Everything Men Know About Women

So, November was brutal. I spent the first week of the month in bed with a lung infection. I was sleeping, oh, at least 15 hours a day. Then I decided that I needed some help with fatigue and ended up on the GAPS diet which resulted in a healing crisis. Ever try to read during a healing crisis? No? That's probably a good idea. The healing crisis is pure evil and trying to read just makes it worse.

Because November was brutal, I pulled this book off my shelves and figured it was time to take a look.

It's a gift from a friend.

What does that post-it hanging off the side say? Open here? Okay.
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Ooops, it's empty! And the back claims it's based on years of research and that it's "frank and brilliantly insightful" (more on Amazon, scroll down, way down!)

So that's my book this month.

Next month I will try to return to reading books with words. I did read quite a bit of The Final Act of Mr. Shakespeare, Nourishing Traditions, and Santa Claus: A Biography, but I didn't finish any of them. (Heck, I don't think I'll ever really "finish" Nourishing Traditions since it's a cookbook)

I'm looking at this and wondering how I will ever do the next step of the challenge - reading two books a month in 2011...eep! Oh well, we'll deal with that when we get there!

The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan

I know, I know, I'm posting this a day late. But. September was nuts.

Crazy.

So glad it's gone.

And reading, ha! That's a pastime for those who are retired, independently wealthy, or who aren't trying to juggle a toddler with a new daycare and essentially a new job and, because of a temporary change at their spouse's workplace, all of the meals and grocery shopping and most of the housework life.

I seriously went to bed last night a bit disappointed with myself. I thought I'd failed September.

I have about three books in progress. I've been writing tons. I've been reading tons, actually, but for the purposes of this challenge I had to finish a book. And magazines, they don't count. And browsing through cookbooks, that doesn't count. And reading about 50 million blogs a day, that also doesn't count (although on that note, I have culled a number of blogs from my feed. This morning there were only 96 posts for me to read. I skipped most of them. It makes me sad.) And reading articles and papers for work, well, that doesn't count either.

So sad. I only survived three months of my challenge.

But then I remembered this AWESOME birthday gift from my brother-in-law.


It's not literature. It's not a biography. It's not thoughtful or instructional. It might qualify as thought provoking.

But it made me laugh. And cringe. And possibly throw up a little in my mouth.

And, best of all, IT'S A BOOK!

The premise: A woman found her grandmother's (she assumes, since no one will own up to actually being the original owners) set of Weight Watchers recipes from the 70s. She keeps them, because, wow, easy laughs! And the book is great. It pokes fun at the actual recipes. It pokes fun at the names of the recipes. It pokes fun at the staging of the food.

I loved it! I don't know which recipe was my favourite, but this book had me cracking up. Even Alex read a good chunk of it.

What I do know now though, is WHY people lost weight (and probably lots of it) on Weight Watchers in the 70s - the food was just too gross to eat. And if they did eat it, it probably made them have tummy aches, so they didn't eat much.

I'm glad Weight Watchers uses a healthier model for weight loss these days!

I just googled the book and you can see some of the cards and commentary here.

EDIT: Also check out this page - it's got Weight Watchers information from the 1970s...scary stuff!