Weekend Recap

Hope your weekend was wonderful! I can't complain about mine - I spent the days exploring the trails nearby with my dog, experimenting in the kitchen (broccoli guacamole was nothing to write home about) and taught my first yoga class since being back in Germany! This week I'm looking forward to finalizing travel plans with a good friend, finishing up an Osho book I'm reading, and getting back into the swing of things at the gym. Ok, Monday, let's do this. 

The Yoga Bible

Easy step by step instructions to yoga poses

Small size

I'm often asked if there is a book or a dvd I recommend for people who are interested in yoga and don't know where to start. One day I'd like to make a beginner's dvd (the YogaByCandace power dvd called Sweat is available here!) but until then, there isn't a beginner's dvd that I've tried and really loved. On the book front, however, I picked up The Yoga Bible earlier this summer and have really liked it. It's relatively small, which makes for easy traveling, carting around in your tote bag or to the studio or gym. The pictures are in color, which is helpful, and the instructions are clear and concise. They give the name of the pose in both English and Sanskrit, and have a little box on the side for suggested poses you could do to build up the strength/flexibility for the current one, and suggested ways to take the pose a step further. There are over 150 poses in the book, and I think it's a great resource for both instructors who are looking for a little inspiration and students who want a clear breakdown of poses.  

Are there are books that you love and would recommend for yoga poses? 

PS- More yoga gear, easy spring roll recipe, and using yoga for anxiety and depression.

Summer Reads: Historical Fiction

A few weeks ago I shared my favorite memoirs that are great for summer reading, and today I'm sharing my favorite historical fiction picks. These are all great books, but the ones I honestly couldn't put down are The Other Boleyn Girl, The Kite Runner, The Help and The Kitchen House. Do you have any recommendations for summer reads? I'm always looking for a good book!  

1. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. Set in England in the time of King Henry VIII, this story follows a rivalry between sisters vying for Henry's attention.

2.  The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Set in Afghanistan in the 70's, this book follows the friendship of Amir, the son of a wealthy businessman and Hassan, the son of the Amir's father's servant. As kids, the boys are inseparable until something happens and their friendship is changed forever.

3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This book focuses on the lives of two women from Aghanistan - Mariam and Leila - and and how their lives cross. 

4.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Set in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, a young white woman from Mississippi named Miss Skeeter becomes interested in the plight of the black maids that work for the families in town. She writes to expose the way they're mistreated, and all the awful things they have to deal with on a daily basis.

5. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. In 1929, a young girl is sold into slavery at a geisha house.  The book follows her life as she works in Kyoto, Japan as a geisha before and after world war 2.

6. The House Girl by Tara Conklin. The book weaves together two lives from different points in history - one, an escaped slave named Josephine in pre-Civil War south and the other, a lawyer named Lina in New York who tries to piece together the mystery surrounding the escaped slave. 

7. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom. Lavinia is a white girl who was orphaned while onboard a ship from Ireland bound for the US. She is taken in as a slave on a plantation and is caught between the two very different worlds of her fellow slave, who love and care for her, and the white family in the big house who have accepted her as well but who have their own issues, as the master is rarely present and the lady of the house battles an opium addiction. 

8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the 20s, new money Jay Gatsby is head over heels in love with old money Daisy Buchanan, who met years ago but were separated when Gatsby went to war. After the war, he comes back to find Daisy has married, and throws lavish parties waiting for her to appear.

PS- Another great book- this one is about obsession and pain in competitive Bikram yoga. 

Summer Scenes

I usually try to put out a yoga video once a week but this week was crazy and my body is feeling it. (Here are my other yoga videos, if you'd like to check 'em out.) In preparation for the big opportunity (which happens on Tuesday, send me good vibes!), I've been getting to the gym twice a day all week and I'm sore and tired, so today I'm resting. If the thunderstorms stay away, I'll be heading to the beach to get lost in my new book (Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone). This weekend I hope to get to the movies, try some new (easy) recipes, and finalize plans to meet up with some German friends who'll be vacationing in Miami in a few weeks. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Favorite Memoirs

Do you like to read? To me, it doesn't get much better than a good book while you lounge on the beach, so I thought I'd take a moment to highlight some of my favorites. Turns out that making a short all-time favorites list is pretty difficult so I broke it down by genre. For today, here's a collection of my favorite memoirs.

1. Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren. Pretty self explanatory title.

2. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. Also self explanatory title.

3. Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff. The father's perspective of the previous book in the list. 

4. Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. A look back into the 30 years that Frank McCourt spent as a teacher in the NYC school system. 

5. All Souls: A Family Story From Southie by Michael Patrick Macdonald. I felt like this was a modern day Angela's Ashes - Macdonald, one of nine children (from various fathers), recounts growing up in Southie in extreme poverty.

6.  My Bloody Life: The Making of A Latin King by Reymundo Sanchez. About joining the Latin Kings, trying to get through each day, and trying to get out of the gang alive.

7. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher. Hornbacher wrote this at only 23 years old but her talent is undeniable. With candor, she talks about getting down to a painful 52 pounds and how she decided to turn it all around and get healthy.

8. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I absolutely love the way this book is written. It's laugh out loud funny with sobering moments about how Eggers is left to pick up the pieces and raise his younger brother when both parents die suddenly. 

9. Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War by Deborah Copaken Kogan, a photojournalist who travels the world and meets many men along the way. 

What are your favorite memoirs? Please share - I'm always looking for a good read!

Conscious Reading: Bossypants

I chose this book as a light read to balance out the heaviness of the last book I read about childhood trauma and how it affects brain development. Tina Fey's Bossypants was alright. Just alright. Sure, there were the laugh out loud parts that you would expect from a talented comedy writer like Tina Fey, but there were other parts that I felt were irrelevant  or unnecessary- like reprinting scripts of her shows. Publishing multiple scenes from both 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live came across as a cheap way to "bulk up" the book because if you're a real fan of either show, you've likely already seen the episodes and don't need to read them, and if you haven't seen the episodes and don't have a sense of character development, then the context is lost on you. All in all, it was just okay. I wouldn't rush out to pick up a copy, but I didn't dislike it either. Purchase here through amazon.

PS- Other books I've enjoyed include The Happiness Project, How Doctors Think, and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.