I Am A Boss Bitch And You Can Be One Too...Here's How

It seems like there is a need in today's work landscape to provide women with the tools to not only set goals for success but also to blow those goals out of the water. But how? We all know about leaning in and claiming our spot at the table but some of us need a few more specific tips and tools to become the Boss Bitch we know we can be. Enter Nicole Lapin's new book Boss Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Take Charge of Your Career. This book is great for three kinds of working women: those who are learning the basics of being the boss of their own lives and career, those who are in a leadership role at their company, and/or those who have aspirations of being the boss of their own company.

I found the first two sections especially relevant for my career goals, but I think there really is something for every woman here. Lapin presents the info in a fun chatty voice and offers up one of the best business glossaries in the back of this book. She demystifies many of the business words that make us pretend we know what is being talked about and simplifies them. Probably worth the cover price of the book in and of itself.

This book would make a great graduation gift, as well as an excellent addition to any Boss Bitches' book shelf.

Blogger Note:  I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review. This review is entirely based on my opinion.

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore: A Book About Putting Yourself Back Together After Falling Apart

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore is a book that reads like a memoir in all the best possible ways. Right off the bat, I enjoyed this book and connected with it (mostly). I felt like the narrator, Elsie, was able to represent an accurate depiction of an almost-thirty year old woman from a (dare I say) feminist perspective. Elsie longs to do something with her life that matters by way of incompatible and toxic relationships, traveling to Paris and Sri Lanka and a long-term project of a French translated manuscript about cats. 

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore, Penguin Random House

This was the Eat, Pray, Love for the modern twenty-something. Honest, unapologetic and full of promise. It's rare to read a book that unintentionally speaks for young women's yearnings to belong in the world and have something of their own. In lieu of bad relationships and a product of the 50% divorce rate, Elsie wants to have her own legacy and own meaningful life project, which to her comes in the form of an ambitious and sometimes a lost-cause translation endeavor. I dare you to show me a young woman who doesn't long to find herself apart from who she is as a daughter or in the confines of a relationship. These relationships, while wrecking her, also give her the desire to fully live a life of new experiences.

Her travels, while being the most unrealistic part of the novel (really how many almost thirty-year olds do you know whose fathers foot the bill for not only Paris living, but also a sojourn to Sri Lanka?) also echo the general notion of loosing oneself in order to discover a better understanding of oneself.

An enjoyable novel that left me with a slight case of wanderlust and hungry for the next serving by Tennant-Moore.

Blogger note: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review. This review is entirely based on my opinion and contains my honest evaluation.

Spinster, In Praise of Women who Crave Their Solitude

Quick! What do you think when you hear the word spinster? Chances are good that you think of a never-married woman living with an apartment full of cats. Whatever image your mind immediately conjures up,  it's likely to have a negative connotation.

Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick takes a refreshing look at what it means to be a single woman by choice. It's less of a memoir and more of a history lesson on the kinds of women who have stood up throughout history to defy traditional female roles and stereotypes of Mother/Wife.

Spinster by Kate Bolick. Crown Publishing

Bolick presents the book as her own enlightening of sorts, she introduces us to the five women in history whom she relates most to because of their quest to define themselves first as individuals and then as women. These women are her five awakeners (whom are all writers of some variety and notoriety had either sworn off marriage or done so on their own, nontraditional terms). It's interesting for me, as a woman in her mid-thirties, to ponder what it was like to lack a choice in one's future. My generation grew up as the offspring of divorce, wedlock and normalized feminism and were probably the first group of women who honestly believed that they can tread any path that they choose, whether that means marrying and having children, staying single and focusing on one's career or any combination of both.

This book mingles the feminist historical context of what it is to be a single woman by choice as well as trace the author's own quest for self-discovery through re-examining the lives of her awakeners. She coins the term "spinster's wish" as her private desire "for the pleasures of being alone". And really what woman doesn't desire solitude from time to time? Whether that means a break from the kids/husband or the ability to fully immerse oneself in the things that fill one's life with passion?
Bolick encourages women of all states of coupling to take back the term spinster and make it into something positive.

Blogger note: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review. This review is entirely based on my opinion and contains my honest evaluation.

Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship with Shopping, Edited byKerry Cohen

It's not really any surprise that the essays contained within the aptly named anthology, Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship with Shopping (Edited by Kerry Cohen) are all penned by women. Not to feed into sexist stereotypes, but in the immortal words of Chris Rock, "women be shoppin'". And that's kind of where the whole "ha, a book about women liking to shop" notion ends. Because this isn't really that kind of book at all. As matter of fact, not a single one of the 31 essays in this book really falls into the "I-like-shopping-because-I'm-a-woman-and-that's-what-I'm-supposed-to-like-to-do-for-fun" category. On the contrary, there are a surprising amount of essays about just the opposite, women who loathe having to shop, at least for the traditional feminine staples (shoes, clothes, bags, makeup).

Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship with Shopping, edited by Kerry Cohen

I found all of these essays fascinating and widely differing. It's a book that begins with the universal-enough topic of shopping and branches out into our always complicated relationships with other people and ourselves. What we shop for, what we are really trying to obtain when we buy things, the meaning behind why we hate shopping, how shopping in our childhood helped to cement memories and further carve out our pro/con shopping mentality, shopping for others versus shopping for ourselves, the price point of the things we buy, where we shop, shoplifting...it's all thought-provoking and perfect fodder for this anthology.

A quick read that really gets to the core of a problem most of us have, and explores it from honest and often relatable ways.

Book Review: CONSTELLATION OF BOYS BY KERRY COHEN

This review also appears on Amazon & Goodreads.

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5.0 out of 5 stars

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5.0 out of 5 stars

Must Read for the Loose Girl in All of Us April 26, 2014

By sleepdeprivedandstarryeyed

Format:Kindle Edition|Kayla is a little of each of us. She is the Everygirl, who eventually morphs into the Everywoman. In A CONSTELLATION OF BOYS by Kerry Cohen, Kayla Gray connects the boys of her life from age eight onward. Her brother's friend, the boy at the gas station, her missing-in-action father, the boy at the summer beach house, boys from the mall, boys from school, boys from the skate park, older boys who were friends of her brother, men her mother has relationships with. The boys were fleeting moments in her life, much like the passing of a lone shooting star, once they passed over her, were never to be heard from again. The connections she craved from boys, most notably mirrors her mother’s own relationships with men, eventually becomes her unraveling.

Told in short vignettes about each boy’s effect on her life, however minor or major, A CONSTELLATION OF BOYS is simply a glimpse into a young girl’s mind specifically as it relates to boys. How boys are all-consuming, how boys have an ability to be confident about their place in the world from a young age and how girls have to forge out their own place while withstanding the emotional roller coaster highs and lows of want and desire. How boys have it so easy, they “owned the world” and how girls subject themselves to boys’ whims in the most intense ways just to grasp at the possibility of connection. How boys become a drug. The underlying parallel between boys as heavenly bodies. The euphoria attached to be wanted can be addicting. Thus, how easily we all become loose girls.

A great, quick read for adults and teens alike. Kerry Cohen has definitely done it again with being able to speak for all of the loose girls of the world.