2008 Books in Review

This year, I read almost as many books as the previous 2 years combined. 70 was the grand total for the year. (Who knew having a kid would give me more reading time?)

I'm always looking for book recommendations, so tell me: What were your favorite books last year?

Okay, okay. I'll go first. My two favorites of the year also make it to my all-time favorites list, so I would highly recommend them to anyone and everyone:

• Nonfiction: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
• Fiction: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

And there are a few more I'd recommend to specific folks...

For the Kids (or Kids at Heart)

• Feathers
  
• Flush
  
• Olive's Ocean
  
• The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (start with The Penderwicks)
  
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard
  
• Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
  
• The Underneath

For the Teens

• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
  
• Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing (start with A Great and Terrible Beauty)

And go ahead and read the Twilight series. It's not the best stuff in the world, but it's fun as hell.

For the Aspiring Writers

• How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights
  
• No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
  
• Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids

For the Expecting or New Parents
Yes, I know you're tired and/or have a lot to do. But these are all worth it, I promise.

• Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love
  
• Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk
  
• The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative
  
• Good Nights: The Happy Parents' Guide to the Family Bed (and a Peaceful Night's Sleep!)
  
• The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer
  
• Nursing Mother, Working Mother
  
• The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child

For the Other Parents

• Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
  
• Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family

Finally, Some 2008 Stats
I tend to read a novel or two in between every nonfiction book, so these numbers make sense:
Fiction: 66%
Nonfiction: 34%

And here's the breakdown within the fiction category:
Adult fiction: 13%
YA or kids' fiction: 87%

Review: No Plot? No Problem!

Title: No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
Author: Chris Baty
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: Advice from the founder of NaNoWriMo on how to write a novel in 30 days.

Review: This made for a fun read during my crazy month of writing. And this book is what convinced me I didn't need to stress out about writing an outline before NaNoWriMo because according to Baty, "plot happens." Which is completely true. The story arc and ending I first envisioned for my novel are completely different from how they actually turned out. That's a good thing, I promise you.

The week-by-week guide was helpful, even if my writing motivation didn't track it exactly. The book also had writing exercises throughout that I haven't tried yet but sound fun, like the person and thing game.

You take your notebook, pen, and an unread newspaper and go to a public place with lots of foot traffic. Close your eyes, count to fifteen, then open your eyes. The first person you see is your Person. Write down everything you can about them before they leave your sight. Then take your newspaper, close your eyes, open it to a random page, move your finger down the page a few seconds, and open your eyes again. Whatever you're pointing to has a deep connection to your Person. What's the connection? Figure it out and write about it. And bonus points for integrating your Person into your current writing project!

Review: Waiting for Birdy

Title: Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family
Author: Catherine Newman
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: Memoir of a mom who is pregnant with her second child.

Review: Hi-LAR-ious! I don't often laugh out loud when reading, but this book had me chuckling and giggling at every turn.

I knew this was going to be my kind of book when I got to this part on page 11:

"I once sat up late with a friend, enjoying a shot or two of Jagermeister and imagining a special line of Hallmark cards called 'Womanly Thoughts' or, maybe, 'Gynecological Moments.' These would be designed around moody little watercolors of women with their feet in stirrups, women skulking around ovulation kits at the supermarket, and greetings like 'Sorry to hear about your ovarian cyst. / If I had one, I'd be really pissed.'"

The author tells it like it is, and no topic is taboo. While on the whole it's a very funny account of her life raising a toddler while being pregnant, the author also addresses more serious issues. For example, she talks about losing her patience and then temper with her son Ben and how she feels horrible afterward.

My favorite take-away from the book is that it reminds you to try to live in the moment even when that moment seems unbearable. The author's mantra is "This, Now." I find myself reciting that mantra when I'm bouncing Abby on the exercise ball for the third time after trying to put her down for a nap unsuccessfully two times already. Because one day, she's not going to need me to help her fall asleep, and I'm sure I'm going to miss these days looking back.

The only part I didn't love about this book was frequent assurances from the author that she wasn't kidding before she shared a particularly funny or outrageous tidbit. When someone is constantly saying that they're not kidding, it makes me wonder if all the other things they're saying but not prefacing with "I'm not kidding" are true or not.

So I could have done without that quirk, but I still loved, loved, LOVED this book!

Review: How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

Title: How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights
Author: Ariel Gore
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4/5
Summary: The author of several books presents her advice for launching a literary career.

Review: The advice in this book is by no means earth-shattering. You'll recognize most of it from other writing guides. Example: Want to be a writer? Then write. (Sure sounds simple, but I have yet to develop a habit of writing every day.)

But unlike most other writing guides, this book will keep you laughing while it injects you with a good dose of writing wisdom. This book also has some great ideas for exercises—for example, go through a piece you wrote and remove all adjectives and adverbs, rewriting where necessary.

Gore includes several interviews with literary stars, some more interesting than others. One of my favorite interviews was with Ursula K. Le Guin: "Stories are like feral kittens. You have to be very patient and careful and quiet and put out little bits of chicken on the floor."

The chapters in this book are fairly short and the advice is so fun to read that I'm going to get a copy of this to own.

(By the way, the first day of NaNoWriMo went well. I wrote over 1700 words, which keeps me on track to finish 50,000 by the end. 1 day down, 29 to go.)

Review: Unconditional Parenting

Title: Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
Author: Alfie Kohn
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: The author explores research on the effectiveness of parenting based on rewards and punishments.

Review: The front cover of this book describes it as "A Provocative Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom about Discipline." Uh, YEAH.

This book had me squirming in my chair on a regular basis. Over and over, the author would present compelling research about how parenting with rewards and punishments doesn't necessarily get you a kid who's more compliant. And over and over, I would think to myself: "Well, if you don't use rewards and punishments, what the crap else are you going to do?" The author would dance around alternatives, but he kept referencing Chapter 7 as where he'd be presenting them in detail—which was over halfway through the book.

In the end, I'm not sure if I would have been ready to accept the ideas in that chapter had I not gone through the painful process of being challenged again and again and again in the first part of the book. Maybe the author has to break down a few walls before he can help you start to build up something completely different in their place.

Here are just a handful of the reasons why punishment doesn't work, according to the research covered in this book:

• Punishment makes people mad. I can recall with great clarity the times I was being punished for something that I had done, and I guarantee you I wasn't "reflecting" on my actions. I was getting even more pissed off at whomever was punishing me, and my actions were the furthest thing from my mind.
• Punishment models the use of power. Do we really want to teach our kids that might makes right? As adults, will it be healthy for them to exploit their power over their fellow humans?
• Punishment makes kids more self-centered. If I hit Susie, I'll have to sit in timeout and miss the rest of recess. Notice that I'm thinking about what will happen to me, not how Susie will feel.

What about rewards? If punishing non-compliance isn't effective, what about rewarding compliance?

"...rewards are remarkably ineffective at improving the quality of people's work or learning. A considerable number of studies have found that children and adults alike are less successful at many tasks when they're offered a reward for doing them—or for doing them well."

Or worse, rewards can undermine the very behavior you're trying to encourage:

"...when there's no longer a goody to be gained, [kids are] less likely to help than are kids who weren't given a reward in the first place. They're also less likely to help than they themselves used to be. After all, they've learned that the point of coming to someone's aid is just to get a reward."

These are just a few of the points from the book, but I know what you're thinking right now: "Well, if you don't use rewards and punishments, what the crap else are you going to do?"

Or maybe: "Haha, your kid is going to walk all over you! Sucker!"

To the latter, I say: You could very well be right. But this book resonated with me on a much deeper level than the parenting practices I saw growing up or continue to see on Supernanny. What do you think that kid on the naughty step is thinking about? About how what they did was wrong and they'll never do it again? Or about how Mom is so unfair...or...next time she's not going to catch me...or...I'm going to hit little brother for tattling on me?

Certainly you can remember a time when you were in timeout as a kid. Maybe you were a perfect kid and sat quietly reflecting on your misbehavior and how you will never, ever do that again. But me? Not so much. I sat there thinking of ways to blame someone else. I sat there steaming about the person who was punishing me. I sat there making plans to not talk to anyone for the rest of the day to show how mad I was.

So what if instead when you did something wrong, your parents sat down with you and asked you what happened? What if they had helped you explore why you did what you did? What if they encouraged you to think of other ways you could have expressed your emotions?

Kids are smart. They have good ideas for how to solve problems, including their own. You just need to give them a chance and support the process with your loving guidance.

Do I think that this style of parenting will mean Abby won't ever misbehave or have a tantrum or annoy the crap out of me sometimes? No, not at all. She'll still do all those things, but what will be different is how I react to her.

Kids see rewards as approval and love, and they see punishments as a withdrawal of that approval and love. So on a basic level, will my actions teach Abby that I love her only when she behaves in the exact way that I want her to? Do I really want to raise a daughter who is blindly compliant with whomever has more power than her? (Even if I did want a compliant daughter, research shows that rewards and punishment aren't effective in getting that.)

No. I want to teach Abby that I love her always, not just because she does what I want her to. I want a daughter who can make smart decisions for herself, not just do what the person with more power is telling her to do.

If any of this is resonating with you and if you're wondering what could possibly replace rewards and punishments, I would suggest that you read the book yourself. There's no easy formula for parenting without rewards and punishments, and this book will help you explore what that style of parenting will be for you and your family.

Review: Baby Signs

Title: Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk
Author: Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: Two child development experts explain how you can teach your baby sign language. Baby sign language helps babies express their needs and emotions before they can talk, resulting in fewer tantrums and a stronger relationship with their parents.

Review: This book provides a more robust introduction to baby sign language than a book I previously reviewed on this topic, Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants before They Can Speak.

I especially appreciated the easy-to-digest "Ten Steps to Success" in this book:

1. Start with just a few signs


2. Always use the baby sign and word together


3. Repeat the sign and word several times


4. Point to the object when possible


5. When necessary, gently guide your child's hands in making the sign


6. Make baby signing a regular part of your day


7. Watch for opportunities to model the signs


8. Be flexible and watch for your baby's own sign creations


9. Be patient!


10. Remember, make learning fun

However, the sign illustrations were much clearer and more detailed in Sign with Your Baby. But I'm finding the Baby Hands Productions video dictionary of signs more helpful than illustrations anyway.

One part of Baby Signs did not sit well with me, but it's just one paragraph out of the whole book. The authors recommend the "Baby Signs Video for Babies" as a way to teach babies more signs, then go on to say (emphasis mine):

"Of course, extensive video watching by very young children is not a good idea. However, chosen carefully, videos produced specifically for babies and toddlers can be beneficial."

But they don't reference any research to support this claim. I've never come across any research indicating that TV watching by babies and toddlers has any lasting positive effects. In fact, I read the opposite in Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It—research quoted there suggests TV watching before a child learns to read teaches them passive learning habits that can be detrimental in all their future learning experiences.

The authors are generally diligent about referencing research to support their claims, but here I think they could have done a much better job. (The cynical side of me thinks they might have vagued up the supporting arguments because they have a video they're trying to sell.)

But that is just one paragraph out of the whole book, so I probably just need to let it go! This book is clear and well-written, and I just ordered a copy to own from PaperBackSwap.

Review: Baby Minds

Title: Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love
Author: Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 5/5
Summary: Two professors of psychology summarize research about how babies' minds develop, then suggest ways of incorporating brain-building games into your baby's life.

Review: This book is similar to another book I read this year: What's Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life.

Although I enjoyed What's Going on in There?, I loved Baby Minds because it focused more on what you can do to help your baby's brain grow. And not in a baby-flashcards sort of way, either. The games they suggest are fun and easy to incorporate into your routine. For example, they recommend modeling some pretend play starting at around 6 months to foster creativity. So we've instituted a 3:00 Puppet Show in our house. Abby loves it of course, but so do I! 3:00 is about the time I start counting down the minutes til Erik gets home from work so it takes my mind off the clock for a bit.

I also preferred how this book summarized the relevant research studies in an accessible way. The research they highlighted made me that much more motivated to try the corresponding games. And this book was much lighter on the biological details of development, which I didn't mind at all considering those were the parts of What's Going on in There? I found myself skimming.

Both books had needed reminders to parents that there's no way to be a "perfect parent." The message in Baby Minds is: Just do what works for you, and don't stress out if you're not doing every single game they recommend because every single game won't work for everyone.

This book also has a handy list of all the games at the back, which I find myself using a lot lately. On the weekdays when I'm at home with Abby all day, I use up all my tricks by the early afternoon—we read books, we take a walk, we have a tickle fest, I feed her solid food. Then I'm bored and she's bored, and that's not good. So the list at the back is helpful for jogging my memory about other things we can do together that will be fun for both of us. In fact, that's exactly how the 3:00 Puppet Show came into existence!

Review: Leadership and Self Deception

Title: Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box
Author: The Arbinger Institute
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: A management training and consulting firm uses a parable to explore the idea of self-deception and how it impacts a business.

Review: I came into work one day, and this book was on my desk with no note attached. I picked it up, flipped it over, and read the first quote on the back: "Fascinating, thought provoking, and insightful! This book is a wake-up call to all those who think they're good with people..."

Wait. What?! Was somebody trying to tell me something? Was this some passive-aggressive attempt at telling me I'm a bear to work with? I could actually feel my heart drop and hit my stomach. I hid the book under my purse and tried to check my email, but I just couldn't concentrate.

I peeked into my neighbor's cube and said in just-barely-above-a-whisper, "Hey, I had some book on my desk when I came in. Do you know what that's about?"

"Oh, yeah. Our boss left them for us. She wants us to read them before our group meeting in 2 weeks."

My heart sprung back up to its rightful position in my chest cavity. No secret message from a disgruntled co-worker, hooray!

But...assigned reading for work? I have a spreadsheet of 643 book titles I want to read and a stack of 20-ish books from the library all in various stages of being read and flipped through and referenced, and I'm what—just supposed to work this in?

I eventually relented though, and I'm glad I did.

Don't get me wrong—this is one of those cheesy how-to-be-a-good-leader parables. But the message is a good one, and it's one we could all stand to be reminded of from time to time. Our co-workers deserve our respect and understanding. Self-deception gets in the way of that.

Self-deception is the term they use to describe anytime you have an impulse to help another person, but you ignore the impulse and "deceive" yourself into believing you're justified for not honoring the impulse. For example, let's say it's rush hour and you're driving down the highway. Someone in the next lane has their blinker on and is desperately trying to find an open spot to get over. For a split second, you have an impulse to be nice and let them over. But you don't. We've all done that, right? Have you ever noticed that it's only after you've already decided not to let the person over that you start coming up with reasons for why you're justified in your behavior? You're in a hurry, you're gonna be late, they should have planned ahead if they really needed to get in your lane, etc. That's self-deception. It's just a handy label for something we've all experienced.

Self-deception happens everywhere—even at work. In a workplace, the consequences of rampant self-deception are more than a little twinge of guilt for not letting someone over on the highway. Self-deception can poison how you view your co-workers, and before you know it you're working against each other instead of with each other towards a common goal.

Let me give you an example. When I starting reading this book, I had a meeting at work coming up, which I was going to lead. I had asked all the attendees to send me some information so I could compile it before the meeting. A couple people cut it down to the wire, leaving me only a couple hours to compile their information before the meeting. Because of my part-time work schedule, I almost didn't get it done in time. So you can imagine that I was pretty annoyed.

Fast forward a couple weeks. Now one of the people who had given me their information late needed something from me by the end of the week. I knew that it would be unfair of me to send them the information they needed at the last minute. But I had a lot of big things going on that week, and I kept putting off what that person needed from me. And yet, it was only after I made the decision to put it off each time that I thought of what she had done to me a couple weeks prior. I felt justified in putting off what she now needed from me. Was I enhancing her efficiency at work? No. Was I enhancing my own efficiency? Not really, because I still needed to get the work done—it was just a matter of when I would do it. What about the next time I need something from her, and she remembers my behavior? Will she be compelled to help me out?

This is just a small example, but imagine this happening every day in every cubicle/office in your workplace. Because it does. Every single person is always making little decisions like this that drag down your collective efficiency and productivity. Worse than that, over time we're also letting self-deception color our opinions of our co-workers. We think they're lazy or stupid or irresponsible. I certainly started to think that person was irresponsible when they didn't send me what I needed when I needed it. Sure—sometimes we have to work with some real doozies. But when you're never satisfied with the abilities of the people who surround you at work and you're always complaining about them, is it really your co-workers who are the problem?

If we all began to honor those little impulses to help our co-workers and to work together, not only would we get a lot more done but we'd be a lot happier at work too. I don't know about you, but when I go into work and feel confident in the people who will be working alongside me, I'm in a much better mood than if I feel like I'm surrounded by lazy and/or incompetent people.

Review: Sign with Your Baby

Title: Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants before They Can Speak
Author: Joseph Garcia
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3/5
Summary: Researcher Joseph Garcia reviews the fundamentals of communicating with your baby using a sign language based on American Sign Language (ASL).

Review: I chose to read this instead of Baby Signs because I figured as long as we're teaching Abby a second language, it might as well be an actual language (American Sign Language) that she can use later on in life too.

A major benefit of this book is that the text to read is less than 50 pages, and that's nothing to shake a stick at when you're a parent with little uninterrupted reading time. The rest of the book is a glossary of signs. However, I have decided to read Baby Signs after all, even though we still plan to use the signs from Dr. Garcia's book.

There are a couple reasons for my change of heart. I started reading Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love, which is by the same authors of Baby Signs. I really appreciated how the authors did a great job of backing up every major point with specific research studies. In Sign with Your Baby, the emphasis is more on anecdotes from parents and Dr. Garcia's own experience.

Because I was reading both books at the same time, I also found myself preferring the writing style of Baby Minds to Dr. Garcia's writing style. There's nothing wrong with it per se—I just thought the Baby Minds authors were a little more engaging and professional. (The book design might be playing into this impression too, as Sign with Your Baby doesn't exactly have a slick book design.)

But what really sealed the deal for me is that in his book, Dr. Garcia actually mentions and recommends Baby Signs. So that made me realize I didn't have to go with one or the other but that I could learn from both. Duh, Kelly.

Review: The Audacity of Hope

Title: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Author: Barack Obama
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4/5
Summary: Senator Obama lays out his vision for the country and how we can begin to heal the wounds of partisanship to solve pressing problems like poverty, unemployment, lack of access to quality education, and a society that for all its "family values" rhetoric doesn't support families in meaningful ways.

Review: Before I go any further, I have a quick public service announcement: Regardless of which candidate strikes your fancy, don't forget to register to vote before your state's registration deadline. A country where half the citizens don't participate in the process of choosing its leader is not a healthy country!

With that said, I loved this book. It took a couple chapters to get to the juicy stuff of specific ideas for solutions to our nation's problems. But looking back on the beginning of the book, I realize how important it was for Obama to start off talking about values and the common threads that pull Americans together—no matter whether they consider themselves blue, red, purple, or indifferent to politics.

And if nothing else, reading this book cemented my resolve to not only vote for Obama but to donate to the campaign and volunteer for him as well. Obama is a leader who can find common ground and lead us toward solutions to the problems that are tearing us apart as a country.

Obama is by no means my political kindred spirit or anything. I will probably always be more progressive than any Presidential candidate with a real shot at the White House. But Obama shares the values I hold most dear. We feel the call to take care of our fellow humans when we can, and not just when we live in the same house or the same neighborhood. We try not to devolve into "us and them" when thinking and speaking about those who don't share our exact political views. We realize that luck plays a large part in providing the opportunities you have for a good education, a good job, and a healthy life.

I was lucky to have been born into a middle-class family who could afford to live in a neighborhood that had excellent schools. Not to mention I was born with white skin that sadly, makes a lot of things in this country more accessible. Did I work hard to achieve what I have in life—a loving husband, a healthy daughter, a great job, a beautiful home? Sure. But does that mean that someone who cleans homes like mine for a living and has three kids at home and another job at night and lives in a tiny apartment on the "wrong" side of town works any less hard than I do? I know in my bones they work harder, much harder. So why am I more deserving of the things I have? I'm not. Mainly, I'm lucky.

We are stronger as a nation—as a world—when we all have the opportunity to live a healthy, happy life. Obama recognizes that and has great ideas for providing that opportunity to more people, and that's a candidate I can get behind.

Finally, I'd like to share a few quotes that rang true to me:

• "...the Ownership Society doesn't even try to spread the risks and rewards of the new economy among all Americans. Instead, it simply magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today's winner-take-all economy. If you are healthy or wealthy or just plain lucky, then you will become more so. If you are poor or sick or catch a bad break, you will have nobody to look to for help. That's not a recipe for sustained economic growth or the maintenance of a strong American middle class. It's certainly not a recipe for social cohesion. It runs counter to those values that say we have a stake in each other's success. It's not who we are as a people."
  
  
• "So let's be clear. The rich in America have little to complain about. Between 1971 and 2001, while the median wage and salary income of the average worker showed literally no gain, the income of the top hundredth of a percent went up almost 500 percent. The distribution of wealth is even more skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age. These trends were already at work throughout the nineties. Clinton's tax policies simply slowed them down a bit. Bush's tax cuts made them words.
  
  I point out these facts not—as Republican talking points would have it—to stir up class envy. I admire many Americans of great wealth and don't begrudge their success in the least. I know that many if not most have earned it through hard work, building businesses and creating jobs and providing value to their customers. I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligation of ensuring every American child has a chance for that same success. And perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents...: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes.
  
  More than anything, it is that sense—that despite great differences in wealth, we rise and fall together—that we can't afford to lose. As the pace of change accelerates, with some rising and many falling, that sense of common kinship becomes harder to maintain. ...we have always been in a constant balancing act between self-interest and community, markets and democracy, the concentration of wealth and power and the opening up of opportunity. We've lost that balance in Washington, I think. With all of us scrambling to raise money for campaigns, with unions weakened and the press distracted and lobbyists for the powerful pressing their full advantage, there are few countervailing voices to remind us of who we are and where we've come from, and to affirm our bonds with one another."
  
  
• On his daughter Sasha's birthday party, where she sat in the middle of a parachute: "On the count of three, Sasha was hoisted up into the air and back down again, then up for a second time, and then for a third. And each time she rose above the billowing sail, she laughed and laughed with a look of pure joy.
  
  I wonder if Sasha will remember that moment when she is grown. Probably not; it seems as if I can retrieve only the barest fragments of memory from when I was five. But I suspect that the happiness she felt on that parachute registers permanently in her; that such moments accumulate and embed themselves in a child's character, becoming a part of their soul. Sometimes, when I listen to [my wife] Michelle talk about her father, I hear the echo of such joy in her, the love and respect that [her father] Frasier Robinson earned not through fame or spectacular deeds but through small, daily, ordinary acts—a love he earned by being there. And I ask myself whether my daughters will be able to speak of me in that same way."

So if you like what you've read here, check out Obama's site and learn more about his vision for this country.

Review: The Diaper-Free Baby

Title: The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative
Author: Christine Gross-Loh
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: A mother of two shares tools and information you can use to practice elimination communication (EC) with your children.

Review: Out of all the EC books out there, I chose to read this one because it sounded like a more laidback approach. It was, and I'm glad for that. My main hesitation to EC was the idea that I'd have to watch Abby like a hawk 24-7 to catch every elimination. So it was refreshing to read about examples of parents who successfully practice EC only some of the time. The book is organized by age of the child, so there's some repetition, but I didn't mind the reinforcement of the concepts. You could read just the part that applies to your child's age, which is a nice option to have.

If you're interested in EC, this book is a good place to start.

Review: What's Going on in There?

Title: What's Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life
Author: Lise Eliot
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: Neurobiologist Lise Eliot brings together insights from biology and cognitive psychology about how a child's mind develops.

Review: Just about every day as I was reading this book, I would read an interesting sentence or paragraph out loud to Erik. I found it fascinating, and before it goes back to the library I'm going to type up a few quotes to keep around for reference.

A few interesting things I learned:

• The flavor of your breast milk changes depending on what you eat.
  
• For optimal language development, it's important to have conversations with even young infants. You can do this with face-to-face contact and taking turns so your child gets to hear you speak but also gets a chance to practice herself. Even babies need to know that they are being addressed and that they are being heard.
  
• Sensitive parenting can improve a child's temperament. This means being aware of a baby's signals and responding promptly to her needs. And no matter how busy you are, they should feel that you are available and not ignoring them.
  
• Babies prefer novelty—new places, toys, experiences. It helps their brains grow.
  
• Daily infant massage improves a baby's motor skills development.

I like how the author structures each chapter—starting with the biology up front and then ending with how you can encourage that particular area of development, whether it's a sense, motor skills, social-emotional growth, memory, language, or intelligence. (I have to admit that I skipped over some of the biological details, and that structure made it easy for me to do that!)

The book did leave me with a few unanswered questions. For example, I wanted to know what impact baby sign language has on overall language development. And the author mentions that children in bilingual homes start talking later, but she didn't talk about the optimal age for starting to introduce a second language.

But I would highly recommend this book to any parent interested in how their child's mind is developing.

Review: Influencer

Title: Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
Author: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4/5
Summary: This book articulates the strategies that the world's most influential people use to solve persistent, resistant problems.

Review: The biggest eye-opener for me was the point that verbal persuasion can't solve all the world's problems, especially when you're trying to convince someone to change their behavior. I've always believed in the power of a carefully crafted argument and prided myself on being able to put forth an effective argument for certain things. But this book made me realize that verbal persuasion is just one eensy weensy technique in the grab-bag of influential techniques, and it's an overused and often ineffective technique at that.

I love how this book teases out the different techniques and gives lots of examples of each. The authors recommend that you read it with a problem in mind that you want to solve. The problem I kept in mind as I was reading was how to get more people at my company to recycle everything that's possible to recycle. Too many times at work, I walk by a trash can that contains a perfectly recyclable piece of paper or aluminum can. And the recycling bin is right. next. to. the. trash. If the person had just moved their hand a measly couple of inches to one side, they could have dropped the item in a recycling bin instead of the trash! But I digress...

For some of the techniques, I immediately got ideas for how to apply them to this problem. For others, I couldn't think of anything. So while I don't think all these techniques will work for every problem, this book certainly made me look at the lack of recycling at my office in a new light, and it gave me a renewed sense of hope for increasing the amount we recycle.

I'm going to put this on my wish list to own because I could see myself referring to it fairly often. The authors also have a web site, influencerbook.com, with a worksheet you can fill out to brainstorm solutions to a problem you're trying to solve.

Review: The Starfish and the Spider

Title: The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
Author: Ori Brafman, Rod A. Beckstrom
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 2.5/5
Summary: This book argues that decentralized "starfish" organizations are more powerful than more traditional top-down, hierarchical "spider" organizations.

Review: Mildly interesting. It's been compared to The Tipping Point, but I didn't have any big "aha" moments like I did with The Tipping Point. They gave lots of examples of successful decentralized organizations. And they did try to summarize the qualities those successful groups had. But that part was pretty short—I wanted more of that. I didn't get a lot out of the book that I feel like I can apply in real life. Whereas The Tipping Point helped me to start making connections about how to create tipping points for things I care about. If you're looking for practical advice on how to encourage a decentralized community feel in an organization, this book doesn't have much to offer.

Review: Writer Mama

Title: Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids
Author: Christina Katz
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4/5
Summary: Freelance writer Christina Katz offers advice for moms wanting to begin a freelance writing career.

Review: I'll definitely be purchasing a copy of this book to keep. The advice for starting a freelance writing career is straightforward and practical, especially how to start off small and work your way up to bigger publications. And by doing just the first few exercises in the book, I got a ton of ideas for articles I could write.

If you're interested in writing fiction, some of the advice will be helpful to you, but in general the focus was on nonfiction freelance writing for magazines, newspapers, and so on.

Review: Writing Motherhood

Title: Writing Motherhood: Tapping Into Your Creativity as a Mother and a Writer
Author: Lisa Garrigues
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: Writing teacher Lisa Garrigues offers advice on chronicling your experience of motherhood.

Review: This book has a lot of great ideas for writing prompts. I was expecting more practical information about balancing motherhood and a writing life—there was some, just not a lot. But this book would be worth owning for all the great prompts. You would never be able to say "I don't know what to write about!"

If you're looking for a book with more practical advice for moms about launching a writing career, check out Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids.