The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Yes, this is science fiction – and is an extraordinary, magical tale.  The Time Traveler’s Wife is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six. They were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. It seems impossible but is true:  Henry is diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder:  his genetic clock is periodically reset and he is pulled suddenly into his own past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are harrowing or amusing.

The book depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love for each other, and their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of his time travelling which they cannot prevent or control. Let yourself wander and wonder with this emotional and fun fiction.

 Christine Goyer-Swift

Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron’s newest book, The Prosperous Heart, takes techniques from The Artist's Way and applies them to how we look at money. This 12-week program helps us regain our balance and connection with spending and money.  Cameron helps us find and use our creative spirit to connect with prosperity in all aspects of life and her message is that we cannot separate finances from spirituality or any other aspect of life. She says that "Prosperity is a spiritual bottom line” - that  we are works in progress, growing, learning and experiencing it all.

Those familiar with the Artist’s Way will recognized some of Cameron’s basic tools and a few new ones:  

Morning Pages which have been an element of Cameron's teachings for many years. The author calls it "...the primary tool of a creative recovery."

Counting, where we learn to habitually count money in and money out.

Abstinence, to completely stop going into debt. No more borrowing (mortgages and loans allowed)

Walking, as an opportunity to be present.  Many people don’t really inhabit their bodies and walking helps us do this and embrace our connections to the greater world.

Time-Out:  Taking time for self-appraisal and self-approval twice a day.

With twelve weeks to devote to ourselves and our financial and everyday wellbeing, Prosperous Heart will, at the very least, bring us to understand and better connect with our money habits, and hopefully will help us understand the seeming mystery underneath it all with spiritual tools and Julia Cameron’s wise mentoring. This book will be a mainstay on the shelf – one you don’t trade in!

...Christine Goyer-Swift

Changing my Mind - Margaret Sinclair Trudeau

From the time she was a little girl her parents said, "There's something different about Margie." This observation was a significant understatement. Margaret Sinclair was a free spirit. She grew up in a political family and like many children of the sixties, became a hippy and had the heart of a wanderer. She traveled a lot, smoked pot and became vegetarian.

Margaret Sinclair met and married one of the most powerful men in Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau and, barely out of her teens, became the youngest wife of any Canadian prime minister. He was 29 years her senior and here began her roller coaster life of mania, depression, humiliation, anguish and loss.

Mental illness was almost unrecognized during Margaret Trudeau’s younger life in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and even today much more could be done to recognize, accept and treat mental issues. With denial being one of the key factors to not getting needed help, it can be a difficult and arduous road to recovery but she made it, and made it well. Now at age 63, this Canadian woman has found balance - through hard work and the right medication - and and meaning in her busy life. She speaks on mental health to large audiences across the world, volunteers her time in Africa for WaterCan , and enjoys her large, extended family who supported her over the years.

This is a great memoir on bipolar disorder and how one woman broke through the fog into  more conscious behavior and light.

…Christine Goyer-Swift

Conscious Health 

Choosing Natural Solutions for Optimum Health and Lifelong Vitality

by Ron Garner

Ron Garner, BEd, MSc, Diploma in Natural Health, is a health researcher, educator, author and speaker who combined his previous teaching experience and current writing skills to write Conscious Health. His own search for health solutions convinced him that the human body is a miraculous self-healer when given the support it requires to build and maintain health.

Conscious Health teaches natural health principles, with an emphasis on causes and prevention of disease conveying how our bodies function, why we succumb to disease and how health problems can be reversed. We become aware – for those who do not already know – that it is not doctors or medications that heal: Only our own body can heal us. Garner’s easy to read chapters and sub-sections give in-depth information on describing disease and its processes; what we are doing wrong; how eating the right foods and thinking the right thoughts can prevent and reverse the disease process; how our body talks to us; detoxifying and healing; and many related topics on the prevention of sickness and how to become healthy by living health-consciously and happily.

…Christine Goyer-Swift

Writing the Life Poetic – An Invitation to Read & Write Poetry

by Sage Cohen

 Write poetry as if you’ve done it all your life. This book is informative, fun, creative and juicy. Sage Cohen takes us on a word trip through roads definitely less traveled and more spacious as she helps us savour the creative process, inspiring a feeling of play and joyfulness in writing.

Her style is different from any I’ve come across in my sometimes serious, sometimes not, poetry writing. Here’s a sampling of chapter titles in Writing the Life Poetic: Redefining Real Work; Imitation is the Highest Form of Discovery; Poetry as Tonglen Practice; Family Fodder; Save Acorns – Keeping Track of Your Great Ideas; To Thine Own Self be True; Keeping Your Wilderness Alive. Can you imagine what might come from your pen – or keys – writing from these funky pages?

This book has brought me the most joy I’ve ever had writing, using feeling, senses and discovery to create, shape and write poems. With short and easy writing tasks to do at the end of each chapter, this poet, writer and educator brings her fellow word lovers around bends and through mountains and fields of words and topics you probably wouldn’t think of on your own, to create magical, musical poetry. It’s a great book to do with a writing group or to pick up a chapter here and there as part of your daily or weekly writing project. I adore this one.