoke loudly to me.

“We do not think our way into new action, we act our way into new thought.” ~Anonymous

I received a free hardbound copy of this book from TLC online book tours and Harper Publishing.  Thank you for the opportunity to review I NEVER PROMISED YOU A GOODIE BAG.

This book is being offered at a reduced rate at Amazon and you could win a free copy from this site for a comment or a review of this book. You can win a free copy of the book for a review on Powell’s also.

If you purchase anything from Amazon or Powell’s from this site, I will receive a few blossoms in my bouquet.  Thank you.  Donations also welcomed.

Related Reading:
The Gods Of Heavenly Punishment
Dual Inheritance
Margaret Fuller
The Clover House

I finished reading this book with a longing for more and then a hearty laugh.  OUR LOVE COULD LIGHT THE WORLD is a delightful group of short stories all about one family.  I am sure you know this family the Dugan’s, because there is a family like this in your neighborhood.  You know the one with 5 children; never do any yard work or house maintenance and their dog and cat poohs in your yard!

OUR LOVE COULD LIGHT THE WORLD is not a knee slapping kind of humor, although I did a few very discreet chuckles along the way which were matched with a deeper tad of sorrow page by page.  Just about nothing went quite right for this family as each story unfolds a part of their lives and realities.

I could spell out the characters for you, but I just think you would prefer I did not, as each person has their own chapter and problem to overcome and explore.   The characters are all stuck in Dunstan, New York and cannot seem to see further then their own experience.  The children take care of themselves and most of the time dear old dad too.  Mom does it all, including work, until she leaves and takes the children into a moneyed environment, in which they all, including Dad find benefit.

Aunt Patty is the only one to escape but then again not for long, as she must repeatedly return from Montana to pull the family into a semblance of organized and functional.  She has an undaunted spirit and a bit of plan for everyone along the way, and most often does the right thing for the right person, though maybe not always intentionally.

Anne Leigh Parrish, the author, in the handout is described as being a person who LOVES to write and it does show in this delightful book.  I found a precision in her words and a connection between the stories which was tight, full and precise.  I got to do my own visualizations, when the individual’s story presented, I found what I had imagined from the words to hold true to form in the chapter.  Parish has won an amazing number of writing awards and hails from New York, Colorado; presently Seattle. Her style is being compared to a number of the Best Seller Writers, and yet none of them have such quirky, realistic characters and none of those books made me feel like this was the family down the street.

The Dugan’s have a very strange way of expressing it, but this book is a true love story and I can only hope that my actual neighbors have at least some of their loving spirit behind all the swearing and I am sure alcohol consumption.
The reader will find a heartfelt, chuckling, calamity filled experience in OUR LOVE COULD LIGHT THE WORLD.

 Once again I want to say thank you to TLC online book tours and the Anne Leigh Parrish for sending me an early copy.  The e-reader copy is only $4.99 and the paperback is just $8.99 so the author is giving the reader quite a deal on this one.   A Kindle copy will be given away to a good comment.

Put this one on your list, you will be very happy that you did.

If you purchase anything from Amazon or Powell’s from this site, I will receive a few daisies in my basket.  Thank you.  Donations also welcome.

Related Reading:
What the Zhang Boys Know
Olive Kitteridge
Half As Happy Stories
In The Garden of Stone

One of the members of my book group asked us to read THE LEMON TREE for our summer gathering.  I am very glad that I was able to pull this book off my own personal library shelf, because it has been my intention to read this book for a long time.  The subject matter of the book has been a part of the news cycle for my whole life.  It is about lots of wars and about a great deal of struggle which is no closer to resolution or consensus and is still curled up in resistance and teaching the next generations new levels of hate and objectification.

I wanted to know more about Israel and Palestine and the human story of this conflict.  Tolan has created a remarkable history lesson based on an Arab man and a Jewish woman who both lived in the same house with a LEMON TREE in the back courtyard.   Bashir was born in this house that his father built and as a boy his whole family was told they must leave and were expelled from this home and not allowed the right of return.  Dalia was a baby coming to a new homeland from Bulgaria and her family was assigned this house which became her home.  Bashir and Dalia meet at their home and Dalia opens the door to a friendship and understanding.

The story is also a who’s who of all the individual names and countries involved in this conflict from Hitler to Putin and Cheney.   It highlights the troubles of the entire region and one can begin to understand the role of the ARAB SPRING experience of the last few years.  There is perspective and insight which can layer the pieces of history and begin to put the whole conflict into a container tossing the pieces around until the different outcomes are revealed.   The basic story is about little boys throwing rocks at soldiers with machine guns and tanks and how terrorism is just moving through the world at large, how it is a global problem festering within the minds of each new child born today.  It is now a central part of our cultural DNA.  The child who was tricked into playing with a bomb concealed within a toy deception has translated that explosion into each of us, we all know that loss.

I purchased this book because I felt I needed to understand.  My daughter’s friend Rachel http://www.rachelcorrie.org/   was killed in this conflict, when as a college student she went to help with the olive harvest and tried to stop a Palestine home from being destroyed by a bulldozer and was crushed to death, saving the lives of the sleeping family in the home.  The BUSH/Cheney/ Rumsfeld response to her parents, “No American was killed in this incident.”

THE LEMON TREE is about how we become polarized in our positions and when this happens there is no progression – all forward motion is stopped until the pressure builds and we have explosive responses. This is the behavior our political parties are exhibiting currently here in the United States and boldly within the Middle East; a stop action scenario to say the least.

Sixty years of loss.  THE LEMON TREE is about seeing the reality, accepting the opportunity and moving forward; understanding and ending terrorism.  THE LEMON TREE is an excellent look at history unfolding and repeating before our eyes.

If you purchase anything from Amazon http://www.amazon.com or Powell’s http://www.powells.com from this site I will receive a few beans in my bucket.  Thank you.  Donations also welcomed.

Related Reading:
Mug Vs. Heart 
The Gods of Heavenly Punishment
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena 
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
Margaret Fuller

A fun and interesting read was HE’S GONE by Deb Caletti.   It was fun because the location of the story was Seattle and I just so enjoy visiting Seattle and I recognized many of the sites.  It was also fun because I have always thought living on a houseboat on Lake Union would be fabulous and this story did not disappoint at all.   The story is interesting because of the secrets and mystery to be solved which does keep one guessing right until the very end.

After a party and too much to drink, Dani, a web designer/marketer, wakes up to discover her husband is not beside her.    Not to worry, he probably just went to get them coffee and enjoy a morning walk.  When the day stretches on she is still not worried, because the party was a celebration at his office and maybe he was there working on some new ideas or getting things back in order; and yet, there is no answer on his cell phone?

Then comes the realization that her husband is gone and all the processes to locate him and figure out what has happened begin.  They have both been married before so there are all the dynamics of the ex’s and the step’s to take into consideration.  HE’s GONE contains some of the best hooks for a story I have read in a long time and it was only after proceeding further I could recognize them.  I got very involved in the aspects of relationships and marriage that Dani was busy analyzing and contemplating. She makes some valid, universal realizations about marriage and reality of involvement come alive.  Did Dani drive him away or is there some kind of foul play?   What does one learn about the self and each other when one is in a relationship?

“Deb Caletti is the author of nine highly acclaimed young-adult novels, including The Nature of Jade, Stay, and Honey,Baby,Sweetheart, a finalist for the National book award and the PEN USA Award. She was nominated for the Washington State Writers Award. She lives with her family in Seattle.”

I am sure my book groups would enjoy reading HE’S GONE.   I am quite sure that HE’S GONE would intrigue an amazing discussion about marriage and divorce.

I received an Advance copy of this book from TLC books and Bantam Books publishing and I thank them both for the opportunity to read this book and share my review.

If you purchase anything from Amazon or Powell’s from this site, I will receive a few beans in my bucket.  Thank you.  Donations also welcomed.

Related Reading:
A Dual Inheritance
The Clover House
The Somebody Who
The Love Ceiling