"It's All Too Much" was all too little for me

By Tiffany Young

I was pretty excited about seeing "It's All Too Much" by Peter Walsh at the library because I tend to love organizing books. However, as I dove into this one I realized it's really lacking for single people. I can see how it would be useful for families but I'd say about 85 percent of his book at least focuses on issues for families and people with big homes.

Each chapter is divided to break down what you should work on, and since I live in a rented out bedroom, I pretty much just have one room. His advice for the bedroom to keep only things related to sleep and romance? Well, that's not going to work for me, since I don't have anywhere else to keep craft projects or setup my computer.

He also seems to focus a lot on people who have really bad clutter problems of which I either don't feel I have or am in denial—don't get me wrong I do have clutter I could part with, I'm just not sure it's as extreme as the examples in the book.

All this being said, I can see how this book would be beneficial for couples who have issues that need to be worked out. He gives a lot of instruction on communicating and working together to create a shared vision and make a room fit the vision that I can see being helpful. The room by room checklist can probably help those with bigger homes tackle the problems one at a time instead of getting overwhelmed.

Book of Lists or Lists of Books?

By Tiffany Young

If you're here you probably already read a lot. But in case you need inspiration, there have been a lot of bloggers out there creating their book of lists that I thought I'd share. I was going to add my own personal books that I want to read in the coming months, but realized many were already on these lists and most of them I'll be writing about at some point anyway, so find a topic below and get reading!

Here is a list of books to start learning about everything from finances to relationships:
Build Your Own Classroom

One of my favorite blogs for some reason is "The Art of Manliness." No, I don't have an identity problem, but they write about interesting topics no one else does. Here is a post on why men should read poetry with some suggestions on where to start. The list is totally fine for women, too! (And maybe you can leave the book on the bedside table for your man to stumble upon.)
Be a Man, Read a Poem

Trying to become more organized? Who isn't? Check out these three books on organization discovered by The Washington Post.
3 books to help you with your organizational resolutions

Looking to change your life? These books encourage you to find your strengths and use them.
Two books to buy for 2011

Skip down to the educate yourself section at the bottom to find a list of finance books if you're motivated to get rid of debt and get financially fit this year:
How to take control of your finances in 2011

Interested in losing weight? Here are some tips and books to read:
How to Lose 20 Pounds in January

The Simple Dollar shares his books for 2011 (Even though he has a financial blog, they're not about finance):
Resolution 3

A minimalist blogger shares her goal for 2011 and lets followers see what she thought of various books.
Rowdy Kittens' 2011 Book Challenge

Live in the Bee Cave area? Their library has some new books to share:
New Year, New books

And lastly, read a review before you read the book. This can be a time saver!
New York Journal of Books

There are a lot more lists out there, but this should be a good start. I'll try to share more as they come up—especially a fiction section, since most of these involved nonfiction and self-help books mostly. Have a great weekend and happy book hunting!

Ex-con risks freedom to find out if his policeman son was a good cop or bad cop

By Tiffany Young

"The Two Minute Rule" by Robert Crais was a very fun read.

It begins with a bank robbery in which the robbers are shot after trying to have a shootout with the police officers there to arrest them.

Then you meet Holman, a convicted bank robber about to be released from jail. But right before his release he is told his son, a police officer had been shot the night before.

Holman questions police about what happened, but not getting answers that add up leaves Holman to search for answers himself. He makes contact with the only people he knows—his old friend, Chee, another ex-convict—and FBI Agent Pollard—the one who helped lock him away in the first place.

Holman, the "Hero" bandit, is trying his best to stay clean, but as he digs deeper into this mystery of his sons murder, he finds himself slipping into old patterns in order to stay a free man and has several run-ins with the police who were doing the investigation on his son's murder although they say the case is closed.

Pollard helps Holman against her first instincts, because, after all, Holman was named the Hero bandit because he was caught robbing the bank because he couldn't let himself leave the bank with a guy having a heart attack and went back to save him by performing CPR.

As Pollard gets to know Holman, she comes to see more of this side of him, though he sometimes slips back into his old habits and has a terrible time keeping his temper under control.

Will they be able to find out what happened to Holman's son before their time runs out and the dirty cops they believe had something to do with the murders find them? Will Holman be able to stay out of trouble an remain a free man or will his grief and need to find out what happened to his son—and whether he was a good cop or followed in his father's footsteps—put him back in the slammer?

Collector inadvertently helps another find his past

"Everything is Illuminated," a film that came out in 2005 with Elijah Wood, is a wonderful movie that tells a story of one collector who is moved to find out where a photograph came from and to thank a woman for saving his grandfather's life.
Jonathon (Wood) is the collector and travels to the Ukraine to find a small village that more or less vanished during the Holocaust. His tour guides, Eugene and Eugene's grandfather, end up being related to this village as well, though you're not sure how until the end of the film. Though Eugene does not know it, his grandfather is from the village and pretended to be dead and ignored his Jewish heritage so he could survive. All throughout the film it seems that perhaps the grandfather was one of the soldiers who killed the Jews. He ends up taking his life in the end, once they have left the village and he tells the women the collector is looking for that the war is indeed over. She has been living in a house near the no longer existing village surrounded by sunflowers and collecting items from the village and cataloguing them since the war.
Though Jonathan and his guides start off on a rocky start, they end up respecting one another and having a weird understanding of one another.
I highly recommend the independent film.