Tag Archives: Reading

The Bookshelf: It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be.

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I saw this book last summer in the gift shop at the Design Museum in London - a must visit for any of you design lovers who find yourselves in London.  Since I was travelling with only a single suitcase for a few weeks, I decided not to buy it at the time to keep my load light.  I was delighted when I came across it again a few weeks ago while visiting a little gift shop in Kent, CT as I had completely forgotten to buy it after my trip.  Written by the former creative director of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Paul Arden’s guide to success in the advertising world easily translates into a manifesto for succeeding in our one big act – life.  Written with a no-nonsense and humorous tone, the book is an easy read — bold graphics and typography and fun pictures help drive home the point that we can all make “the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible.”

Title: It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be.
Author: Paul Arden, www.paularden.com
Favorite Quote: There are just too many to choose from. This one resonated with me at this moment in time “The person who doesn’t make mistakes is unlikely to make anything.”

 

The Bookshelf: A Short Guide to a Happy Life

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One of my all time favorite books is Anna Quindlen’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life.  As the title suggests, this book is indeed short, and can therefore be easily reread time and time again. But don’t be fooled by the book’s length. It in no way compromises the importance of her words — to live life fully every single day.  This book has been my gift to many people over the years – in celebration of life’s biggest milestones or as a subtle reminder to a friend that life is still good despite the occasional rough patch.  The Short Guide sits lovingly on my coffee table where I see it every single day and I occasionally pick it up to be reminded again by Quindlen’s profound words.

Title:  A Short Guide to a Happy Life
Author:  Anna Quindlen, www.annaquindlen.com
Favorite Quote: “You just need to get a life, a real life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too. School never ends. The classroom is everywhere.  The exam comes at the very end.  No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.”
Favorite Quote Quoted in the Book: (This quote was my signature block on my emails for years!)  “Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold, it will not come again in this identical disguise.”  – Gwendolyn Brooks.

One of the Loves of My Life

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I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile. It’s about one of the loves of my life – books.  As a child, I was completely immersed in them and reading would occupy hours of my time.  (The Bernstein Bears were my childhood favorite!). I was the nerd who spent her summers visiting the library to read books and write book reports so that I could earn the distinction of having read the most books that summer. After having to read so much in law school, my love affair for reading for pleasure started to wane.   Even getting through a dinner menu proved to be too much at times.  But a few years ago, I started to read again just for fun and I (re)discovered that books are one of the things that make me oh-so happy!

Books have always been like friends to me. I always feel better when they’re around, even just sitting on my bookshelf at home. Walking through a bookstore can lift my mood as it reminds me that there is so much to learn in this world, so much to experience so I better just get over whatever might be bugging me at the moment.

So today I want to start this series called “The Bookshelf.”  Why today? Well,  starting this series has been on my mind for some time, but today I went for a haircut and my hairdresser and I spent the entire time discussing our love of books. We both got ridiculously giddy exchanging titles, talking about how one book had inspired us, what we learned from another, etc. And so, I want to bring those conversations to all of you.  In this series, I’ll be sharing with you some of my favorite books and I hope you’ll share some of yours too!

Weekend-ology

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After a weekend of celebrating Valentine’s, hiking among the California redwoods at Muir Woods, soaking up the sun during a leisurely lunch at Sam’s in Tiburon, and enjoying an urban hike up and down the Lyon Street stairs, I was looking forward to capping it all off by curling up with the current issue of Anthology magazine at a local coffee shop.

I first came across Anthology over a year ago while perusing through the Anthropologie store, but hadn’t picked up a copy for my reading pleasure until yesterday. Anthology is the shared vision of Meg Mateo Ilasco and Anh-Minh Le who both love and longed for the return of print. After brunch at a San Francisco cafe in 2010, the two writers launched Anthology with the goal of creating as they put it “a shelter and lifestyle magazine that takes a narrative approach to its coverage of home decor, travel, design, entertaining, and culture.”

Anthology is absolutely scrumptious! Each issue centers on a theme like Handmade at Home or Life is a Party and introduces you to the lives and homes of people from all over the world by way of stunning photography and thoughtful articles. After making my way through the entire current issue, I felt like I had met each of the people profiled in the mag. It is like the print version of attending a cocktail party where you meet such a range of interesting people that you can’t wait to go home and tell all your friends about them. Combine this with limited ads (for an uninterrupted experience) and the most gorgeous paper that is oh-so smooth to the touch, you’ll wish that this cocktail party lasts all night! The one and only downside is that the magazine comes out only four times a year. Can’t wait to pick up the next issue!!

Fore more information about Anthology, click here.

From One Marina Girl to Another – Heather Joy Hampton’s Marina Girl

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If I could do back flips, I’d be doing them right now. Why? Because I can’t contain my excitement about today’s post — a Q&A with Heather Joy Hampton, the author of one of my favorite novels – Marina Girl.

After reading dry legal documents all day at work, I desperately needed a reprieve and somehow watching endless reruns of Keeping up with the Kardashians wasn’t cutting it.  So, I developed an affinity for reading chick lit and Marina Girl is one of those heartwarming and relatable tales that I didn’t want to put down.   As I read it, I oftentimes felt like Heather was in my head, writing about experiences so unbelievably similar to my own.  Marina Girl tenderly captures the journey of a young woman named Olivia, moving to a new city, trying to juggle a career, with developing new friendships and dealing with the roller-coasters of dating –  all set in the neighborhood I call home.  You see, the Marina is a hip, young San Francisco neighborhood with a reputation as a haven for preppy, 20-and-30-something urban professionals (a.k.a yuppies) and a Marina girl is the stereotypical pretty-young-thing who lives in this trendy playground.  Did I just call myself a PYT?

Marina Girl sits on my bookshelf next to all of my cherished books and will survive many a spring cleaning or move.  And now that I have had the pleasure of getting to know Heather, it is not only one my favorite books, but a book written by my new found friend.

What inspired you to write Marina Girl?

Embracing and publishing Marina Girl was the hardest thing I have ever done. Pulling a novel out of your ass is a tough thing to do. Pulling a novel out of your heart is even more painful. That is exactly what Marina Girl is: my heart, my love letter to every girl that has found herself grasping to keep her head above water. The last year I lived in San Francisco was the best year of my life. My career was in full swing at a job that I loved. I had intelligent, interesting friends who inspired me to be a better person. The icing on the cake was falling in love with a remarkable man I was certain would be a part of my life for a very long time. Then, just like that, my life fell apart, and I found myself broken open.

The Marina Girl manuscript was written in a two bedroom apartment I set up shop in after moving back to Texas. I tacked 12 x 12 inch cork board squares to the walls of my second bedroom, and created a storyboard. I used sewing pins and index cards to constantly rearrange story lines, ideas, sketches, quotes, maps, etc. I tweaked and fondled and finagled that storyboard until I finally created a plot that congealed together into a story worth reading.

Heather’s actual storyboard. Love that she pinned up those colorful SF Muni bus passes. I’ve kept all of mine too!

What are some things that surprised you about the writing process?

There is one fun factoid about the writing process that surprises everyone, especially me: I didn’t have a television. Yes, that’s right. No television. Not only did I not have a television, I didn’t have television or a job. That’s 24 hours a day of no background noise. No news. No Real Housewives of Where-ever. No vegging out on the couch. No escape from the shadows in my head.

My television-less existence happened by chance.  I had one of those ginormous 32″ dinosaur numbers that I bought when I was in college and had schlepped around for years. My relocation back to Texas after my life fell apart was being paid courtesy of Heather Joy’s shoe fund so Big Bessie the 32″ lazy maker was left on the curb in the Marina since I was paying by the pound to get my silly self and shenanigans back to where I came from.

Heather at Texas state line. Things sure do look bigger in Texas!

I shopped for a flat screen a few times, but would inevitably leave the store each time in a cold, clammy, unexplainable sweat. Had I developed an obscure phobia to televisions? What the funk was wrong with me? After a half dozen failed attempts at television acquisitions, and a full dozen raised eye brows from Craig at Best Buy (side note: Why are the dudes who sell TVs always named Craig?), I decided to sit down somewhere and figure out exactly what was bouncing around in my head. What was bouncing around my head was Marina Girl.

What advice do you have for aspiring authors out there?

Write the book you have always wanted to read.

My goal when I was an aspiring author was to write a book you can’t put down, a vacation book readers could polish off on a long car  trip  or at the  beach with a  Mai Tai.  I wanted to make readers laugh in the beginning and maybe even cry at the end. Gosh, I sound like an a-hole for wanting to make people cry, don’t I? What I’m getting at, is that I tried my best to write an entertaining book that, if I’m very lucky, will have a lasting impact on the folks that read Marina Girl.

I also wanted Marina Girl to have a few unique attributes, like the Marina Girl Lexicon of Terms and Abbreviations for example. I created a list of definitions that would, hopefully, get a chuckle or two out of folks skimming over the first few pages.  That’s also why chapters have sophomoric titles like Kappa Kappa Kraigslist.

Union Square Illustration from Marina Girl

Marina Girl has illustrations. Weird, right? This is a fictional book we’re talking about. Why are there doodles within the book? Well, why not? All sorts of other books have illustrations, but I had never seen illustrations in an adult novel before. Since the main character, Olivia, is an architect and daydreams quite a bit, she would probably be an awesome doodler. I wanted to incorporate whimsical illustrations within the book that she would have drawn in her spare time. Olivia’s doodling is also the concept behind the book cover, the map of the Marina and the Golden Gate Bridge through Olivia’s mind and sketches.

We are both avid quote collectors. What are some of your favorite inspirational quotes?

  • “And the time came when the risk to remain in a tight bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin
  • “She packed up all her potential, and everything she learned, grabbed a cute pair of shoes, and headed out to change a few things.” – Unknown
  • “Don’t grow a wish bone, daughter, where your back bone ought to be.” – Clementine Paddleford

There are over forty quotes peppered into Marina Girl from Mark Twain to Willy Shakes to Oscar Wilde to Edgar Allan Poe. Even a zen saying or two snuck their way into Marina Girl. Ol’ Oscar Wilde and I became fast friends during the writing process. He’s the saucy opinionated gay BFF I always wanted. Here are a few of my favorite quotes used in the book:

  • “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde (Chapter 1)
  • “If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.” – George Bernard Shaw (Chapter 6)
  • “Words have no power to impress without the exquisite horror of their reality.” – Edgar Allan Poe (Chapter 22)
  • “If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life.” -Oscar Wilde (Epigraph)

What advice do you have for “marina girls” everywhere about navigating their turbulent twenties (and maybe even thirties)?

Enjoy yourself. Have as much fun as you possibly can without incurring permanent damages that will follow you into your future.

Invest. Sure, invest in your 401K and all that good stuff, but invest in yourself too. Buy a pair of Louboutins with your bonus. You will thank yourself a few years down the road when you are juggling the hats of Mommy, Wifey, and Mortgagee and looking super sexy doing it in a pair of red-bottoms.

For all the single gals out there, myself included, the last sentence of Marina Girl says it all. I don’t want to spoil the ending. You’ll just have to read the book to find out!

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Many, MANY thanks to Heather! Marina Girl can be purchased on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Autographed copies are availalable on Heather’s website. For more information about Heather, Marina Girl, as well as new and exciting projects on the horizon, check out Heather’s website.