Four reasons you need to read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl before it hits theaters
Tag: book report
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Single Girl Reads | Gone Girl
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Single Girl Reads | The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything
9 reasons you need to read James Martin, S.J.’s Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Anything
In Twenty-Seven | What I’ve Learned This Far, I cited this particular book as a wonderful starting point for anyone looking to reflect and deepen their knowledge of themselves on this level. I tend to read books with a pencil in hand, but this one is impossible to get through without one. It took me a really long time to get through it, not because it was uninteresting… on the contrary, while the material James Martin S.J. covers is dense and requires a lot of reflection and processing, he writes in true Jesuit fashion making the teachings of St. Ignatius accessible for all with more than a few moments of real laugh-out-loud humor. Whether your goal is to get to deepen your sense of self, learn more about St. Ignatius and his friends, or get a better understanding of Jesuit teachings, here are 9 points that Martin, S.J. makes… and my arguments for why you should pick up a copy and start the trek through this book today, if not sooner.
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Single Girl Reads | All’s Fair in Love & Wardrobe
Why you need to add Stephanie Simons’s All’s Fair in Love & Wardrobe to your shopping cart immediately
With a crash course on how to date like a fashion “editrix” (“channel a front row state of mind—don’t settle for being a back-row babe who’s constantly shuffled around and buried out of sight under the proverbial exit sign”), guides to the 7 phases of waiting for him to call and throwing the pity party of the season (“do create a stellar guest list; don’t open less than three gift registries”), a history of the relationship between love and fashion, how to master the “signature walk” of shame, a collection of closet confessions (assumedly Simons’s own dating anecdotes), and over 100 cheeky rules, All’s Fair in Love & Wardrobe makes you want to makeover your wardrobe, your romances, and your life to appear as casually cool and easily put-together as an editor off-duty. Here are 5 points why you should pick up a copy, read, reread, and personify All’s Fair.
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Single Girl Reads: Divergent
“Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.”
It’s a triology. It’s about a “dystopian” society that’s taken over Chicago… one that’s divided into organized groups based on human qualities that rule individual mentality: Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Amity (the friendly), Erudite (the intellectuals), and Dauntless (the brave). Despite the outward similarities with the coming-of-age strong female lead and the ability of the protagonist to outwit the central dictatorship, The Hunger Games this is not. With a slow start and elementary literary features, Divergent lacks the depth that attracted me to The Hunger Games. With that said, I did enjoy the read and am looking forward to the release of the film starring Shailene Woodley next Friday, March 21st. Don’t let the 487 pages scare you; you can finish the novel in the next week if you start this weekend!
At the age of 16, every citizen takes an aptitude test that reveals to them where their qualities will help them most succeed in their society. Each citizen considers their results and at the Choosing Ceremony publicly declares where their mind and heart has led them. Many choose to stay within their own faction, but others choose to “abandon” their families and the ideals they were raised to uphold and switch to another. Any decision to leave is often seen as a betrayal to their family and to their faction, and they believe that you can never return home afterward. Each 16-year-old becomes an initiate that goes through a process of training into the new ideals of their adulthood and sometimes new faction before they undergo a test that accepts them into their new faction… or doesn’t.
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The Rules | A Single Girl’s Reinterpretation
The Single Diaries Decodes The Rules Dating Wisdom
A few weeks ago we posed the question, have you ever heard of or read The Rules? The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right was published in 1995 by Ellen Fein and Sherries Schneider, a dynamic duo with the guise that they had this whole dating thing figured out. The golden rule upon which their dating bible was built is the simple premise that men must be the aggressors in a relationship. The Rules is essentially a 35-point action plan to carry this out. Fast forward almost 20 years and The Rules may feel a bit archaic.
With guidelines such as “Don’t Talk to a Man First” and “Don’t Talk Too Much,” The Rules seems a far cry from the Lean In culture today’s Single Girl has embraced. With good cause, women are being prompted more than ever to be more aggressive in claiming ownership over the course of their lives. Want to be CEO of a big company one day? Fight your way to the top! Want to marry the man of your dreams? Buy the ring and ask him yourself! The message is coming across loud and clear: “the rules” are changing.
With all of that said, The Rules continues to survive even in a Sheryl Sandberg world. In addition to having been a best-selling book at the time of release, the authors spawn new versions of The Rules every few years and continue to find themselves attracting publicity. This had me wondering, is there something about The Rules that defies the test of time? As crazy as they might initially seem, do they actually work?’
Having read the book myself, my short answer to the question is “Yes, I believe in The Rules.” BUT (of course there’s a but), I also believe they only work so much as today’s Single Girl is able to pass them through the filter of the present realities. The key is to be smart about The Rules and to reapply them in a way that makes sense. To give you a better sense of what I mean, I’ve taken 15 of The Rules suggestions and decoded them into a set of practical guidelines that I believe actually make sense for our Tinder, Twitter, Insta, Chatting worlds. Read on for The Single Diaries take on The Rules.