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Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: I’d Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile

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I’d Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper is a full-book expansion on a chapter by the same name in Ashworth and Nobile’s I Was a Really Good Mom before I had Kids. Since I enjoyed the former book and this happened to be the first book in my library’s Dewey Decimal system for 646.78 (a section I started reading with Gottman’s And Baby Makes Three), I figured I’d go ahead and see what this book had to say.

The authors continue their previous pattern of starting each chapter with a tongue-in-cheek quiz before addressing what they consider to be important issues in marriage. They then close out with practical steps women can take to improve their marriages in the given dimension. Call-out boxes sprinkled throughout share women’s “Dirty Little Secrets” or other anecdotes from women related to the given topic.

The title might give the impression that the authors consider marriage expendable – but this is not at all the case. They start (and finish) the book with the view that marriages are worth keeping and that a HAPPY marriage is something worth striving for – both for the sake of each party and for their children’s sake.

What the authors found, as they interviewed women across the country for this book and their previous one, is that many women rated their marital happiness around 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 – but when they were asked what they were doing to make it better, they were dumbfounded. Those that responded often replied that they figured their marriages would get happier when the kids were in school or out of the house or in some other stage than they were currently in.

Ashworth and Nobile don’t think that’s an acceptable answer – which is why they wrote I’d Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper to offer women suggestions for improving the happiness of their marriages right now.

Several of their main points for improving happiness in marriage overlap with their suggestions for improving happiness as a mother: having realistic expectations, communicating with your husband, prioritizing your relationship. Others are new – adjusting your attitude and investing in having a good sex life with your husband. In general, it’s good sound advice.

This book would be a good choice for those who enjoyed Ashworth and Nobile’s style from I was a Really Good Mom and who want to invest more in their marriage. (If you haven’t read I was a Really Good Mom, maybe you should check out my review.) I think there are probably other books that might give equally good advice – this isn’t unique in its advice, per se. But what makes this book stand out among marriage advice books is its readability and light-hearted tone, a tone which overwhelmed moms are likely to find more appealing than the clinical tone many marriage advice books take.

It’s valuable to note that this book is not Christian advice – which means it’s missing some biggies (Trusting God immediately comes to mind, see 1 Peter 3:5-6). It also means there are vulgar terms littered throughout (mostly in the interviews with other women) – and, as I cautioned with the previous book, many of the quotes from other women display distressingly poor attitudes towards their husbands. While Ashworth and Nobile’s advice is generally good, there is little worth emulating from any of the “real woman” anecdotes (The “I’d trade my husband for a housekeeper” is one of the tamer snippets from those real woman anecdotes.)

For the record, I wouldn’t dream of trading my husband for anyone or anything.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Marriage Advice
Synopsis: Ashworth and Nobile help women learn to “love your marriage after the baby carriage”.
Recommendation: Generally good advice – and less clinical than many books on marriage, which makes it a lot easier to read when you’re in the trenches of motherhood

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: The Lion’s World by Rowan Williams

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Why did C.S. Lewis write The Chronicles of Narnia?

Some praise Lewis’s “Christian allegory”, while others rage against the heavy handed allegory – Polly Toynbee of the Guardian writes that “Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion” and quotes Philip Pullman saying that Narnia is “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read.” (Her critical column can be found here).

But C.S. Lewis made it clear that Narnia was not intended allegorically – although he did have a purpose in writing Narnia, a purpose Toynbee quotes as to “make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life”.

In The Lion’s World, Rowan Williams expands upon Lewis’s stated purpose, suggesting that “Lewis is trying to recreate for the reader what it is like to encounter and believe in God.” It’s a fascinating suggestion, and one that Williams backs up rather credibly with various arguments.

But The Lion’s World is not a book of arguments. Instead, it is more like sitting down for book club with one of the smartest and most widely read persons of your acquaintance and listening with fascinated interest as he gives his thoughts. And lest you think smartest and most widely read equals most pompous, let me quickly dissuade you of that idea. Williams is humble and approachable as well.

I didn’t take notes as I read, didn’t flag paragraphs, didn’t file things away for comment in my review. I just read, delighting as Williams danced from theme to theme, bringing up things I’d felt but not put together as I read the Chronicles.

Williams does not accept Lewis’s theology unquestioningly, he occasionally notes a tricky theological or cultural comment or a clunky bit of prose. But The Lion’s World doesn’t exist either as an apologetic or as a critic of the Chronicles or of Lewis – it is written as a conversation from one Chronicles enthusiast to another.

It was a pleasure to read. And, at just 144 gift-book-sized pages, it was an easy read too.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Commentary on the Chronicles of Narnia
Synopsis: Rowan Williams discusses a number of themes he sees throughout the Chronicles of Narnia.
Recommendation: Fans of the Chronicles will likely find this book enjoyable.

Categories Book Notes

There is no land called Narnia

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I was shocked, in rereading The Silver Chair for this year’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge, to realize how much I’d forgotten from this book. It’s never been one of my favorite of the series, but I’ve still read it at least a dozen times. So why had I forgotten so much?

One scene, though, that I could not at all forget, is the scene where the Lady of the Green Kirtle aka the Queen of the Underworld returns to her throne room to find Prince Rillian free from his chair and in his right mind.

She throws some powder on the fire, filling the room with a sickeningly sweet aroma. She begins thrumming a mandolin with a repetitive, mind-numbing thrum. And at last she speaks:

“Narnia?” she said. “Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia.”

The Prince, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill all try to counter the sweet smell, the repetitive thrumming, the queen’s patronizing derision. There is a Narnia, they say. They’ve been there. But the queen’s questioning makes clear she thinks it all a childish game, a dream. Since they describe Narnia in terms of what she knows, in terms of the Underworld, she presumes that they are only looking at her world and dreaming of something bigger and better.

Eventually, between the mind-fogging effects of the music and the odor and the scorn of the woman, all the travelers begin to relent.

“No, there never was a sun,” said the Prince, and the Marshwiggle, and the children.

In this scene, Lewis has the witch play the role of the Enlightenment scholar, who declares no need for god now that reason is king. Once upon a time, people needed to create myths of gods to explain their world – but now that we have science to explain, we need no God.

And here Lewis makes one of his most compelling arguments for the existence of God: joy. And the seemingly joyless Marshwiggle is the one to make it.

“One word, Ma’am,” he said… “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder….So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones….And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

You see, science might be able to explain a lot about how this world works – but it doesn’t explain the unfulfilled longing for joy that rests in each human heart. It doesn’t explain the hunger that every experience in this world serves only to deepen. A purely naturalistic world would ultimately have us all as nihilists – since we are mere pawns of impersonal natural forces.

One must say that, if religion is a story, it is a much better story than the one naturalism tells. And if there is no heaven, at least the tale of heaven goes further to quench our forever longing than does the naturalistic story of death.

If this be a game, it’s a play-world which licks your real world hollow.

As C.S. Lewis said in prose:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

So even if there is no Narnia, I shall live like a Narnian.

I choose joy.

Categories Book Notes, Following Christ

Down from the mountain

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When I was in high school, our youth group talked about “mountaintop experiences”.

Mountaintop experiences were when we had some sort of emotional experience with God or His word, usually at a camp or other special event. We would get all hyped up about one thing or another – evangelism, personal holiness, being in the word, whatever.

I don’t remember if we had any direct teaching on the Biblical basis for the term, but it hearkened to Moses on the mountaintop receiving revelation from the Lord or to Peter and James and John seeing Christ transfigured on the mountain. Away from people on the mountaintop, each of these had very special encounters with God.

And each of these ran into difficulties when they returned from the mountaintop to face everday life. Moses found the camp worshipping a golden calf. The disciples came down to discover their compatriots unable to cast out a demon.

We were given warnings about life off the mountaintop. We were warned that we’d come home from camp only to be tempted to get into a fight with our parents. And, amazingly enough, the warnings were usually right. It was a lot harder to be obedient, to be in the Word, to tell others about Christ once we were back in everyday life, once we had to clean our rooms and do our homework and get along with our siblings.

I was struck, as I re-read The Silver Chair last month for the Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge, that Lewis describes a mountaintop experience as well – and describes the difficulty of coming down from the mountain.

Jill meets Aslan on a vast plateau that sits high, high, high above the land of Narnia. She receives a task from Aslan: to find the lost prince of Narnia. And she receives four signs by which to complete the task.

Before Aslan blows Jill off the mountaintop to meet Eustace, he gives her a last warning – a warning about life off the mountaintop.

“Stand still. In a moment I will blow. But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. And now, daughter of Eve, farewell — “

Aslan gives two instructions on leaving the mountaintop, but they are really one.

“Remember, remember, remember,” Aslan said. Lewis has Aslan almost quote the words following the Hebrew shema in Deuteronomy 6:

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

~Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (ESV)

Aslan was telling Jill that she needed to remember what he had spoken. She needed to repeat his words to herself multiple times a day. She needed to return to his word again and again and again.

“Let nothing turn your mind”, Aslan said. He was telling Jill that she needed to purpose to be obedient to Aslan’s word. What’s more, she needed to keep on purposing to do Aslan’s word, whatever the inducements otherwise.

“Take great care that it does not confuse your mind,” Aslan said. He was telling Jill that she needed to guard against distraction. I am reminded first of Titus 3:9 (I’m in Titus now, so that’s on my mind quite a bit), where Paul warns the Cretans: “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.” When Jill told bits of their quest to the lady of the green kirtle, she laughed them off with what seemed like enlightened words, dismissing Aslan’s words as myths. Eventually, under the power of the lady’s smoke, she would make Jill and her companions doubt that life above the ground even exists. Confusion was everywhere – but Jill needed to guard against distractions from her purpose – and from what Aslan had said.

“Pay no attention to appearances,” Aslan said. He was telling Jill that she needed to value Aslan’s word above her interpretation. How easy would it have been for Jill to have paraphrased the third sign “You shall find a writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you” as “Follow the directions on the stone sign”? Very easy, I think. And when she saw the words “Under me” inscribed on the stone? She would have been looking for a stone sign, not writing carved on the stone underfoot. She could have missed (and nearly did miss) what Aslan had directed if she’d allowed herself to fixate on her interpretation of the sign rather than the sign itself. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day did exactly that, fixating on what they thought the Messiah was supposed to be and missing the Messiah when He came. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40 ESV)

Lewis’s advice, given by the mouth of Aslan, is good advice, I think, for those of us who live on this side of divine revelation. We have the signs, they are written in the Scriptures. But as we live our busy lives, if we are to live out the purposes for which God has called us, we must:

  • Remember what God has spoken
  • Purpose to be obedient to what God has spoken
  • Guard against distractions
  • Value God’s word above our interpretations

If we do these four things, I think we will avoid many of the traps that lie in store for us in this world down from the mountain.

Categories Book Notes

No other stream

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Who from among the lovers of Narnia has not quoted Mr. Beaver’s famous words: “Safe? … Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

I certainly have, many a time.

Beaver was, of course, responding to Susan’s initial fear upon hearing that Aslan was a lion, not a man. When she had thought Aslan was a man, she had experienced that strange feeling – “like the first signs of spring, like good news”. But now that she knew she would be meeting a lion, she felt apprehensive. When the time came that she would actually meet Aslan, she felt apprehensive as well, begging Peter to go greet Aslan – Peter was the eldest after all.

Jill Pole’s initial experiences with Aslan were completely different. Her classmate had just fallen down an enormously high cliff and while Jill was prostate on the cliff in terror, an animal had rushed over and was breathing right beside her, so close she could feel his chest vibrating. She couldn’t move at first, but once she could, she saw that it was a lion. At that very moment, the lion stalked away.

Jill became thirsty, and when she did, she rose from her place on the ground and began to search for water, moving cautiously for fear of the lion. She safely tiptoes her way through the trees and at last finds her heart’s desire. Water. At this point, the thing she wants most in all the world. The thing she feels sure she will die without.

But the lion.

The lion was lying right there, between her and the stream.

She stopped short in terror. She could not advance towards the stream. The lion might kill her. She could not run away. The lion might kill her. She was desperate.

This was no lovely thrill of spring or good news. This was only terror.

And then the lion spoke. He offered her drink.

She asked him to move. He refused. She tried to negotiate for her safety. He refused. She tried to reassure herself that he wasn’t as dangerous as she felt he was. The lion would have none of it:

“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms.”

He couldn’t get any more unsafe.

Jill decides to forgo the stream. The lion reminds her that she will die without it. She tries to find another way, another stream – one that she would not have to go through the lion to get.

“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

And such is the crux of Jill’s dilemma.

There was no other stream. And this stream was accessible only through Aslan.

Aslan the great and terrible – the swallower of children, of adults, of kingdoms.

The only way she could live was to throw herself at His mercy.

And so she did, with no reassurances of His goodness.

Her situation was completely different than Susan’s – she had no assurances that this unsafe god was good. She would learn that, but she didn’t know it now.

For now, her only reality was that

“There is no other stream.”

I’ve been reading The Silver Chair as part of Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge. Don’t forget to check in there to see what others have been reading this month.

Categories Read Aloud Thursday

Read Aloud Thursday (July 2015)

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For the most part, Tirzah Mae and I have been reading board books by the same authors as we read last month – because, of course, her mother intends to read every book at our local library and working systematically from where we started seems the best route to take :-)

Clare Beaton’s Farmyard Rhymes
and Clare Beaton’s Garden Rhymes

Clare Beaton's Farmyard RhymesClare Beaton's Garden Rhymes

These are just like Clare Beaton’s Nursery Rhymes (which we read last month.) They have the same type of lovely embroidered and appliqued artwork accompanying familiar and unfamiliar rhymes. I would love to own copies of Clare Beaton’s books – Tirzah Mae likes the rhymes and I love the artwork.

Hide and Seek Harry Around the House by Kenny Harrison

Hide and Seek Harry around the House

I believe this is the first of the Hide and Seek Harry books – we read Hide and Seek Harry at the Beach last month. Just like last month, we found plenty of things to point out as Harry the Hippo “hid” in each of the rooms of a house.

Baby Bright

Baby Bright

I found Baby Shine asinine last month, but I wouldn’t skip reading a book my library owns for such a small beef – so I requested Baby Bright to finish out the series. Baby Bright is green and yellow (Baby Shine had blue instead of yellow), black and white, but with gold leaf instead of Shine’s silver leaf. Tirzah Mae enjoyed the shimmering (again), and her mother found this title slightly less annoying – since at least every two page spread has a theme of sorts (mouse/cheese and owl/moon). Still. Ugh.

Planting Seeds by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

Planting Seeds

A simple counting book in which a family of brown bunnies take a garden from digging to eating. The illustrations are in cut paper and there are generally at least two different objects to count the appropriate number of (six bunnies, but also six visors and six dragonflies). I can see this one being quite a bit of fun once Tirzah Mae is ready to start learning to count – and once she understands what we’re doing when we’re gardening. For now? She isn’t tremendously impressed.

Princess Baby, Night-Night by Karen Katz

Princess Baby, Night-Night

This book takes the prize for most annoying book read this month. A parent asks “Princess Baby” if she’s completed each step of her bedtime routine (always starting with “Princess Baby, did you…” The little girl replies that she has and the illustrations show her doing each step with her stuffed animals and dolls. Finally, the little girl falls asleep among her toys and her parents put her into her bed. Of course, she does all of this while wearing a glittery golden crown.

Where do I start? Can you think of any more annoying moniker than “Princess Baby”? I’m personally not a fan of calling little girls princesses. Yes, all little girls dream of being princesses, and it’s fine for parents to let them play that – but better that they know that isn’t who they actually are. Teach them that they’re valuable as who they are, right now. Anyway, I don’t like the “princess” thing. And that’s probably the bulk of why I don’t like this book. Yep. Just prejudice against princessing. You may think otherwise.

Where is Baby’s Belly Button?
and How Does Baby Feel? by Karen Katz

Where is BabyHow Does Baby Feel?

In Where is Baby’s Belly Button?, each double page spread asks where a certain body part of baby’s is – and then the reader lifts a flap to reveal that body part along with a few more words. So “Where is baby’s mouth?” has a fold down sippy cup with the words “Behind the cup!” on the opposite side of the flap. Tirzah Mae loved the repetition of this book, especially since she’s familiar with the cadence of mama’s voice playing peekaboo. I enjoyed reading it to her, but didn’t exactly enjoy trying to keep her from ripping the flimsy cardstock weight flaps.

How Does Baby Feel? describes a picture on one page (“Baby is yawning”) and asks “How does baby feel?” When the reader lifts a flap, she reveals that baby feels… “Sleepy.” I had the same complaints about flimsy cardstock with this one – and it had less cadence and familiarity, so Tirzah Mae didn’t enjoy it as much as Where is Baby’s Belly Button?

Up Close by Gay Wegerif

Up Close

A bigger than usual board book, this one has a format similar to that above except that instead of lifting flaps, one turns the page. The first two page spread states “Up Close, I see your [body feature]. You are a…” and the second declares what the animal is, accompanied by a zoomed out graphic of that animal. Problem is, the simple geometric shapes making up both the “up close” and the zoomed out images are so simplified as to be unrecognizable (most of the time.) This is an artsy book, but not one that’s particularly worthwhile for kids (in my opinion.) Tirzah Mae liked the shapes and colors though.

Black on White and
White on Black by Tana Hoban

White on Black/Black on White

Also in the artsy realm, these two wordless books contain black and white outlines of familiar and unfamiliar objects. A bib. A leaf. A bucket. A sailboat. A necklace. A bird. They’re visually interesting but don’t have a whole lot to talk about.

Baby’s First Words by Sassy

Sassy: Baby's First Words
We got this book thanks to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and enjoyed talking about all the things we saw inside. A farmyard complete with animals and tractors and barns and haystacks. A highway running along a canal with a train track nearby and planes flying above. A picnic with a variety of food items. This was a hit with both Tirzah Mae and her mother.

Check out what other families are reading aloud at Read Aloud Thursday at Hope is the Word.

Categories What's on Your Nightstand?

Nightstand (July 2015)

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After last month’s success with reviewing, it’s almost guaranteed that this month I’d be behind on reviews – but not too far. Mostly, I have lots to write about NARNIA.

Fiction read this month:

  • The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
    My in-real-life bookclub selection for the month of July. I’m going to review this someday (maybe) – but, for now, I’ll just say that it’s a powerful fictionalized retelling of the life of Sarah Grimke, a noted abolitionist and early women’s rights activist. It’s definitely worth reading.
  • The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
    I’m in Narnia for the Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge – and was surprised at how little I remember from this book (it’s been, what, five years since I last read it?) I have lots of thoughts but haven’t written any up yet – which means you might be inundated over the next week.
  • 2 picture books author last name BROWN
    I’m moving really slowly through the “Arthur books” because, well, I rather despise them. Thanks to all those who offered some alternatives on that post :-)
  • 13 board books
    I’ll be talking more about these on Read Aloud Thursday – coming up in just a couple of days!

Nonfiction read this month:

Books about Children and Parenting:

  • Before Their Time by Daniel Taylor and Ronald Hoekstra
    A wonderful collection of stories from a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Minneapolis. I reviewed it, and wrote a few more reflections about our own NICU experience, in this post.
  • Your Child at Play: Birth to One Year by Marilyn Segal
    A month-by-month guide to your baby’s development with lots of activities you can do with your child. I loved it, but it’s a bit outdated and modern parents might notice some safety concerns. You can read my full review here.

Books about Essential Oils:

  • Essential Energy by Nikki Goldstein
  • The Essential Oils Book by Colleen K. Dodt
    Everyone and their dog is doing essential oils these days, so I figured I’d try to see what the buzz is about. So far, I see lots of unsubstantiated claims and frankly silly pseudoscience. Does that means there’s nothing to it at all? No, not necessarily – just that there’s a lot of opportunity for research, and that until the research has been done, it’s worth taking the advice of aromatherapists with a grain of salt. I have mini-reviews of these written, just not posted. So…one of these days.

Books about Health:

  • Lean Mommy by Lisa Druxman
    An excellent, balanced approach to establishing a healthy lifestyle after having a baby. Even if you don’t plan on doing Druxman’s “Stroller Strides” exercises, this is still a worthwhile book to have postpartum. I wrote about the book (and about my own postpartum body issues) here.
  • Eat This, Not That! by David Zincezenko and Matt Goulding
    The concept of this book is great as a column, not so great as a book – lists of the “best and worst” foods in more than a dozen categories (and healthier switches you can make.) I reviewed the book in greater detail here

Books about Houses:

  • Atomic Home: A Guided Tour of the American Dream by Whitney Matheson
    Sparse text. Lots of full-color pictures, generally from advertisements, of tract homes (and their furnishings) from the 1950s. Lots of kitsch. Lots of reminiscing (except that it isn’t reminiscing for me ’cause I never experienced the ’50s). Lots of fun.
  • Get Your House Right by Marianne Cusato & Ben Pentreath
    I skimmed rather than read this almost 250 page text aimed at preventing McMansions. It contains a lot of good architectural advice – and a lot of supercilious upturned noses.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

What's on Your Nightstand?

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Eat This, Not That! by David Zincezenko and Matt Goulding

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You’re flipping through a magazine at the doctor’s office and a column catches your eye. “Eat This!” it proclaims, pointing at a full-color photo of some restaurant entree. Beside it, another photo declares, “Not That!” A couple call-out boxes give fast and dirty nutrition info, the amount of calories you’ll save by switching from one entree to the other, and some other quick nutrition trivia about one or the other of the items.

Fun, right?

I imagine I’d think so if I saw such a column (although it’s unlikely I would, since it could – maybe still can? – be found in Men’s Health).

Now, put 415 pages of that together into a book about the dimensions of a children’s board book, except, well 415 pages long.

Fun?

Not exactly. Or at least, I didn’t think so.

Eat This, Not That! has 24 chapters, including “The Best (& Worst) Breakfasts in America”, “The Best (& Worst) Supermarket Foods”, and “The Best (& Worst) Foods for Your Blood Pressure”. Each chapter includes a two page “Eat This, Not That” spread like the one I listed above, before providing a countdown of 15-20 of the worst foods (with plenty of pictures). Each “worst food” (example: “saltiest packaged side”) is accompanied by an “eat this instead!” – giving a similar item that’s not as unhealthy. The end of each chapter gives a “Hall of Fame”, with about five items that are good bets.

Overall, the information is pretty good – mostly focused on calories, sodium, fat calories, and trans fats. Callout boxes highlight things to look for or substitutions to make (pesto instead of mayo switches healthy fats for unhealthy and adds antioxidants) and little blurbs here and there discuss how to choose a healthy sandwich, for example, or make a healthy pizza.

But a whole book of it is simply not sustainable. I love food. I love nutrition. But I struggled to make it through this book (that said, most people probably aren’t going to read every word like I did.)

Now, a lot of that might be because I don’t eat a lot of restaurant food or prepackaged meals or snacks. If I do, I’m choosing it as an indulgence. All that “if you switch this for that once a week, you can save x pounds per year” stuff? It doesn’t really apply to me because I don’t drink sweetened drinks, don’t eat packaged snacks, don’t buy frozen meals, don’t go to restaurants frequently. Someone else who finds themselves relying on convenience foods or restaurants for a greater portion of their intake might find this book more useful.

Of course, I wouldn’t be myself unless I had some sort of beef with this book nutritionally speaking. The authors are wary of additives and anything unpronounceable – in a way that ignores what science actually exists about the additives they’re denigrating and fails to recognize that some food additives actually make our food supply more safe! Believe it or not, a long ingredient list doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat something. (In fact, I have quite a few recipes that have 20, 30, 50 ingredients once you count the ingredients that went into the components of the recipe.)

So… should you read this book? Eh, check it out of the library and browse it, especially if you use a lot of convenience foods and/or eat out a lot. But I wouldn’t buy it.

Rating: 2 stars
Category: Nutrition
Synopsis: The authors give lists of the best and worst foods you can buy at restaurants or prepackaged at the grocery store – and substitutions to improve your nutritional choices.
Recommendation: Neat concept for a column, okay to browse, but not great for reading straight through.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Lean Mommy by Lisa Druxman

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Most women, regardless of their history, experience some degree of dissatisfaction with their bodies after having a baby. I, despite my long history of being comfortable in my own skin, have been no exception.

It wasn’t particularly about the weight for me – although that contributes. Because of how much fluid I’d gained, I lost over 50 pounds in the first three weeks of Tirzah Mae’s life. That might have felt good, except for the overwhelming sense I had that my body had failed me – and Tirzah Mae.

Sometimes people will remark that Tirzah Mae “just wanted to come out” – and I have to bite back an angry remark. Tirzah Mae’s premature birth had nothing to do with Tirzah Mae. It wasn’t her body that stopped regulating its blood pressure. It wasn’t her body that started spilling protein in her urine. It wasn’t her liver that shut down, making the womb inhospitable to life. It was MY body. It was MY womb that was poised to become a living coffin (although not for long – it would have killed me in addition to Tirzah Mae.) My body betrayed us. That’s why Tirzah Mae was born early.

Even when thankfulness for Tirzah Mae’s safe delivery overcame the sense of my body’s betrayal, I still felt dissatisfaction towards my body. My weight came down, my blood pressure started coming down – but I spent a month seeing in shades of gray except for occasional bright floaters. My weight came down and started rising again, stabilizing about 25 pounds higher than my pre-pregnancy weight. For the first time in my life, I was overweight.

But the weight wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was how weak I was. I exercised regularly during my pregnancy – my second trimester before I started retaining water was probably the fittest I’ve ever been. But after nearly a month of some form of bedrest, 8 days of it hospitalized, I couldn’t do anything. I was weak, I got winded, I felt every muscle in my body after formerly routine movements. My body betrayed me again.

The weakness (and a desire to be ready for VBAC next time around) is what motivated me to get exercising after Tirzah Mae was born – and I’ve been taking the opportunity to also read the books my library has available to help postpartum moms get fit.

Lisa Druxman’s Lean Mommy is the best book I’ve read so far.

Reasons I love Lean Mommy:

  • It’s not all about the weight – it’s [honestly] about making healthy lifestyle changes
  • It uses the [science-based] Cognitive-Behavior Therapy to help moms change self-defeating thoughts and actions
  • It gives a straightforward program for physical fitness and healthy eating habit formation – with different regimens depending on your starting fitness level
  • Apart from an overemphasis on choosing organic and avoiding additives, the nutrition advice was actually not terrible (which is saying a LOT!)

I was already working out regularly when I started reading this book – and what I was doing was working for me – so, apart from trying the workouts once, I didn’t follow this program. But I would have no qualms about doing this program straight through.

The author is the founder of “Stroller Strides” – a playdate slash exercise group that walks with their kids in strollers – and the workouts come from this program. Which means having a stroller definitely makes it easier to do this program (I didn’t when I first borrowed the book from the library). So does having exercise bands (I didn’t and still don’t – I used free weights.) That said, even if you don’t choose to do the three different workouts detailed in this book, the book still has plenty to offer in helping you set up an individualized program for getting fit after having a baby.

I recommend it.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Postpartum fitness
Synopsis: The author helps mothers establish healthy exercise and eating habits after having a baby – all while enjoying their babies and modeling healthy attitudes towards their bodies, exercise, and eating.
Recommendation: An excellent resource for moms – even if they don’t intend to use the “Stroller Strides” workouts found within

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Before Their Time by Daniel Taylor and Ronald Hoekstra

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Viability. Such a cold term for such a sad reality – that there is a point in a baby’s development before which he cannot survive outside the womb.

Medical advances have pushed the age of viability back further than ever imagined – but it still exists. Babies of a certain age can’t live outside their mothers.

The difficulty is, age of Viability isn’t a magic number. It’s a spectrum. Two babies born at just under 22 weeks have survived (according to Wikipedia) – but 0 out of a hundred babies born under 22 weeks will survive. At 23 weeks, about a quarter of the babies will survive – but most of these survivors will experience some level of disability due to their prematurity. Not until 24 weeks is the chance of living greater than the chance of dying.

For this reason, debate goes back and forth as to how much work to do, how much machinery to use , how much money to spend to try to save a child whose likelihood of living is miniscule.

Daniel Taylor and Ronald Hoekstra’s Before Their Time doesn’t try to debate age of viability or to argue for a standardized approach to caring for a preemie – but it does tell the story of six preemies born within the tenuous period of questionable viability. Four of the six were born at 23 weeks, while two – twins – were born at 25 weeks. In addition to being born with low viability, each of these children was cared for by Dr. Hoekstra, a neonatalogist, at Minneapolis’s Children’s Hospital and Clinic.

When I first started reading Before Their Time, I was impressed to learn that Dr. Hoekstra was a believer. I know what a comfort it is to have a believing doctor in a time of crisis.

When I was on bedrest, preparing to deliver a premature baby (although nowhere near as premature as the babies in this book), I asked to have a neonatalogist visit me in my hospital room to discuss what would happen after I delivered. One of the neonatalogists came by to answer my questions – many of which were about what to expect if my baby were born at a particular point in my pregnancy or another. The doctor explained the many variables that influence outcomes in a preemie, and then, nodding to the Bible sitting on my bedside table, said, “I see that you are a person of the Book. Pray. God is the one who ultimately determines what will happen.”

I had only minimal interactions with that doctor – another doctor cared for Tirzah Mae and we mostly got updates through one of the neonatal nurse practitioners. But just knowing that one of the doctors in the practice was a believer was a great encouragement.

As I read further, reading story after story of people of faith (some more in line with my own theological bent, some less), I realized that this was a Christian book. I finally got around to reading the back cover of the book (Yes, I selected it to read based solely on the title and the reality that it was a book my library owned about preemies) and discovered that the book was published by InterVarsity Press. That made so much sense.

Yet this isn’t a theological treatise, it isn’t even a book of “testimonies”. It’s stories. Honest stories about moms and dads making tough decisions. Doubting. Believing. Fearing. Rejoicing. Grieving. It’s about how tiny babies, with dozens of difficulties, affected their families, their communities. It’s about how families and communities affected tiny babies.

It’s beautiful.

I am so very glad that I read it.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Stories of premature babies
Synopsis: The stories of six children born on the edge of viability – and the stories of their families, caregivers, and communities.
Recommendation: If the subject matter interests you at all, it’s definitely worth reading.