Books are Delicious, Brain Food

Celebrities share why books make great gifts in this holiday video featuring Emeril Lagasse, Stephen Fry, Steve Doocy, Valerie Bertinelli, Elmore Leonard, A.J. Jacobs, Neil Gaiman, and Alec Baldwin.

A Practical Gift for Any Renter

Dare to Repair: A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home By Julie Sussman and Stephanie Glakas-Tenet

The idea for this post was brought on by San Francisco’s recent cold snap.  To many parts of the country 34 degree overnight temps might sound like spring is upon us but to us this is downright unseasonable! We’re not usually prepared for the mercury to go below 40 so last week when I turned on the heater for the first time I realized it was broken.  The apartment manager was prompt to respond that he was sorry for the “inconvenience” but money is tight right now.

Flash forward to this week: I’m freezing and now I’m researching how to repair electric wall heaters!

In times like these, money is tight for most people, even property management companies which means your ‘fix-it’ list is even lower on their list of priorities.  So, put your DIY ethos and community spirit into action by fixing minor flaws and damages yourself.  You may have to put a little money toward it but remember, time is money and sometimes I’d just rather not wait. 

Enter Dare to Repair: A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home! Filled with detailed illustrations, Dare to Repair provides even the most repair-challenged

A Classic Christmas Giveaway!

A Classic Christmas: Spiritual Reflections, Timeless Literature, and Treasured Verse & Scripture

Since becoming an adult my Christmas traditions have become what some may view as ‘relaxed’ but as a child I dreamed of a Victorian Christmas with gentle snowdrifts in every window, midnight mass and carolers in red velvet coats.  The 80 degree weather and Santas in sunglasses of Southern California didn’t provide much along those lines so I built my Christmas visions from heart-warming stories, poems, carols, (and yes, movies...) 

A Classic Christmas is just the sort of book I would have liked to have in those days.  With guilded edges and ribbon marker, it’s a collection of timeless passages from literary greats and thoughtful reflections on the true meaning of Christmas.  From C. S. Lewis to Martin Luther; from Frederick Buechner to Laura Ingalls Wilder; from John Paul II to Dietrich Bonhoeffer; from Charles Dickens to Mark Twain, A Classic Christmas is a joyful way to celebrate and worship.

It’s a version of Christmas we all share whether the weather outside is frightful or all is merry and bright and we’d like to share it with you so we’re giving away copies to five readers.   To enter, just leave a comment below sharing your favorite thing about Christmas between now and December 14th and we’ll pick five winners!  Happy Holidays all! (And don’t forget to read the rules here.) [Note: This contest is now CLOSED.]

The Good Karma Divorce by Judge Michele Lowrance

Cover: The Good Karma Divorce

To call Judge Michele Lowrance an expert on divorce is an under exaggeration. Having been divorced, she is a child of divorce, a former divorce lawyer, and for the last decade plus she has been a domestic relations judge in Chicago. She watched for years as couples overburdened with emotion decided that the best course of action was to simply give the court and judges complete control over their future. Not only their financial and custody decisions but their ability to work through the pain and negativity. 

In her upcoming book, The Good Karma Divorce: Avoid Litigation, Turn Negative Emotions into Positive Actions, and Get On with the Rest of Your Life (HarperOne; January 2010,) Judge Lowrance puts forth a program to reverse the stereotypes of divorce and empowers couples to turn their negative emotions into positive actions. Because she has also been a practicing Buddhist for 17 years, she has come to see that the principle of Karma is the perfect model for transforming the divorce process. 

Her book is full of stories from the court room, practical exercises and strategies for coping with the anger, pain and resentment of the divorce process. 

All We Need is a Little Perspective

NY Times bestselling author Andy Andrews has taken his personal struggles and turned them into hope. In this video, Andrews tells the story of those personal hardships and how he made it through tough economic times.

His latest book, The Noticer, his second bestseller, is based on his own remarkable true story of his accidental meeting of a man named Jones who reminds him that everyone encounters hard times. Eventually the character, “Andy” develops a wider perspective that allows him to lift himself from poverty and homelessness. It provides simple, yet powerful distinctions about love, relationships, value, and integrity and inspires readers to take that first step toward a major life change.

Andrews has also started the Noticer Project, encouraging us to “notice” the five most influential people in our lives.

Publisher Showcase: Beyond Words Publishing

Growing Your Inner Light: A Guide to Independent Spiritual Practice by Lara Owen

Beyond Words Publishing, a co-publisher of Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books is run, in Hillsboro, OR outside of publishing’s New York epicenter. They publish 15 new mind-body-spirit titles per year with the hope that their work will inspire readers to gain wholeness and completeness for themselves, and to learn, grow, and find solutions.

While you may be most familiar with one of their popular best-sellers, The Secret, Beyond Words offers an extensive catalog of genres from Global Native Wisdom and Spiritual Lifestyles to Psychology and New Science.  GBiBT had the good fortune of receiving a few recent titles last week (thanks Whitney!) including a signed copy of  Growing Your Inner Light: A Guide to Independent Spiritual Practice by Laura Owen and a spiritual memoir from Jessica Maxwell, Roll Around Heaven: an All-True Accidental Spiritual Adventure.  

“Live for a while in the books you love.”

A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke - A collection of 366 readings from his poetry and prose.

Learn from them what is worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be returned to you a thousand times over. Whatever your life may become, these books— of this I am certain—will weave through the web of your unfolding.They will be among the strongest of all threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Viareggio, April 5, 1903, “Letters to a Young Poet”

As a child I loved poetry. I filled notebooks with my favorite passages and wrote my favorite lines all over my brown paper bag book covers.   Devotedly, I read the reader submissions in Teen Magazine and Reader’s Digest alike, adding what I found into my handwritten library.  At night I’d flip through the pages of those notebooks like they were the Sears catalog, dog-earing, underlining and circling. 

Then I discovered the classic American novelists of the 20s, 30s and 40s which I found poetic in their own right and abandoned poetry for a while until finding inspiration with Latin American poets – Lorca and Neruda.

It had been almost 10 years since I picked up a book of poetry until A Year with Rilke made its entrance.  It’s a collection of daily readings from the modern German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.  The passages are taken from his letters and journals as well as his prose and poetry.  Much of his work was written during and just after the turn of the 20th century, a period during which daily life was altered dramatically by industrialization. 

Books for the Holidays

Everywhere we look this week, it seems that the pace of life has been set to Holiday Mode.  Macy’s has decked their outer facade with wreaths and lovely strands of white lights, the street lamps of San Francisco are adorned with silver stars, and the Holiday shopping list I started in August sits untouched in a desk drawer.  

As projections on the future of publishing fly through the world wide web like so many snowballs, one team of bloggers has come to our rescue in more ways than one.  Buy Books for the Holidays is a community of bloggers that has decided to voice its love for books and the written word while also supporting independent bookstores.  Their mission is to inspire people to make this season a literary season by encouraging people to buy books for gifts and to donate to literacy charities for their year end giving.

As such, we at GBiBT have decided to join the march! From now until the very last minute, we’ll be highlighting books we think make meaningful gifts.  And if you’re in need of extra suggestions, the gang over at Buy Books for the Holidays will be spotlighting as many independent bookstores as they can as well as offering gift suggestions, printable shopping lists and more. 

Check back soon for our holiday picks!