There’s this site I love.

I’ve been kind of avoiding it lately, but that’s my stuff. It’s called Mini Book Expo for Bloggers, and they give you books. To review. If you’re a blogger.

It’s cool because you get a book for free, and then you get to talk up the book to people who might fall in love with it, and everybody wins. And by everybody I mean book people — readers, authors, publishers, and, of course, those bloggers who either a. like to read or b. are stuckified about what to write about.

I always have stuff to write about (usually too much stuff to write about), but I also really love to read. And I thought this site was genius.

But I screwed up.

Okay, here’s what happened. I chose two books. I got them for free, yay. And I hated them.

Well, not so much hated them as that I wasn’t meant to read them. I’m just not one of their Right People.

But now I have these books. And I want to review them. But I have only negative things to say about them, which isn’t really fair because these books need to find their right people, not for me to scare everyone away from them.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …

So I’m taking this course with the magical Jen Hofmann (for the second time!) and it’s supposedly about space and clearing and organizing, but — like all good things — it’s actually about your relationship with yourself.

Jen is amazing, and one of the things that she makes so clear is that in order for your workspace to support you and nourish you, you have to remove the things that don’t belong there.

So I’ve been in this pretty deep process of internal and external clearing, as I work on my poor, hurt arms and my office and everything else that’s going on right now.

Yesterday it occurred to me that my “guilt shelf” of books that I know I’m not going to review here does not belong in my office. I don’t need a guilt shelf.

Yes, that’s probably embarrassingly obvious, but it took me awhile to figure that out. So it’s time for these books to find their way out of my space and into a place that will be better for them.

My plan! It is …. a plan!

Right. So I’ll tell you what these books are, and if you think you might like to read one and review it (and then tell the Mini Book Expo people that you’re doing it), I will send it to you.

You can volunteer yourself in the comments, or send an email to Marissa (support at fluentself dot com). And if no one volunteers, I’ll mail them back to the Mini Book Expo people.

The first book: “Where’s your WOW?”

The first book is called “Where’s your WOW? 16 Ways to make your competitors wish they were you!” It’s by Robyn Spitzman and Rick Frishman and it comes highly recommended by Jay Conrad Levinson, if that does it for you.

I read business and marketing books all the time, albeit with a certain degree of internal resistance. Over time I’ve gotten pretty good at just gleaning the bits I like, but this time just wasn’t able to stomach it.

Just looking at chapter titles like “You Gotta Have a ‘Brand Slam’!” provokes awful revenge fantasies towards the authors for perpetrating that much violence and stupidity against both the English language and my consciousness.

Take this book. Please.

The second book: “Your Perfect Fit”

The second book is called “Your Perfect Fit” and I completely misunderstood what this was about. Somehow, from the description I gathered that it was about interacting with body criticism and self-image.

Since I used to teach a workshop at yoga studios called “learning to love your body”, and since the theme of working on your relationship with yourself is so relevant to the stuff I teach now about patterns and habits, it seemed like this would be — dare I say — a perfect fit.

This is not that book at all.

This is a book about how to choose the right strappy sandals so you won’t look fat, how to do exercises so you won’t look fat, and how to snack healthily … so you won’t look fat.

To which all I can say is: ?!?!?!

But of course I am a woman who doesn’t wear heels. Okay, let’s be honest. I own two pairs of shoes. Both of which were chosen for comfort and not for whether or not they make my legs look good.

And I can’t even begin to imagine having interest in or patience for advice like “wear jeans that fit” or “vacation is not an excuse to eat everything in sight”.

But again, I’m not their Right People. If you’d like to learn a bunch of exercises and/or uh, find out what type of sleeves flatter your body type or something, I would be more than happy to mail this to you.

Speaking of Right People …

This is barely even slightly relevant, but what the hell.

Last night I had a fairly insane dream that I was back at SXSW and I was headed to some cafe with someone.

And then it turned out that Tim Ferris was going to be there to and I was all “Really? Do we have to?” because I am so not one of his Right People. And the friend I was with said we couldn’t get out of it and I was going blech blech blech because I am not very nice.

But then Tim-in-my-dream was very nice. And he asked me, “Given where your business is at right now, what do you think you and your duck need the most and is there any way that I could help you get it?”

So I said, “That’s a terrific question.” Because it was. And he said, ” Yeah, I know.”

And I said that I had to think about it. Because I had to think about it. And then I thought about it.

And then something really cool happened.

While I was thinking about it, I had this humming sensation around my heart. It was a very pleasant sort of feeling, and I knew my heart was telling me that my business wants to be peaceful and full of love.

And I was all, there’s no way I’m going to say this out loud because these are marketing people and they so won’t get it, and I’ll come across as the world’s cheesiest businessperson.

But I didn’t have anything else to say, so I just didn’t say anything. And then Tim-in-my-dream said, “I think your business needs to be peaceful and full of love.” And I said, “You’re pretty insightful for a guy who cheats in kickboxing tournaments.” And he said, “Yeah, I know.”

And I thought, man, I’m glad I’m not his Right People, but it must be really great for them to be his Right People.

And the point is …

No idea.

But seriously, take one of these books off my hands. Or both of them.

And hand them over to someone who would enjoy them. So that I can go back to talking up the fabulous work they do at Mini Book Expo and get rid of my a guilt shelf.

The more space I free up — in my heart and on my bookshelf — the more peaceful and loving my business will become. That may make me the world’s cheesiest businessperson — but I can also feel the truth if it.

Just because I don’t like something, doesn’t necessarily mean that it doesn’t have value. It just doesn’t have value for me.

So I’m going to sit with that for a while and enjoy all this new space.