In this post, I thought I’d talk about a few good books about the day to day of building your grown up life. Or as Mary Catherine Bateson so wonderfully put it, Composing a Life.

I’ll start with Jessica Alba’s The Honest Life: Living Naturally and True to You because this is… actually, a really good book — and not just because it convinced me to start wearing primer. It’s a good resource for stuff like organizing your home and your closet, how to eat more healthfully and I love the resources at the back of the book.  I’ve already bought one for a young woman on my Xmas list as a gift.

Over the past ten years, I’ve lived in Maine, California, Paris (I know it’s a city, not a state), Philadelphia, Princeton and now in the lovely tri-state area that is New York. I am never far from my copy of Sheila Bridges’ Furnishing Forward: A Practical Guide to Furnishing for a Lifetime.  It taught me and still inspires me to buy pieces that last. Totally worth buying a used copy on Amazon.

This is not a book, but an article that Tyra Banks wrote for Vogue Italia: How to Be CEO of your own Life. It is, like the woman herself, fierce, flawless and fabulous:

Then, of course, there’s the original Mary Catherine Bateson book Composing a Life.