Poser: my life in twenty-three yoga poses, by Claire Dederer

This well-written and engaging memoir recounts what one conflicted wife and mother found out about herself and her family during her thirties and early forties, and the hook she hangs her memories on is of varied experiences with yoga. Born and raised in one of the most liberal areas of liberal Seattle, the expectations for living your life and raising children are actually anything but. One is expected to marry rather late, breast feed a minimum of a year, make one's own baby food from organic products, and adhere to any number of other unwritten rules. Toe the party line, or risk exclusion. But life isn't that neat. Her own upbringing was very unconventional -- her mother and father separated when she and her brother are very young, but never divorced. Her mother lives with her much younger boyfriend, while Dad pursues his life on a houseboat. The children, bewildered, shuttle between them. One of the more interesting aspects of the book for me was the author's insightful contrasting of what conventions her own mother was expected to live up to (and how the awakening feminist movement in that generation threw these all into a cocked hat), and the different, but still rigid and codified, conventions her generation embraces yet fights against. The more things change, the more they stay the same. She begins yoga when all that breastfeeding causes her back to go out, and she approaches it warily. Is it a cult, an exercise routine, or something more? Is she a "poser," or a "poseur?" Over the course of a ten year's journey with various forms of yoga, for her it leads to some answers. 332 pp.