Title: Successful Self-Promotion for Photographers
Author: Elyse Weissberg
Genre: Non-Fiction
Not quite geared to the kind of photography career I want but full of very useful information just the same. For anyone trying to break into the world of photography as a career it’s definitely worth a read.

Title: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Genre: Non-Fiction
Possibly the most disheartening and depressing book I’ve read in a great while. Ehrenreich’s adventures in the world of low wage employment remind me so much of the economic surroundings that most of my paternal family, though not my nuclear family, toil in. Try, try, try to get ahead all you like but without some great stroke of luck or fortune all of your trying won’t make much difference at all. Show up on time, do your job, sacrifice yourself for the company and if you’re lucky you’ll get paid a wage that in most people’s reality is a sub-living wage by far. I admit that I don’t like “working for the man” and thus I’m biased in this regard but it’s incredibly infuriating that we’ve all been sucked into a cycle of working just to live. And not work that makes the world better in any tangible way, hell not even work that makes one person’s life better. It’s work that makes a company more profitable, work that makes stockholders richer, work that makes CEOs have insanely exorbitant salaries that bypass the average wage of their employees by factors of tens and hundreds. It’s just work. We’re not even cranking out widgets. We, as a society, we’re just working and seeing so very little for it.

Title: Bella Tuscany
Author: Frances Mayes
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
The used bookstore had this on sale for $2.00. Thus even if I hated it I couldn’t be really disappointed with the purchase. I didn’t hate it. In fact I enjoyed parts of it very much but didn’t love it. Didn’t even like it a great dea overalll. The descriptive prose, sincere sentiments and simple observations of a certain kind of life are all present and deeply enjoyable but the life that Mayes writes about in this book is different from the life she wrote about in her first memoir. No, that’s not true. The life is the same but her relationship to it and so the things she thinks are worth writing about are different. Less rose colored glasses, more seeing things as they are. More mundane details and minutae that must be endlessly interesting to Mayes but to me? Not so much.

Title: Under the Tuscan Sun
Author: Frances Mayes
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
This is another re-read and again I deem that to be quite ok. If there were ever a book that you should read first or better yet instead of seeing the movie it is this one. The movie is fine as a typical chick flick but it really has no relation all to the book other than the name and a very few details. The specifics, the story, the feelings, the mood, the impressions you are left with are night and day different from the book to the movie.
The book is earnest, beautifully written, heartfelt and a tiny bit melodramatic in just the right places. I very much enjoyed reading it and being transported not just to another place but to another life and another kind of living. As I approach the next chapter in my life I hope to carry some memories and inspirations from this book with me. Such as finding the house you can really love and make a home in. Finding joy and contentment in the manual labor associated with your house and home and finding a place in the community you’ve chosen to settle in. Those things brought so very much joy and deep happiness to the author I can’t help but hope to follow, in spirit, in her footsteps.

Title: Upstart Start-Ups!: How 34 Young Entrepreneurs Overcame Youth, Inexperience, and Lack of Money to Create Thriving Businesses
Author: Ron Lieber
Genre: Non-Fiction, Business
I bought this book maybe 7 years ago when I first start freelancing seriously. I was looking for inspiration and maybe that great idea that was going to make me into a successful entrepreneur who worked for herself and no one else. Clearly that didn’t happen but I’ve never let go of my entrepreneurial spirit and as my photography and photography career grows being a good, creative business woman is more important to me than ever and so I re-read this book for inspiration. This time though I can tell immediately what pieces of advice are good, which are crap, which are worth paying more attention and giving more thought to and which ones should be ignored with extreme prejudice. It’s a pretty ok book. I have a page or so of notes from it that I want to think about and work on and incorporate into my business plan and business planning.
Recommended for freelancers, independent spirits, artists and entrepreneurs looking for inspiration based on sound business principles and ideas.