Book Launch Cafe

The secret to designing your life

Some people might find this a little morbid but I practice dying while I'm still alive. I'm not alone in this practice. Buddhists including many people living out their passions practice this mental exercise.

Question your life, question what you're doing and ask yourself this question today... if I had 1 day, 1 week, 1 month to live, "what would I do?"  Would I be watching TV, reading magazines, reading the paper, gossiping? Get clear and be honest with yourself. It's one of my secrets to designing my life with intention and clarity and I do have to re-visit those questions often. It's a lesson I am always learning more from.

Dying while still alive is the best way I can think of to put a laser sharp focus on how I choose to spend my time. Get that mental note in your mind that some day (like everyone else) you will leave this physical world. What will be your contribution?

Randy Pausch has created a huge buzz because of his book The Last Lecture and his determination to live his life with great intention knowing his life will be cut short of cancer. If you haven't seen the lecture do a search and watch the lecture he gave at Carnegie Melon to his students on utube.

Designing your career

It's graduation time so BLC 's focus is on career design.

Designing your career and path in life takes a lot of listening to yourself and what I call your heart brain. We all have this internal compass called intuition and to be on the path of how YOU define success... listen to it. Just like your dog, your intuition doesn't lie.

Sometimes though we need help along the way with a little knowledge from people who've been there and want to see you succeed. Here's a few books I came across worth noting:

The Authentic Career: Following the Path of Self-Discovery to Professional Fulfillment

Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

Your Authentic Self: Be Yourself At Work

Have fun creating the profession you've dreamed of!

- Maria

Rainbow book effect

With all the heavy reading I've been into lately that require laser focus attention, I've been craving just looking at pretty images, like a toddler enjoying a picture book. It's one of life's simple pleasures to flip the pages of design magazines and be inspired.

I love how creative people can get with their book collection. Here's a photo of how room design integrates beautifully with shelved books arranged by spine color. It creates a beautiful rainbow effect and quickly livens up a room. Maybe one day I'll loosen up to try this but right now my books sit neatly by category for ease of reference.

photo: eccentric scholar

Apartment Therapy features these trendy tower bookcases. Maybe, maybe not your style. Are they really practical and space saving?   

The Little College Handbook

Here's a practical book to getting IN to college called The Little College Handbook: A First Generation's Guide to Getting In and Staying In by Melissa Mellott.

Melissa herself is a first generation college student who authored this essential resource book for parents and students with practical help choosing a major to figuring out financial aid.

Checkout her education blog, Education Defined.

Just Who Will You Be?

Here's another great books for new grads as you go on the  graduate program of life.  The book is called "Just Who Will You Be?: Big Question. Little Book. Answer Within." written by Maria Shriver. She reminds us to seek meaning through the joy of following your heart. 

Top 10 reads for recent college grads on Grad to Great

Grad to Great asked me for my top 10 Recommended Reading for college grads. In tune with their mission to help you achieve and sustain career success, I came up with the following books that have made positive imprints in my life and career and has shaped who I am today. It was tough coming up with only 10!

Click on a book to read a description on Amazon.com

• The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life by Geshe Michael Roche
• Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement by Napoleon Hill
• Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design by Laurence Boldt
• Creating Affluence by Deepak Chopra
• The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Pocketbook Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams (One Hour of Wisdom) by Deepak Chopra
• A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
• A Revolution in Kindness and Business As Unusual by Anita Roddick
• The Death of Common Sense by Philip K. Howard
• Road Fever by Tim Cahill (have a goal but have fun in the process, this was a fun read and one of the lighter ones!)
• The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brand

Consider these books as tools to help you design your life right now, at any place in your life. These are books that resonated with me. Add to these and come up with your own personal list. Track them over time. Then look back on the year(s) of how you fed your mind.

I used to use a spreadsheet to document my books and my reading wish list. Here's a neat site that helps catalog your books online. Check out LibraryThing.

Plus three more to add to my original list...
Thinking for a Change by John Maxwell
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
The time of our lives; the ethics of common sense by Mortimer Adler

Grad to Great: Discover secrets to sucess in your first career

College graduation is next month and what a great time to keep the focus on all the new grads in the coming weeks by highlighting books that will help them on their journey to finding work they love and defining success in their own terms. 

Grad to Great co-author, Anne Brown is featured this month as BLC's featured author. To read the Q&A click here.

Coast Highway has officially launched

I had the pleasure of putting together my first book event/reading for Chris Corbett, author of Coast Highway last Thursday. It launched the official start to his book tour and how honored I was to host this event with  Coffee Bean, a coffee shop on a quiet road in Montecito known for cleb sightings. And how appropriate that Coast reveals itself several times on Chris' first book tour stop, in the coastal town of Santa Barbara along Highway 101 on Coast Village Rd.

We enjoyed Chris' great storytelling with tibits of 70's drama, humor, entrepreneurship and spirituality. Thanks Chris!

Check out his website for his LA book stop April 27th then back to Zurich in May.

Meet Coast Highway author Thurs April 17th Montecito

Meet Coast Highway author for a book reading/signing/chat around the fireplace at the Coffee Bean in Montecito.

When: Thursday April 17, 6pm

Where: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
1209 Coast Village Rd, Montecito

FREE!
rsvp to...
maria@booklaunchcafe.com

www.booklaunchcafe.com

"A story for the heart, where sometimes you have to lose everything before you can discover your true self."

For best reading results...

Mortimer Adler showed there's more than one way to read a book. The best way to read is to take notes, "page by page - not in bed, not even in an armchair but at a table or desk." I do take this advice because once I start reading in bed I doze off soon after I've read a couple of pages. Lack of focus being too comfortable. I've seen much better results at a desk like studying for college exams. Highly effective.

Adler calls this mastering the lesson of active reading. Reading let's say in bed or on the beach is passive reading which is almost always with the eyes in motion but with the mind not engaged. Not reading at all so why bother picking up a book?!

In his book published in the 70's, How to Read a Book he writes if you truly want to measure your active reading, consider how you read a love letter. So I go back in time and recall....

People in love "read every word three ways; they read between the lines and in the margins; they read the whole in terms of the parts, and each part in terms of the whole." The reader perceives the color of words, the odor of phrases, and the weight of sentences. Finally, reading if it is active is thinking and that's how you can improve your thinking.

Adler wrote more than 20 books after he turned 70. Google him to learn more about this first educator to recommend readers underline and write in the margins.

Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love is one of those lovable books that can transform thoughts to a deeper and higher level... therefore for me replacing already some bad habits with good habits (patience and the occasional silence are virtues!).

The author shares intimate details of her spiritual journey from Italy to India to Indonesia. Hilarious most times blended with spiritual finesse, I think we can find a little bit of ourselves in her.

Watch for the movie adaptation of the book, starring Julia Roberts.

See BLC EVENTS page for Author Reading at UCSB Arts & Lectures, Santa Barbara March 30th

Here's one of her earlier books and one of my favorites stories. The Last American Man, a fascinating and sometimes complicated true story of a modern day man Eustace Conway living in the Appalachian Mtns.

Healthy Living from Muriel Hemingway

This is a smart book on living a radiant life of well-being. It's a great workbook, reference book and healthy living program you can refer to over and over again. It's her second book titled Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living from the Inside Out: Every Woman's Guide to Real Beauty, Renewed Energy, and a Radiant Life, a book she dedicated to her spiritual guru. The companion website is... http://www.marielhemingway.com/

I have seen Mariel Hemingway speak several times and she seems to be all about living an authentic life striving for balance, wellness, lots of humor and spirit. 

Mariel encourages us to listen to ourselves and do things differently that will allow us to discover our radiant life. Here's a few doses from the book.
- Take time for yourself
- Pay attention to your own wants
- Prioritize relaxation over work every once in a while
- Moderate your exercise, less is more - instead of going to the gym running on the treadmill, take a 10-20 min walk outside
- Find peace and quiet in your day - take in some silence
- Have your own sacred space in your home and fill it with objects that resonate with you; change it up once in a while as your tastes change.

Her first book...
Finding My Balance: A Memoir with Yoga

Her latest book...
Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living from the Inside Out: Every Woman's Guide to Real Beauty, Renewed Energy, and a Radiant Life

An Inspiring Workbook for Botanical Illustrators

What a great book to give illustrators, painters, gardeners or naturalists in your life... in time for Spring!

It's a wonderful new workbook written by Wendy Hollender, coordinator of Botanical Art and Illustration at the New York Botanical Garden. For more information, click here.

Book Signing at ArtPlantae Books Southern CA.  March 11. Click here to go to ArtPlantae's website.

New podcasts on BLC

Get the skinny on your grammar questions with new Grammar Girl podcasts (scroll to bottom left of screen) on BLC. She's fun and I love her writing tips.

Check out the 2 new podcasts... New York Times Book review podcasts and Barnes & Noble Meet the Writer Podcast. An eclectic mix for all BLC readers. Thanks for visiting.

Santa Barbara Reads selection and community conversations

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli.

The SB Public Library has partnered with UCSB, City College and Patagonia to bring Professors from various departments at the university, along with local experts that will lead discussions in the public libraries to explain globalization and its effects on our economy and society. You can join the conversation. More info at SB Public Library website. Click here.

About the book...   The author, Georgetown University business professor Pietra Rivoli, chronicles the round-the-world odyssey of an ordinary T-shirt, from Texas cotton-growers, to factory workers in China, labor champions in the American South and an African used-clothing bazaar, to reveal how the global economy really works.

 

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade

Upcoming Spring release ... What's Possible!

I've always been drawn to human interest stories. Here's a heartfelt one due out in April....

"What's Possible!: 50 True Stories of People Who Dared to Dream They Could Make a Difference by Daryn Kagan, former CNN news anchor.

With her 20 year career as TV journalist Daryn Kagan presents inspiring accounts of memorable people with defied the odds, survived incredible hardships, dreamed big, gave back, transformed grief to benefit others, and more.

Interestingly Daryn's first job in TV was here in KEYT, Santa Barbara where Book Launch Cafe was born!

Click here to go to her website (www.DarynKagan.com) for daily doses of inspiration.

BLC on Unleashed Imagination

Unleashed Imagination blogged about BLC today. Thanks for the kind words about BLC. I  try. Right back at you!

Book signing with Dave Wann of Simple Prosperity

Booksigning and talk with author Dave Wann of Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle
2/8/2008

SANTA BARBARA PERMACULTURE NETWORK AND  S. B. SIMPLICITY CIRCLE
Presents:
Simple Prosperity

Slide Show & Booksigning with
Dave Wannn

Friday , February 8, 2008, 7 pm  Donation $5
Santa Barbara Public Library, Faulkner Gallery

Best selling author David Wann presents 17 forms of “real wealth” that can eradicate affluenza, a pandemic he helped diagnose in the book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic. “When we change a few key priorities and values, such as what we mean by the word “success,” many of our material wants will cease to be obsessions,” says Wann. “Instead of fidgety, addictive consumption, our lives can be filled with the real wealth of sanity, health, hope, caring, connection, participation, and purpose.”

Click here for his website.

Maria reads: Influencer

Borders is my backyard and I picked up this book on a whim or so I was drawn to it. It's called Influencer: The Power to Change Anything.

It's for anyone who wants to make a difference... and isn't that all of us. Though most of us don't make the change because it's too hard. We use coping strategies instead. It's an interesting read on the psychology of why it's so hard for us to make change in our lives and what we can do to effect or inspire positive change in ourselves and others.

You'll love this book because it's about "everyday" people making incredible improvements in solving problems. Yunus is a feature subject on being an Influencer and many more great examples.

Coast Highway is creeping up there on my must read.

My webstore, Sama Living and becoming the new Santa Barbara Ladies Who Launch leader has gotten me busy but I'll catch up with the blogging again soon! 

 

Maria reads: the Circle

Hello readers, I've been up to a lot these days. I completed The Circle: How The Power Of A Single Wish Can Change Your Life by Laura Day in full this week! It's supposed to be a workbook but I cheated and read through it twice by now because I've skimmed through it since last year. It was one of those books that required my total focus in the morning. As of this reading I remain in the Circle. Pick up a copy for yourself this Valentine's Day. It has changed me.

I was lucky enough to meet Laura Day last year at her Big Sur Energy and Intuition retreat. Here is a photo of my little shared cabin with 3 other amazing women while in breathtaking Big Sur.