The Brilliant Book Club

March 2014 Selection

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior.

From Amazon.com:

“Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on theirparents?

In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior tries to tackle this question, isolating and analyzing the many ways in which children reshape their parents’ lives, whether it’s their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today’s mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear.”

We’ll be writing about it on Monday, March 31.

January 2014 Selection

The Good Mother Myth, edited by Avital Norman Nathman

From the Amazon.com description: “In an era of mommy blogs, Pinterest, and Facebook, The Good Mother Myth dismantles the social media-fed notion of what it means to be a “good mother.” This collection of essays takes a realistic look at motherhood and provides a platform for real voices and raw stories, each adding to the narrative of motherhood we don’t tend to see in the headlines or on the news.

From tales of mind-bending, panic-inducing overwhelm to a reflection on using weed instead of wine to deal with the terrible twos, the honesty of the essays creates a community of mothers who refuse to feel like they’re in competition with others, or with the notion of the ideal mom–they’re just trying to find a way to make it work. With a foreword by Christy Turlington Burns and a contributor list that includes Jessica Valenti, Sharon Lerner, Soraya Chemaly, Amber Dusick and many more, this remarkable collection seeks to debunk the myth and offer some honesty about what it means to be a mother.”

We’ll be posting our thoughts on the book on Monday, January 27th. I hope you’ll be reading along with us!

About The Brilliant Book Club

The Brilliant Book Club is a collaborative project among five bloggers: Lauren Apfel of Omnimom, Deb CG of Urban Moo Cow, Sarah Rudell Beach of Left Brain Buddha {that’s me!}, Jessica Smock of School of Smock and Stephanie Sprenger of Mommy, For Real.

Although we are all busy parents, we still love to read thought-provoking books and share our thoughts and reactions with one another. So we figured we’d start a book club!

The Brilliant Book Club is for parents who want to read the latest books about parenting — from research-based books on parenting practice to books that reflect on the emotional and personal aspects of childrearing.

Think of it as Back to School…. for you!! 🙂

Every other month, we will select a recent book about parenting. Over eight weeks, we will invite you to read our selected book along with us, and share your ideas with us on Facebook, Twitter and our blogs. On the last Monday of each month, each of us will write a post about our thoughts on the current selection and our own unique perspective on it as parents.

We encourage you to read, reflect and share with us as we illuminate the parenting research and insights that can help us, and our children, shine.

Read. Reflect. Share.

Shine.

The Brilliant Book Club.

Click here to learn more about the Book Club and our first selection, Playing to Win by Hilary Levey Friedman.

You can read my Brilliant Book Club posts here.