Are You Looking for Some Words to Live By?

I love books – they are stacked all over my house. Non-fiction, fantasy, and even juvenile fiction (I figure I’m never too old for a great story). But my problem seems to be finding time to read all those fabulous books. See, though I have them in abundance I have yet to develop a consistent habit in actually reading them – something I find especially bizarre since I am an author myself.

But this year will be different because I am not only making a personal commitment to read more but I am making myself accountable by presenting a segment on the morning radio show I co-host called Words to Live By. It’s a short piece I’ll bring every morning highlighting interesting tidbits from books that move me, books that make me happy, books that make me think and books that provoke me. And even … books that make me uncomfortable.

One such uncomfortable book I’m highlighting this week is Caitlin Flanagan’s To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife. It happens to be a book that I am re-reading for the third time. Here’s an enlightening paragraph that might bother you (or not) but either way it’ll make you think:

“If you want to make a feminist sputter with rage, remind her of those dark days in America’s past when girls took home ec classes and boys took shop. But to watch yuppie parents squirm with dread and confusion when anything in their households goes on the fritz is to wonder whether it was such a bad thing for one half of the marriageable population to know how to mend a fallen hem and the other half to have rudimentary knowledge of the workings of a fuse box. And to see such people frantically dropping wads of cash on hanging shoes and designer closet organizers is to suspect that they don’t even know where to look for what they’ve lost.”

Hmmm. Anybody out there bothered? Or can you relate?