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139th out of 296 books
—
621 voters
Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over
by
Cathy Alter
By age thirty-seven, Cathy Alter had made a mess of her life. With a failed marriage already under her belt, she was continuing down the path of poor decisions, one paved with a steady stream of junk food, unpaid bills, questionable friends, and highly inappropriate men. So she sat down and asked herself what she truly wanted. A decent guy. A nicer home. More protein. When...more
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published
July 1st 2008
by Atria Books
(first published 2008)
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When I read the blurb about this book, I was excited and very interested in seeing what the author found out. By about the 2nd chapter, I was bored and tired of her and her views. The book's premise is that a woman who is recently divorce takes out 14 different subscriptions to popular magazines and follow the advice to change her life. I think that sounds like a great experiment. She starts out talking about her divorce and how she is having an affair with a co-worker that she hates in her offi...more
This book gets two stars just for its premise and the author's willingness to follow through on the experiment and a half star for being occasionally amusing. But I'm rounding down on the half star because I found the writing, and writer, so irritating. This might have been an excellent 6,000-to-10,000-word magazine feature, though I know few mags would have been willing to publish something so likely to focus on their inherent flaws. What I perceived as the writer's flaws made reading the story...more
If you were expecting a book outlining a 'scientific' experiment about whether or not magazines can change your life with a cut and dry ending, this book is for you. That said, I found this book thoroughly delightful as some light 'in-between' reading. Alter's neurosis proved more relatable to me than those outlined in other "Happiness" books, and her interactions with other characters are made more believable simply by how truly awkward they are at times. Alter never paints herself as the alrea...more
Women is on somewhat of a downward spiral and decides she needs to change some things about her life. Magazines are always trying to make you better, they must work if they continue to sell! For a year she puts all her confidence into magazines and abides by them to see what happens. It seems like I am hardly a chapter into this book when she meets her new boyfriend. She is a bit older then her current boy and has been married once before but within like 6 months, she is already hunting for the...more
I feel that it's easy to relate to Cathy in this novel, a woman who reads a lot of magazines to somehow learn all the mystical workings of the female world - how to look good, feel good and attract a good mate with some cooking and exercise tips involved. We all read magazines for various reasons, I enjoy the makeup and fashion the most alongside health magazines and subscribe to almost all the mags that Cathy has been reading herself but sometimes they lay around for months before I get to them...more
I feel that it's easy to relate to Cathy in this novel, a woman who reads a lot of magazines to somehow learn all the mystical workings of the female world - how to look good, feel good and attract a good mate with some cooking and exercise tips involved. We all read magazines for various reasons, I enjoy the makeup and fashion the most alongside health magazines and subscribe to almost all the mags that Cathy has been reading herself but sometimes they lay around for months before I get to them...more
When freelance writer Cathy Alter decides to spend a year following the advice found in the pages of 14 different womens' magazines, she finds some contentment, new skills and a fiance. A journey into improved nutrition begins with a lesson in how to correctly cling-wrap a sandwich so that it stays together in one's lunch bag (although, in today's environmentally aware environment, I do not know why Alter did not choose a reusable sandwich case and lunch box). That's just the beginning of a refr...more
As those of you who breathlessly follow my Goodreads affairs (hello, imaginary friend Gavin) may be aware, I had put this in the "quit" pile, on the grounds that it was a gross misapplication of the One-Year Memoir genre and also that the author/heroine was intolerable. However, my husband, who declines to read things I recommend LIKE IT'S HIS JOB decided that this book, about a woman who tries to improve herself for a year using advice from Cosmo, Glamour, O, etc., was the one he'd like to spen...more
In Up for Renewal, Cathy Alter’s life is a mess. At 39, she is divorced, has an unhealthy lifestyle of partying, and is even involved with 2 terribly inappropriate men. Her wake up call comes when a long time friend calls to tell her that she’s fallen too far to remain a close. Alter decides that something needs to change. Instead of turning to self-help gurus, Alter turns to the covers of women’s magazines. These magazines are full of self-improvement ads from getting into shape to looking grea...more
Dreadful self-absorbed nonsense. Good idea- Alter decided to take one year, and follow the advice in magazines to see if her life would improve. It did- and maybe dumbing the jerky boyfriend and learning to cook etc helped with that. What was annoying about it was that she never said how she could afford to spend Beauty Month trying all sorts of new makeups and spas, she never talked about how Clothing Month would devastate a normal person's budget, she never talked about how she could afford al...more
I didn't give the book two stars because it was bad, per se. I gave the book two stars because I just couldn't care.
The premise - Alter turns her life over to the advice of magazines for a year - doesn't feel like the compelling force of this book. Instead, it takes a backseat to an examination of Alter's life, her loves, even her relationship with her shrink and with her mother. Some readers might argue that the point of the experiment was exactly that: to act as a vehicle for Alter's self exa...more
The premise - Alter turns her life over to the advice of magazines for a year - doesn't feel like the compelling force of this book. Instead, it takes a backseat to an examination of Alter's life, her loves, even her relationship with her shrink and with her mother. Some readers might argue that the point of the experiment was exactly that: to act as a vehicle for Alter's self exa...more
* Subscription for self-improvement*
Up For Renewal features Cathy's year-long subscription to pouring over women's magazines for monthly rounds of self-improvement. Not surprisingly, the tips found within the magazines were not the solutions, but merely guided Cathy to the real answers found within herself. Although she consults the magazine stack for advice on specific beauty, fashion, nutrition, relationship and job-related issues, she comes away with more general insights into her own life....more
Up For Renewal features Cathy's year-long subscription to pouring over women's magazines for monthly rounds of self-improvement. Not surprisingly, the tips found within the magazines were not the solutions, but merely guided Cathy to the real answers found within herself. Although she consults the magazine stack for advice on specific beauty, fashion, nutrition, relationship and job-related issues, she comes away with more general insights into her own life....more
I bought this on a whim and later worried I would find it too annoying to finish. To my surprise, I actually liked this book a lot. I found the heroine likeable and funny (she's written for McSweeney's), and the story itself was kind of inspiring.
Some reviews on GoodReads claim Alter abandons the whole premise (following the advice of women's magazines) halfway through the book. This baffles me, because it's totally not true. She follows the magazines' advice in one way or another throughout the...more
Some reviews on GoodReads claim Alter abandons the whole premise (following the advice of women's magazines) halfway through the book. This baffles me, because it's totally not true. She follows the magazines' advice in one way or another throughout the...more
Jul 24, 2011
Ronya Misleh
added it
A mix of chick lit, self help, and memoir, this book was definitely entertaining. But not necessarily something I'd read again. I did like how the author is local and talks about places I can picture in my head...but it just seemed a little too tell all for me. It followed through with everything it "promised," but I kept asking myself "Why do I care about this woman? Who is she? Who cares?" Yet, of course, I continued to read. The concept was an interesting one, though, and in taking the "who c...more
It probably isn't fair for me to rate this book, as I didn't actually finish it. To be honest the author lost me right at the very beginning with her cubicle sex exploits - that kinda screamed "seek professional help" not "go out and get this months Good Housekeeping". I kept trying to read it anyways, but I had a lot of trouble relating to this woman's problems (and it was by no means because I have my life so in order), but I didn't understand the conclusions she was coming to. My expectations...more
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This book is a memoir about the one year in the life of Cathy Alter. In the beginning of the book Cathy is a recently divorced, thirty nine year old who's life is out of control. She parties until all hours of the night, gets her lunch out of the vending machine at work and sleeps with her co-worker in her cubicle with no inhibitions. Standing in front of a magazine display, like the cover, she has an idea. What if, she lived her life for one year following the directions of magazines? Then, she...more
Cathy is a writer whose life was out of control. She was in her 40's, with a failed marriage and a slew of poor decisions and inappropriate men behind her. She decided what she really wanted and the list looked like what every women's magazine on the rack promised- "Find the love you deserve", "Perfect meals", "Paint to the rescue"... That's when she decided that for the next year she would follow the advice she could find in these magazines without question. And this is the book about the how,...more
Here's how memorable this book is. I just finished it in the last 24 hours. And earlier today, I entered a few books--one of which I read last week--and never even thought, "isn't there something else I read?" I had completely forgotten it. And then once I remembered it, I couldn't recall the title. Or the author. Just, oh that book I finished quite recently and immediately forgot.
So there you go. I think that tells you how I feel about this. It was pleasant, but innocuous--about like reading on...more
So there you go. I think that tells you how I feel about this. It was pleasant, but innocuous--about like reading on...more
My Review of Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over by Cathy Alter
Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over is the delightful and intelligent account of the real life journey by Cathy Alter to see if in her late 30s she could change her life for the better. In a unique, witty approach, she examines the problems she faces and decides to try and conquer them by studying and following the directions found in the popular women’s...more
Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over is the delightful and intelligent account of the real life journey by Cathy Alter to see if in her late 30s she could change her life for the better. In a unique, witty approach, she examines the problems she faces and decides to try and conquer them by studying and following the directions found in the popular women’s...more
I am not into "Chic Lit" at all, but this book was sent for reviewing.
I was pleasantly surprised.
This is a really fun and yet heartfelt book; however, it's not Kafka or Plath, so don't expect to come away with the feeling that you've accomplished reading a major serious work of fiction. This is what I would call "chick lit," and it's actually the first type of this genre that I have read. Most likely my last, as this is not the type of fiction I gravitate towards, but I enjoyed reading it!
I was pleasantly surprised.
This is a really fun and yet heartfelt book; however, it's not Kafka or Plath, so don't expect to come away with the feeling that you've accomplished reading a major serious work of fiction. This is what I would call "chick lit," and it's actually the first type of this genre that I have read. Most likely my last, as this is not the type of fiction I gravitate towards, but I enjoyed reading it!
While the author was cute and likeable, the book just didn't work. I'm biased against women's magazines to start with, so I was interested in reading a somewhat objective account of following their guidance. Unfortunately, this book was more an homage to love than having anything to do with women's magazines, and it wasn't even that good of an homage. Great, I'm happy for you, but the book was a piece of fluff that was even more trivial and superficial than was to be expected (and let's face it,...more
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Cathy Alter worships the thing I love most in the world: Lady Mags. After a year-long odyssey, she goes from cubicle sex to self-respect and marriage to a Chew (half Chinese, half Jew) with the help of Cosmo, Self and Friends. "The fact of the matter was," she writes, "I did need to be better. And that's why I had found these magazines so surprisingly liberating." Her book acknowledges her debt to magazines, and renews the favor.
A decent speed-read...And an additional comment on the "TMI!!!" criticism that this book has inspired: I found this aspect to be one of its redeeming qualities! Who wants to hear about someone trying to change their life if we don't know what brought them low in the first place? True, I didn't always "like" everything the author did, but her descriptions of past relationships gave the story enough emotional clout to keep me reading.
Cathy Alter realized that her life was not going the way she wanted it to go, but didn't really know how to fix it. She was divorced and tended to date emotionally unavailable men, not to mention that her diet and exercise life were terrible as well. So, she decided to completely make over her life by adhering to the advice in a dozen women's magazines. Each month had a different focus: money, cooking, exercise, dating, sex, etc. As the year progressed so did Cathy, she began to see her life tak...more
Self-indulgent and just plain creepy at times. Couldn't finish it. That said, what a great idea, a year of self-improvement by following the advice in women's magazines. And, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, but mostly an embarrassing expose of Ms. Alter's multiple neuroses. Ms. Alter should apply her fine writing talents to less personal matters. I may well be too old to enjoy such a book as this.
When Cathy realizes her life is a complete mess and nothing is going right. She doesn’t know where to begin to fix it. When she makes a list of things she wants to be different, she realizes that with a little bit of editing, her desires could read like a magazine article. So she figured she had nothing left to lose by using a series of magazines to try and better her life. In this fun and funny romp, we follow Cathy as the tries to throw the perfect dinner party, rid herself of unwanted fat, bl...more
I wasn't sure what I was going to find when I sarted reading this book. I was pleasantly surprised at the genuine and welcoming tone the author has. It feels very much like someone is sitting and having a conversation with you.
I thought the premise was interesting. About 3/4 through the book though, it started to feel like traditional chic lit. Sh emet a guy, things were all hunky dory and then it went downhill from that. Although getting a guy was a happy side effect from her lessons...she fo...more
I thought the premise was interesting. About 3/4 through the book though, it started to feel like traditional chic lit. Sh emet a guy, things were all hunky dory and then it went downhill from that. Although getting a guy was a happy side effect from her lessons...she fo...more
This was a fun, fast read. The author is witty, slightly neurotic, relatable, and doesn't take herself too seriously (at least on paper!) She has issues a lot of people share, and like a few other authors, she decides to address them in a slightly arbitrary but yet positive way: to take the advice of women's magazines for a year, focusing on a different topic for each month. I do wish she'd been a tiny bit more focused with that, really getting into each month's issue and how the various tidbits...more
I wasn't sure if this would be my kind of book. I'm always interested in 30 day, 40 day, 90 day, year long projects that people take to learn something from... well, anything. But within the first chapter, I heard way too much about the author literally "doing the daily grind" in her cubicle with a coworker. EW! I don't want to know about it.
Dropped it. Gladly.
Dropped it. Gladly.
Up for Renewal was a charming book. Light-hearted and a quick-read. I would recommend it to any woman who grew up reading Cosmo, Glamour, etc. I think the part that was most amusing was any section that dealt with her mother-in-law who is Chinese. The dramatics of the mother struck close to home. :)
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“I grew up accepting the inevitability that once you became a woman, you were always on a diet. Being a woman equaled loss.”
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