Ever feel like a bit of an underachiever? Well, trust me, practically nothing can make you feel less productive than a quick glance at Martha Stewart's monthly calendar.
Yes, even with all her legal troubles, 72-year-old Martha still has time for composting and cleaning her chicken coops and regular Pilates and ironing her table linens and making creative crafts out of nothing more than a few sticks and can-do attitude, and she details her activities in the front of every issue of Martha Stewart Living.
Yes, even though I'm about as crafty as your average truck driver, I can't help reading with a big ol' smile on my face every month. It's the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, and lucky for me, the recipes tucked inside the pages are also pretty fantastic.
As it turns out, I'm not alone in my fascination with all things Martha. In fact, one of my favorite writers, Jen Lancaster, has devoted an entire book to the pursuit of a more Martha-like existence. With The Tao of Martha: My Year of LIVING, or Why I'm Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog, she details her pursuit of perfection in a way that's a total gut-buster.
From baking like a trained French chef to decorating for the holidays in a way that would make Liberace jealous to the tedious art of getting organized, Lancaster tackles it all with the tenacity of Julia Powell's quest to cook through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in Julie & Julia.
But if you were a little disappointed by Powell's writing like I was and actually preferred the late Nora Ephron's movie (on a side note, Meryl Streep was totally robbed of that Oscar), that definitely won't be the case with The Tao of Martha. Lancaster has a natural flair for humor and prose, and really my only complaint is that her book ended far too soon.
Trust me, if you need a laugh and maybe even a little inspiration to be grateful for what you've got, this book is totally worth reading.
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