Book Rec: Up for Renewal

Earlier this summer, I had the privilege of attending an event with several wonderful women writers, including Cathy Alter.  I should say up front, in the interest of full disclosure, that I liked Cathy–a lot– when I met her.  She’s funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful, and very warm.  This is a good thing, because if I hadn’t gotten such a positive impression of her, I probably never would have picked up her memoir, Up for Renewal.  The premise: Alter, in the wake of a divorce and in the middle of several bad decisions, decides to give her life over to magazines for advice.  Not just any magazines, though: she turns to the gurus of women’s magazines, from O to Real Simple to Cosmo, plus about a dozen others.

It will surprise no one to know that I’m not a big fan of so-called women’s magazines.  Sometimes they’re fun to flip through, but much like Sex and the City or a jumbo candy bar, the sugar rush tends to wear off and leave me feeling sick.  Women are so much more than sex and fashion, and yet a look at the newsstands would have you believe that all us ladies have a couple primary goals: 1) drop some weight, 2) so we can have mindblowing sex (mindblowing for our male partners, anyway), 3) and also, get this season’s hottest look on the cheap.  Ugh.

So I was skeptical of the idea that women’s magazines could serve as a self-help guide.  And yet, Cathy Alter made it work.  Key to her success is that she wanted to make serious changes in her life; the magazines provided tips and some framework, but they weren’t the catalyst.  She could have picked another genre of magazine and probably gotten to the same results, albeit perhaps not quite as hilariously.

Alter’s candor, humor, and distinctive voice make the memoir an incredibly engaging read. As it happened, I read the book during a three-week road trip, and I got to the chapter on “Roughing It”– in which Alter conquers some demons by camping out  for the first time– as I was getting ready for a week in a tent.  The chapter provided only some of my many laugh-out loud moments while reading.

Good for: a summer read that’s fun, but not all fluff.  There’s serious insight to be found, and a level of self-reflective honesty that’s rare even in the memoir genre.

But is it just for girls?  Mmm, maybe.  I read a few sections aloud to my boyfriend, and he laughed, but I imagine the typical male reader wouldn’t find as much that resonates with his own experience as I did.

Excerpt:

This month I would jump into unfamiliar waters [...] There was something really transformational in taking an active role in my life.  To do this, I had to get out of my comfort zone, away from my laptop, away from my merlot and must-see television.

I had to go camping.

It was an idea that I had been batting around since Karl invited me to join him and a few of his friends in Monterey, California, to watch the American leg of the MotoGP, an around-the-world race on motorcycles.  To defray the cost of the trip, the group was going to camp on the sanctioned grounds of the racetrack, which they had reserved for the low, low price of forty dollars.

With a complete lack of experience with the great outdoors, I wasn’t just getting out of my comfort zone–I was excommunicating it entirely.  But the giddy realization that Karl wanted to spend three solid days with me overrode any fears I had about bathing in a lake or cooking beans over an open flame–that’s what you did when you camped, right?

Only after I accepted the invitation did the compound subject of tent and me really sink in.

‘Does he realize he’s camping with the princess and the pea?’ was my mother’s response upon hearing my plans.  She urged me to inform Karl that most Jews prefer hot and cold running water and toilets that flush. ‘Tell him you want to stay in a five-star hotel.’

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2. Book Rec: Some Girls
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