Posts

The Book Club Hotel - Women's Fiction Done Right

-
Image
  The Book Club Hotel is Women's Fiction done right. The gorgeous pastel-dominant book cover captures the overall light tone accented by real-life issues. One thing I hate in books is multiple main characters with multiple subplots. However, the book club hotel handles this element masterfully as it weaves in and out of each the individual woman's life with effortless agility. Erica, Anna, and Claire are three women at crossroads in their lives: Anna, the homemaker, is feeling anxious and unappreciated with her kids leaving the house and going off to college. Clair the Chef just lost her job and her passion and is not even sure if she wants to cook anymore. Finally Erica, the risk management agent who is married to her job, is about to get her world turned upside down.  In the meantime, the owner of the hotel they decide to have a getaway at has her own problems trying to live up to the ghost of her dead husband who ran the hotel before her. Fittingly the romantic element is m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Elle's Magazine Minute: Gravitating to Rebellious Womanhood

-
Image
Let me save you some time. The October Issue of Elle is like all ads. Like entirely. There are some concept pieces that try to trick us into believing they're ads, but we're not stupid. They're ads. The only thing worth reading is the article about Bridgeton Alum actress Phoebe Dyvenor. A last name cloaked in allure and mystery -- mainly because none of us know how to pronounce it. Thanks, Letter Y, your Double Agentry was the worst grammatical decision in history. But aside from her meteoric rise and her six month stint dating Pete Davidson (which apparently everyone has done nowadays. It's almost a requirement for getting your drivers license) the theme of her attraction to playing rebellious women. The book 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt calls this character The Maiden or (the more villainous rendition) The Troubled Teen.  So, right after we learn how to pronounce her name, lets unleash our inner Phoebe Dyvenor today. Rebel ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Art Spotlight

-
Image
  In today's Art Spotlight, we look at Art By Megan. Megan describes her art as such:  "Reflections of light on water, shadows created by trees, and fallen leaves, as well as petals on contrasting surfaces inform my subject matter. I paint these fleeting moments, so they are noticed." Her paintings remind me of the goddess Athena: the goddess of wisdom and art. They seem like two starkly different components but philosophers have long talked about the connection between the two. How you can tell a lot about the morals of a community by the type of art they consume.     One looks like a collection of leaves of varying colors flowing in a twist of wind. They evoke happiness. Joy. A beauty that women have had to learn to see in the face of obstacles. A beauty men have had to learn to slow down and see. A baby's laugh. A beautiful sunset. On the other end are her sea paintings which evoke something completive and wise. The deep blue reminds me of long deep talks about fee...
Post a Comment
Read more

If the Shoe Fits: A Meditative Book Review

-
Image
  OVERVIEW:  Cindy Elanor Woods is a Plus-sized fashionista with an underlying cynicism due to losing both her parents at a young age. Despite having a degree in fashion design, she is currently jobless until opportunity knocks in the form of a reality dating show -- Before Midnight . Cindy accepts the offer and joins the show looking for the chance to show off her fashion chops but (as the book cover blatantly intimates) she may end up finding love in the process. COMMENTARY: When you have to endure the pain of a loved one dying at an early age, fairy tales are basically bullshit to you. Because of this perspective, Cindy essentially embodies the experience of the reader and all of us who roll our eyes at Reality Show "Romance". Yes, these shows are an essential papering over of some harsh realities in the world and how love truly comes about. But in that same way, isn't that silhouetted dress, those painful high heels, that brilliant shade of red lipstick? Is it an unt...
Post a Comment
Read more

Artist Spotlight: Carol Simon and Stories of Gratitiude

-
Image
  “Stay Happy and Be Positive” that is the the mantra of Houston Artist Carol Simon. Though my exploration of women artists, I've encountered a wide variety of styles. From the sublime to the dark art that looks deliberately like roadkill. But all the art, it seems, presents its own message. If there is a message that Carol Simon that resonates with me it's gratitude. This is most perfectly embodied in her Gratitude Collection which I won't display here for copyright issues, but to describe the art, I would say it is a kaleidoscope of nebulae -- spurts of joy -- calling us to have gratitude in the simple joys of life. Take me, for instance. Right now I am sitting in a bar, sipping wine, with access to the internet. Normally, I would just sit here and stare into the abyss. Maybe mourn the meaningless of life, but gratitude commands me to take advantage of it. There was a time when I had no laptop, no internet, no place to write. And I still wrote. But now, the paralyzing f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Karen Swan's Primadonna & the Permanence of Hope

-
Image
Prima Donna by Karen Swan starts with the protagonist speaking to a little brother. The two of them are trying out for the ballet as children. He doesn't think he did too well, because he couldn't "turn [his] feet the right way". Sophie knows he means turn his feet out. Because Sophie is an expert in all this. Still, she relieves his worries, assuring him that their lives will be filled with music and beauty from now on. She goes through the door to begin her try out... and never sees her brother again. Hope is a wondrous and necessary thing that can also be bitter and cold. We offer it to the mourning widow, saying it will be alright, not knowing this for certain but we say it because we must. Because it is what makes us human. It is the animating force in a dying world. But A paradox who we are in no position to question. For sometimes, in the tiny parts of life, we tell a weary stranger it will be okay. And the stranger believes and and that simple act makes it s...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Luxe - A Brief Examination of the Communicative Element of Fashion

-
Image
Your jacket, yours shoes, your dress -- they all TALK.   No, this is not me having a schizophrenic episode. This is me introducing the concept of the communicative element of fashion.  As a writer, I find I'm good when it comes to dialogue. Not so good when it comes to the descriptive elements. Therefore, that's why I'm so impressed with a book like The Luxe.  First, let me review it's weaknesses: yes, it's a Gossip Girl ripoff except set in the late 1800s. Yes, the anachronisms will make perfectionists want to shiv out their retina with a knife. And yes, most of the characters will have normal people wanting to construct a real-life facsimile of their character just so you can strangle them in effigy.   But what Anna Godberson does better than any writer I've encountered is use a person's dress to communicate something about their character. In almost every scene in The Luxe,  a character is wearing something to express something whether it's dom...
Post a Comment
Read more