1. SPT Buy, Buy Baby - Susan Gregory Thomas
2. STR Breaking Free - Beth Moore
3. GFT The Lucky One - Nicholas Sparks

I’m up to 76 books. That leaves 24 to go to reach the big 100. I’m starting to think that just ain’t going to happen. I was doing 12 books a month or so when I had the time (and the fervor) so I know it’s doable (and at that rate I should have reached 100 by August). It does stink a tad though because I was cruising along and got loads of great books read. (Also some real duds, but oh well.) The reason I didn’t finish any audiobooks this month is because I’m in the middle of a huge one and I’m also not in the car as much as I used to be when I had a commute every day. I’m on disc 8 of Pillars of the Earth, which is one of the most ginormous books I’ve ever read. I think the only book that equals its length is Harry Potter 5, and even that one falls short by about 100 pages.

Buy, Buy Baby was really interesting. I think I read it rather quickly considering how much junk I have going on. I definitely won’t think of children’s products as benign anymore, and while I can’t see myself totally boycotting the industry, I think it’s good to be aware of these things and then teach your children correctly. And also try to avoid helping them be blind consumers.

Breaking Free was a fabulous book that had lots of great insights in it, and I think I may read it again next year but get the journal that goes with it and then do it slowly over the course of a month. I’ll probably do her book Believing God first since I already have that journal, and I just got another of her books the other day that I’m excited to dive into. I wish that I had waited on Breaking Free though because since I’m doing another Bible study at the same time I wasn’t able to take it all in. Oh well, my copy is so water damaged that I won’t be trading it!

And the new Nicholas Sparks book was great. He totally redeemed himself for Dear John and The Choice, which were depressing beyond words. This one reminded me of some of his older books and it just captured that romance and loveliness that the other ones had.

Right now, I’m reading Son of A Witch by Gregory Maguire and really enjoying it. I hadn’t realized that I was reading it on Halloween, but I guess that is somewhat fitting. I have a ton of Christmasy books coming in too, that I’m excited about starting over the holiday season. I’m all set (internally) for Christmas, and I can’t wait for my reading material to reflect that.

My birthday was pretty uneventful this year. Mike and I exchanged presents early “just in case” we ended up in Michigan during the actual days. So far that hasn’t happened, but I got a nifty wacom tablet (like a drawing peripheral) and I’ve been using that almost exclusively instead of a mouse. I’m getting pretty good at it, actually. I spent most of Monday studying or doing school-related things. I interviewed a librarian for an assignment due this Monday (eep!) and then I went to Panera Bread and studied for about 3 hours. That evening we went out for pizza at a restaurant called Tilli’s. The food was pretty good, but the place was completely dead. I think we were the only paying customers there - the other dude sitting at a table was the owner, I’m pretty certain. I don’t think they’ll last, which is too bad because the food was decent.

I’m working tonight but I have tomorrow off. I’ll probably spend it studying and cleaning, since the apartment is a little messy and we have a crapload of laundry to do. It’s also nice to spend the morning at home doing homey things. I get my schedule tonight for next week, so until then I have no idea what next week will be like, and of course who knows what’s going to happen with Grandma. I hate everything being so up in the air like this, but it’s a good lesson in learning to “go with the flow”. Anyways, I should get some reading done for school, so I’m off for now.

In less crappy news, I got a job! You’re looking at the blog of the newest bookseller for a national chain bookstore. I’m not specifying just in case I have bad things to say later on. I’m actually a little conflicted about the whole deal anyways. I just finished reading “Buy, Buy Baby” by Susan Gregory Thomas and I’m thinking that the world is out to turn little kids into materialistic consumers, with the whole “cradle to grave” marketing. It’s definitely changed how I feel about cartoon characters and kids’ programming. I recommend anyone with small children or planning to have children to read it. Anyways, the section on reading and children’s books was shocking. I can’t believe how many kids’ books are pretty much 10 page commercials.

There’s a possibility that I may be in Michigan for a few days next week. It all depends on things here, and how Grandma is. She’s not doing so well, and it seems like it will be just a matter of time. Anyways, my battery life is getting low and my computer is being a pain in the butt anyways, so I’m going to sign off and head home.

1. PBS Love The One You’re With - Emily Giffin
2. SPT Unauthorized Biography of Tom Cruise - Andrew Morton
3. PBS Inside my Heart - Robin McGraw [audio]

I actually thought I was going to get a lot more reading done this month, but Hurricane Ike threw a wrench into my plans. I am halfway through three library school texts books, so if you count that I’ve been reading like a fool. I also started more books than I could finish this month.

You’ll probably notice that I put the Giffin book up there again this month, since I actually finished it in September, not August. I figured the two other selections would be lonely. I’m up to #73. I could still make it to 100 if I pick up the pace. And I’m actually quite caught up in school related things, so I may even have some extra time for fun reading.

As for this month’s finished books, the Giffin book was subpar as I mentioned. The Tom Cruise book was pretty much a scathing report on his religion. I actually didn’t find it that great. There was lots of dirt, yes, but first you have to wonder if any of it is true because he doesn’t cite any sources (or very few) and only provides a ’selected’ bibliography in the back (what’s up with that?). The Robin McGraw book was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I’m actually considering keeping it instead of trading it back. It was pretty inspirational, and I love her accent. I might even pick up her newer one.

I’ve been thinking that now that I have more time to devote to blogging and reading I might make some website tweaks. It’s not really fleshed out yet, but I would like to spend more time being creative on the web. I’ve been meaning to make some changes for awhile, mostly to the main page of the site, but I just haven’t gotten off my tushy yet.

This month’s recommendations:

• Inside My Heart

I spent most of today trying to get my schoolwork under control but it’s difficult considering I can’t hook my own laptop up to the internet and have to use someone else’s computer. So my notes are on mine and I have to look things up on this one - very inefficient. I’d go somewhere to hook up to the internet but at this point I just don’t know where to go. I don’t even know if I have an appointment tomorrow with a doctor since I have no way to get ahold of anyone. Very frustrating.

I mostly just wish that Mike and I had our own place to go to since we’re staying with his grandmother and I just feel weird about the whole thing. It would be nice to have our own private space to be in. Of course this storm has probably made our house even farther from its completion date. We’ll be lucky to be in there by Christmas. I know I sound discouraged and mopey and I kind of am, although I do feel relieved and happy that the damage wasn’t worse and everyone I know made it through safely. Some more breathing room would be nice though.

1. PBS So Much for My Happy Ending - Kyra Davis
2. PBS Over Her Dead Body - Kate White
3. PBS Playing For Pizza - John Grisham
4. GFT The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini [audio]
5. PBS Love The One You’re With - Emily Giffin

So I didn’t read very much but at this point I will be amazed if I make it to the end of the year with 100. So Much for My Happy Ending was sort of bizarre but very unique. After I finished the Emily Giffin book (check out her first two novels, Something Borrowed and Something Blue for the best reading experience EVER), I felt like they were pretty much two sides of the same story. Girl meets boy, girl loves boy, girl marries boy, boy turns out to be a weirdo, other boy comes into the mix… They just ended differently. Over Her Dead Body was a little murder mystery that is apparently several books along in a series (but it worked well as a stand alone) and Playing For Pizza was about a washed-up NFL player who has a little Italian adventure, a la Eat Pray Love. (Grisham said in an interview on The Colbert Report that there were no lawyers in it - lies.) And my one audio book this month was a pretty famous one. The Kite Runner was a solid story, but sort of depressing. Khaled Hosseini’s books are probably better in audio form because you get the real gist of the story through the accent.

All of my books this month were fiction. I’ve changed it up this month; first book I started was the unauthorized biography of Mr Cruise. I should probably finish off those books that have been collecting dust on my “currently reading” section on the page about my reading resolution. Like that cosmetics encycopedia. Yeesh. With all of my school reading, I don’t even know where I find the time.

I just realized that the last book I only finished yesterday, not in August. Whatever. I may include it again next month just for giggles.

This month’s recommendations:

• The Kite Runner

Meags’ Fly-by-the-Seat-of-My-Jeans Goulash

• 1/2 lb ground beef (freezer burnt optional)
• 1 tsp minced garlic (about 1-2 cloves)
• 3/4 cup diced onion (or a handful)
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup diced sweet green and red pepper
• all the elbow macaroni you have (about 3 cups)
• 2 14.5oz cans diced tomatoes (don’t drain)
• 6oz can tomato paste
• 5oz can mushrooms (drained)
• dash salt and pepper
• 1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese (grated by husband - trust me, it tastes better this way)

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Brown the beef in the oil at about medium-high heat, tossing in the garlic and onions at first, then add the sweet peppers when the meat is almost browned. Meanwhile, cook pasta according to directions. Once the beef is browned and the veggies sauteed, add the tomatoes and the paste. Stir around so that it becomes a thick sauce. Add the mushroom and the seasonings, then simmer for a few minutes, until heated through.

After the pasta is nice and al dente, drain it and put it in a casserole dish. I used my 2-1/2 quart corningware dish and it was brimming over - so maybe a lasagna pan. Then pour the sauce over top and stir it in so that noodles are all covered in the sauce. Top with mozzarella cheese and bake until the cheese melts (about 10 minutes). Serve!

I was actually quite surprised by how good it was considering how few ingredients I used (not to mention, I’m not really a recipe inventin’ kinda gal). I think in the future, I would add some oregano and basil to the recipe, and maybe some marjoram. Spinach would also taste pretty good in the sauce. We’ll see if I start inventing more recipes as the last few weeks here at Apt 7302 come along.

1. ARC Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity - Kerry Cohen
2. GFT Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul - edited by Jack Canfield
3. GFT Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom [audio]
4. GFT Getting Things Done - David Allen

But hey, 1 more book than last month! Technically, I only really read 2 of those books in July. Chicken Soup and GTD were finished this month, but I read the bulk of them over the last couple of months. I’m about to start a second Chicken Soup book (great for those random few minutes that break up the day) and I’ve downloaded It’s All Too Much from the Houston library. I also randomly picked up a novel on Saturday and started reading, and I’m already 150 pages in. (Novels go by so much faster than non-fiction.) I wrote a review for Loose Girl and posted it on my Library Thing profile. I was meaning to jazz it up a little bit (make it less review-y) and post it here but never got around to it. It’s on my to-do list. I guess I’m feeling the reading bug more these days, and since I’ve made such great progress on my magazines stack (8 magazines read, scanned and ready to be recycled!) I’ve been wanting to get through my stack of books.

This Month’s Recommendations:

• Tuesdays With Morrie

Source: Better Homes and Gardens, August 2008, p. 170

So this is why I was excited about a presentation put on by a financial services company called Primerica. The title of the event was “Women’s Empowerment Night” and promised, along with food and door prizes, to educate women on some of the options they had available to them and how to make smart choices with money. I have been meaning to write on this subject for a long time, but it’s complicated and involved and requires heavy research, so I hoped this presentation would help me get the ball rolling. In some ways, I was right. But in many others, I left disappointed.

Now, I’m not completely naive. I knew there would be some product pushing and agents cleverly positioned throughout the room to answer any and all questions. This was a company sponsored event, after all. However, the information that I “learned” that concerned my finances was so minimal and basic that a simple sentence or two can sum it up. The presentation was split into thirds. The first third was an introduction on the company’s history and operations. All of this was also neatly summarized on a handout and is also available on the web. I did my homework beforehand and had already read this information. The second third was a quick summary of what Primerica services can do for a family in debt, with an example of the “Jones” family and their credit debt plus a mortgage. This is the only part where financial education was even mentioned, and it consisted of: “Consolidate your debts with us and we’ll help you invest what you are now saving on your monthly debt reduction payments”. (Most of that information was equivalent to what they offer on their website, you can judge its usefulness for yourself.) The final third was a large spiel on recruitment.

Yes, recruitment. The company is looking to cash in on the retiring baby boomer generation and grow from 35 Houston locations to 300 in the next couple of years. After a somewhat interesting discussion about the differences between employees, self-employed, business owners, and investors, contact information sheets were passed out so you could either nominate yourself for a career with Primerica or some unsuspecting friend or relative. Of course, there was a run down of what type of commissions you could expect to earn if you decided to join up and the presenter, Regional VP for that particular location, was very frank about the type of money that she earned through Primerica. Of course, we have no way of knowing if she was being honest or not, but according to her, her family nets $30 000 a month from her and her husband’s work through Primerica. This left me a little unsettled because I was still waiting for the education part.

After the recruitment presentation, there was a chance to win some nice door prizes from vendors like Victoria’s Secret, Godiva, and Bath and Body Works. This is sort of beside the point, but it really irritated me how they set this up. First of all, agents were included in the draw. I thought it made sense to only have the invited guests in the draw, but okay. Then it comes out that agents would have more entries in the draw because they each got an additional entry for each guest they invited. So you can imagine how it went. Most of these very nice prizes went to agents. I guess in my opinion it made the whole presentation really scammy. It doesn’t seem to me like education was the primary goal. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to offer prizes to get people in the door for information that is important and necessary (albeit possibly a boring choice for a Friday night activity), but it seemed as though the prizes were more incentives for the agents to invite as many women as they could in order to win prizes. And the whole point or bringing these people in? To either convince them to purchase Primerica’s financial services (from the agent who invited you, of course), or that Primerica is a great employment opportunity.

I hope to be able to address personally some of these education issues that I think are extremely relevant, but until then I recommend the following books:

• Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny - Suze Orman
  • This book is a great primer with an ACTION plan (things you can actually do!) to plan your finances better. This book is a wonderful starting place to get to a place where you feel financially secure, whether you are single or married. It was available for free on Oprah’s website for awhile, so if we managed to snag it then READ IT. Buy it, get it from the library, just get your hands on it if you are suffering from debt, or unable to save for retirement.
• The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? - Leslie Bennetts
  • While the Suze book is about doing, this book is about what’s already happening out there. It paints a pretty bleak picture of the financial state of women. I thought it was really eye-opening and it got me convinced that more education for women is needed. This book was truly a wake-up call for me, and it may be for you too.

I hope to write more on this subject in the future. This subject is so important but so easily passed over in favor of things that are more immediately pressing. If you don’t have a plan now for your financial well-being, you need to start something before it is too late. You can’t decide at age 40 that you need 2 million dollars in your retirement fund. I hope any women reading this will take a few minutes to reflect on it, and any men reading will encourage their wives and girlfriends to do the same.