Honestly, I couldn’t stop laughing while reading this, and my book has hardly any corners left unfolded, since I wanted to remember so many of the hilarious points McCarthy makes. I couldn’t help but snort with laughter when reading this while riding on public transportation, and I noticed more than a few folks trying to sneak a peek at the interesting cover image!

If you want to know what all the laughter is about, click over to read my full review at 5 Minutes for Mom. You can enter to win one of two copies we have for giveaway, too! (U.S. and Canada residents.) The giveaway is closed.

Dawn loves her husband and children more than she can express, even if they all seem to drive her crazy. The fun of their lives is often chronicled on her blog, my thoughts exactly.

Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott experience the same evening rush as the rest of us. For a while, Leslie served as a short-order cook in her own kitchen as she prepared separate items for different family members before shuttling them to various activities (sound familiar?). As a psychologist and family therapist, however, their research (and the research of countless others) has shown that families that share a dinnertime ritual with each other reap the rewards. In The Hour that Matters Most: The Surprising Power of the Family Meal the Parrotts discuss the secrets of a happy home and explain why the family meal plays such an important role.

While the research encourages us to gather around the table, the question exists: How will I do it? After establishing the need for the family meal, the Parrotts include informative chapters on food preparation, talking with your family, listening to your children, curbing conflict, enjoying laughter, and other topics. The Parrotts also include recipes and advice from Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna, two leaders in the meal-assembly industry. This book is a practical and useful tool to help jump start a meaningful tradition. I especially appreciated the assurance that not every dinner hour is magic. Food may be burned, kids may be cranky, and parents may be impatient, but the Parrotts encourage persistence. Over time, family meals create stability and meaningful relationships between parents and their children. The Parrotts assure us that time together at the dinner table softens hearts, builds connections, engenders laughter, and cultivates caring.

According to the Parrotts, “Countless studies have shown that if parents could take only one proactive and practical step to engender family commitment, appreciation, affection, positive communication, time together, and all the rest, it would be to establish a regular dinnertime around a common table without distraction. One hour a few times a week. That’s it.” I’m a realist, and I know we will not be able to have a family meal every night. But thanks to the information and ideas in The Hour that Matters Most, I am committed to bringing my family back to the table. I am sure I am not the only reader to be facing this challenge, and I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book. Our families are worth it!

5 Minutes for Mom has 12 copies to give away!

I’d love to hear your thoughts here on my review, but to enter to win a copy, you need to visit the main post at 5 Minutes for Mom and leave a comment over there. The giveaway closes October 13.

Lauren is a wife, mother-of-two, and an avid reader. She blogs at Baseballs and Bows.

The full title is Cheat On Your Husband (with Your Husband): How to Date Your Spouse, and Andrea Syrtash gives practical advice and a good boost in motivation to all of us women who are so bogged down in doing it all that she forgets her marriage and herself.

Please click over to the Kirkus Reviews blog to read my full review of Cheat On Your Husband (with Your Husband). I’d love to hear what you think!

Jennifer Donovan has been married over 18 years. She has a 13-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son, which explains the revelations she had that she’s let some things go. She blogs about her family at Snapshot.

While some memoirs follow a strict chronological presentation, Pittman opts instead for individual essays as each chapter that work together to eventually paint a full picture of the earliest stages of her relationship with her husband-to-be, the arrival of three sons over the years, and the experiences she has in the role of mom for almost a decade. It’s undeniable that she adores this role, even as she admits that her personal history didn’t give any indications to this outcome. However, she deftly balances expressing her joys with complete honesty about the lows, as well.

Take the section where she addresses her status as a stay-at-home mom while her husband is employed in an office setting. My highlighter came out in full force on this passage:

It was my choice to stay at home with our children during the early years, and I wouldn’t have traded it for whatever middle-income wage I could have earned at the time. Notwithstanding real financial sacrifice, I was lucky to have the choice, and I knew it. But choosing to be at home didn’t waive my right to resent the hell out of it sometimes, especially when Patrick came home from his day at the office with the feeling that he was entitled to relax. His working hours were clearly delineated, whereas I was on call 24/7. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if I was tied to a desk all day, every day. I could take my work to the park. My clients were the people I loved most in the world, even if they couldn’t wipe their own noses. My colleagues were my best girlfriends. There were no common denominators to form the basis of an objective comparison between our workloads, just vague jealousies that erupted periodically into open recriminations.

This insightful and painfully honest set of essays about parenting, marriage and passing out of your 20s and 30s is pitch perfect. Self-deprecation is at play along with a huge dose of humor, but nothing falls flat or feels contrived. Exactly the opposite- everything here feels authentic and genuine, and it’s easy to imagine how challenging it must have been for Pittman to write some of these pieces. Several passages hit so very close to home that I felt the tightness in my throat before I realized that a tear or two had already slipped out. Planting Dandelions has become my new most recommended parenting memoir.

Dawn often wishes she could express her own observations about married life and parenthood more coherently, so instead she enjoys living vicariously through the memoir section of the bookstore. Her own stories are told on her blog, my thoughts exactly.

Here’s the problem with most marriage books — we have to read them.

I generally start off reading and nodding my head, and then I end up putting it aside, because it’s a little dry, impractical or repetitive (or all three!).

Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes was different. I was pulled right in with practical advice written in a highly engaging style. I loved how the authors used economic principles — most of which were new to me, but fun to learn about — to show areas we could improve in our marriage.

The key to using economic science is that the results are often counter-intuitive. What seems to make sense isn’t always the best course, and the authors use examples — both from economics and real couples who participated in their Exhaustive, Groundbreaking, and Very Expensive Marriage Survey.

Topics include

• Division of Labor
• Loss Aversion
• Supply and Demand
• Moral Hazard
• Asymmetric Information
• Intertemporal Choice
• Game Theory

Another thing I liked about Spousonomics is that my husband might actually read it. I’m usually the one who reads marriage and parenting books, but both people really have to read them to appreciate the benefit. Whether he ends up reading it or not (I’m guessing “not”), it did open the door some fun, low-pressure discussions.

Jennifer Donovan and her finance-guy husband have been married over 18 years. She’s very happy, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. By popular demand, she avoids blogging about sensitive marital issues at her blog Snapshot.

I read the book last year in hardcover, but in honor of the paperback release, I was offered the chance to do a giveaway, and what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with a look at the marriage institution?

Please click through to read my review and leave a comment if you’d like to enter. The winner will be announced in the weekly Monday book column at 5 Minutes for Mom on February 28.

Comments are closed here to remind you to enter over there.

While our kids may always know that we love them, do we point out the parts of their personalities that make us smile or the actions that they take that do not put them on the naughty list, but in fact get them bumped up even higher on the nice list? I’m sadly aware of my own parenting style that has me pointing out my children’s mistakes perhaps more often than calling attention to the positive parts of their day. With the i like book, parents can not only bring these little things to their children’s attention, but the memories will also stay collected as a lovely keepsake of a year’s worth of “likes.”

In addition to their line of i like books for parents to use with their children, a new version has been created– the i like book for couples. The same idea is at work here, with lines for each partner to record their daily thoughts about the other. I really like the idea in this context, as well, and couples could always use an extra motivation to focus on the positive, right?

With all the hustle and bustle that comes with this time of year, making a new tradition of calling attention to the things you like about your child or your partner seems perfectly timed. The i like book makes this easy and fun! Be sure to visit their site, ilikebook.com, and like their page on Facebook, too!

As part of our Gift Guide Giveaway, the publisher is generously offering 1 copy each of the i like book (green version, for use with child) and the i like book for couples, (U.S. only, please).

This giveaway is now closed.

As a bonus, we also have been given a discount code to share with our 5 Minutes for Books readers. Use the code “kids2010″ when you register on theilikebook.com, and you’ll save 40%!

To enter, first “like” the i like book on Facebook, and then leave a comment here.

Entries will be closed on December 3, and we will announce the winners on December 4. Please watch your email and check the site for your name, so that we can collect your shipping information to pass along to the publishers.

Be sure you’ve entered all the giveaways in our 2010 Gift Guide and Giveaway event.

Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter.

Dawn’s children anxiously await the new books that greet them every Christmas morning. Their holiday tales will be shared at my thoughts exactly.

This is a story of trust. Trust in what Laura Munson knew was real, in spite of appearances. It’s a story of risk as well — risking her heart and her pride. It’s an unlikely story of her own happiness.

Laura Munson chose happiness. Her husband shut down and checked out of their marriage and their family. She knew that she could not make him do anything. She couldn’t change his mind about what he thought he was feeling. She couldn’t make him understand what she saw. She couldn’t force him to be committed and responsible. So instead she waited patiently. She persevered; she reacted in response to who she knew her husband was, not how he was acting at the moment; she loved him. She loved him through her own pain and his pain.

She invites us on her journey, with powerful results. It does align with my own personal belief system, so perhaps that is why it resonated so much for me, but I can’t help but wonder how many relationships — those between siblings, husband and wives, parents and children and more — might be saved if more people were willing to take this sort of approach.

In addition to a very real look at a very real marriage and family, the book deals with Munson’s relationship with writing. She has always felt like a writer, and though she was a successful freelancer, novel after novel remained unpublished. She shares the writer’s vision and drive — to help people understand life or understand themselves.

If nothing else, if one is willing to really look at Laura Munson’s example, one can learn that happiness is not dependent on what others think of us or direct circumstances in our lives. In the first chapter she addresses the reader: “So stay with me. Like a gentle friend. Maybe we will both learn something that will change our lives. I’m willing to try. On our behalf” (page 15 ARC).

Happiness comes from knowing who you are, and being willing to love without reserve. This kind of hopeful love is not easy. It takes a risk. One must risk failure, risk abandonment, and yet it’s worth it.

Being able to look deeply at one person’s experience and what he or she learns from it is what I love about memoirs in general, and it’s definitely what I love about this book in particular. Because it affected me so deeply, I can’t help but make this a 5 Star Read.

Jennifer Donovan is happy. Life isn’t always good, but she’s been blessed with an optimistic outlook as well as the faith that God is in control, both of which help her deal with from ugly truth. She blogs at Snapshot.