JUST LET ME LIE DOWN: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
JUST LET ME LIE DOWN
Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom
BY KRISTIN VAN OGTROP

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Kristin van Ogtrop knows she's lucky--fulfilling career, great husband, three healthy kids, and, depending on the hamster count, an impressive roster of pets. She also knows she is tired. Always. Using stories and insights from her own life, she provides a lexicon for the half-insane working mom. Anyone who has left a meeting to race to the Halloween parade immediately understands van Ogtrop's definition of "Kill the messenger" as "The action you must take in order to forget about the office for a time--that is, to remove your Blackberry/Treo/iPhone/whatever from your person and store it as far away as your neurotic self will allow." Filled with essays, lists, and resonant observations, JUST LET ME LIE DOWN establishes van Ogtrop as the Erma Bombeck of the new millennium.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kristin van Ogtrop is the editor of Real Simple magazine and has held positions at Glamour, Vogue, Travel & Leisure, and Premiere. She lives outside New York City with her family.

Audio and Video

REVIEW:

JUST LET ME LIE DOWN by Kristin van Ogtrop is a charming and understanding look at the trials and tribulations that working moms face on a daily basis. Kristin, herself, is a busy mother of three with a career and a loving partner. All that is fantastic but also means she is usually dead tired and looking for a moment’s peace, like any other working mom. Even the best of us needs to be real and understand that they need a breather from time to time; thus the title, a little time to just “lie down”.

The book discusses the realities of being a working mom, including all the efforts and anxieties, from tears to joys, from sacrifices to accomplishments, that are all part of the incredible privilege of being a mother. Kristin van Ogtrop uses examples from her own life, both professional and personal, to produce cleverly written terms that all working moms will be able to relate to and probably find themselves using in their daily routine. The terms are like a working mom’s dictionary. In it, she includes the good, the bad, and the ugly of parenting, marriage, and work and gives them all a name. The format of the book is well organized and easy to follow. The sections can even be read out of order and each one is just a few pages long so a busy mom can sneak in a minute here or there to read parts of it, OR take some much needed time for herself to read it in one sitting.

If you get nothing from the book but the permission to give yourself some alone or down time, then you have understood van Ogtrop’s point. Mothers all need to love themselves as well as their families, just as Kristin van Ogtrop does. If JUST LET ME LIE DOWN gives readers a chance to laugh and relate and realize that there is no guilt in thinking of yourself first, even just once in a while, then it is well worth the price and time to read it.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO ANNA AND THE
HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, I HAVE
THREE COPIES OF THIS CHARMING
BOOK TO GIVEAWAY!


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