Book Review: The Frantic Woman's Guide to Life

Aside from reading other women's blogs and checking out my favorite (now defunct) magazine, I haven't really done much investigation into the methods used by others to organize their homes, lives, and checkbooks. Well, it turns out that the local library has quite the selection of books on this subject! While browsing, I thought this book might help me out, so I took it home:

The Frantic Woman's Guide to Life
by: Mary Jo Rulnick

What I loved about this book: The book is separated into three sections: the first is for year-round issues, the second is for issues by month, and the third is a bunch of extra stuff that may or may not be helpful (i.e. a few recipes, lists of things to take on a car trip, etc.). For the most part, I went through the monthly sections in part two to see what advice I could glean. Each month provides a lot of information about commonly celebrated holidays, issues that generally pop up during that month, and helpful tips on preparation for upcoming months. And, best of all (for my list-making-obsessed self), every month has a checklist at the end of it that contains all of the tips in the chapter.

End of chapter checklist for May.

What I disliked about this book: The author really tries to account for women in all stages of adult life. However, I found that there wasn't a whole lot of special information geared towards women living with boyfriends/husbands that do not have children. It's almost as if the author assumed that all readers were either married with kids, or single. A great example was the February chapter, which featured lots of suggestions around Valentines Day - most of them for celebrations and craft projects with children, or ideas for single women without a significant other to spend the day with. Additionally, much of the advice is for home-owners (which I am not) and didn't really account for women in other situations (like apartments, renters, etc.). It was a little off-putting, but not enough to outweigh the rest of the great advice in the book. Plus, this might (over time) make the book more useful - you could use the advice as it pertains to your life now, and then revisit it with a different perspective when you do have children.

Overall Recommendation: This is a good one! I was sad to have to return it to the library, and am considering looking for a second-hand copy somewhere that I can keep. I need it just for the spring cleaning checklist (it's nearly 4 pages long and contains a lot of things that I would never even dream about cleaning!)! However, I'd suggest checking it out from the library first and seeing how much you like it - if you're not a big list person, then you might not be as much of a fan as I am. :)