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KJ

Books for When You Are Feeling Not Quite the Thing

By KJ / Thursday, November 9, 2023

“Not quite the thing” is what Bertie Wooster used to tell Jeeves he was feeling when he was feeling poorly. As a general matter, Bertie was hungover, but the phrase also encompassed a few other typical Bertie states of mind, including vaguely heartbroken and actually ill and snuffly or just taken to his bed in an attempt to avoid one of his many aunts. The past two weeks have found me taking to my bed and clutching the saddest possible […]

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books that make me want to do the thing

By KJ / Friday, June 30, 2023

Reading about cleaning, writing or getting organized is EXACTLY the same as doing it, right? Ok. Reading about getting organized—or being a better parent, or being more creative, or ridding my life of things that aren’t working, is way easier than actually doing it. And often way more enjoyable, because it comes with the free fantasy that when I put the book down, I will be a better, stronger, more improved me. I love books that allow me to imagine […]

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I bought 6… so far

By KJ / Thursday, April 27, 2023

Future you called, they need a book to read and THERE IS A SALE!   Imagine this: you’ve just turned the final page of a fantastic book. Perhaps it was The Bandit Queens, or Murder Your Employer. Or How High We Go In the Dark (in which case, go take some deep breaths, it will be okay) or Georgie All Along. You had so much fun!! And now you have to pick a new book. I have lots to say about what one should […]

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Letters and diaries as page-turners… why?

By KJ / Friday, April 14, 2023

I don’t want to read your diary. Or your letters. But these I want to read… I don’t like the idea of a novel written as letters (or emails. or texts. or What’s App posts). But somehow, I often like the execution. I might not even click on a novel in that format. Or, for that matter, a memoir done as a diary entries. But again—when it’s done well, not only do I really like it… I somehow can’t stop […]

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For the con artist junkies among you.

By KJ / Sunday, April 9, 2023

If you binged Dirty John or Inventing Anna, I have a book for you.   The two POVs in The Fake slowly revolve around an unheard third, coming closer and closer to the truth about the young woman who’s entered both of their lives… but not, in classic con-artist thriller fashion, with any particular ill intent. She will not murder them or steal their identities or ruin their lives, exactly. Not dramatically, anyway. In fact, she’ll make things better. For a while. […]

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Judge my book by its cover… REVEALED!

By KJ / Sunday, April 2, 2023

Purply darkness revealed… I’m gonna need to up my eyeliner game. It is perhaps true that even I, who love all things fall and Halloween, am not exactly ready to launch myself into that distant season just yet. It’s been a long-ass winter (and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last…*) and I am very much not wishing away spring and summer just yet. BUT This fall will bring the release of Playing the Witch […]

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Feelings are hard and I’m not good at them…

By KJ / Friday, March 24, 2023

  I’ve just had the extremely strange experience of being happy when a book broke the spell I was under and revealed itself to be a book. I’d already begun an adversarial relationship with this book—How High We Go in the Dark, a novel in short stories about a pandemic that begins with the release of a virus through melting permafrost. I was lured in by the promise of black humor in the idea of an amusement park for plague-ridden […]

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One bonkers book

By KJ / Friday, March 17, 2023

“And a—kinda—’Writers and Lovers’ read-alike.” A joy of my writing life is the opportunity to read books before they come out into the world. The advent of bookstagram means that many readers know about “advance reading copies” or ARCs—which we usually see as much as six months before a pub date, or the practice of sending some readers an early copy in the weeks right before publication—but in case you don’t, I’ll lay it out for you—especially because it’s a […]

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Double score!

By KJ / Friday, March 10, 2023

Two books I’d love to read again for the first time. It felt like a particularly lucky reading week when I realized I’d inadvertently landed on two of what I call my “starred reads” for 2023 within a matter of days of each other. I can’t wait to share these with you—especially as one of them is suited to reading with partners who skew more thriller/whodunnit (or gifting to same, or possibly to becoming a family road trip audio book […]

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Not everything has to be awful.

By KJ / Friday, March 3, 2023

It’s not all Very Serious Sad Literature, even when it’s about serious things in unfamiliar places. Ok, so here’s the thing: for lots and lots of people, places that are “other places” to me (as in, very other, where things on the surface appear very different to my eyes) are quite familiar. And ordinary life happens in those places, as it is wont to do. But as a U.S-based reader, so much of what I’m offered to read that takes […]

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Don’t be mean, and give your future self a present.

By KJ / Friday, February 17, 2023

Maybe we don’t always have to call everyone out all the time.   I was listening to a conversation recently where someone who’d been doing more yoga and exercise said she thought of it as “coming home to her body” which, she said, seemed like a really warm and pleasant approach to her. Well, the other person responded, maybe—if you’re lucky enough to have good associations with “home” and “body”. But a lot of people don’t. And… that is indeed […]

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While waiting for the tow truck..

By KJ / Thursday, February 9, 2023

What would 1990s KJ do? The wheels off of my plans this morning—literally, although not in the plural. The wheel came off the car my kid was driving to school (happily, on a small rural road). He and the friend he picked up had to walk back to the friend’s house and find a ride. Me, I had to call three auto shops to find someone with time to figure out what went wrong, and as I write this, I […]

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Technically I do in fact have time to do all this, but I would rather read.

By KJ / Friday, January 27, 2023

  First up today: me making a pretty typical me mistake. Next: a book that’s totally vibing with the view out my window right now and that I loved, plus one chock-full-of-weird-reading-experience—so skip down to that if that’s what you’re here for! Conceded that it was a long list. But I want to do—and be—a lot of things. I want to speak other languages fluently, to be able to draw the things I see and imagine, to stay connected with […]

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I was afraid of this book, but I loved it.

By KJ / Friday, January 20, 2023

It was fat and literary and difficult and daunting. But I finished it and now I’m eying all of its friends in the #tbr pile because I want more.   I know. You want to know what book I’m talking about. I’ll get there, but first: I think of myself as a pretty light —but decently educated or something like that—reader. Like, I can handle Jane Austen, but you can keep Nathaniel Hawthorne. Trollope yes, Melville no. So when it […]

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Please just distract me with your glorious pages.

By KJ / Friday, November 18, 2022

A serial book abandoner’s plea. Rough week around the old couch-and-bedtable reading homestead. I started and dumped no fewer than 6 assorted books. There’s only one thing to conclude at that point. I’ll spare you the meme, but… It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me. I just wasn’t into them. In my defense, five of the six were advance copies, which I don’t pay for and am therefore far more likely to take a flier on. I could probably […]

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There’s a Hole in the Bucket

By KJ / Thursday, July 30, 2020

I can’t think. Every day finds me standing in one room or another, asking any human or animal within the range of my voice important existential questions: Why am I here? What was I thinking? Why am I holding this spoon? Usually I do manage to sort that out (someone once told me that if you go back through the doorway you just came through, it helps you remember what you came for, and it absolutely works although I do […]

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5 Fun Things About There’s a Word for That

By KJ / Thursday, July 2, 2020

An unpleasant alcoholic famous producer father? A sister who hates the biz and a niece who wants in so bad she can taste it? Hollywood behind the scenes, and I want more.

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5 Things I Adored about The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

By KJ / Thursday, July 2, 2020

Boring 90s Southern surburb-y moms go Buffy? I’m in.

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5 Fantastic Things about “The Authenticity Project”

By KJ / Thursday, July 2, 2020

Fun but not a romp. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good romp. But this is deeper fun. And deeply satisfying.

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine

By KJ / Friday, April 10, 2020

5 Things I Liked About Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine (and why I have THOUGHTS about the marketing of this one) 1. The main character. Main characters who do not understand how “normal” people interact and are actively trying to work that out are like catnip to me. Let’s don’t think too hard about what this says about my personality. 2. The story progression. Lots of things happen, but they’re all regular things. It’s the person they’re happening to that […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Life and Other Inconveniences

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Things I liked about Life and Other Inconveniences and why writers should take note: 1. Truly multi-generational. There are POV chapters in here from teen to old and every one works—and while I haven’t experienced the symptoms the oldest character does, I found the way they played out very believable. 2. Sensible characters. This isn’t a book that relies on people misunderstanding each other, or even making dumb choices, and that’s hard to pull off. 3. The mother-daughter relationship. […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: The Bromance Book Club

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 things I loved about The Bromance Book Club and why you should put it on your #toread list—and why writers should take note: 1. Scoops you right in. By the third page you’ve got a good idea of what to expect—and that it’s going to be a fun ride. 2. Whole characters: all the mains and secondaries in this one have full stories, reasons for what they’re doing and something to offer the reader and the protags. 3. The […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Nothing to See Here

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 things I liked about Nothing to See Here and why you should put it on your #toread list—and why writers should take note: 1. Genuinely funny. Too often, when something that’s more “literary” fiction is described as funny, what people really mean is bitter, or snarky. There are tones of that here, sure, but it’s also got the kind of humor that comes of a sense of possibility. 2. The protagonist’s voice and attitude. This isn’t someone who knows […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Ghosted

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Things I liked about Ghosted Watcher beware! There aren’t spoilers per se in the book chat, but there might be enough detail to make spoilers easier to spot—because this is a twisty book, and I have thoughts about those twists. But nothing even spoiler-ish in the text. 1. The premise. Love at first sight, a week of very well-created, believable connection, and then the guy disappears off the face of the earth. Her friends tell her he’s just not […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Things I loved about Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts 1. Tuesday Mooney. She had bad things happen in her life but she pulled her shit together, man. She’s got issues but they’re the issues of someone who CAN get everything under control and therefore, once all the things start happening, will probably grow and change and once again get things under control. 2. The friends. For someone who keeps everyone at a distance, the people around Tuesday Mooney were […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Separation Anxiety

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

My original 5 Things I Loved About This were lost in a tragic IGTV incident, but let me do my best to recreate them here. Because I DID love this book–and it’s the perfect book for its horrible, anxiety filled moment (and yet still distracting!) 1. the loopy premise. Sad-for-good-reasons, blocked writer starts wearing dog in sling and then can’t stop. It’s so crazy it just might work–and it does, for the protagonist and in the book sense. 2. the […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

Five Things I Adored About Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes: 1.) The juicy insider setting. I love glimpses of other worlds in general; behind the scenes at a total hothouse of a school full of crazy parents, and you’ve just sprinkled catnip on my Fancy Feast. 2.) The there’s-a-reason-she’s-too-good-to-be-true main protagonist. There are plenty of characters and POVs here, but the primary one, a teacher determined to give her privileged students an ability to see beyond their bubble, seems at […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Would Like to Meet

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

A wanna-be Hollywood agent tries to convince a famous but blocked screenwriter that the meet-cutes in romantic comedies do work by acting them out on her own. 1.) The Hollywood insider angle. Truth is, screenwriting is not my jam. But books about people who do something I do not do—and in particular, books about characters who are assistants and just need to grab their chance and move up to the big leagues—yeah, I’m in for that. So I loved all […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Love Lettering

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Fun Things About Love Lettering #bujonerds, rejoice. The protagonist is a professional letterer and journal-maker in Brooklyn, where people pay her to design their planner pages. I love a really good fantasy career. Like every good protagonist, this one needs to have the scales pulled from her eyes so she can see herself clearly—but I’ve not seen this particular problem done like this before, and the way we learn why she is the way she is really works. It’s […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: Red, White and Royal Blue

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Things I liked about Red, White and Royal Blue I know. I know. You’ve either already read this rom-com about what happens when the first son and the second prince fall for one another, or you’ve decided it’s not for you. If you’re in that latter category—let me encourage you to think again. Here’s what’s to love about this book: 1. ) OOOh believable, insider-y looks at The White House and Buckingham Palace. I love a good look at […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: The Giver of Stars

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Things I Liked about “Giver of Stars” 1. You’re in such good hands with JoJo Moyes. She’s a pro, and you feel it on every page—there are no moments of noticing the narrative or questioning a character. You’re just in it. 2. She created a less obvious protagonist. This is the story of rural traveling librarians in 1930’s Kentucky, and there were plenty of “outsiders” there—but by adding in a real outsider, a young woman from England who really […]

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#BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

By KJ / Thursday, April 2, 2020

5 Things I Adored About The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet 1. Wait! Maybe you don’t think this genre is your thing—but give this one a chance. If you like thoughtful books about the ways individuals struggle to understand one another, this is your jam. 2. Or maybe you don’t read in this genre, but you’re willing to watch—in that case, you’re in luck! The arc of this story is in many ways more like a video series […]

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A book that will get you out of your head, and one that won’t.

By KJ / Monday, April 8, 2019

Sometimes my own head is a cruddy place to be. It’s noisy, for one thing. And really very—close. Like a hall of mirrors all parroting my least appealing inner voices back at me. (Let’s just say they aren’t all waving little “Yay” flags and singing “THIS GIRL IS ON FIYYY-RRREEE.) I mean, it’s not like that all the time, but when it is, or when I really need some serious distraction, there’s no better cure for being too much all in my headthan the chance to spend a […]

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Wanna Be Happier? Go Rube. (Works for Kids, Too)

By KJ / Wednesday, March 27, 2019

There are worse things than tapping an oak tree your first time out. Like never making syrup at all.

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Writing for Listeners

By KJ / Friday, February 8, 2019

It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that KJ Dell’Antonia and Jessica Lahey are winging it. Both women pull out pages of notes as they meet in a hastily tidied upstairs office in Dell’Antonia’s sprawling, well-appointed farmhouse to record the latest episode of their podcast. Both, too, are distinguished writers who know their way around an interview.

Still, there’s a sense of breezy spontaneity in the room, a feeling that unrestrained curiosity is in the driver’s seat, as they chat via Skype with Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson, A Rather Haunted Life, on a recent Friday afternoon.

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Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email

By KJ / Thursday, February 7, 2019

I’m 47 years old. Two days ago, you sent me an email, which I did not answer. I didn’t answer it, in part, because I am 47 years old.

I appreciated your email. You are a person, who has written an email, and I am a person, who should reply to that email. However, your email arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and just as I opened it, my 16-year-old son came in. He wanted to describe to me an app he is in the process of developing. Then he showed me a funny article someone had sent him, and I showed him a funny article someone had sent me, and then I explained that I had work to do, that I needed, in fact, to respond to your email, and also to write 3,000 words in the next 36 hours. “I’ve only written 300,” I said.

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Happier Parent Mantra: What you want now isn’t always what you’ll want later

By KJ / Thursday, February 7, 2019

This one is really biting me in the butt lately.   What you want now isn’t always what you’ll want later.   That’s one of my 10 Mantras for Happier Parents*, and it is killing me.   Honestly, I’d really rather just give in and make my child happy right now—on whatever it is. Lately, it’s been biggish stuff (hello, report card season), but it’s also been a pile up of all the stuff. Come back here and put your […]

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Sometimes Happier, Sometimes …

By KJ / Friday, November 30, 2018

If you had your crystal ball handy yesterday, and chose to peek in at me and my three younger kids around 3:30, you would have judged us all pretty harshly. One was on the floor, surrounded by a mess of their own making, kicking another, who was nastily mocking the mess and the sibling and anything else. Another was wildly defending some earlier transgression. As for me, I was yelling mightily at anyone in sight. They were horrible people, all […]

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For Happier Family Holidays, Recite This: Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys

By KJ / Wednesday, November 14, 2018

  Bracing yourself for family visits and family travel over the holidays? Me, too–and I’m prepping my kids as well. Happier family holidays means balancing expectations and planning for, well, pretty much whatever went wrong last year and then some. My tips, below (with my favorite bits highlighted in red). Know why you’re going Not everything about a family holiday trip might be precisely a dream vacation for parents or teens, but if we hold our reason for going close to […]

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Happier Parents leave wiggle room

By KJ / Friday, October 12, 2018

  I had an amazing morning today, which can be summed up as follows: got child to doctor’s appointment on time. Let’s back up. Why would that constitute an amazing morning? Because it’s something I rarely achieve. The doctor’s office is a 25-30 minute drive, at the end of which, just as you’re thinking hey, we’re just in time, you encounter the parking garage. The parking garage takes a minimum of ten minutes to navigate, because it’s a narrow structure […]

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Things happier parents know: you don’t really “have to” do that much

By KJ / Friday, September 28, 2018

I have to get up at 5:00 AM tomorrow—to do all the things I want to do. I’ve got have-tos in my day, of course. There’s a big block of work to be done that’s not optional, farm chores, and a business meeting. I would put getting my home ready for a family visit and prepping a couple of meals for that visit in the “have-to” category as well, although that’s arguable. We could eat take-out (like we did tonight). […]

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Two Steps to Happier Parenting: Zero in on a Problem. Try to Make It Better.

By KJ / Friday, September 21, 2018

  Mr. Tantrum is, of course, loud and noisy and demanding. So it’s tough to have him around sometimes—anyone can see that. And he tries to sneak up on us, but the truth is, he’s kind of predictable. He shows up at the end of long days and during transitions. If you can predict Mr. Tantrum, maybe (maybe) you can do something about him. A reader wrote me about Mr. Tantrum last week, because she noticed something in her parenting […]

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A Happier Parent Mantra that even works when things suck (and I wondered)

By KJ / Friday, September 14, 2018

Here’s one of the four things happier parents do: they soak in the good. Which means that when things are pretty decent—not necessarily great, just fine, thanks for asking—they look around, and they notice, and they take a minute to let that soak in. They observe. They say to themselves, yep, dinner’s on the table, 5-year-old’s having a tantrum because the sippy cup is wrong, gotta go back to work and get to all those emails after bedtime, but overall, […]

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#AmWriting NaNoWriMo Countdown: 7 Weeks and Starting a New Project from Scratch

By KJ / Thursday, September 13, 2018

Nanmowrimo (National Novel Writing Month, held annually in November and challenging writers to draft a 50,000 word novel in a month–that’s 1666.66 words a day) is exactly 7 weeks away as I write. 49 days. And I need a new story. My agent has a draft of the novel I wrote over the course of NaNoWriMo last year (I’d estimate that about 10K words of that draft remained in the final draft, which went through another 5-6 iterations and benefited […]

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Happy Children Do Chores

By KJ / Thursday, September 13, 2018

Children should do chores. That’s a controversial premise, though not everyone will admit it. A few parents will declare outright that their children are “too busy for chores” or that “their job is school.” Many more of us assign chores, or say we believe in them, but the chores just don’t get done. That’s a problem. For starters, chores are good for kids. Being a part of the routine work of running a household helps children develop an awareness of […]

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Things Happier Parents Know: Family is the Place to Say Things You Don’t Mean

By KJ / Friday, September 7, 2018

  I HATE SCHOOL AND I AM NOT GOING! I’M QUITTING THE TEAM! I AM NEVER COOKING DINNER FOR YOU PEOPLE AGAIN! I HATE YOU YOU RUIN EVERYTHING! I AM NEVER SPEAKING TO YOU AGAIN! IF YOU COME IM MY ROOM I WILL KILL YOU! OUR CHILDREN ARE THE RUDEST CHILDREN IN THE WORLD! Yeah, yeah, yeah. In this, the first week after school starts here and a fairly early week of the school year for many of us, I […]

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kids on way to school in goofy hats

The One Thing Happier Parents Know That Makes Back-to-School Mornings Better

By KJ / Friday, August 24, 2018

  MORNINGS! They’re a madhouse. So much at stake—those kids have to get to school on time! With their gym shoes and their violin and their homework and six manila folders and two cans of green beans and a ball of yarn that they didn’t mention needing until 6:30 am! It’s crazy and it’s painful and it’s chaos—and there really is one secret, one thing you can know, that makes it all better: There’s actually nothing at stake. Nothing. Zero. […]

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How I’m Celebrating the Official Launch of How to Be a Happier Parent

By KJ / Tuesday, August 21, 2018

It’s here. Anybody who wants to can just walk into any store or click any link and get How to Be a Happier Parent right now. I’m happy and proud and freaked out all at the same time—which is, I’m told, exactly the state of mind you want to be in before you walk out onto the set of the Today Show. That’s my big news of the day—if you’re reading this before the 8:00 hour of the Today Show, […]

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Happier parents do these 10 things

By KJ / Sunday, August 19, 2018

I’d been a parent for close to 12 years by the time it occurred to me to ask myself if the whole thing really had to feel this hard. As a journalist, I’d been writing about the cultural, societal, and political aspects of family life for a decade, and the one thing I knew, as I began to contemplate the question of why I wasn’t more satisfied with my life as a parent, was that I wasn’t alone. I interviewed […]

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Three things happier parents say when their kids whine about chores

By KJ / Sunday, August 19, 2018

Children should do chores. That’s a controversial premise, though not everyone will admit it. A few parents will declare outright that their children are “too busy for chores” or that “their job is school.” Many more of us assign chores, or say we believe in them, but the chores just don’t get done. That’s a problem. For starters, chores are good for kids. Being a part of the routine work of running a household helps children develop an awareness of […]

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