Winner!! {Giveaway}

Congrats to Shawntae!!  You will love this book!

Send me your address & I'll send the book right out!!

Seriously one of my favorites!! {Giveaway}

I picked up Torn Apart a few weeks ago.  It's a biography of the life of a boy with Tourette's syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorder, among other issues.

Can you even imagine???


Years ago I worked at a counseling center (and loved it), so this type of stuff really intrigues me.

Here's the basics: it's a really easy read, understand, and pick up where you left off.  Most chapters are 2 pages long, so you don't really lose your place if you have to set the book down quickly.  And the story moves fast, without repeating itself.

It opens your eyes to something that most of us (including myself) have absolutely no understanding of.  The way he describes the tics... as a need to move his body in such a way that only moving his body that way will satisfy...it's captivating.

The story goes from the time he was 4 and first started showing symptoms, all the way through high school, and all the nitty gritty stuff in between.  Honestly, I was shocked at a lot of it-- it was really eye opening!

Want to read it?  I'm giving it away!!  Leave a comment (make sure I have info on how to get in touch) and I'll pick a winner on Sunday.  :)

Winner!

And the winner of the latest book giveaway is....

Keren!  I know where you live... and where you work... so I think I'll find a quick and easy way to get this book to ya.  ;)

For the rest of you, here's my the review of this book.  And a neato fact?  The author was mostly responsible for the whole pink-ribbon-for-breast-cancer thing.

Oh that little thing?


Yeah... that's pretty freakin' cool!

Book Review & Giveaway: 'The Bag Lady Papers'

I have another book giveaway for you!  This is a memoir of yet another unique character.  Here's a quick overview of the author, ripped straight from Wikipedia because they put it so clearly:


Alexandra Penney is an American author best known for her 1982 best-selling book How to Make Love to a Man who was also an editor at Self magazine and has been credited as one of the creators and popularizers of the pink ribbon as a symbol for awareness of breast cancer.

No joke, this woman has lived a successful life!  And yes, you read that right... she was the one with the idea of the pink ribbon for breast cancer.  She also helped start the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

But that's not what this book is about.  It's about how she invested all of her money with Bernie Madoff and, well... that didn't end so well.

Imagine you are successful and you've worked your butt off to be where you're at.  You've saved your money well and you live off of your savings so that you can spend your time doing what you love (in her case, making art and photographs).  Awesome, right?  Yeah... she lost all of her savings because they were with Madoff.

Sure, she had 2 houses, but in the middle of an economic meltdown, that doesn't do much good.  This book is about her journey from freaking out (Hello!  I would be too!) to being okay and moving on with life.

So who wants this book?  Just leave a comment on this post and you're automatically entered!  I'll chose a winner randomly on Thursday, March 10.

Good luck!

And the winner is...

So I know today is the Super Bowl and I'm almost required to blog about it, but I'm not much of a football fanatic.  So there... I mentioned the Super Bowl in today's post!

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I was so excited about my first giveaway!  It's something I'd always thought about doing, but I don't really make anything and it's kind of hard to give away a photo session to people across the country.

So I decided that since I read books and love them, but don't really ever go back and re-read them, I might as well give them away to someone who will use it!  Keeps my house from being cluttered, too.

I also loved Jennifer Lathan's idea of passing the book along, so I'm writing a little bit on the inside of the book with my email address so people can continue to read and pass along the book if they so choose.

Without further ado (don't I sound so official?)... the winner is...

Melanie Reller!

Melanie is a talented photographer in Kentucky-- you can check out her latest and greatest here!

Congrats, Melanie!  I will send your book out this week!

I'm almost finished with my second book for this year, so I'll be posting about it as soon as I'm done.

First Book Review & Giveaway!

A few weeks ago I got a wild hair and ended up at Barnes & Noble.  After spending about 2 hours reading the back or inside cover of every book I saw, I finally landed on two books.  The goal?  To start reading!

Okay, I know that sounds funny, but after college, something inside me said there's so much more to do than read.  And as bad as it sounds, I don't regret it.  Life is happening every minute of every day and I don't really want to pass it up with my nose stuck in a book!

Don't get me wrong, I read, just not a ton.  It may take me months to go through a book.  But when we moved to Virginia, I have a bit more free time (it is nice!) and I figure it's not going to hurt my intelligence to read, so why not?  It may even help with with the whole slow-down-and-be-still thing.  I'm a bit rusty on that as well.

The first book I chose to read was 'Thin is the New Happy' by Valerie Frankel.  It's her memoir related to body image issues she's had since a kid.

I was always that kid- not overly fat or anything, but always seeing a distorted body image.  And honestly, I still struggle with it today.  So that's why I picked this book up.

In short, she's a chronic dieter and it's her journey to being happy with herself.  I was pleasantly surprised that the things she did to overcome her body image issues were out of the norm.  It's a breath of fresh air from the "I talked to my counselor and started writing my feelings down."  No, it's way deeper than that.

She's a very imaginative writer, but doesn't lose you in her creative add-in stories.  Humorous.  And she uses a lot of big words.  Like, BIG words.  As in, I was a professional writing major and I didn't even know these words existed.  But it doesn't get in the way of the flow of the book, and you won't be running to your dictionary for the definition because you'll just want to keep on reading.

Bonus: She has lived a pretty cool life- cool jobs (for the wanna-be writer in me) and a dynamic home life, to say the least.

Overall, I'd give it an A.  I read through it quickly, loved her intelligence level, and was able to relate to her even though our stories aren't identical.  It was a good read.

And now here's your chance to read it!  Leave a comment on this post (make sure there's a way I can get in touch with you- whether it links up to your blog or however you want to handle that).  On Friday, February 4th I'll pick a winner at random and mail it out to you!  Good luck!