Yolanda A. Reid's Blog, page 4

YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE by Louise Hay

For years, I’d heard of Louise Hay and her groundbreaking book, You Can Heal Your Life.   When I
first saw her in a TV interview, she proclaimed how easy, effortless, magical her philosophy is.
According to Hay, your thoughts can be your genie.   Cristina Aguilera’s song comes to mind: “I can make your wish come true/I’m a genie in a bottle. . . .” 
The premise is that we create our lives through our thoughts.
In the book, Hay writes of changing one’s thoughts. ...

I'M THE ONE THAT I WANT by Margaret Cho

In her brilliant memoir, comedienne  Margaret Cho analyzes her life with the skill of an offbeat poet-philosopher.
I’m The One That I Wantis a tiny gem, hard, tough, searing and unrelenting in its honesty.  (It’s that unrelenting honesty that made me feel weary by the end of the book.  But I felt I’d accomplished something.)
  Ms.  Cho re-lives a litany of bad relationships with boyfriends she dislikes/hates and can’t wait to dump.  Three men stand out.  Jon a...

I LOVED, I LOST, I MADE SPAGHETTI by Giulia Melucci

“Whenever I start dating someone new, I just can’t hold back” begins  author Giulia Melucci’s memoir— I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti.  The Brooklyn-born author  goes on to recount her lovelorn days and how she overfed her ex-boyfriends with an array of scrumptious pasta dishes (linguini, pastina, rigatoni, spaghetti, etc.).  This “chick lit” book charts Melucci’s fruitless foray into the dating world:  From Kit, her first love, through Lachlan, the love who inspire...

AROUND THE BLOC by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana is an exuberant, energetic, informative, and entertaining account of Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s travels:  she spent a year studying in Russia, another year working as a journalist at a Chinese newspaper, and vacationed for a few days in Cuba.
The author’s first book, Around the Bloc is divided into three sections, by country.  We get to peek into the daily lives of Russian students.  We learn that when they party, young Ru...

ON READING WOMEN AUTHORS

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ANIMAL VEGETABLE MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver

ANIMAL VEGETABLE MIRACLE is the beautifully written book by Barbara Kingsolver. In the book, the author chronicles “one good year of food life” during which she and her family grew a garden on a little farm in the mountains of Appalachia. Kingsolver, her husband and daughters also raised their own food—hens, roosters, eggs, turkeys, etc.--and, as “locavores,” ate from local farmers’ markets in Appalachia.

They ate seasonally. Asparagus in springtime. Squash at harvestime. In summertime, write...

THE IMPRESS OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS

When I was nearly fourteen years old, I tried a couple of times to read WUTHERING HEIGHTS but always fell asleep. Maybe it had to do with how I read the novel: in my grandmother’s room, my hand propped up to my ear for support, as I lay (too comfortably) on her bed which was bedecked in an old pink chenille bedspread. I’d begin to slog through old Joseph the manservant’s Yorkshire dialect, faithfully rendered by Emily Bronte, and that drone as he said, “Owd Nick” would send me into dreamland....

HOW I WROTE MY FIRST NOVEL by Yolanda A. Reid

At age 19, I told my English professor that I was writing a novel.
I'd written the first chapter. How interesting! How wonderful!
She wanted to know if the novel was about me. I told her that
the main character was like me--a college student, at the time--and
that her name was Yasmine. But she was NOT me. I was adamant:
I wanted to write outside myself.

"Most first novels," she said, "are autobiographical."

I never finished that novel. I estimate that I began 3 or 4 more novels. 
I wrote...

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT

I just finished reading "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin.  It's an illuminating book.
The author assigned herself tasks for a year--each month devoted to some area/aspect of her life.
February, for her marriage.  March was for work--she began happiness project
blog.  April for her young children (to improve her connection with them).  June is devoted to
improving her existing friendships and making new ones.  By November, her tasks were to "Laugh outloud. ...