2 Essay Collections that Will Open Your Mind
Description: In this episode of On My Shelf, I’m sharing two essay collections that will open your mind.
Book links:
In Other Words: http://amzn.to/2e54WPQ
The Folded Clock: http://amzn.to/2dTNobU
How Simplifying Your Home Can Energize Your Life
Periodically throughout the year, Husband and I will walk around our house with a box or a trash bag, whatever is needed, and get rid of things. We do this because with six children, our house could easily become overwhelmed with toys, stickers, art supplies, rocks our sons decided to collect on the way home today, or, most recently, acorns that brought into our house the delightful acorn weevil larvae, hatched into our empty banana bowl. Good thing it was empty.
I’ve always been a person who feels stressed and suffocated in cluttered places. I like to have space. This is a personality thing, but psychology and neurology are both fields that have conducted studies about simplification. What research suggests is that when we simplify our homes and, hence, our lives, we find more energy, more pleasure and calmer attitudes. We also can create better without clutter. We can make decisions better without clutter. We can become better people without clutter.
There is this space on one of my kitchen counters, where my sons who go to school pile their school things. They have folders and papers and agendas and sometimes even random pencils, and, instead of putting these things in the designated places—because there are designated places—they pile them all into a precarious mountain that will most likely fall when one of them runs past it too quickly. Which is pretty much guaranteed in our home.
Every evening, when I’m done with my work, I have the pleasure of entering the kitchen, and the first thing I see is this pile. By this time, the pile has been knocked over several times, which means the papers are not so neatly stacked as they were, if they ever were, but are more like pinwheels, turned in ever direction. When I see this pile, my throat closes up a little. Clutter makes it hard to breathe.
But I’m not even just talking about the physical clutter of our lives. I’m talking about the schedule clutter of our lives, too. We live in such a fast-paced world, one where we find it necessary to do everything and be everywhere and keep going until we can’t go anymore. This is the road to success, right?
Wrong.
What simplification of our lives and homes does is it opens in us space enough to think more clearly and deeply, to spend more time discovering ourselves and the people around us, to sit outside on the back porch and linger over a dinner that all the kids complained about but ate anyway.
Our minds need space to consider important decisions in business and family and personal life. Our bodies need space to stretch out and move and not puncture our foot on an errant toy wherever we step (we’re still working on that one). Our lives need space to dream and create and grow.
[Tweet “Simplification of our lives gives us space to dream, create and grow.”]
Earlier this week, I was working on the layout of one of my books. I was struck by the small amount of white space—when you’re laying out text in a text-heavy book, you don’t want a whole lot of white space, because it represents wasted space, or, in other words, wasted paper. But as I stared at the little bit of white space in my book, I thought about the white space in our lives. We need that white space. We need it more than the text.
In the next few weeks, Husband and I will be doing another purge of our house, because our oldest has a birthday in a few days, and Christmas is coming up. Grandparents have a really hard time not buying toys for all of our boys. So old toys will be donated or thrown away if they have no more life left.
This is a sad thing (everybody will miss that Buzz Lightyear with a missing leg), but it is also a wonderful one. We get to teach our boys what it looks like to intentionally create white space in their lives. We get to demonstrate for them just how much simplifying our home and our lives can open wells of creativity, connection, passion, and wonder.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and my perspective on clutter. Every Friday, I publish a short personal essay that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
On Eliminating the ‘This is Terrible’ Voice
There are so many negative voices a writer must face and overcome. Today I want to talk about how writers can eliminate the “This is Terrible” Voice.
This is a persistent voice. That’s about the only good thing I can say about it, and only because persistent is a favorable quality, although not exactly favorable for an annoying voice that torments writers at every stage of their manuscript or creation development.
That’s right. This voice will show up at every stage of creation. It doesn’t matter if you’re almost done or if you’re only just beginning. This voice will, at some point or another, make its presence known.
What the “This is Terrible” Voice boils down to is what writers in the past have called internal editors. These are the editors that hound you when you’re in the process of writing. They dog your heels even if you can outrun them with your typing speed. There is always a voice in the back of your mind telling you this—whatever you’re writing—is terrible.
What’s important is that the voice remains in the back of your mind rather than in the forefront. So we’re going to talk about two different reasons why this voice can hinder even the most seasoned of writers.
The first is perfectionism. I suffer from this condition myself. I want everything I write to be perfect, the first time out. I’m not quite as bad as I used to be, because now I fully understand the process of writing and how perfection, if it can ever be achieved, is only reached in the revision. Usually multiple revisions.
But if you’re still in the beginning stages of your writing career, or you find that perfectionism is so loud and distracting that you can hardly write, here are three things you can do to eliminate the “This is Terrible” voice—or maybe just make it grow quieter:
1. Let a little of the pressure off.
I know this is easier said than done. We all want our writing to be flawless and wonderful. But the reality is that the first time we put it down on paper is only about one-tenth of the process. The sooner we can accept and understand that, the less likely that this voice will persist.
[Tweet “Writing a first draft is only one-tenth of the process. Revising is where the magic happens.”]
2. Remember that you are a growing writer.
The writer I am today is not the writer I was yesterday. I am better today. I will be even better tomorrow. This is true for you as well. So when perfectionism descends upon your mind, remember that of course this isn’t the best you will ever do. You are still learning, and you will always be learning. We continue learning and growing and improving our entire lives, which means no manuscript will ever be perfect.
Now, disclaimer here: Don’t let this “I’ll be a better writer tomorrow” keep you from sharing your work with the world right now. Don’t use it as an excuse. You will never share anything with the world if you’re always waiting until you become a better writer. This is a journey, not a destination.
3. Read a bad book.
There is nothing like reading a bad book—and there are plenty of these out there—to make us feel like maybe it’s okay if our book isn’t perfect. At least it’s better than this.
The second reason the “This is Terrible” voice comes around is because of our insecurity. Writers have so much insecurity, don’t we? I know I do. I read a really great book, and I think I’ll never be able to do that, which makes me, inevitably, look on my manuscript in progress as not a work of art, but trash.
And that, in turn, makes me a little angry. (It’s also not true that I will never be able to do that, because of the constantly growing thing. I may not be able to write a book exactly like that one, because I’m a different person. But I’ll be able to reach my own genius. And so will you).
Here are some ways you can eliminate the “This is Terrible” Voice when you’re feeling insecure:
1. Remind yourself, again, that it only gets better from here.
If you’re consistently practicing your writing and telling stories and crafting essays, you’re not going to get worse. You’ll be consistently improving. So that gives a little hope for today.
[Tweet “If you’re consistently practicing your writing, you’ll consistently improve.”]
2. Remember that it gets easier every time you do it.
This is for the insecurity about publishing or sharing work with the world. The first time I decided I was going to blog, my hand shook as it hovered over the publish button. I didn’t know what would happen. Would people read it? Would they respond? Would they think it was terrible? I almost didn’t publish it. I’m glad I did, though. I’ve been blogging now for four years, and I can say, with certainty, that every time I’m ready to hit the publish button, I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s gotten a whole lot easier.
3. Do your part to learn and grow.
I’m of the opinion that we should never, ever stop learning more about our craft and the mechanics around book writing and creativity and running a writing business. I’m constantly reading books and scouring web sites with valuable resources. I want to always be growing, because I don’t want to ever be satisfied with the skills I have at any moment in time. We can always improve. And our improvement will also lift our self esteem.
[Tweet “We should never, ever stop learning more about and growing in our writing craft.”]
Week’s prompt
Write as much as you can, in whatever form you want, on the following word:
Talking
2 Essay Collections that Will Open Your Mind
I read a wide variety of books, if you haven’t quite picked that up yet. Today I want to tell you about two essay collections I really, really enjoyed.
The first was Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words, which is a collection of essays that form the story of Lahiri’s journey into the Italian language. Her passion for the language and her drive to learn it moved her and her family to Rome for an immersion into the language. She begins the book by saying that she studied Italian after a trip to Florence in college. But she had never achieved mastery of the language. She’d never been able to let that go.
In Rome, Lahiri began to read and write—at first in her private journals, but later in short stories and essays—only in Italian. In Other Words is an autobiographical work that she wrote completely in Italian, so it is, at its heart, a story of one woman’s love and passion for a foreign language that culminated into a greater understanding of words.
But it’s not just Lahiri’s story about learning another language. It’s also a story about trying to find a place to fit in between cultures and selves. It is a masterful self-reflection on the art of reinvention.
Lahiri has a very poetic style, which made the essays flow smoothly and beautifully from one to another. Those who know Lahiri and her work will find this book different from her other books—but no less brilliant. She is one of my favorite short story writers, but now she has become one of my favorite essayists. The difference can be explained by her mastery of the Italian language. She wrote the book entirely in Italian and had someone else translate it into English—which gives the book a richer, deeper tone and voice and lyricism. Her writing is wise and truthful and lovely.
The second essay collection was not so much an essay collection as it was a diary. The Folded Clock, by Heidi Julavits was an intimate look into a regular woman’s year—or two. Julavits chronicled her daily life—but it wasn’t mundane or ridiculous. In fact, there were times that I laughed out loud and times that I got a little lump in my throat and times when I shook my head and said, “Yeah, me too.” Julavits talked about anxiety and women in writing and youth and aging and children and marriage. She wrote with intelligence, humor and, above all, deep honesty. She wrote about her struggles and about her silent thoughts and about her irrational worries that were so much like my own irrational worries. She framed the everyday with eloquent observations that spoke to the larger realm of life. It was charming and entertaining.
Some people might say that something as self-focused as a diary has no value at all. But Julavits proves this is not the case. She lays out her day-to-day activities but frames them within a larger context, and this is where the value in a diary is found. She doesn’t just report about what she did in the day, although each diary entry began with the same words, “Today I” but she takes her readers on a meandering path through her brain. What does it mean that she fought with her husband about his new diet? What does it mean that she does not like that particular coworker? What does it mean that she fears her daughter’s death when she hears an ambulance in her normally quiet neighborhood? And because she brings meaning to all of this, her readers not only connect with her everyday activities, but they connect to her musings.
My favorite parts of this book were the ones where Julavits talked honestly about the realities of parenting, but I also really enjoyed the courage it took to showcase fights with her husband and blunders she herself had made.
To demonstrate for you how Julavits took a situation and broadened its meaning, here’s an excerpt from the very beginning of the book:
“Today I wondered What is the worth of a day? Once, a day was long. It was bright and then it wasn’t, meals happened, and school happened, and sports practice, maybe, happened, and two days from this day there would be a test, or an English paper would be due, or there would be a party for which I’d been waiting, it would seem, for years. Days were ages. Love bloomed and died in a day. Rages flared and were forgotten and replaced by new rages, also forgotten. Within a day there were discernible hours, and clocks with hands that ticked out each new minute. I would think, Will this day never end? By nightfall, I’d feel like a war had been fought. I was wounded; sleep was not enough to heal me. Days would linger in my nerves, aftershocks registered on the electrical plain. Days made a physical impact. Days could hurt.”
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
This is What Happens When an Imperfect Woman Has a Son
I watch my boy from where I sit, his back curved just the littlest bit while his head hangs over the Star Wars book he’s reading, and I marvel at how his brow is missing the soft spot between eye and forehead, how his face has thinned out of the baby cheeks and chin, how his mouth moves in silent speaking while he is so lost in the world of a book.
My boy is no more a baby, but he will always be my baby.
In twelve days he will celebrate ten years since his birth day, that day when my body bore down and his body tore through, a day when boy became first son and girl-woman became Mama.
“I know how I was made, Mama,” he said three years ago on his day, when I set that birthday brownie-cupcake in front of him. “God took a piece of your heart and made me.”
He has a gift with words and truth and insight, this one, because he saw it exactly right. All my sons, all these babies, are a piece of my heart walking and jumping and racing around outside my body, and it’s scary and risky and agonizing to let loose those heart strings so they can learn to walk on their own, but this is how they settle into their becoming. This is how they transform into young men and young women. This is how they learn to live.
The love between a mama and her boy is wide and deep and strong enough to knock us all flat. What I have learned of love, what I have learned of grace and forgiveness and joy, what I have learned of life I could not have foretold that chilly night in November, four days before Thanksgiving that year.
I have never been the same.
///
He slid into the world late, when the sky was pitch black, and it was a perfect, by-the-books birth, with a perfect, rosy-cheeked baby and a perfect love all the way from the beginning. And then they released him to two young parents who didn’t know what to do with a seven-pound, fifteen-ounce baby except let him steal our hearts and wreck our existence.
We laid him in a Peter Rabbit bassinet that first night, after reading him a bedtime story, and then his daddy and I found sleep to the sound of a new being breathing just beside our bed.
I woke before he did for that early, early morning feeding, and he was still sleeping soundly, but the darkness, all above his bassinet, was moving, swirling, like something lived in the dark, something sinister and sharp and full of a death that did not steal breath but something greater—life. I picked up my baby boy and held him in my arms, and I prayed while he fed, and when he was done I held him and prayed some more, and when my arms got too tired to hold him anymore, I laid him in the bassinet, but I didn’t stop praying until the first shards of light reached right through my window, until that twirling dark lifted from the corners of the room, until the fingers that fought to reach an innocent baby’s form had completely disappeared.
It was my first all-night vigil for this boy whose name means Jehovah has heard.
It would not be my last.
///
A couple of years ago that feel like just a few weeks ago, I tossed and turned and prayed and listened and tried hard to find my way out of a confusion too dark to see through. My boy had spent three days in school suspension for choosing to act outside of who he is, and I was sick to my stomach and sick at heart, trying desperately to crawl my way toward understanding.
I tried to find the words that came so easily all those years ago, at my first all-night vigil, but the only words that would come sounded more like, Help. Please. Over and over and over again.
He was too big to hold in my arms all night, but I held him in my heart.
It happened only weeks after announcing we were expecting boy number six, when all those people filled a comment box with those words, I guess you’re just really good at raising boys, but here was my firstborn, the boy who first stole my heart, proving them all wrong.
There was more he had to teach me here, this child who has always been strong-willed and creative and a wild hurricane of love.
Sometimes our parenting journey takes us right up against the places where it feels like we don’t know what we’re doing and it feels like we are not enough or we were never enough or we will never be enough and it feels like we are failing in a midnight where all the stars have gone out. Sometimes we need to stall here and stay a while.
Because our children will show us the way back out.
///
The day before Thanksgiving that year he was born, we raced him to a children’s ER, because he hadn’t produced a wet or dirty diaper in twelve hours.
Your milk will come in, my mother had told me the day we brought him home and I could not even pump an ounce and could not say for sure that my baby was eating anything at all.
I sat in the emergency room, holding my 4-day-old, watching the way he slept so peacefully even though my whole body shook with the knowing that he could have died from his dehydration. They called us back and woke him with a needle, trying to find purchase in a tiny vein so they could hydrate him again with clear white fluid. He cried and screamed and writhed on a table while they poked the bottom of his foot and then his arm and then another hand and then, after all the others slid out of their grasp, the largest vein in his forehead.
I watched my baby, hooked up to a hydration drip, and I noticed the way those glassy eyes stared at the nurse whose face hung over him, how he searched the room for his mama when he realized her face wasn’t the right one, and I cried and cried and could not stop crying. My body had failed him already, four days in. I had failed him already, four days in.
It would take all the days after for him to set me straight. I had not failed him, not really, because I was still his mama, and that was all he needed. I loved him and he loved me and that was enough.
///
Love always has been and always will be enough.
Even on the days when strong will met frustration. Even on the days we yelled and said those words we didn’t mean. Even on the days we walked bruised and bloodied and broken for all the mistakes we made.
Every mistake, every failure, every less-than-ideal moment was remaking me. It was not just this boy who slid from a womb ten years ago. It was me, too.
A child, this child, and all his little brothers living inside my home have led me deeper into the way. They have drawn me closer to the Way. So it is not just his birthday we will celebrate in twelve days. It is my birth-anew day, too.
As hard as this journey has been, the ways he has taken apart all our parenting philosophies and rearranged them completely, the times we have walked shaky and unsure off the ledge into a boy-world, I would not trade it for all the ease and predictability and certainty in the world.
Sure, there have been days when he has raged and I have thrown my rage to meet his and we both bled through tears and words and wonderings, but I would not give away those days, those opportunities he has given me to practice asking forgiveness and limp toward a better vision for parenting, because they have taught me about humility and grace and freedom.
Sure, I used to watch the 2-year-old nursery where all those kids sat on their designated seats while my boy climbed onto the one he’d already chosen before the teachers pointed out a different one, and I would wonder how the other kids could be so obedient and well-behaved and calm, but I would not wish a perfectly obedient, minds-all-the-time child in his place, because he has taught me acceptance and joy and great, deep-down belly laughter.
Sure, there would be days when he walked out the door and threw back those words, I’m going to run away, and I wanted to let him, but the truth is I would chase him down to the ends of the earth, because he has taught me how to love in all the hardest places, and I DON’T WANT TO STOP LEARNING.
The only time my boy was ever easy was when he was a newborn baby, but I’m glad. What he has taught me in his challenge whispers truth about a mama’s strength, so much greater than she knows, and a mama’s hope, so much wider than she can see, and a mama’s great love, so much deeper than she could ever understand.
Thank God he is alive. Thank God he is mine.
Happy birthday, my sweet.
How to Battle the ‘Who Would Even Read This?’ Voice
Today I’d like to talk about how to battle the “Who Would Even Read This” Voice. This is a particularly annoying voice for those of us who write personal essays or memoirs, but it does occasionally hound fiction writers as well.
The origin of this voice is usually the fear that we are the only ones. This has been a persistent voice over the years for me, especially as our society has grown more adept at hiding the struggles that we have and pretending like we are perfect people. If we are authentically writing personal essays and memoirs, it will become clear very quickly that we are not actually perfect people. But there don’t seem to be many out there like us (there are).
The origin for fiction writers is a fear of failure, which leads us to a fear that we are writing a terrible book. (And trust me, we’ve all heard it at one time or another.)
I have three scenarios where this voice comes to visit (but there are likely more.)
Scenario 1: When a writer is undertaking the composition of a personal essay or a full-length memoir, which I’ve already mentioned.
We are terribly afraid that what we’re writing is just another notch in the minutiae of the Internet. Everybody has a blog, right? Everybody writes personal essays. Why in the world would someone want to read ours?
Well, if you’re crafting your personal essays and memoirs correctly, the answer is actually a lot of people. We like to read about people who are both different and the same as us. So either way, you’ve got an audience. But the trick is to thread your stories with some truth that could be universal to at least a small group of people. Thread your story with a why or a what was learned form the situation, and it becomes instantly better. Thread your story with emotion—which is universal—and you’ve risen above the minutiae.
To combat the voice in this scenario: Remember that sharing your experience is one of the most valuable things you can do.
In a world where humanity likes to hide the imperfect, those who show themselves to be exactly that (imperfect) will have a huge impact.
Scenario 2: When fiction writers get to the sagging middle of their story—or when they’re wrapping it up.
Sometimes the voice comes to visit because we’ve fallen out of love with the story we started to tell. Sometimes it happens because we’re just having a bad writing day and nothing we put down on paper really makes sense.
I believe it’s important to finish what you start, so when I get to the sagging middle, I try to power through. This is so I can show the voice we talked about last week that I can actually do this and finish something. The story can always be reworked. But a story that’s unfinished will remain unfinished.
To combat the voice in this situation: Give yourself permission to write badly.
Hey, you know what? We’re not going to crank out the perfect words every single day, not even when we’re on the final draft of our book. Some days we’ll write badly. There’s always tomorrow.
[Tweet “We’re not going to crank out the perfect words every single day. Some days we’ll write badly.”]
Scenario 3: Right before you’re going to hit publish.
You could be hitting publish on a blog post or on an entire book. You could be hitting “send” on an email to an editor or an agent. You could be showing your work to anybody in the world, and this voice will creep up behind you and ask its annoying question.
To combat the voice in this situation: Go ahead and hit publish. Go ahead and send it.
The wonderful thing about publishing and sending is that you get better the more you do it. So maybe this query letter isn’t as good as it will be after a few rejections. Maybe that blog post isn’t as perfect as it will be after someone writes a nasty comment. Maybe your book will undergo many different manifestations even after it’s published. The point is to be brave and hit the button anyway. Every time you show the voice that you will win this battle, it will get quieter.
Next week we’ll talk about the “This is Terrible” Voice that is closely related to this voice, so stay tuned for that.
Week’s prompt
Write what comes to mind when you read the following quote:
“We all live every day in virtual environments defined by our ideas.”
—Michael Crichton
4 Frightening MG Books that Will Keep You Up At Night
Lately I’ve been obsessed with the author Mary Downing Hahn. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth mentioning again—when I find an author I love, I will read everything she (or he) writes. It’s part of my reader’s manifesto. This is the case with Mary Downing Hahn.
I first read Hahn when I was a pre-teen and the book Wait Til Helen Comes was featured in a Halloween display in my middle school library. I enjoyed scary books as a kid, and this book was everything I loved about reading and horror and horrific imagination. I haven’t re-read this book yet, but it’s on my list.
Hahn has a whole stack of other scary books she’s written over the years. I sort of lost sight of her once I became an adult, but recently one of my boys asked me to start reading one of her books to him. This led me to checking out every single book of hers from our local library.
The most recent ones that I’ve read include The Old Willis Place, Dead Man in Indian Creek, The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall and Took.
Three of these are actually in the kid-lit horror section, so I’ll talk about them first. The Old Willis Place is a story about two children, Diana and Georgie, who live in the woods around the Old Willis Place. A new caretaker comes around and they start to play tricks on him, like they do to every caretaker. But this time the caretaker has a daughter, and Diana really wants to be her friend, but she can’t break the sinister rules that keep her and Georgie tied to the woods.
The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall is about a 12-year-old orphan, Florence, who goes to live with her uncle in a creepy old house where her cousin, who was exactly her age, died. Her cousin haunts the house and is not a nice ghost.
Took was about a creepy old ghost that haunted the woods around the home that Daniel and Erica’s parents buy. When Erica disappears, Daniel has to brave those woods to save his sister. This was probably the scariest one of them all.
The Dead Man in Indian Creek was about a boy, Matt, and his best friend, Parker, who discover a dead body while out camping in the woods. They try to solve who did it. This one was creepy in a different way and had quite a bit of mature content because it dealt with drugs and violence, but it was still just as enjoyable as the others.
What I love about Hahn is that she seems to have such an authentic connection with the middle grade voice. Hahn understands children. Even in the middle of scary situations, her characters come to life as innocent children, mostly. They have authority, of course, but it’s an authority that’s constantly trying to work out who they are and what they should do. Her narrators don’t know everything. So that immediately creates a tension with the reader—will the narrator figure out what’s going on? Will she make the right choice in letting a hostile ghost go free? Will he be brave enough to face a dangerous monster in the woods?
Hahn has written quite a few stories in the same genre, but they don’t feel the same. The characters are very much different from one another. Matt, in The Dead Man in Indian Creek, was a little humorous and self-deprecating, as we can see in this passage, where he’s making fun of himself for being a bit overweight:
“Forgetting my resolve, I looked at him. ‘What’s the matter with you,’ I said. Angrily, I broke the stick I’d been whittling and tossed it into the bushes. If we were going to have a fight, okay, I was ready. Let him sock me, I’d sock him back, and then I’d sit on him, my ultimate advantage, right?”
One of the other characteristics of Hahn’s books that make them come alive for me are the creepy descriptions of houses and woods and rooms. I’ve talked before about how some of the scariest things I read or watch are the things that use understatement and let the imagination fill in all the details. Hahn is a master of letting her readers do this for themselves. Here’s her description of the Old Wills Place:
“The old Willis place everyone calls it, though its true name was Oak Hill Manor. The front lawn was a field of knee-high weeds and thistles the size of small trees. Paint peeled from the front door and wood trim. The steps and porch had rotted long ago. Shutters hung crooked from the boarded windows; some had fallen off and leaned against the house. Slates from the roof littered the yard. Two tall double chimneys tilted to the right, giving the place an unstable look, as if it might topple over at any moment in a tumble of bricks.”
You can just imagine that haunted house and all the horrors within it, can’t you?
I will be spending the rest of this year going through Hahn’s backlist, which is quite extensive. Most of her stories are scary ones, but some are historical or mysterious. I’m sure I’ll love every one.
Be sure to visit my recommendation page if you’re interested in seeing some of my best book recommendations. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And, if you’re looking for some new books to read, stop by my starter library, where you can get a handful of my books for free.
*The books mentioned above have affiliate links attached to them, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on them and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them.
A Resource on How to Develop an Effective Life Plan
In this episode of On My Shelf, I’m talking about a book that will help you effectively plan your life—both the personal and the business side.
Book link:
Living Forward: http://amzn.to/2dQj14q
2 Kid-Lit Fantasy Books that Will Make You Want to Watch Movies
In this episode of On My Shelf, I’m talking about two kid-lit books that will make you want to watch some movies.
Book links:
Zodiac Legacy Book 1, Convergence: http://amzn.to/2dGY9eF
Zodiac Legacy, Book 2, The Dragon’s Return: http://amzn.to/2dqBV3X
The Isle of the Lost: http://amzn.to/2dQgqaU
Return to the Isle of the Lost: http://amzn.to/2dQgPd8
