kick ass giveaway!

Win a FREE copy of The Dash Diet Younger You!

 

 

All you have to do is email your name, address, and this book title to: jenileerose@yahoo.com to enter!

Giveaway ends on 6/5 at midnight!

Good luck :)

you should already be mildly smart to use this.

Data science is everywhere. You are constantly getting data collected about you without even realizing it by using social media, dating websites, online shopping, etc. Data Science from Scratch: First Principals with Python by Joe Grus is a book dedicated to teaching YOU how to become a data scientist, for free. Well, for the cost of this book.

Grus begins this book with a scenario. You have been hired to lead the data science efforts for a company. It's your first day, what do you do first? Grus gives you step-by-step instructions with codes and everything. Which leads you to the rest of the book. Codes upon codes upon codes. So you can figure out for yourself how to use and understand Python for data collecting. None of this makes any sense to me, of course, why would it? I don't use words like algorithm. But if you do. This book is for you.

i didn't love it...

On Instagram a few months ago, my friend Reese Witherspoon was recommending All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr up the wazoo. So of course, I ran to the library to request it immediately. Waited a few weeks, and it finally came back in. Although I knew nothing about the book other than it was set during WWII, I was really excited because the last book Reese recommended to me (and her 324032 followers), The Girl on the Train was excellent.

Well. I cannot tell you that All the Light We Cannot See was excellent. To me, it was not a kick ass book. BUT. It since it's pretty kick ass to a lot of other people who reviewed it. I am still going to share my review. And I don't want over 500 pages to be for nothing.

It started off well. We met a young German orphan boy who is incredibly bright and would find radios that were discarded and fix them so that he and his little sister could enjoy listening to radio programs at their group home. Late at night they would hear a program in French that they grew to love. And things started looking up for Werner when he was called up to be a part of Hitler's youth soldiers, and eventually called up to work as someone who traced where radio activity was coming from so that his team to kill "terrorists".

Around the same time we met a young blind French girl who lived with her father in Paris. He worked as a locksmith for a museum, and when the war reached France, he was to take a notorious jewel and travel away with his daughter, Marie-Laure, not knowing if the jewel he possessed was the real one or one of the fakes that were made so that the real jewel didn't fall into the wrong hands. They travel to Saint-Malo to take refuge with Marie-Laure's great-uncle Etienne, who has serious PTSD from the first war, and has more bad days than good. When her father is called back to Paris, and does not return, Marie-Laure wonders if the jewel really is cursed like the stories say.

During the whole book you are waiting for these two kids to crash into each other. It just wasn't the BOOM I was hoping for.

I really liked the beginning and middle of the book. I enjoyed learning about these two children on opposite sides of a gruesome war. But the ending just killed it for me.

behind every great man...

Abraham Lincoln is in my family tree. Don't be jealous, I bet if you looked far enough back you will find someone cool in your family tree as well. But since we are basically cousins, I have a soft spot for any historical books based on Lincoln, the latest being, Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image by Joshua Zeitz.

 

 

For those of you (like me) who are not super familiar with John Hay and John George Nicolay, the first part of the book will catch you up on their lives. Their youth is written separately, they were both writers and they came to become part of Lincoln’s inner circle after his election in 1860 as his official secretaries. Honestly, this book is more about Hay and Nicolay than President Lincoln himself, which works because they were the closest people to him other than his family. They helped shaped Lincoln into the kind of president he was. The kind of president who was remembered so fondly. They were kind of like Lincoln's Olivia Pope. And continued to support his memory after his death. Zeitz created a readable and engaging bio that I found very enjoyable to read.

 

I was able to visit the Lincoln Monument for the very first time in DC a few weekends ago. It was extremely cool being in our nation's capital. Especially so close to Memorial Day. So much history.

let's reflect on this for a minute.

I'm not very Zen. I'm not easy going. I don't mediate. BUT. I want to be all of those things, so I read Paradise in Plain Sight by Karen Maezen Miller who is actually a Zen teacher and helps students (and readers like us) find contentment in the here and now, just like she did in the ancient Japanese garden in her backyard (even though at the time she didn't exactly have a green thumb). Miller uses her Japanese garden as a metaphor to explain Zen concepts. I can get behind this idea because the home I've created over the last two years with my husband IS my Zen place, if I had such a place. I've created a very cool and open space for myself when my husband keeps his crap in his designated rooms, and I love it. This book is about making wherever you are in life right now, your paradise, and I love that message along with the rest Miller shares, especially the message on change. Because change is SO hard for me. This was a very soothing read and helped me realize how my own fears can blind me to so much promise for myself.

if you're looking for results, Heller's got them.

Marla Heller's The Dash Diet Younger You will transform your body, leaving you twenty years younger and twenty pounds lighter in just ten weeks. Well, I don't want to be nine years old again, and twenty pounds is a little much, but I still got A LOT out of this book, which builds on the success of Heller's popular DASH diet, it's simply designed for a younger looking inside and outside. I am in it for my mildly high blood pressure, honestly, and so far so good.

The Dash Diet Younger You includes a 14-day meal plan with breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner specified for each day. HELLO. You can do anything for 14 days. There are 75 recipes in all, and they are followed by a section on a healthier lifestyle, and on managing the aging process. Very easy to follow, and no one's asking you to do anything outrageous. Eat more plant-based foods and eliminate those sugars and processed goodies. The testimonials are super encouraging, so if you are someone looking to reverse time a bit, this diet is definitely for you.

luckiest girl....alive.

Jessica Knoll is definitely an author for the every girl. Having credentials from Cosmo AND SELF (my favorite magazine), she has a way with women, and she really proves that with her debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive and heroine (or anti-heroine?), TifAni FaNelli.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ani has spent her twenties reinventing herself. Working toward the woman's version of the American dream. Kick ass job, check. Nice digs, check. Hot body, check. Successful and sexy fiancé, check. Her life is going on perfect, but fourteen years ago something happened to this girl that she just can't shake. And apparently no one will let her as she's asked to participate in a documentary revolved around the trauma, telling her side of the story. Ani is planning a wedding, starving herself into a size negative, about to marry a man she doesn't even love, to forget a past that won't go away. Alternating between her twenty-eight and fourteen-year old selves, I wouldn't call Ani a likable character, but the more you learn about her past the more you understand her present. And everyone deserves a chance to tell their side to the story.