365 Ways to Live Generously Simple Habits for a Life That's Good for You and for Others by Sharon Lipinski

365 Ways to Live Generously Simple Habits for a Life That's Good for You and for Others by Sharon Lipinski will be released this January 8th by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
It's the story of a lady plenty of success born in a family with a mom very generous with everyone.Her mom, tells Sharon helped everyone in every possible ways and necessities, while the author grew up pretty selfish and without any kind of compassion for other human being.
Sharon doesn't know the reason why from a mom such generous she became at least someone so closed with other people. Maybe it was because of work, maybe it was because absorbed by a full-time job with zero private life and plenty of responsibilities. Sharon started to get up during the night with frequent panic attacks. Responsibilities, pressure was very high, she couldn't cope anymore with all of it: living in a system like that one, constantly under pressure and she decided to resign starting a more spiritual and real trip along the USA.

Once she met a man abandoned to himself with a very sad story behind. That man wouldn't have been invited tells he author to spend any minute at the house where he previously lived in with his dear ones, he was considered a sort of failure from his dear ones, and so Sharon invited this man for the Thanksgiving dinner in the closest place they would have found, and there she discovered what it meant to go out with a stranger that it is not anymore a stranger but a friend and someone with which you are able to establish a great and good connection thanks to his human story that it is after all also your human history because each of us is in this world for a certain purpose.
Not only: Sharon discovered how a little gesture of generosity like spending some time with a stranger since at few minutes before could mean the world to him.

The book is very captivating, because after this experience Sharon learned what it means to be generous with other people and now she wants to give to all of us the opportunity to change our mind, our body for becoming best people and for becoming great new generous helpers in this world.
Create your Best Life thought Generosity one of her motto.

I found the story touching and the entire book stimulating.
Change is possible just we must want it.

Buy it if you think to be a little Scrooge in every sense, and you will start a new real beautiful chapter in your life!

I thank NetGalley and  Llewellyn Publishing.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Little Big Book of White Spells by Ileana Abrev

Do you want money, love, power, friendship, more color in your life, and are you interesting to defeat your most common disturbs? Maybe The Little Big Book of White Spells by Ileana Abrev will be the answer for you! The book will be published this January 8th by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.

You can have good luck, you can attract the world, you can avoid negativies, you can be more...colored do you know? Yes you can, also that thanks to the help of... Colors! Yes colors, and in particular choosing them carefully for your wardrobe.

Crystals, another chapter of the book will be able to cure a lot of symptoms and little illness, and then magical bath, herb and plant magic...An important chapter to me the one of candles.

I don't know you but I love candles. After my dad passed away I sure enjoy everyday to bring him some candles for avoiding any kind of obscurity.

Each candle and each color of the candle you will pick up will have a different meaning. If you will choose the white one you will search for protection and purity, purple for family and so on. It depends the use you must do with candles and the message you want to spread to the Universe and the answers you are searching.

A special section of the book all dedicated to love, and self-love, break-up, negativities connected to love.

The book written with great enthusiasm by Ileana Abrev  The purpose: helping you to realize your dreams and desires using remedies pretty old, more commonly used by pagans. Fascinating.

It's a great book! and I like the cover so badly. When I meet a black cat I can tell you my day will be extra-lucky! Oh, what a terrible witch I am! ;-)


Anna Maria Polidori

The Magic of Trees A Guide to Their Sacred Wisdom & Metaphysical Properties by Tess Whitehurst

The Magic of Trees A Guide to Their Sacred Wisdom & Metaphysical Properties by Tess Whitehurst will be published by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. this Jan 8th and it treats the sacrality of trees.
Why trees are so important in our existence?

Because our life will be followed from the beginning to the end by wood. Wood is a warm and familiar material able to give us warmth and able to let us feel well.

Every tree is sacred although Celts thought that there were certain types of trees more sacred than others for example.

The author will follow the reader through an interesting magical trip where trees are evoked, trees are searched, hugged, taken in the proper consideration in a reality, the one where we are living in where what we are missing the most is poetry and the ability of the enchantment and dream.

A tree is viscerally important for our existence. Under a big tree we can find restoration in a very warm day, we can organize a picnic, we can read a book. Trees accompany our existence. My father loved trees. He planted many fruits trees. He always said me a tree live a long life like a human being although soon or late it will a die for a reason or another just as a man will do one day.

Many kind of trees taken in consideration from A to Z for discovering the magic that there is in every tree and the most important factor why a tree can be important for our life.

Many thanks to NetGalley and  Llewellyn for this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

Classic Prayers for Every Need by Donna K. Maltese

An important book Classic Prayers for Every Need by Donna K. Maltese that will be published this February First launched by Barbour Publishing.

Why? Because you will find every sorta of prayers for every kind of problems first of all with the particularity that these prayers are not the common prayers Christians know.

No: they're the ones of beloved and inspired people who during the centuries made the difference in the christian history.

From C.S. Lewis, to Mother Theresa of Calcutta,wagons of other important men and women of faith will bring good mood, inspiration to your life, they will let you understand much better your problems.

These prayers with their importance and their wise words are here, waiting for you, your human problems and miseries for bringing a sparkle of light in your existence, if you need it, or a word of comfort, or just some seconds of reflection.

This book is for every possible needs and for being used everyday of course, because each day is different from the other one  and each day potentially needs a different prayer.

Or many different prayers :-)

Bring it in your purse and wherever you will go you will find a great instrument of prayer and a moment for staying all alone with God and with these inspired men and women born with the ability to speaking with God with simplicity and humanity.
 
Many thanks to NetGalley and Barbour for this book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Choose Joy: 3-Minute Devotions for Women Compiled by Barbour Staff

Choose Joy: 3-Minute Devotions for Women Compiled by Barbour Staff will be published this next February First and it is a wonderful little book for each of us, women. Bring it wherever you go and read it often. You will find thanks to these christian words inspiration, peace, harmony and joy!


The book is plenty of devotions that can be read in just few minutes everyday and there are so many topics treated in the book!

All optimistic topics the book is structured first of all in a verse, then a short devotional reading that will explain the verse previously read and/or meditate as well, and later a little conversation with God. I found the book truly captivating for the many thematic treated.

The cover is wonderful, relaxing, friendly. A great book for each of us! and a wonderful and precious gift as well!

And remember always: Choose Joy!


Anna Maria Polidori

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler Illustrator John Jennings and adapted by Damian Duffy

As always another stunning graphic novel Kindred by ABRAMS Books that it will be published this January 10th.

Inspired by the masterpiece created by Octavia E.Butler, Kindred,
firstly published in 1979  a sci-fiction classic. The book is also taken in consideration in school for trying to understand the racial problem and what it meant to live in the USA in the 1800.

It is a science-fiction because the story the one of a girl, Dana transported from the present, the 1970s, in the rural USA of 1800. After 35 years from the publication, the wonderful adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings. 

Dana is a young woman, black, that for some strange reason ends up is transported by Time in the pre-years of the Secession War, so in a world where communication between black ad white people pretty impossible.
In the reality of the 1970s this woman is free. Free to be who she wants to be and free to express herself. This condition will change abruptly although it will become intriguing because she will also discover her ancestors, her personal family tree and not only...

The book has been thought from ABRAMS for reaching a new generation of readers.

Highly recommended!

Anna Maria Polidori

The Gingerbread Girl by Sheila Newberry

The Gingerbread Girl is the latest book by Sheila Newberry. I am sorry for the delay but the loss of my dad that I recently experienced altered my reading and my reviews.

When I read today the notes of the author I understood: Sheila Newberry has had nine children and maybe that's why the story is seriously crowded, the plot frenetic, you will find many dialogues and an action that will pass also through the dialogues of the various protagonists, but also many historical facts regarding the moment pre-Second World War and most of the facts touched UK during the latest world war conflict.

You won't find a moment of relaxation while you will read this book because you will learn a lot while at the same time you will follow the adventures of many many characters.

Everything starts in 1936 when Cora Kelly to the hospital because sick receives the visit of her mother. Her mother brought her a gingerbread man as gift  disappearing forever from her existence. She died in fact some months after this meeting. Pregnant of another child she died because of it. Dede and Cora will be grown up so by Eliza, one of her mom's best friends.

And trust me when I tell you that these stories in the past and I would want to hope also in the present, pretty common, in our area as well.

What is Christmas for a child? Surely the best holiday of all the year. And gingerbread cookies? The perfume, smell and taste of the festive season.

For this reason once the feasts over and Cora understood her mother was dead because Eliza would have told her that, like also of the arrival of her new sister and well the fact that in the future they would have lived all together, Cora kept that gingerbread man as a relic. Obvious.

For recovering Cora will spend some time in a farm becoming friends with the boys, children of the owner of the farm, but other events will constrict her to return to London, stopping by at the house of her dad in various occasions but mainly at Eliza's house.

We will see during the various years the evolution of this kid of 7 years in a young woman, a telephonist at first once she started to work, and then a girl in search of that love that at least will arrive, always remembering the sacrality of Christmas.

Christmases not very happy, of course the ones celebrated during the war, where the word sacrifice the first one in the mouth of people including for ingredients of common recipes that couldn't be found.

Christmas sad also for other reasons like some member of the family sick.

Nothing was perfect during the years of the war. 

Refuges, fear, terror, the war, and then the end of a nightmare and the reconstruction of a place and identity of people.

It is a beauty book, intense, it will let you think and it is moving, because it speaks to the heart of people telling of good values, help, generosity, good heart, difficulties, hard times and the force of people always able to going on, re-inventing their own destiny with the reality they were living in. In optimistic view.

I want to thank NetGalley and also Bonnier Publishing House.

Anna Maria Polidori