The women on aspirational mommy blog, The Glow make it look sickeningly easy, but in reality, balancing babies and business can make you sweat.

In their new book Mom Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco and Cat Seto offer sound advice to enterprising moms on everything from writing a business plan, to launching a website to staying sane and focused at home.

The writers are serial entrepreneurs–Seto juggles motherhood and a successful custom stationary line while fellow mom, Mateo Ilasco is an artist, crafter and DIY-er par excellence – so the advice comes first hand.

Mom Inc. isn’t the most original title, (it’s one of many) but this is a smart little book, regardless. —Athena Tsavliris

From $15.16 at Chapters Indigo.

What we’ve learned from parenting books so far this year: French kids don’t throw food, and French kids eat everything (presumably because it’s still on their plate).

While American Pamela Druckerman has tackled the contretemps (or lack thereof) of French child rearing in her book Bringing up Bébé, Canadian mom Karen Le Billon concentrates on food-related norms in her helpful treatment of the subject, French Kids Eat Everything, out this week.

“If Pamela explains the why, I explain the how” says Le Billon from her Vancouver home, stressing that she is not a fan of French parenting per se, but has been converted to their rules around food.

Part “momoir” of their family’s year in France, part recipe book, and part self-help book for parents, she distills from her experiences a set of 10 rules, including: try everything, no snacking, have dinner together, eating is joyful….

Sounds simple until you remember your last meal was a salad eaten over the sink.

But working mother Le Billon (a UBC prof) finds a golden mean back home that includes treats (like sushi night) and adapts her kids to the Canadian regime of 15-minute school lunch breaks (versus the two hours allotted in France).

But will the kids get Easter Baskets filled with chocolate or fois gras this year? We suspect the former.
—Sarah Bancroft

French Kids Eat Everything (And Yours Can Too), from $16.60 at www.amazon.ca

There's nothing better than curling up with a good book, our editors share their favourite reads:

Will Ferguson’s Canadian Pie serves up slice-of-life stories the humour writer has collected throughout his career, all of which confirm we live in a delightfully quirky country. $32 at Shelf Life Books, 100, 1302 Fourth St. S.W., Calgary, 403-265-1033, www.shelflifebooks.ca — Jaelyn Molyneux, Calgary editor

Watership Down is one of my favourite books. My husband read it recently and he was enamoured. It is the beautiful story of a group of rabbits running away to start a new life, and a perfect feel-good-make-me-smile novel. $9.98 at www.amazon.ca —Alexandra Suhner Isenberg, Vancouver fashion editor

For some spine-tingling spookiness pick up Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ($14.43), peppered with vintage photographs for a multi-sensorial reading experience. At www.amazon.ca —Jennifer Nachshen, Montreal editor

If you read one book over the holidays, let it be Téa Obreht’s debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife. What a beautifully written book from a young author with startling talent. $12.27 at www.amazon.ca —Athena Tsavliris, Toronto editor

Of the several books published on Coco Chanel just this year, Intimate Chanel gives us an unprecedented glimpse into her private life, thanks to Chanel’s grandniece and only living relative, who opened the family archives to the author. Through family photographs, correspondence, gifts from her friends and lovers, the book has a voyeuristic feel, like rummaging through someone’s secret drawers. In this case, it’s “Auntie Coco’s.”  $42.64 at www.amazon.ca — Anya Georgijevic, Vancouver beauty editor

I really loved Jeffrey Eugenides’s last book, Middlesex, so I’m going to spend some quality time with my couch this holiday and power through his just-published tome The Marriage Plot. $24.31 at www.amazon.ca —Kelsey Dundon, Vancouver lifestyle editor

For a seriously good cry nothing beats the tragic romance of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audery Niffenegger. Make sure you have ample Kleenex, a cozy blanket and glass (or bottle?) of red wine while you wallow in the delicious sadness of this beautifully written novel. $15.88 at www.amazon.ca —Kelsey Mulyk, Managing editor

Children’s entertainment is a bit of a minefield. Like, how do you explain the “Justin Bieber is my Baby Daddy” debacle? And it’s now impossible to screen The Parent Trap, in case a little one wonders where Lindsay Lohan is now.

Now there are even children’s books that may not be particularly suitable for children. As the resident Bad Aunty, even we know that writer Douglas Coupland and illustrator Graham Roumieu’s Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People ($17.52) aren’t exactly bedtime material for tots. But with tales titled "Donald, The Incredibly Hostile Juice Box"; "Cindy, The Terrible Role Model" and "Hans, The Weird Exchange Student", we might just end up reading to our very naughty inner-child, instead.

It’s getting dark in here. —Jennifer Nachshen

At www.amazon.ca

If you're a girl-adult who goes to bridal showers drunk, loathes pastel with a superhuman passion and wonders whatever happened to, like, dating: someone wrote you a book.

The generally acclaimed debut novel from Jennifer Close, Girls in White Dress, isn't as (terrible word alert) chick-litty as you'd think. Sure, the cosmopolitan one-liners can feel lifted from a certain '90s HBO show. But her interconnected short stories, tracing familiar patterns of post-graduate ennui and reluctant maturity among New York twenty-somethings, have a welcome and sardonic honesty. There's a dark thread in all the air-light dresses, seen by Close as more economic burden than feminine pleasure. If you tug a little, it unravels a hard knowing: happiness doesn't get easier, and getting older sometimes just feels like getting less young.

This isn't a beach read, but a transitional one, for girls between seasons. —Sarah Nicole Prickett

These lit picks have earned a spot in our sand- and sunscreen-filled beach bags.

The Cellist of Sarajevo
by Steven Galloway
The fact that it’s written by one of Vancouver’s own is just one of the reasons we love this tense (like, really, really tense) tale of a city under siege.

Making Ideas Happen
by Scott Belsky
Just because we’re sunning our bottoms at the beach doesn’t mean we can’t also be productive. Or at least read about being productive.

Monocle, the magazine
It’s fashion, it’s design, it’s travel, it’s culture. Come to think of it, it’s starting to sound very familiar.

On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
With the movie adaptation coming out soon, we figure now’s a good time to brush up on this classic.

iPad 2 by Apple
So we can bring Vitamin Daily to the beach too. (We kid, we kid. We’d totally read canonical literature on it.)
—Kelsey Dundon

To quote Young MC we’re spending our holiday “lying on the beach perpetrating a tan" (fully sunscreened, of course). Here are some of our fave summer reads, tan and man not included.

Pick up The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein to get lessons about being human from a very clever dog.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett is Heart of Darkness with heart, transporting you to the Amazon with a pharmaceutical researcher sent to track down her missing former mentor.

No one does bodice-rippers like Philippa Gregory, back with The Red Queen, telling the War of the Roses as seen through the eyes of Henry VIII's politically-minded grandmother.

It’s hard to argue with the Pulitzer committee (not that we’ve tried), so pick up A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan to follow an aging rock music executive and other characters as their lives take them places they never intended to go.

Speaking of places you never intended to go, Jon Ronson takes you into minds of madness in The Psychopath Test. Hey! Who said beach reading needed to be light and fluffy? —Jennifer Nachshen

Now that Hermione has a pixie cut and is attending Oxford, Harry’s been nude onstage and we’ve developed an awkward May-December crush on Ron, we’re looking for a new series to submerse us into the world of magic.

Described as a subversive Harry Potter for grown-ups, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians introduces us to Quentin Coldwater, a melancholic genius who attends the magical Brakebills Academy and discovers the less enchanting side of wizardry, pounding back more beer than butterbeer. We’ve already pre-ordered the sequel, The Magician King for our fall reading list.

Maybe we’ll give platform 9 and ¾ just one more try…. —Jennifer Nachshen

$14.44 at Amazon.ca

As Canada Day approaches, we’d like to thank our country for delivering so much artistic talent. Here are some of our fave.

Author
We loved the quiet drama of Late Nights on Air, so we’re looking forward to cracking the spine of Elizabeth Hay’s newest offering, Alone in the Classroom, a multi-generational tale exploring the origins of love and hate. At www.indigo-chapters.ca

Actor
From the Sound of Music to his latest role as a gay man who comes out of the closet in his seventies in Beginners, Christopher Plummer is a class Canadian act. It doesn’t hurt that Ewan McGregor co-stars in this film about love and discovery. Now playing at the AMC Forum.

Musician
No matter what we think of her kooky outfits, Shania Twain has always stood out as a strong, sexy female artist, who has emerged from heartache only to sing again. We’re picking up her autobiography, From This Moment On, taking us on her journey from Eilleen Twain in Timmons, to country legend Shania. $14.99 at Amazon.ca

Happy Canada Day! —JN

The Go Fug Yourself fashion faux-pas blog is our go-to source for treating the mid-afternoon office yawnies (that and a nice cookie / diet coke combo).

Now the satirically sartorial duo (aka Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan) have written a book just in time for our summer reading list. Spoiled is a soapy tale that follows the adventures of 16-year-old Molly Dix, who abruptly discovers her father is red-carpet regular, Brick Berlin. Set in the jet-set L.A. lifestyle with characters including “Redbull-fuelled stylists, tiny tanned girls, popped-collar guys, and Blackberry-wielding publicists,” this story of sudden celebrity status is sure to keep us giggling over our mojitos.

What? We can’t read Salman Rushdie every day! —JN

$15.99 at Amazon.ca