Weekend Reading: A Good American

A Good American by Alex George.  Penguin 2012.

I was just complaining to someone a while back about how no one writes multigenerational epics anymore.  I was pretty young when this was a major literary trend, but I remember scavenging my mother's book collection and finding Sidney Sheldon books like Master of the Game and Windmills of the Gods which covered a family over many years, and were just fascinating.  I've had people come into the library as well and ask if we had multigenerational sagas, but all the ones I could find were quite old and the person had already read them.

Now I have a new one to recommend: A Good American.

I honestly had no idea what to expect with this book, but I really, really liked it.  It's a pretty slim volume, but it's written in a kind of languid pace and since it covers three generations, it seems much longer--but in a good way.  I savored this book, which is unusual for me because I usually just blast right through and finish a book in about two days (I'm not bragging, I'm just an impatient person).

Best takeaways:

Hard Work:  Frederick and Jette Meisenheimer are German immigrants who somewhat unexpectedly land in Beatrice Mississippi when Jette gives birth to their son Joseph a couple days early, before they can make it to St. Louis.  They befriend the local doctor, who also owns the local bar, start working for him, and eventually buy the bar.  Once prohibition takes hold, they convert the bar into a lunch restaurant, then an all day place.  I don't know what it is, maybe I just yearn for a simpler time, but I love stories about people who just work hard and profit because of it.  There's no strategy (aide from giving people what they want i.e. booze or food), there's no investment scheme, just good, honest (for the most part) work.

Barbershop Quartet: The Meisenheimer's are also quite musical, and Frederick and Jette wind up with four grandsons--the perfect number for a babershop quartet.  I don't know why I found this who storyline so interesting, but it was just neat.  This was something I've never thought about before, and the music lifestyle is one I know nothing about.

Charming Anecdotes:  Since this is a story about so many people, it's just jampacked with funny little incidents of every day life, which is something I really enjoy in books.  Overall, it's a serious work, but there are just so many funny insertions and hilarious asides that I was cracking up way more than I thought I would.  I don't want to give anything away, but trust me when I say that this book is much funnier than its cover would let you believe.

Overall, I enjoyed this book tremendously, and I'm so glad I got to read it.  I never would have picked this up on my own, and I'm really looking forward to the discussion in the BlogHer Book Club, which I encourage everyone to check out as well.


I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own.

Weekend Reading: Here I Go Again

Here I Go Again by Jen Lancaster

At first glance, you might not think this book has much to do with personal finance, but you would be completely wrong!  In a nutshell, this book is about Lissy Ryder, who was basically the Queen Mean Girl when she was in high school.  Twenty years after graduation, on the night of her High School reunion (they're always so dramatic in books and movies, aren't they?), her life basically falls apart and she's forced to reconsider all of her horrible choices.

I don't want to give too much away, plotwise, but trust me when I say that this book is hilarious escapism at its best.  Lissy starts off the book as a completely despicable, self-absorbed person who loses everything--and it's so satisfying.  Then, gradually, she learns to become a better person.  It sounds completely sappy and disgusting when I describe it, but it's quite witty and hilarious.  Eventually the main character realizes that she's so mean because all of the women in her family are incredibly mean, and the trait has been passed down through generations: "Grandmama's big claim to fame is once having made Jackie Kennedy cry.  She's still proud of that too, like it's her crowning achievement."

Personal financewise, Lissy is a complete gong show.  She works as a publicist, but barely shows up for work choosing instead to spend time at her gym stalking Oprah and working on her tan.  So naturally, she's cut loose right away.  Since she has no savings--her life is in shambles!  She has to move back into her bedroom at her parents house, and ends up depressed and eating her feelings.  Lesson one: have an emergency fund!

Anyway, highly enjoyable read, and I'm obviously very bad at writing book reviews for books I actually liked.  Check out the book discussion page at Blogher.com for people who are better able to put their feelings into words than I am.




I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own

Weekend Reading: The Willpower Instinct

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal

This is a very appropriate book to kick of 2013.  Since so many people start off the year with lofty resolutions that seem to peter off, it behoooves us to take a look at the notion of willpower and see if we can harness a little bit more and actually meet those resolutions.

Personally, I went into this book a bit skeptical but also intrigued.  Since I'm the type of person who hates feeling out of control but still frequently gives into temptation, I was not really convinced that this book would do anything for me.  I pleased to report that I was pleasantly surprised.  I'm certainly no saint for having read this book, but putting into practice some of the ideas may actually work.  Unfortunately, it's too soon to tell, but I'll keep you posted.

Best takeaways:

• Willpower is controlled by the prefrontal cortex region of the brain, so everyone has willpower, but some are better at tapping into it than others.
• When people encounter sugary snacks, the reason the treats are so hard to resist is because our blood sugar actually drops in anticipation of eating the snack.  This is so that if we do actually eat it, we don't go into a sugar coma, but it actually makes resisting that much harder.  It's true!  It's not (as much) your fault!
• Willpower and self-control are finite, and you can run out, but you can also exercise your self-control muscle and gain better willpower endurance.  Meditation apparently helps in this regard, and the more skeptical you are about meditation, the better the result (though I still don't really want to try it out, but I might).
• When we are 'good' and recognize that we're good, we give ourselves much more permission to be bad.  Studies have even shown that thinking about giving money to charity--not even actually doing it increased desire to buy something extravagant.  Thankfully, by knowing this and thinking about it, we can quell those urges and get back on track.

Overall, I'm glad I read this book.  I don't typically read books that seem like self help, but this is much more rooted in science, which makes it feel less like self help and more just like logic.  This is not a book to just sit down and plow though.  Even the author says that you should read one chapter at a time and try the techniques mentioned before going onto the next one.  So I'm going to sit down with it again and try that out--I'll keep you posted.


This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.

Weekend Reading: Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail

Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail by Caitlin Kelly.

I picked this book mostly because I loved the title (wordplay!) and because after working in retail for most of my life and just sort of going numb to the way things are, I thought it would be interesting to get an outsider perspective on it (and revel slightly in the fact that I no longer have to do it).

My review, in a sentence, is that this is an important book, but one with far too many flaws to really have the impact that it should.  Kelly is a professional journalist who, feeling the pinch of the recession and the cutback that most journalists are feeling these days, wants a source of steady income and takes a job at a North Face store.  The problem with this book, and one that I didn't think would occur considering that this writer is a professional writer who has thus far managed to keep herself fed and clothed using the power of her prose, was that this book is just quite poorly written.  I don't know if the original draft was too short and she just added a lot of padding, but this is honestly the most repetitive book I've ever read.

I read this in an afternoon, and perhaps it was intended to be read over the course of months, or the author wanted to just excerpt each chapter out as a stand-alone essay because she kept repeating herself over and over again.  I feel like I'm repeating myself just mentioning it more than once, but at least I'm aware of it.  One of the other major flaws--she only worked one shift a week, usually just five hours.  On one hand, it's a bit shocking that working that few hours could make a person crack after just two years, but on the other, it's a bit disingenuous to call this a "career" in retail.

Best takeaways:
--We expect stores to provide a high level of customer service, yet retail employees are barely paid more than minimum wage, the industry has 100% turnover and staff are rarely trained.  This leads to frustration for the customer and abuse for the staff.  Kelly mentions that on several occasions, particularly when she asked too many questions, she was rewarded with inaction.

--Expectations from on high.  At this store, employees were given a daily sales goal.  It was a pretty arbitrary number and they were expected to meet it, but whenever Kelly asked what would happen if they didn't meet the sales goal, no one had an answer.

--Lack of employee support. At one point in the book, Kelly broke the de-tagger, which is that tiny gadget that takes tags off of clothes.  Because it was broken, staff had to constantly use one of the other two, which are bolted to the counter.  This necessitated a lot of hopping around, and took up more time.  She later found out that the replacement de-tagger cost something like $10, but their store went without one for months.

--Ludicrous demands and policies.  I alluded to this when I talked about my experiences at Barnes & Noble and how obnoxious upselling is, but it bears repeating.  I've never worked at a clothing store, but I thought it was interesting that they had a person on staff whose job it was to 'stage' the store.  This meant that every so often, someone would completely re-organize the store so that the staff never knew where anything was.  This was to create new displays and highlight certain collections, obviously, but it also seems like a tremendous waste of time and effort.  Of course, this was something I wanted to know more about, but it was only mentioned briefly once.  This is something that the frontline staff has no control over, but they have to deal with the fallout of not being able to find anything for customers and we, as customers, have to wait longer.

Overall:
Disappointing.  This book says something needs to be said, but it's just poorly written.  I was hoping for more of a retail version of Nickle and Dimed, but this is half fluffy memoir, one quarter analysis of the retail industry and just one quarter whining/boasting.  In writing something so sloppily, I feel like Kelly looks down on her readers the same way corporate overlords look down on retail employees, but that might be a bit of a stretch.

Weekend Reading: Lost and Found

I was rather excited to be able to review this book because it seems like it actually might be a personal finance book, or, at least, a book about one woman's personal finances.  And I guess it is, but I really just don't know what to make of this one, for a few reasons.

Geneen Roth is a successful writer and leader of retreats where women go to deal with their issues about food and binge eating.  Roth is the author of a book called Women Food and God, which I remember people clamoring for at the library a few years ago, so I was mildly curious.  What I don't quite get about this book, is the way that the author keeps talking about how flawed her relationship with food and money is, but then sells herself as an expert and as someone who can help other people.  I don't believe in hiding your flaws, certainly people should learn from them, but the way she laid it all out in this book was just strange and I just kept thinking why should I listen to you? You're a total mess.

In that sense, I would say that this book falls more under the umbrella of self help than personal finance.  She's not laying out rules like Suze Orman et al., she's examining how people feel about money through the lens of her own experience.  I'd say that this could be a valuable book for some people, but I guess I'm just too cynical?  Maybe I've done all the analyzing I need to without realizing it because I didn't find a lot in this book that I really responded to.  I also never really respond well to introspection and talk of feelings, so there's that too.

Ms. Roth and her husband have made a lot of money over the years, and they invested most of it with Bernie Madoff.  We all know how that story ends, and that's where this book comes in.  The author is trying to analyze her relationship to money and figure out how to stop herself from overspending the way she stopped overeating, and she's also trying to understand why money is something you're not supposed to talk about.

That's interesting to me, and it is important to analyze your relationship with money, because it's entirely too easy to write off as being too complicated or too boring or too scary, but I feel like the way this author approaches things is just not something I respond to.  She makes a lot of good points, "Money is expensive--we pay for it with moments that will never come again and then we toss those moments away as if they have nothing to do with us." (182).

Overall, this book has value, but it's just not the book for me.  I lose a lot of patience when I feel like I'm being lectured and this book felt like there was a lot of filler in it too.  I'd say, if you're someone who is truly afraid of dealing with money (you're probably not actually reading this blog), this is a good starting out book.  It lays some good foundations and ends on a very optimistic note.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book and compensation from Blogher Book Club, but the opinions are all mine.

Weekend Reading: Diary of a Mad Fat Girl

Regular readers will have noticed that I've been reviewing a lot of books lately that have nothing to do with personal finance.  That's because I've been participating in the BlogHer book club, where you read a book, write a blog about it, and contribute to online discussions.  It's been fun so far, and I like the books I've read--except for this one.

Upon reading the description, Diary of a Mad Fat Girl sounded like light and frothy chick lit, which is something I enjoy tremendously.  In reality, it was a sloppy mess from start to finish, and I had to bribe myself into reading the whole thing.

Book description from Amazon: Graciela "Ace" Jones is mad-mad at her best friend Lilly who cancels their annual trip to Panama City for mysterious reasons; at her boss Catherine for "riding her ass like a fat lady on a Rascal scooter;" at her friend Chloe's abusive husband; and especially at Mason McKenzie, the love of her life, who has shown up with a marriage proposal one year too late. Ace is never mad, though, at her near-constant companion, an adorable chiweenie dog named Buster Loo.
Ace's anger begins to dissipate as she takes matters into her own hands to take down Chloe's philandering husband-and to get to the bottom of a multitude of other scandals plaguing Bugtussle, Mississippi. Then, she starts to realize that maybe Mason deserves a second chance after all.

Sounds somewhat interesting, no?  Certainly that description didn't sound like a book that would wind up in my personal top ten, but I figured it would be entertaining enough to carry me through to the end.  Then I noticed on the back of the book it says: "A revised and expended edition of the smash hit New York Times bestselling ebook."

You know what that means?  It means that this was a self-published book that likely sold well because it only cost $.99.  And once I started reading it, that was abundantly clear.

Let's start with the first problem, the cover:

The title is Diary of a Mad Fat Girl, yet the legs and ass on the cover are not those of a fat girl.  The main character is supposed to be a size 16.  The girl on the cover, maybe an 8.

Also, this book is not written as a diary.  Why give it that title, if that's not the format?  They couldn't think of anything else?  Does the word mad in the title mean she's insane (I kind of think she is), or angry?

Ok, I can get over that, and you may say I'm bring too picky, but the innards of the book are just one example after another of what not to do.

The characters are not well-drawn-- at all, they're barely described.  The main character, Ace, is incredibly obnoxious and unlikeable, and these friends of hers just turn up with no description whatsoever and the reader is just supposed to figure out that they're been lifelong best friends?

Ace's friend Chloe winds up in the hospital toward the beginning of the book and Ace infers that her husband had hit her.  Ace then freaks out, attacks him physically and winds up in jail.  I'm all for friend loyalty, but when this happened in the book I had no idea who Chloe even was, and I just assumed that Ace is the kind of moron who gets arrested all the time (she gets arrested two other times in the book).  She's one of those girls who may think of herself as sassy, but in actuality, she's just rude.

There's a bunch of intrigue in the high school where Ace and her other best friend Lilly are teachers, but it's not very intriguing despite the author's insertion of steamy pictures, secret homosexuality and inter-departmental sexual shenanigans.  It's just dull.

Ace seems to have handsome men falling all over her despite the fact that she's incredibly unlikeable, and at one point complains about how hard it is to be a bigger girl on the arm of a handsome man.  What?  That's pretty much the only time in the book her size is mentioned, so why does it feature in the title of the book?

Despite the fact that this book seems to rush through everything that happens, it still drags on and on.  Reading 300+ pages took me forever when normally I could read a book like this in an evening.  There are about ten sub-plots, none of them intriguing, and all of which seem to cast our unloveable heroine as a mentally deranged barbarian with no regard for social mores or reason.  At one point, she breaks up with the love of her life because he has a short conversation with a girl he used to date.  Really?  Are you kidding me?  And then she proceeds to wallow about how much she misses him and how much she hates that she had to move back to her home town.  Then she and a friend inexplicably make the acquaintance of an older wealthy woman in town.  Those scenes just read like she was trying to insert a wacky granny character a'la Janet Evanovitch.

Yeah.  These are not people I want to spend time with.

So I do not recommend this book--for anyone, and I will probably just throw my copy away.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book and compensation from BlogHer Bookclub, but the opinions in this review are (clearly) my own.

Weekend Reading: Why Women Need Fat

Slightly off the topic of frugality, but firmly on the topic of health and wellness, I recently acquired a copy of Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprisingly Solution to Keeping it Off Forever by Dr. William D. Lassek and Steven Gaulin.  It's a mouthful of a title, but a really fascinating read.  I've always been interested in diet and exercise--don't know if that's just a side-effect of being a girl, and this book is possibly the most comprehensive look at why women are built the way they are, why our weight shifts over time and why most women gain the same percentage of weight around the same age as they get older.

Weekend Reading: American Wasteland

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half Its Food (And What You Can do About It) by Jonathan Bloom. De Capo Press, 2010.

Much like when I recently read a book about hoarding and kept finding myself hopping up to clean and organize things, so too was I hyperaware while reading this book of the excess of food in my house, what I was going to need to eat next and how long those zucchini had been chilling out in my crisper.  If everyone read just a little bit of this book every morning, kind of like how some people read the bible, I bet food waste in this country would go down significantly.  Either way, this is a fascinating, if depressing, book that actually features a few of my favorite frugality bloggers and manages to make a clear point without being preachy--I like that.

Best Takeaways:

• In 2009, the average American household wasted $2200  worth of food (24).  That's just depressing.  Add to that the cost to grow, harvest and ship that food and the food waste, and it's just horrifying.
• Even our produce is getting supersized (100).  Whenever I think of large portions, I think of restaurant food.  When I go out to eat, I typically come out feeling so overstuffed and sick that the notion of going out to eat at all is less attractive to me.  Add to that the fact that I will most likely be eating my leftovers for the next meal, possibly two.  But I also noticed last summer when I was going through a banana phase, how hard it was to finish even a single banana.  I'm not saying this to try to convince you I'm some kind of delicate flower or something, but there is often a finite amount of banana that I want to eat in one sitting, and even though I would purposely grab the smallest bunch I could find--or take smaller bananas off of other bunches and have a bunch of loose, I could usually only eat half and then I would have to come up with a way to make it last until I wanted it again, which is a pain in the ass.  People love baby carrots, give me a baby banana!  Apparently, food retailers think large produce looks better, I assume healthier, but once you open a banana or cut an apple, it just doesn't last as long.  Let's get back to normal sizes, please.
• Reed College in Portland, OR has a "Scroungers Line" in their cafeteria where students who don't have a meal plan line up and share the unfinished food from the people who do have a meal plan (249).  I'm still a little fuzzy on how this works, but it's reducing food waste and feeding hungry (and thrifty) students, so that can't be a bad thing.  Double bonus, the scroungers believe that their immune systems are strengthened by the constant consumption of different germs.
• We can harness the power of garbage.  There are facilities in England where people (usually food processing companies) bring their excess food waste for anerobic digestion.  This is where the food waste is put into a machine and allowed to break down releasing methane, which is then captured and re-routed "Methane can power a generator in order to create electricity.  It can be compressed into a natural gas... and it can be cooled and used as a liquid natural gas." (259)  Methane is a natural byproduct of food breakdown, but in US landfills, it's often just vented out of the pile using long, curved pipes.  That keeps the landfill from exploding, but doesn't actually do anything with the methane except release it into the atmosphere.
• Plate Waste. One restaurant owner in California, in an effort to reduce food waste overall, but plate waste (the food left on the plates of diners that can't be donated or re-used) in particular was very worried that his customers would think he was ripping them off by reducing the amount of homefries that come with breakfast.  He studied how many got consumed, on average, and then reduced the number served to that amount.  Then he put a line in the menu that anyone who wanted more homefries could have unlimited refills.  He said some people request the refill, most don't, and very few diners take advantage and abuse the policy.  Serving people what they can actually eat--makes sense to me.
• We really do eat with our eyes.  This is something I've heard many times, and agree with completely.  If you serve people more food, they will eat more.  We eat based less on how full we feel, but how much food is gone from the plate.  Studies have shown that people served large tubs of stale popcorn will still consume about half even though they don't like the taste; the author mentions a study where people were eating soup from bowls connected to tubes that automatically refilled them.  Those people ate 30% more soup than people eating from non-refilling bowls.  

All in all, a fascinating (if depressing) read that I would recommend to anyone.  It also, reminded me again, that I need to start composting.  Problem is, I have no yard of any kind and therefore no place to put the compost.  I heard a while ago that there are compost barrels at Whole Foods, but possibly not at all stores... I need to go check that out.

Weekend Reading: Not Buying It

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

I found this book while wandering in the library stacks and initially thought it would be an interesting read.  Then I started reading it and thought it was a piece of pretentious garbage; then I got over that and realized that I actually liked it quite a bit--so many feelings!  I was initially drawn to this book because I've failed spectacularly in the three No Buy Months I've attempted (always in February), so I was curious to see if someone could actually pull off a whole year.

In addition to talking about her own experiences, Levine actually explores other aspects of consumer culture i.e. the rules of gift-giving, and she does some research.  I have a very well-developed set of prejudices against any books that includes the phrase "A year of" or "My year of" because it's so  gimmicky, and it seems like you can always get something out of an experiment like that if you know you're planning to write a book about it.  That said, I'm always racking my brains to come up with something I could do for a year and then write a book about, so maybe this is all sour grapes.

Either way, this is a real book (if a bit gimmicky) written by a talented writer, and she has convinced me that she has something to say other than just complaining about how she misses her smartwool socks.  Judith and her partner Paul (I can't believe she convinced someone else to go along with this, but it would have been truly awful if 1/2 the couple didn't participate--like every time I've done this), spend a year, New Years Day to New Year's Eve only buying what is absolutely necessary.

The Rules:
No eating out
No prepared foods--including those from the grocery store
No gifts unless those gifts are home-made foodstuffs or re-gifted items

What's allowed:
Only necessities for sustenance, health and business i.e. toilet paper, but no q-tips

Best Takeaways: 

• In the beginning of the experiment, there was a lot of complaining, a lot of deprivation, but by the end, the author actually says "As our stockpiles of socks and sauces dwindle and the buffer between ourselves and extremity fall, I can see that Paul and I have everything we need.  This makes me feel less, not more afraid... Having less, I feel more financially secure than in decades." (194)  I have to say, that since our household lost most of our food to the pantry moths and tropical storm power outage, I've actually taken pleasure again in coming home and figuring out what I can make to eat with what I have.  I actually found a recipe online that I'm going to make for dinner tomorrow, and was shocked to realize that even though I feel like I have no food, I have everything I need to make it already.
• "The preference for private over public is based on at least two fallacies.  One is that a dollar circulating through the government's till behaves differently than one moving through Wal-Mart's.  Now, there are differences in how these dollars are spent.  For one, unlike the Wal-Mart cashier, the worker at the Motor Vehicles Bureau is likely to belong to a union and therefore earn a decent salary and get health insurance and a pension.  Anti-tax pundits would lead us to believe that we taxpayers are bankrolling the fat wage and benefits package of the public-sector worker, while Wal-Mart is carrying its own weight.  In fact, by declining to offer its workers insurance or sufficient wages to buy the basics for themselves, Wal-mart shifts the bill to the state.  After all, the cashier gets sick anyway, her children get hungry.  When these things happen, she turns to Medicaid or food stamps, and the rest of us subsidize not just the cashier, but Wal-Mart itself."  
• "As I noticed on the mountain trails in Bozeman, leisure is a form of work.  Teach a man to fish and he will buy a pair of $400 Simms waders."  That was a bit of a slap in the face after my recent overspending on hobbies woes.  I've been toying with the notion of doing back to back weekend 1/2 marathons--one this Sunday, another the next week.  It's a new challenge, and could be fun.  But what might be just as fun, is not paying another $60 and driving 45 minutes, but just running 13 miles because I can and want to.  Yes, the pressure of competing and paying registration ramps up the excitement, but it also makes me very aware that a lot of people run faster than me, which crushes my spirits a bit.  It's a mixed bag, but I've decided I'm going to save that $65 for next season.

Final verdict: recommended.  It's interesting, a bit preachy in parts, but overall--solid.

Weekend Reading: Get Thee to the Library!

As part of my frugal summer (and life) plans, I've been reading a lot.  There's nothing quite like the summertime... or really fall, winter and spring to curl up with a good. book.  Since a big part of my job is helping people find books to read, I though I might throw in a short list of what I've been enjoying lately--some good "summer reads", if you will.

1. Elin Hilderbrand.  Hilderbrand was first recommended to me by a wise grad school chum, and I've been smitten ever since. She (the author, not my friend) writes stories that take place on Nantucket, which makes her books perfect summertime reads.  To date, I've read almost all of her books, and recommended them to many a library patron.  I actually looked on the shelf the other day and noticed that even though we have about four copies of each of her titles, they were all checked out.  Now I need to come up with another "beach read" recommendation.
2. Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series.  I had heard of Laura Lippman, but I've never had a lot of library patrons ask for her, and our library doesn't seem to have many copies of her books.  Then I saw her speak while I was at the ALA conference this past June, and learned that a friend actually got her baby name from Lippman's lady PI, Tess Monaghan.  Naturally, I had her sign a copy of one of her books for my friend, and then I read it in the hotel room.  I have to say, the woman weaves a gripping yarn.  I'm not much for the murder mystery genre usually, but her writing is less gruesome and more intriguing, and Tess Monaghan is a delightfully flawed badass, which is what I've always aspired to be.
3. Izzy Spellman Mysteries by Lisa Lutz.  I know I said above that I'm not much of a mystery reader, but these books (full disclosure: I've only read the first one so far.  There are four in the series), are like a delightful mix of The Westing Game and Mrs. Pollifax with a dash of The War of the Roses (which I haven't actually read, so I may be waaaaaaaaay off).  Anyway, good stuff.
4. Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepherd.  Now is the point in the list where I start to wonder if I've actually been a big mystery reader all along and never owned up to it... I am a bit obsessed with Nancy Drew... Regardless, I first dismissed the PLL series as Gossip Girl with slightly more boring covers.  Turns out, that despite the somewhat cardboard teen character casting i.e. The Smart One, The Arty One, The One With The Eating Disorder, etc., these books are seriously well-written and devourable.  I couldn't stop reading them, and now I can't stop talking about them.
5. TC Boyle. Anything by TC Boyle.  I have loved TC Boyle for many, many years.  He runs the gamut from historical to hilarious to heartbreaking and I make it a point to have at least one of his books on a display in the library at all times.  He's the ultimate satirist, and he can bring your emotions bubbling up to the surface without you feeling the slightest bit used or tricked. For funny, I recommend Drop City; to make you think, The Tortilla Curtain; for history, The Road to Wellville; and if you just want a damn good book, When the Killing's Done.
6. Bill Bryson.  I love Bill Bryson.  He's funny and smart and thoroughly entertaining. He basically tricks you into learning, which is awesome.I read his newest book At Home, a few months ago while serving jury duty, and it was fascinating.Then I told a co-worker about it, and every time I saw him, he'd say something like, "Can you believe that's how it was?!?!?"  I love his travel books too, he makes you feel like you're there, but without being all pretentious about it.  Good stuff.

So that's just a short list, feel free to add your own suggestions for me and the other readers.  And if you hate one of the books/ authors I mentioned, let's have a delightful brawl in the comments section!

Weekend Reading: Hot (broke) Messes

Hot (broke) Messes: How to Have Your Latte and Drink it too.  By Nancy Trejos. Business Plus, May 2010.

This is more of a tale of financial mishap than a personal finance book, but that's a rather nice change of pace, actually.  Author Nancy Trejos is a personal finance writer at the Washington Post, and is currently crawling her way out of debts racking up by poor decision-making, ignorance and trying to keep up with the Joneses (I hate that expression).  She turns her mistakes into our lessons, and supplements those with accounts of other people's woes and triumphs.

As far as personal finance books go, this one is certainly the most readable.  Trejos is an excellent writer, so I forgave what seemed to be a bit self-indulgent at times.  She also steps a toe into other areas that fall under the umbrella of personal finance, but rarely get mentioned i.e. health insurance.

Best Takeaways:

• I now have a better understanding of health insurance and what some of the previously daunting terms mean.  I'm not going to have health insurance any time soon, but it's nice to have a bit of information.
• The importance of honesty.  Since this is more of a narrative than a personal finance book, you actually get to see her character develop as she goes along her personal finance journey.  She includes excerpts from her diary about her financial hits and misses, and you witness a person going from not looking at price tags to buying wheat crackers for $1 less. She comes clean with her friends about her budget and finds that many of them are in the same boat.  It's so important to just be honest with your friends about where you are moneywise, but it's also really hard to do.  In the long run, we all know that saving and paying off debt will serve us better than having friends who spend recklessly, but everyone gets caught up sometimes.
• An example.  She's very honest and warts-and-all about her personal finance trials and lessons, and that's something you rarely get.  It's really nice to experience a book of this type and not feel a bit like you're being lectured.  Certainly Suze Orman talks about her own financial wobbles, but this is much more confessional, and you can see how you two would get sucked into buying a condo for love or buying a car because you're sick of feeling deprived.  I certainly get petulant when deprived (see clothes shopping), and even though I know I'm not alone in that, it's still nice to have a reminder.

Overall, I highly recommend this book.  Whether you're starting out budgeting or are a seasoned couponer, there's something in here for everyone, and it's entertaining.

Weekend Reading: Debt Free U

Debt Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships or Mooching off my Parents. by Zac Bisonette. Portfolio Trade, August 2010.

So, I read this one about ten years too late, but assuming I can ever pay off my loans and have kids (or I ever decide I want kids), I'll have some solid knowledge to pass along! This book is an interesting read, if somewhat unbelievable at times. He cites a lot of studies, and presents what may be for some, an attainable goal of graduating from college with no debt. If nothing else, even if what he says wouldn't be possible for many people, at least it gets people thinking.

In my case, as a person with a huge amount of student loan debt, it made me feel a little angry that I wasn't more sensible back when I was borrowing heavily, but I don't think in my case I could have or really would have (just knowing myself and the experiences I wouldn't give up to save a few dollars) done much differently, and I'm not a big fan of regret, so I'll just keep making loan payments without (much) complaint.

Here's some of the things he said that I don't think are possible/likely for many college students:

• Do the first two years of college at Community College and live with your parents
• Work an average of 30/hours per week with the intent of putting that money toward tuition

Both very good ideas, but not something that can work for everyone. For example, I grew up in a town of 1500 people, so we had no community college, in fact, K-12 was in the same building. I managed to take one very inexpensive college psychology class while in high school by driving 30 minutes to the nearby air force base, but they certainly didn't offer enough classes for me to have finished two years worth of credits, unless I took five years to do it.
I had to move to a bigger city to attend college, which meant the added expense of housing. I picked an inexpensive state school and worked throughout college and grad school, but made nowhere near enough to pay tuition. He says he's not living on ramen, but I'm a bit skeptical.
Best Takeaways:

• You don't need to go to an Ivy League school to get an excellent education. I am thoroughly state-school educated, and I can go toe-to-toe with my Ivy League buddies any day. The name on your degree doesn't matter as long as you're smart and capable. My bf went to Dartmouth and insists that the networking opportunities you get from attending an Ivy League school make the exhorbitant tuition worth it, but in my field, it would have been a waste. Plus, I don't like or want to work with snobs, which many Ivy Leagers are.
• Parents should not take out a home equity line of credit, extra mortgage, whatever to help their kids pay for college. If they can't make the payments later, for whatever reason, their home can be taken away. As Bisonnette pointed out over and over, you can't reposess a college education. If you secure the borrowed money with something tangible, it can be taken away from you. Likewise, parents should not take money out of their retirement accounts to pay tuition. It seems nice, but then how are they supposed to feed themselves once they've retired? They will most likely rely on the kids that they helped through college, so it's really no help at all.
• Pick a major that you enjoy and will do well at, but also find something with flexibility. There's no point working toward a single goal for four years and then finding out that you either don't want the one job you've been preparing for, or that the industry has changed.
• We don't yet know the impact that students graduating heavily in debt will do for the future economy. Unfortunately, people in my age bracket are pioneers in this, but 15% of borrowers already default on their loans, and that number is only going to increase. If you can reduce the amount you borrow, you should.

Overall, it's a good read. The author gets a bit strident at times--he has a thesis and he is defending it to the death, so I would caution any reader to take his advice with a grain of salt. For example: He thinks that everyone should go to a large state school. His rationale is that there are more professors and more students, therefore, more opportunities. I personally would not have been happy at a large school, and it would have been a waste of my money to go to one. I have another friend who went to Texas A&M, who said that she had a nearly impossible task of getting grad school recommendations because her school was so large and her advisor had 100 other students. The author claims that there are ways to make a large school seem small, and that's valid, but my small undergrad school was just right for me.

He also says that campus tours are a waste of time and that students get too hung up on the notion of "fit." While I agree that finding an institution that fits seems to be more important than getting a quality education for some, it is still somewhat important. Likewise he poo poohed study abroad saying that it's a waste of money and often sets students behind so they can't graduate in four years. That may be true, but my study abroad experience was invaluable, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Bottom line: This is a book that will give you instructions on how to graduate college with little-to-no debt, and also little-to-no fun. If saving money and getting out into the working world is your ultimate goal--then go forth with these instructions and achieve. If savoring your college years and enjoying yourself are more important to you, make sure you start saving a lot in high school.

Weekend Reading: In Cheap We Trust

In Cheap We Trust: The story of a Misunderstood American Virtue by Lauren Weber. Back Bay Books, October 2010.

I've already mentioned this book once, but I could write an entire series dissecting why this is a fantastic analysis of the American character in relation to money. I realize that that sentence doesn't make it sound very appealing, but it's seriously fascinating. Just taking a cursory view of American history, we shifted from Puritain values of thrift to wartime rationing, to the roaring twenties to the great depression. We always seem to know that we're supposed to be saving, but easy credit gets the best of us each time. When it's all written down like this, it's both horrifying a fascinating how we as a nation keep making the same mistakes in a slightly new way. It certainly re-validates my personal desire to be thrifty and remain that way, but even I have only come to this conclusion after falling victim to the same ideas that always bring us down.

Best Takeaways:

A new appreciation for Home Economics class

Actually, I should amend that to an appreciation for Home Economics class, because it was a joke to me before. In my school, Home Ec was for the lazy, for the kids that were scared of the shop teacher and for the kids that knew taking shop meant doing a little bit of math. We did the lessons in cooking and sewing, but we also had a Mary Kay beauty consultant come in twice, which seriously undermined any actual lessons we were supposed to be learning. Prior to reading this book, I had never even really considered the name Home Economics and what it actually means. Basically, the men went off to earn the money, and it fell to the women to run the home as efficiently as possible. This means knowing how to get a good price on food, how to prepare it, how to sew and mend clothes--basically all of the things that I'm trying to reach myself at age 31 and lamenting that I didn't know before.

My Home Ec class has changed its name to Family and Consumer Sciences, but still didn't really tell the students that even if you're not going to be a housewife, you will still run a house someday. There is a huge opportunity to teach high school students practical skills that they will actually need someday, but that message doesn't seem to get through. If anyone else has had a better Home Ec experience, I'd love to hear it, otherwise, I feel like I might end up lobbying my way into local schools to save today's youth from themselves!

The notion of the good life has been pervasive in our history.

We have always had the ideal of The American Dream, but we've always let the haves dictate history more than the have nots. "Despite the flashy 1920s images of Gatsby et al., many Americans still lived in poverty having missed out of the decade's gains. In 1929 The Brookings Institution reported that 60 percent of Americans lived on less than $2000 per year, barely able to provide for basic necessities, yet they were inundated with images of the good life." (148). Sure history is written by the victors, but why do we always celebrate extravagance and waste more than we do hard work and practicality. It's sexier, I suppose, but again, it's this whole cyclical notion of thinking that becomes really apparent when you just focus on our nation's history with money.

The Tightwad-Spendthrift scale.

Carnegie Mellon did a survey of consumer behavior (which you can take, if you like) that indicated that people who fall into the category of tightwad actually have a physical reaction to spending money i.e. it's not always just cheapness, for these people, it's actually difficult to spend. Likewise, the spendthrifts have a hard time not spending money, even if it's money they don't have. Personally, I've gone through phases of both, and it depends on what I'm buying. Sometimes I wake up knowing I need to buy milk, but just not wanting to. Sometimes I wake up knowing that I don't need a new black cardigan, but it's all I can think about. I go back and forth and I think I fall more into the middle area of unconflicted consumer.

I'm sure we've all seen, just in observing human behavior, that all of us spend in different ways, but it's interesting to learn the though process (or automatic attitude) that goes into buying things.

Getting a bit too caught up

I'm reading a great new book called In Cheap we Trust by Lauren Weber. It's an examination of Americans' love/hate on-again/ off-again relationship with thrift, and the differences between cheap behavior and thrifty behavior. It's incredibly interesting, and I'll be writing a proper review once I'm finished, but there is one idea that is just lodged in my mind that I can't stop thinking about.

A bit of context: The author talks briefly about her upbringing in the introduction, explaining how her father was a man who liked to make his pennies stretch as far as he could. He would keep the house so cold that you could see your breath and wash the dishes in cold water (which she notes was not very effective). He was also a man who was generous when it counted, and sent each of his kids to the college of their choice to study what they wanted to study with no cost to the kids at all. He paid for everything.

As was reading this, I was thinking--yes! that's exactly the kind of thrift I aim to employ in my life (except I will always wash my dishes in hot water). I never want to be cheap. To me, cheap is mean, penny-pinching behavior; cheap is saving for the sake of saving and just admiring your pile of money; thrifty is not buying more than you need, knowing the difference, and having the ability to spend your money on things that are important.

Then the author mentioned the tea bags.

Apparently, as a further cost-cutting measure, her father would re-use his teabags up to twelve times. He would dunk once, "just enough to color the water" then clip the bag on a makeshift clothesline to dry. This is appalling to me, and I have to wonder, why drink tea at all? Why not just drink hot water?

I like a strong cup of tea. I've been known to use two tea bags sometimes, so this kind of behavior steps foot squarely into cheap territory and infringes on your quality of life. Unless your tea is made of the rarest flower that can only be harvested by blind nuns in Tibet, there is no reason to live like this.

Out of curiosity, I decided to examine my own tea consumption and the possibility of saving money. My preferred brand is PG Tips, which I can usually get at The Ocean State Job Lot (weird, discount remaindered store) for $3.45 for 40 teabags-- about $.09 per bag. Not great, but not bad either. My local grocery store sells that brand for $8.99 for 80 teabags--$.11 per bag, so I'm already seeking out a bargain.
But wait, I can also get Tetley tea for sometimes as low as $2.65 for an 80 count box--a mere $.03 per teabag. Tetley's is nice and strong, but I don't like the flavor as much. However, it is $.06 cheaper per bag to go with the Tetley's.

Considering I drink at least one cup of tea per day in the summer, and at least two cups per day in the winter, that could be significant savings. If we average that I drink 650 cups of tea per year, that's $58.50 spent on PG and $19.50 on Tetley's--pretty significant difference, but do I really want to live my life drinking sub-par tea just to save $39? Then again, it is $39, that's walking-around money.

This is possibly the lamest blog I've ever written, but it's a good illustration of how significant savings can be just from switching brands! It has merit! Even though I've devolved into strange nickle-and-diming territory. I've just done a big tea buy, so I'll drink that up, but I have a box of Tetley's waiting in the wings--perhaps I'll grow to appreciate it?

Weekend Reading: The Money Book

The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-timers, and the Self-Employed

By Joseph D'Agnese and Denise Kiernan

Three Rivers Press, 2010

Basically, according to the title, this is a book for someone exactly like me i.e. a gal who works part-time and freelances. Why is it that I feel like this one didn't really speak to me and mostly made me terrified of the notion of living as a freelancer? I've never been so glad to have some (small) regular income as when I was reading this book. That's not to say that there's not a ton of good advice in here, but it seriously left me spooked. I don't do well with uncertainty.

This book is a very good foundation builder for someone who lives on an unreliable income and/or may have personal debt. The advice is solid, and is the same as advice I've both heard before and given before. It's written in an authoritative yet entertaining way that doesn't take itself too seriously (I do like that...). Because I don't have credit card debt and have heard a lot of this advice before, it didn't pertain to me as much as I hoped, but I certainly did learn some things.

Best Takeaways:

When it comes to money, you have to be brutally honest with yourself.

It's always good to re-remind yourself of this because no matter how saintly you think your spending habits are, there's always a chance that you could opt to ignore the purchase of that item you love the look of and hate the price of. Remember my recent foray into near credit card disaster just because I didn't like the look of my balance and wasn't being as thorough as usual? The authors advocate making a list of all debts and expenses to help you better understand your financial situation and assign some numbers to things. I agree with them.

Spending Identity Statement.

This is interesting. A spending identity statement comes after you've taken a good hard look at your income, assets and expenses, and it functions like a check to keep you in line.

Sample Statement: My name is Jane. As of this date, I have earned $xxxx.xx doing this job. My monthly fixed expenses are $xxx.xx. Based on my income, my monthly discretionary income is $xxx.xx....

Then you assign values to areas where you're likely to do your discretionary spending i.e. eating out, shoes, etc. It's a contract with yourself, and not a bad idea at all.

Debt=Dreams Deferred.

Not really much to add to that statement except a hearty "well said!" Tempting though it may be to keep up with the Joneses, the more things you own, the less freedom you have to do things in the future. Living on credit is far too common and accepted a practice today, and as we've learned over the course of the recent (ongoing) financial crisis, it's not helping anyone. Use money you have to buy things you need.

Change your "I deserve" language.

People say that they deserve things all too frequently these days--in all different ways. "I ran for 30 minutes, so I deserve an ice cream sundae;" I was really good about spending all week so I deserve to go shopping tonight;" "I had a hard week, I deserve a spa treatment." I'm all about rewarding yourself for good behavior, but if you go running for 30 minutes as part of your diet, don't you deserve to lose weight? Or if you're really good about spending, don't you instead deserve a low balance or no balance on your credit card? It's a subtle shift, but it does make a huge difference. Instead of wanting stuff, take pleasure in your savings balance and your zero credit card balance. I think it's even more fun because you don't have to find a place to store new purchases.

Weekend Reading: Suddenly Frugal

Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier for Less

By Leah Ingram

Adams Media, 2010

In the interest of full disclosure, I had to admit that I have a bit of a bloggerly crush on Leah Ingram. Hers was the first frugality blog I stumbled across (thank you google reader), and from that moment forth I decided that I kind of want to be her. That's the bias I'm bringing to my write-up on this book when I say that this is easily one of the best frugality books I've ever read (and that's a lot). Just like her blog, this tome is chocked full of practical advice that saves you money.

I'm not entirely sure what it is about her that I respond to so much but I think it's a combination of things:

1. She's an actual writer. It's hard to find bloggers that can actually write. There are many talented people out there who have a style, but to find a professional, polished writer is a real treat.
2. She's no-nonsense and doesn't make it about herself. There are little asides about how she and her family started doing x, y or z, but it's certainly not confessional or full of pictures of family weekends. That stuff is all well and good sometimes, but other times, I just want the advice.
3. Religion doesn't factor in. This may be an odd thing to say, but one of my biggest complaints about frugality blogs is that many are run by stay-at-home moms who are very religious. I have no gripe with religious people, but it's really refreshing to just read about saving a bit of cash without having to wade through the whole "god directed me to save money this way" stuff. Again, I just want the advice.

While I find the claim on the front cover of the book that a person can save up to $25,000 per year just by reading a bit silly, she does back it up. At the end of each section, there is a breakdown of how much you can save by doing everything she says. Sadly, most of it doesn't apply to me, but maybe someday it will.

Best takeaways:

I need to get a drying rack for my clothes.

I've actually known this for a while, but this book really brought home the fact that I could be saving a lot of money, energy and wear on my clothes if I just sucked it up and bought one. Problem is, I did buy one a few years ago at Target, and the damn thing would not stay together. It was the kind where the wooden dowels fit into plastic brackets on the frame, and the dowels wouldn't stay in. I tried glue (several kinds) and duct tape before I finally just threw it out. If anyone has managed to find a well-made drying rack, let me know.

DIY Laundry detergent.

Borax, washing soda and Fels Naptha soap and you've got laundry detergent that works just as well as the stuff that smells like a meadow. She also posted this on her blog, but the DIY chapter in this book is exhaustive and a little bit awesome. I haven't actually tried making the laundry soap yet, but I will, and you'll hear about it.

How to Compost.

Explained in a way that actually make sense. I have a boss who is a master composter, and she's half explained it to me before, but since she knows it so well, she omits things. This book breaks it down in a way that actually resonates to me much more than boss's advice or anything I've read on the interwebs. Granted, I do not have a yard so cannot really compost--but someday! I'll be ready.

Random Reuseables.

This is an entire section dedicated to giving you ideas of other ways to use common items. It's not unlike the new uses of everyday items section of Real Simple, but that's one of my favorite parts of the magazine, so I can't get enough of this stuff. I love dual purpose and maximizing what you can do with one thing. Ever thought of using toilet paper tubes as seed starters? Genius.

Weekend Reading: Thrifty, Living the Frugal Life with Style

Thrifty: Living the Frugal Life with Style.
By Marjorie Harris.

House of Anasasi Press, 2010.

I don't know what it was about this book, maybe I just couldn't get over the cover, but I really felt like I was reading my mom's guide to frugality. Sure, older people have a lot to teach me about ways to save money, but I also couldn't really connect with a lot of the advice in this book. It may speak to me in twenty or thirty years, but right now, not so much.

Case in point, Marjorie begins with telling us that she hired a friend of hers to come over and organize her house. Well, that seems very extravagant to me, and though she said having a better organized house will save money and time in the future, I'm just not sold. She mentions estate sales and auctions, which is somewhat frugal and green, but also can be very pricey. This is frugality for people who have already lived a frugal live and have a little money, not for those of us up to our eyes in student loan debt and working part-time.

Actually, a lot of the book is just her talking about how great her friends are. I'm certainly glad she likes them, but, again, it didn't do much for me.

Best Takeaways:

Cheap but decent wine list.

Marjorie has a friend who is a wine author who made a list of good wines for less than $20. As I know very little about wine (usually preferring the boxed variety, but I can't really serve that to guests or bring it to dinner parties), it's nice to have a list of good brands that don't break the bank.

Ask for an appliance demonstration before buying.

Granted, I've never bought an appliance, so maybe this is standard, but it's definitely good advice. If you bring home a dishwasher that you paid good money for and you hate the way it sounds or it's way too loud, there's not much you can do.

Run the dishwasher and other appliances at night when electricity is cheaper.

Ok, is this actually true? This sounds like something that people who used to have to pay for minutes on a landline phone would say. I realize that there's less stress on the energy grid overnight, but does that really effect price? Someone get back to me on this.

Overall Opinion:

This is not the book for me. However, I like very much that she draws the distinction between thrifty and cheap, "Being thrifty requires a brain, being cheap doesn't. Being thrifty means figuring out how things work and making them work more efficiently. Being thrifty means being self-aware." (4)

Weekend Reading: Shift Your Habit

Shift Your Habit: Easy ways to save money, simplify your life and save the planet.

By Elizabeth Rogers. Three Rivers Press. March 9, 2010

This isn't so much a book as it is a guide to small tweaks that a person can make to cut daily expenses and waste. Therefore, my plan to sit down and read it in one sitting failed spectacularly (but talk of cleaning products prompted me to get up and scrub my sink). Rogers is an environmental consultant who wrote 2007's The Green Book: The everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time. Rogers follows a few families who agree to shift habits that they have that are costing them a lot of money, and those families give a few testimonials along the way, but the bulk of this book is just lists of things to do to save money.

I have to say though, she's got some good ideas, and there's a pretty kick-ass website to go along with the book: http://shiftyourhabit.com/

The book is broken down into sections: Home and Garden, Food and Drink, Kids, Pets, Work etc., so you can read what you want, discard what doesn't apply to you. I skimmed all the sections paying particular attention to Home, Food and Drink, Work and Travel and Transportation.

Best takeaways:

After opening a jar of tomato sauce, freeze it in an ice cube tray for future use.

I can never get through one of those giant jars before it goes moldy, but it seems like as soon as I throw one away, I want pasta again. I am very pleased with this idea.

Aluminum foil is not necessarily eco-friendly.

I assumed that because it can be recycled, aluminum foil is a better way to store things that may not fit in a container, or better than plastic bags for sandwiches. Not so. Production of aluminum foil involves mining, transport and water costs for something that is rarely necessary. I feel a bit foolish now that I've been trying to actually increase my aluminum foil useage. I'll cut that out.

List of recipes for household cleaners.

Vinegar as a fabric softener? I'm curious... Over the years, I've stumbled across recipes for making your own laundry detergent, window cleaner, drain clearer etc., but this book has a handy list for stuff I hadn't even thought of.

Tips for storing food.

Admittedly, I really don't know much about the best way to store a lot of foods. I've learned a few things by trial and error, but never really know if what I'm doing is right or not. This book breaks it all down from freezing to produce--how long your food can last, and when it's time to let go. Plus she includes a ideas for what to do with food that's right on the brink of going bad.

Overall Opinion:

A lot of this isn't new information, but it's good to have it repeated. The format is very easy in that you can find what you want to know quickly, and there isn't a lot of extra talk surrounding it. The index is very nice. I devour books and blogs even if I've heard it all before just because I may have forgotten something, or in the case of the pasta sauce, I just hadn't thought if it. It's good to just keep frugality in mind all the time. So, no, I wouldn't pay for this book, but I'm glad I got it from the library.