by Cathy Alter

started 7/13 finished 7/19

This book is along the same lines as Helping Me Help Myself, that I read earlier this year. Instead of following self-help gurus for a year, though, Alter uses the wide world of women’s magazines to help her get her love life together. Her first husband drops out of grad school, gains loads of weight, and picks his nose in bed (and she catches him eating it!). After the divorce she doesn’t do much better with the not reciprocated neighborhood crush and an office “romance” (that really only involves them having sex in her cubicle – during work hours). She decides that she would turn over life for the next year to magazines like O, Cosmopolitan, Self, Real Simple, Glamour, Lucky and others. Every month she would use the magazines advice to focus on certain issues – how to get rid of a guy (office dude), how to pack light (for a weekend trip with her new boyfriend), and others.

I almost put this book down after I started reading it because how she carried herself in “relationships” with men was a little frustrating for me. I wanted to shake her and tell her to show some self’ respect. But I don’t like giving up on a book and I don’t like being too judgmental of people who I don’t even know. I am glad that I stuck with it, because she made some radical changes over the year and comes out at the end a happier person.