Recently read: Carrie McCarthy & Danielle LaPorte’s Style Statement

This book is a practical and excellent guide to examining your preferences, style, and overall integration of your inner and outer selves. I love reading these types of books, and this one has a unique concept. Through self-examination, detailed examples, and exercises that look at all of life’s areas (e.g., home, learning, service, creativity, etc.), you come up with your Foundation Word, which comprises 80% of your essence, and your 20% Creative Edge Word. Mine are Comfort Cultured.

There is one significant caveat about this book. It is EXTREMELY hard to read. There is a reason most books are printed with black ink on white paper—that combination of print and page is easy to read. Apparently it is part of McCarthy & LaPorte’s branding and style statement to use tinted glossy paper with white or very very light ink tones. Even some of their web site screens use this format, making the screens very very hard to read, too. When I ordered this book through Amazon, one of the customer reviews also stated this problem. It almost prevented me from buying the book. Although I’m glad I did, and I gained a lot of insight from it, I recommend that you actually look at the book “in person” (so to speak) before you buy it.

Interesting note: I just checked the reviews in Amazon, and the negative review that was there when I ordered the book this spring is gone . . . hmmmmmm, very strange.