In Pursuit of Beauty

Title: Beauty: The New Basics
Author: Rona Berg
Source: library
Fun Fact: Fish scales used to be used to add shimmer to lipstick; today, beetle carapaces are used instead!
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review Summary: Great basic guide for a minimalist beauty regimen, with simple and specific advice.

Like wishing to be more creative, I suspect that wishing to be more beautiful is pretty common. Personally, I’m not unhappy with how I look; it’s more that I wish I knew more ways to do my hair than a pony tail, could put together outfits that look like I just stepped out of a catalog, and had some idea where to start with eye makeup. Some people just seem to know these things naturally – my sister, for instance, seems to have it all figured out – while other people have a mother or friends who teach them the basics. Unfortunately, I’ve never had either the desire to spend time learning or a natural inclination for such things. And it’s still not something I want to spend a lot of time on. This book was the perfect solution.

Three Tips for Reading Historical Non-Fiction

This week I jumped into historical non-fiction for the first time and as some of you may have gathered from this post , I found the experience a little intimidating!  Fortunately, with lots of help from the internet, I made it through – something which turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying experience.  So today I’m going to share with you what I learned, in hopes you won’t need to start a book feeling as lost as I did 🙂

1 – Orient Yourself in Time
My biggest problem when I started reading was that I really wanted to learn something from this book, but I had no prior knowledge of what was happening in the late 1500’s.  I also didn’t know much about when other important events took place in relation the the 1500’s.  Fortunately, I’m not as totally hopeless about history as I may sound, so I was pretty sure I just needed to find a website that gave me a timeline of events to help give me some context.  While searching, I came across this wonderful website which lets you view important world events broken down by era and geographical region.  For instance, I learned that living the late 1500’s Tycho and Kepler were living after the war of the roses, the Spanish Armada, the gun powder plot, and Joan of Arc.  It was really helpful and I highly recommend this as a place to start if you’re feeling lost in time!  

Bookends for Bloggers

This week visiting the boy was awesome, with lots of time off together and one of our best dates ever at the revolving Sundial restaurant at the top of the Westin in Atlanta (so awesome!).  Unfortunately, the boy also had a lot of work to do.  Fortunately, this left me lots of time to work on my blog and read some 006 books on blogging, which I’ll be reviewing here 🙂