Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over

Up for Renewal in a Nutshell

This book is laugh out loud funny! I was giggling in front of my co-workers the whole time I read this book. When I started reading it, my first thought was, "What and idiot! Who would do this?" but you begin to realize that Cathy had hit rock bottom and if turning to magazines was going to help her out of that slump, great. I am sure that learning how to wrap a sandwich in plastic wrapped perfection might not turn your life around, it was the beginning of something big for Cathy.

Cathy is each one of us. She is insecure and her own worst critic. She had made poor decisions in her life and she just might make a few mistakes today. But she is also sexy and funny and perky and willing to take risks. She is relate-able and by the end of the book you feel like you are saying goodbye to your new best friend.

A Cosmo Cover Comes to Life

As an editor and book critic at PODBRAM, I have read a number of books aimed at women, and this is certainly one of the best of those I have read in that genre. I cannot speak for all male readers, but from my viewpoint, Cathy Alter is a highly competent writer in all respects. As I have sometimes done, I chose to read Ms. Alter's lighthearted poke at the frivolity and pseudo-seriousness of women's magazines sandwiched between a pair of books of much heavier subject matter, and Up for Renewal proved to be a very satisfying read.

Up for Renewal is apparently autobiographical and has been composed in a sort of real-time framework. Ms. Alter has been a contributor to some of the same magazines discussed in the book, showing off her insider expertise on a plotline of which she is intimately familiar. What I was most impressed with was her deft, yet compact, use of the characters, dialog, pacing, and language in the storyline. I felt as if I was being taken along on a slice-of-life joyride by a lady who really knows how to drive. Although this is only Cathy's second book, her extensive experience in magazine writing drips off the pages. Maybe that's why the storyline is so precise. The author knows how to truly make every word count, showing off some really tight editing. Do I have anything negative to say about Up for Renewal? I get a delicately queasy feeling that Ms. Alter has led a very easy, comfortable, upper-middle-class lifestyle that has left very little room for any angst to develop that cannot be solved by a little dose of feminist, pop psychology. Maybe that's just the impression I get when I read Up for Renewal between a morality treatise on the death penalty and the history of religious politics in America.

Cathy Alter creates a style that I strongly admire, one that I have diligently tried to impart in my own books, the concept of giving the reader the deepest and best experience possible in as few words as possible. Up for Renewal held my interest from the first word to the last, and I'm not even a member of the skirt-wearing target audience for the book!

Floyd M. Orr is the author of The Last Horizon: Feminine Sexuality & The Class System, Timeline of America: Sound Bytes from the Consumer Culture, and a few books on subjects that men like to read.

Do you trust a magazines advice¿

We have all read the front of magazines, touting their articles aimed at improving your health, beauty, weight, sex life, and relationships. Now, admit it you have not only been tempted to pick one up and see if the article truly can fulfill its magic promise of improving your life, you have actually purchased it. Cathy Alter realized life wasn¿t going the way she wanted it to. In hopes of getting it back together, she formed a plan, sort of an experiment. Each month she would focus on one particular problem. She chose nine magazines and put their advice into action. Up For Renewal is non-fiction. There is more depth to this book than I expected. Alter writes in a witty style. Up For Renewal is a pleasant, easy read. This book will appeal to young women or women going through crisis.

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My Review of Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over by Cathy Alter Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over is the delightful and intelligent account of the real life journey by Cathy Alter to see if in her late 30s she could change her life for the better. In a unique, witty approach, she examines the problems she faces and decides to try and conquer them by studying and following the directions found in the popular women¿s magazines that she and so many women subscribe to and revere. She committed to taking one year to follow the advice from magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire, Allure, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour. She imagined that at the end of the year her physical, social, financial, work, home, and romantic aspects in her life would all come together to make her a new and happier woman. With what could be a light chick-lit type book, Alter instead adds characters from her real life that add just enough authenticity to the story to realize you aren¿t reading a light ¿beach read¿, but rather a woman¿s journey into discovering herself and rebuilding her life. Alter¿s reality includes her perfectionist mother and the intricate relationship they share, as well as a very close friend who is battling a serious illness. Of course, a serious younger man love interest, Karl, is included along with his domineering Chinese mother as well as her not too helpful psychiatrist. As Cathy Alter takes this year long journey, she discovers many things about herself. Gradually, Alter and the reader will begin to see that the magazines aren¿t really what Cathy needed to make herself happy. An astute reader will also learn for themselves the same thing that the author did. She finds that anything in your life can be changed if you have made the decision to do it. Recognizing that you DO need to make changes in your life is half the battle and once that decision is made, half the battle is won. I found this book to be an enjoyable read and one that was entertaining as well as informative. I found myself nodding in agreement so many times as the discoveries, as well as the mistakes, Alter encountered. They were the same kind of things any of us can face and change with a positive attitude. Submitted by Karen Haney, August, 2008

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