Reviews

Sticky Readers: Flypaper for Your Blog

11.07.2011

Bottom line, then, what Margaret’s book is about is: how to write blog posts that make readers return to your site.

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The Last Blind Date, by my new BFF

10.31.2011

And that ego drubbing was what made her realize “how dearly I needed a support system. And not just the kind made of spandex.”

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Fire and Rain, the book

10.24.2011

It offers, at least in my mind, the sound track to my personal history back in the day, and for that alone, I can’t stop reading.

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Pretty, the second season

11.02.2010

Guilt-free sloshing in the barrel of kiddie beauty pageants with all the attendant political incorrectness you could ever hope for.

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The Four Quadrant Movie: Secretariat

10.06.2010

The hero is a stallion, the heroine is a housewife with four kids and the villain is a mouthy man who gets his comeupance. If that’s not a Four Quadrant movie, I don’t know what is.

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How To Save Your Own Life

01.03.2010

I can see How To Save Your Own Life on the bedside table of someone who likes to fall asleep at night with something spiritually-provocative on their mind

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The Boys Are Back

10.09.2009

It’s a love story between a father and his sons….It’s about family in all its messy glory when each member is valued as an individual. It’s about males without women but not in a way that demeans either gender.

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Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a MidLife Crisis

10.07.2009

It’s called coming to a crossroads. You don’t know whether to turn
left or right.

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Cross-Train Your Brain

02.04.2009

My days are filled from morning to night, but never with just one thing. I am, in fact, constitutionally incapable of any kind of singular focus. My life has been lived, and what successes I’ve had, follow a shotgun methodology: I spray the woods and where the buckshot lands, I go gather the goods. I resist the sneers of those who call me dilettante and I insist my way is The Way. But secretly, as I said, I feel guilty. Now, here comes Ingrid E. Cummings telling me that not only do I have a place in the world, more people should be like me! In The Vigorous Mind, Cummings argues for “a return to a Renaissance perspective, when the ideal was to be well-rounded.” Her thesis is contained within the subtitle: “Cross-Train Your Brain to Break Through Mental, Emotional, and Professional Boundaries.”

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Emma Thompson’s First Blog Post…talking about Last Chance Harvey

01.16.2009

“I shall turn 50 this year, which is not without its odd emotions and has got me thinking about being, well, old. I don’t mean decrepit, I mean not infantile, no longer so attached to things, no longer so concerned about what others think, no longer so anxious to prove myself — you may know the sort of thing I mean. It was rather a treat, therefore, to play what is– in a way– my first modern romantic lead in a film that is more romantic than comic (although it has very funny moments and is underscored with irony and subtle humour throughout) where I was not required to be stunningly attractive or in despair or in need of rescue, but simply an ordinary woman in her forties living a rather stale-looking life as best she can.”

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