Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas and Found Happiness by Dominique Browning

This book was interesting on a few different levels. First off I became aware of it because the author, a former editor of House & Garden magazine has a house in our summer town of Little Compton, RI and a few weeks ago my sister, sister in law and i went to hear her give a 'book talk'. She writes extensively about her home and the town.

Browning, a well known magazine editor, was fired from her job (when the magazine folded) leaving her, as a divorced, working mom of 2, without a job. H&G was part of Conde Nast publications where I also worked at Self magazine for several years after college (she is not kind to the higher ups at the publishing house here). (Another connection to her was that her sister rented the house that we've been in for 23 years for part of the summer a few years back so when she mentions that her sister 'lives nearby, in town, a few miles away'.. that was sort of a kick.)

This is the story of how Browning went from going 100 mph day after day with a fabulous high profile editorship to being unceremoniously dumped. She goes through a depression, eating and drinking too much and finally ending an affair with a married man who after years of being together still remained married to his wife. When she makes the decision to leave NY behind and move up here to RI her life beings to slow down, she creates a beautiful garden, learns too cook, and takes the time to 'get to know herself' and appreciate her new life.

Her musings about being the editor of such a prestigious high end magazine and her preferred comfortable way of living was interesting and amusing: "Before I got into the home-decorating racket, I was more capable of making a home for myself, of knowing, instinctively, what made a house feel like a home. And that had nothing to do with professionalism; it had to do with a simple, effortless accumulation, over many years, of habits of living. My basic decorating rule of thumb is to create as many lovely places in which to sit and read as possible. By this time in my life, I need a certain kind of chair and a certain kind of table nearby, a place on which to prop my feet, and a kind of light that suits my eyes. I like a certain color palette. I need a kind of comfortable clutter. I like to rest my eyes on things, to remember the times I found them or the people who gave them to me. And when I'm tired of them, I box them up for storage, so that when I unpack them years later, they can surprise me once again."

Love that..