Winning From Within by Erica Ariel Fox

LIFE is a series of negotiations. From insignificant daily decisions to major life choices, you negotiate every time you aim to persuade, argue over a decision or resolve a conflict. THe most important negotiations are the ones we have with ourselves..so says author Fox.
I found Fox to have a very interesting philosophy regarding the struggles a person has trying to make a decision, or decide to leave a relationship,  or take a new job..or even to take a stand on an issue. I had read a similar book long ago about all the different characters that reside in a person. Author Fox describes them as four negotiators..the Warrior, the Lover, The Dreamer and the Thinker. At any given time any one of these four can be dominant and react to a situation a person is facing.
I know you have met a person who is brusk, a take charge kind of person, one who dominates in a meeting or at work. This person operates through the warrior negotiator, which is fine as long as it is not the ONLY negotiator they use. We all have met people who are dreamers or brainiacs or over thinkers, or bleeding hearts..we all have these qualities inside..they all operate within us, we should be looking for a balance of all four according to Fox. Now, if this all sounds like psycho babble, trust me , it isn't and you will get it when you read the book. I have found this new insight helpful and plan to re-read the book, so that I can make some changes. I found that I lean more toward the dreamer & the lover when I need to make decisions and I need to add a good dose of thinker and warrior to my mix.
If you are looking for a good constructive read for October, this is it :)

pur minerals Correcting Primer

Another great  purminerals  product to talk about ! I have been lucky enough to try a few of these awesome skin care products and have added them to my skin care regimen.
I sampled the Redness Reducer primer and was so pleasantly surprised that this green (yes, green) tinted primer glides on like velvet and color corrects my red spots. I have had more compliments on my skin in the last couple of weeks and I have only added the primer to my daily routine, so I know what is giving my the glow!
Why use a primer? The function of a primer is to prepare your skin for make up. A primer also helps your make up last longer and helps to conceal your pores and imperfections. It creates a barrier between your skin and make up, helping my foundation do it's job.
After moisturizers soak in, I smooth on the primer and then my mineral makeup foundation...smooth as silk with a very even tone. Not just giving me an even tone and silky smooth surface but also brightening and firming my skin so that the foundation covers flawlessly.
As I said I tried the Green because I am trying to tone down the red sun spots on my face..the other primers are: Peach for color balancing, Lavender to hydrate & balance, and Neutral for prep & perfect.
Choose the right one for you.. but do choose one to add to your daily routine, you will love it as I do!!
                   purminerals products are available on line at purminerals.com

Paperboy by Tony Macauley

Oh, how I loved this book. I just wanted to get that right out of the way.
On the cover it says that Paperboy is an enchanting true story of a Belfast paperboy coming to terms with The Troubles. Absolutely take the word "enchanted" for FACT,  I couldn't put it down.
I have often wondered when I see & hear stories unfolding in worn torn countries...how do the people survive day to day? The poor children, how do they make it to old age? This book, is my answer. Tony Macauley gives us a kids eye view of life in Belfast, on Shankill Road in 1975. Bombs go off, people get beat up or killed day to day..sirens a constant noise in the ear.
"Belfast in the seventies was like the newspaper I delivered. Everything was black & white, albeit Orange & Green. Everything got smudged and ruined, like dark ink from the stories that dirtied my hands every day. I was a paperboy. Aged twelve. thin and easily crumpled. Blown around the streets by greater forces. More smart than tough. Yearning for peace, but living through Troubles. And yet I was happy with my calling. I was a good paperboy. I delivered."..Tony Macauley.
He loved the Bay City Rollers, he saved his money to buy the latest fashions to wear to the teen center that his parents ran, called the Westy. He hid from older kids who would be out at night ready to beat him up for his paper route money. He knew which days not to go to the grocery, because they usually got bombed on that day.. and he was in love with Sharon Burgess, who ended up breaking his heart:(  And all the while he delivered the Belfast Telegram, or the Belly Telly, with a dedication that I truly admire.
I love this kid..who now happens to be a grown man with a wife & kids . He is Managing Director of Macauley Associates, specializing in community development and conflict development ... what else would have become of the only pacifist paperboy in Northern Ireland?
Please do yourself a favor and read this book..I would lend you  mine but I just can't let go of it yet.
Oh and by the way, he was such a great paperboy that he got promoted to bread boy....
the name of the sequel!!

We Are Water by Wally Lamb

When you hear the writer Wally Lamb's name, you expect nothing but great writing. After all he did bring us She's Come Undone & I Know This Much is True.  His new book We Are Water, due out in November, is a very good book.
It is the story of the Oh family.  Annie Oh is a housewife to Orion Oh who is a college pysch counselor. They have three children, a boy & two girls. Annie discovers her artistic side when she starts making collage type pieces of art work in the basement of the family home while the kids are sleeping. These pieces of work tend to lean toward anger and violence, so you begin to wonder what secrets Annie is hiding. But wait... there is a  story within the story ... a tale of a talented black artist, working as a laborer many years before, who happened to live on the same property as the Oh's now do.  Annie's work brings Viveca, a NY art dealer into her life and after 27 years of marriage, Annie decides to divorce Orion and marry Viveca. Add murder and floods, and you have a story that is just barreling toward a tragic end.
This is a complex story, where the past and the present are uniquely intertwined. There came a point in the reading of this book that I really believed the Oh family had to have been cursed somewhere along the line. So many just plain bad things were happening to good people.

I did enjoy Lamb's "We Are Water"   and recommend it for good fall reading.

The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau

It's 1983 in Berkeley, California. Twenty-year-old Allie Dodgson is a straitlaced college student working part-time at a dress shop to make ends meet. But when the shop turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug-dealing business, Allie finds herself on the lam, speeding toward Los Angeles in her best friend's Prelude with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine riding shotgun and a hit man named Vice Versa on her tail.

And so I decided this would be a good summer read. I was thinking it would kind of be Thelma & Louise-y, in the beginning. As the story moves on, it gets a bit out there and a bit unbelievable. Straightlaced girl gets involved in drugs and sex, literally overnight? Not that I am a stickler for true to life, by any means. But I mean this girl makes one wrong move after another. She has an ultra beautiful mother, who left the family to join an aging rock star and his band. Her dad had a restaurant and then he mysteriously closes shop and she loses contact. Her closest friend is held captive by drug dealers as Allie runs around trying to sell the stolen cocaine (in a Wonder bread bag)  to raise money for her college tuition. All while avoiding this hit man called Vice Versa who is after her. 

The story was very fast paced, true and may be a good read for a college student, but not for a seasoned reader.  I just could not connect with any of the characters or story line for that matter. The writing just didn't hook me. So you can pass this one by, there are sooo many other great books out there:)

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

Let me say one thing right up front..you will need a free period of time to start reading this book. Have your snacks and bottled water at your side, you will take few breaks:)
The novel takes place in rural Oregon in the early twentieth century. Talmadge tends his apple orchard and leads a peaceful, solitary life. Takes his fruit to market, talks to few people, dozes off for a while and then heads back to his orchard. Many years before, his mother arrived at this place with both Talmadge and his sister Elsbeth in tow, and here he has remained some forty years or so after the death of his mother (he was just thirteen) and the strange disappearance of his sister.
On one of these trips to market, two young girls, both very pregnant, dirty and hungry steal some apples from Talmadge. He does not pursue them. Back home he is in the trees picking apples when he can see them hidden in the grass, watching. And so begins the cat & mouse game...he starts leaving food out and sits  back in his cabin where he can hear them on the porch, he does not approach them..only dirty dishes left behind as a clue that they had been there.
An unlikely relationship develops and he begins looking after these girls, although few words are said between them. Then one day an ugly group of men come looking for the girls, and what follows is heartbreaking. Life for Talmadge after that is anything but peaceful.
If you have read Toni Morrison's Beloved you will understand when I say this novel is a bit mystic. If you have read Grapes of Wrath you will understand when I say that the orchard and the land is described so that you think you are there with Talmadge tending the trees.
Outstanding, mythical, intense, awesomely written first novel.( Coplin tells that she took eight years to write it.) This is a MUST read..this will become a classic, a book destined to remain on library shelves forever. One of the best books I have read in years and years. My daughter-in-law lent me this book, knowing I would love it. I am ordering a copy of my own..I am hoping to get it autographed someday by Coplin, truly a great and gifted writer.

Women From the Ankle down by Rachelle Bergstein

I have started my summer reading, which to me means light hearted, full of romance and fluff novels..but this new book by Bergstein is not a bit of fluff.  It is a very decent history of shoes and women, empowering and powerful.
It begins with the first shoe "designer", a young Italian man named Salvatore Ferragamo who thinks shoes should adorn the foot. He follows his brothers to America and opens a shoe business. It ends with Sex in the City's main character, Carrie Bradshaw and the role shoes played in that series.
But there are so many shoes and so much history in between. The world wars, a time when women had to enter the work force and the shoe of choice was steel toed. After the wars, in the 50's women are back in the home and back in heels. The 60's roll around and we were either barefoot or Birkenstocked with flowers in our hair..the 70's bring the platforms !! Oh my!! Grunge brings Doc Martens..and on and on....and who would have thought that a red glittery pair of shoes worn by a young girl from Kansas would have created such a fuss?
Author Bergstein has done her research and provides so much history in this book..it is a genuine education about how shoes have defined the decades. So, if you are like me and have 20 pairs of shoes by your front door (after I read the book , I had to count them) then get yourself into a pair of your fave shoes and head to the bookstore to pick up this book :)