Three books have significantly made my life better as a young woman today. After trying nearly every birth control (with success I might add), but wanting to serve my body better than to make it believe it’s already pregnant through hormones for more than 6 years, I found the perfect birth control method and I can’t believe it’s not taught to women around the country on a regular basis. It’s free and effective. It’s fertility charting. The next two are harder pills to swallow because they are about men and money, two subjects some of us women can’t seem to seduce. Tell-it-like-it-is authors quickly demystify these two topics and give you the wisdom to learn from your history and move beyond where you’ve been.
Taking Charge of Your Fertility, The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health by Toni Weschler
Knowing your body through fertility charting can help you avoid pregnancy, promote pregnancy, detect problems early and possibly solve them, and tell you when your periods will come so you can plan around them if they affect you poorly. This information has been lost to the shift in popularity towards hormonal birth control methods, but remains one of the best, if not best of them all! For those many women who have been trying to conceive without success, clues to what is going on very well could be within your chart. This book is cleverly written half toward those preventing and the last half toward those trying to conceive, hence the name Taking Charge Of Your Fertility in favor of what you want. In a time religious communities are the only teaching organizations of this method anymore, this book allows a solitary person to relearn sex education, the science behind your body’s reproduction, and a method that takes all the natural family planning practices into consideration for the most accurate information. As a method, it’s just as effective as most hormonal birth control methods when used properly and as a book, you’ll have no excuse for not using it properly! In friendly language, the book is a great reference to keep on your shelf even after you’ve learned to chart.
Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash by Liz Perle
We cannot pretend that women and money are equal to that of men and money. Women as a gender are given far less information regarding money than men are in their lifetimes. This is due to a long history of women not making their own money and was not that long ago. Women, even after they’ve entered the workplace and even conquered many of fields, have different attitudes about money than men. They approach pay negotiation, spending, conversations about money with friends, and nearly every other aspect about money differently than men do. Liz Perle in her book Money, A Memoir fully explains our story to us. What happened to our relationships, economy, personal aspirations and emotions when women were allowed to work? She explains how we are conditioned differently than men and gives us the wisdom we probably missed out on, but our brother didn’t. This book is just the adjustment needed to tackle financial goals and learn more responsibility regarding the topic. It’s not as feminist as it sounds. It’s a real side of the history of our economy written from a female perspective that’s not told often enough. Being in the know of this information can change the trajectory of your life.
He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
Greg Behrendt was a script consultant for the hit show Sex In The City and the concept for He’s Just Not That Into You was conceived from an episode. Too many otherwise smart women are making excuses for men’s behavior that plainly shows they are just not that into you! Greg and Liz explain men are not complicated, but rarely have the huevos to tell a girl straight that they don’t feel the same way. In a Dear Abby type platform, women’s letters fill the pages of this book telling stories we’ve at least heard or told ourselves, and ask the same questions we’ve asked ourselves, our friends, and God. The answer, bluntly, is usually “he’s just not that into you”. It will make you re-think your whole life and want to buy a copy for a friend! Getting the truth bomb from Greg, a man unafraid, liberates you from ever tolerating less than honesty and/or admiration again. Every woman who has to suffer dating in the world today has got to get their ringless hands a copy of this book!