By Deborah Carter Mastelotto 

Every year I try to compile a list of helpful books for each astrological sign. 2024 heralds the end of a major cycle and the beginning of a new one. Let go of those things you’ve worked hard on but still can’t make fit comfortably in your life.

Be brave and leap into the beginning of your new cycle. Next year will wobble a bit and make you doubt your new direction, but have faith—by 2025 your new direction will be firmly planted on solid ground.

Expect to welcome the new energy 2024 brings, especially during the first half of the year.

You feel a strong need to establish yourself, build something solid, and unapologetically embrace comfort and security.

You attract the most good fortune by being steady, charitable, and generous. Pursue your goals in a leisurely fashion, watch your profits and possessions slowly accumulate.

Just guard against being too self-focused and stubborn. By the end of 2014 those attitudes get thrown into the trash along with the last gasp of the old cycle.

Learn to think of your talents and hobbies as a ‘Business of One’ but, to make remote work satisfying and productive, even you need a strategy. That’s why the book ‘Remote, Inc: How to Thrive at Work . . . Wherever You are’ by Alexandra Samuel and Robert C. Posen can be the book you need this year. It gives you the strategies and tools to help tap into the unique advantages of working from home.

This is your year to be social (whether you want to or not) because the more you socialize, especially with groups and organizations, the more successful you can be. To help you do this painlessly, first read Karen Wickre’s ‘Taking the Work Out of Networking: Your Guide to Making and Keeping Great Connections’ . Let Wickre guide you in your new quest to make genuine profitable connections that last.

Life in 2024 doesn’t have to be as complicated as it has been in 2023, but your key to success could be as simple as a shift in your perspective, in the way you see yourself. Could it really be this easy? Let Vaughn Carter help adjust your inner vision, with his book ‘Help Me, I’m Stuck: Six Proven Methods to Shift Your Mindset From Self-Sabotage to Self-Improvement’. Make it your goal in 2024 to becoming more productive by getting out of your own way.

Friendships can be comforting, but also at times frustrating and messy, which you hate. This is your year to sort out your acquaintances and make your friendships and connections more deeply meaningful as a grown up. The book ‘You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult’ by Lane Moore is your book for 2024. It may seem redundant to focus on something you already do well, but open your mind and allow this book to be your personal guide. It can help you heal from past friendship difficulties, improving your current friendships, and finally having the quality friendships you know you deserve.

This is not going to be the year for going it alone. In 2024 your career success depends on sharing your vision and enlisting acolytes to follow it. Going solo won’t bring you as much joy (or profit), so you might need a little boost. Read Cameron Herold’s ‘Vivid Vision: A Remarkable Tool For Aligning Your Business Around a Shared Vision of the Future’. This book can be a holistic road map to help get your teammates passionate about your big picture, and the one you want to share to make your dream a reality.

Whether you’re on a self-imposed budget or ready to indulge in a little bit of luxury, this year is going to be fun and full of travel, especially if you’re part of a couple. For some great motivation get the book ‘The Couple’s Guide to World Travel’ by Rich and Elizabeth Kerian. See how to easily plan extended travel experiences together to take advantages of the years great energies. Don’t have a partner? Then this might just be the year for travel to change that for you.

It’s the year (and about time) for you to explore the idea of creating a simple framework for passive income, and the kind of uncomplicated, stable, and non-stressful financial situation you have only dreamed of. You might even expect a windfall or inheritance in 2024, so how to manage it? Read the book ‘Keep It Simple, Make It Big: Money Management for a Meaningful Life’ by Michael Lynch. Upgrade your financial home base—It’s the time for it.

Fun is action some people seemingly can take practically anywhere, anytime, just usually not you. Research and science prove we all, even you, need fun and creativity for our physical and mental well-being. Yet sometimes you chase the fun from your daily life and then feel guilty for wanting it back. This needs to change in 2024. Mike Rucker’s book ‘The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life’ is your how-to manual for 2024. Take this ‘fun’ thing as a challenge, and conquer it, especially so if if you have a partner.

You Sagittarius folk need to feel like you have the freedom to move, especially in your work environment. The fact that you can now work anywhere is what’s so appealing about remote work—you can take it with you wherever you choose to be. The book ‘Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere‘ by Tsedal Neeley is was (almost) written just for you this year.

2024 is your year to embrace social media as a legitimate enterprise. You will need to amp up your marketing skills and get creative. If this seems like a tall order and a bit frivolous, don’t worry. The stars (and some great books) are on your side and will help you master it, even more than you already have. Need a template? The book for you is ‘Followed: The Content Creator’s Guide to Being Seen, Facing Judgment, and Building an Authentic Personal Brand’ by Amanda Bucci. Read this book then jump right in.

Your surroundings have always been a reflection of your personal style, and no one really understands this completely. How your home is decorated and arranged can have an important impact on the quality of your life, so this is the year for you to read Anita Yokota’s book ‘Home Therapy: Interior Design for Increasing Happiness, Boosting Confidence, and Creating Calm: An Interior Design Book’. Time to be aware of what you’ve been unconsciously doing all along.

A lot of of important things are happening, and will be happening because of you. This is the year, your year, to start writing these things down. You need to be aware that non- fiction has been outselling fiction 3 to 2, but this does not mean you need to stick strictly to actual facts—your life is much bigger than that. Read the Julia Cameron book ‘The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life’ will give your new writing a jump start. Be inspired to take it out of your head and onto the page. Metaphorically and/or practically.

I once spent a drizzly Sunday afternoon playing Scrabble with my mother-in-law. She was having a hard time recovering from her stroke and Scrabble was her favorite game—before the stroke no one could beat her. I made a double batch of cookies and stuffed them full of oatmeal, chocolate chips, sun dried cherries and coconut. As she struggled over and over spelling words she once found effortless, we managed to eat the entire batch of cookies, just the two of us.

Did the cookies help cure my mother in-laws stroke? I believe, for that one day, they did. She definitely played Scrabble better than she would have without them. Her recovery has been a long and painful process and those cookies eased the pain a bit that afternoon.

The word ‘placebo’ is defined as “a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.” This could take many forms. Vitamins. crystals and stones, home alarm systems—these all are alternately proven and disproven to be healthful and real. But as we take our vitamins every morning, don’t we recite (at least in our minds)

“ . . . glucosamine for joint health, Co-q-10 for mental clarity and improved heart health . . . “? Yes we now have scientific proof of the benefits of vitamins, but the most important benefit may be that we believe in them and the litany we recite to ourselves as we swallow them. How many of us collect stones and crystals, thinking “ . . . citrine brings wealth, black tourmaline protects from negative energies . . .”

When my son was very young I placed a kiss on the back of his hand after I put on my lipstick. Looking at it seemed to help calm him if his school day got difficult. And how many times have we made our children’s ‘ouchies’ feel better just by kissing them?

Studies show those of us who get a kiss in the morning go off to have a better day at work than those who don’t. Children almost always cling to a blanket or stuffed animal for comfort. And it works—ask any parent. I don’t know about you but I’d rather believe something I’m doing is making me well. It feels good to believe we’re getting better, and feeling good helps us get better.

On the subject of placebos, the website ‘I f**king love science’ wrote “If you’re not completely blown away by the power of placebo, then you don’t know enough about it. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen to actual magic.” Placebos work even if the person taking them knows they’re placebos, found one Harvard study. It’s a physics principle—the observer affects the experiment.

We use placebos all the time in our lives. Mostly we are unconscious about it. But . . . what if we began doing it consciously? What if we surround ourselves with things that feel like healing to us. It may feel silly at first, if you’re one of those people who need linear or physical proof, but no one needs to know about this but you. Do your own quiet, personal experiments. Believe in something, believe that something wonderful is about to happen. Do it every day. What do you have to lose?

What if it works?

~ always believe something magical is about to happen

pink-chronicity Pyn·chro·nic·i·tyˌpiNGkrəˈnisədē/noun The happy certainty that something is just meant to be.

We are all Stardust “The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded…the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron… were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust.” ~ Lawrence Krauss

When we find ourselves in the presence of synchronicity, we sit in wonder and awe as if the experience is unique, or unusual, or special. We share anecdotes about coincidences, “I picked up the phone to call my sister and she was in the process of calling me.” Or, “I don’t know why but I had a feeling I should call home so I did and sure enough, an old friend stopped by.” Or, you open a card from your husband at Christmas and it’s the same card you gave him.

I like to call that sort of thing “pinkchronicity”, and I smile knowingly when it happens, which is often. And when we read our horoscope in a magazine and it’s right on, we act surprised and sometimes shocked. But what if that sort of thing isn’t unique, or special, or even unusual? As Lawrence Krauss reminds us, “Every event that happens has small probability…but it happens…if it’s weird, if you dream one million nights and it’s nonsense but one night you dream that your friend is gonna break his leg and the next day he breaks his arm… So the real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it’s big, and rare events happen all the time — including life — and that doesn’t mean it’s special.”

It’s a big universe out there and we are all, you, me, the stars, we are all made of the same stuff. We are all connected. We all vibrate with the energy, rhythm and movement of the big, swirling explosion that is our universe in a most intimate way. It shouldn’t surprise us at all that this most accurate and perfect clock can mark not only the time on our world, but also moments, events, and yes, thoughts and moods. It happens all the time.

By Charles Warnke

You Should Date an Illiterate Girl – By Charles Warnke

You should date an illiterate girl.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you.

Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.

(I don’t know who wrote this but it wasn’t me. If you know please tell me)

The last couple of years have been confusing and stressful, so I’m here to help make your transition into 2023 clear and productive. I have thoroughly examined the next year’s astrological aspects, and I have a book recommendation for each Sun Sign. Hopefully, this book will give us all a head start into an exciting future.

Happy Birthday Capricorn! (December 22 – January 19) The crucial mindset for you in 2023 is transformation and change in your work, but from a creative home base. That’s why we are recommending ‘If You Could Live Anywhere: The Surprising importance of Place in a Work from Anywhere World’. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) Its time to stop dreaming of creating a podcast or YouTube channel, or ramping up your social media in general, because this is the year the stars align to do it. We suggest you get ‘The Art of Social Media’ by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick asap.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20) Your charm and charisma are off the charts in 2023, so to help channel this personal magic into money-making power, read ‘The Like Switch: An Ex FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People over’ by Jack Schafer PHD.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) This is your lucky year, but you must be willing to radically change the way you think about making money, and you need to be ready to move fast when you see opportunities. Read ‘Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life’ by Susan David.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) You’ve never really been a joiner, but now is not the year to go it alone—you need a fan base. Look around for organizations to join and groups be part of, maybe even do some public speaking. We suggest reading ‘Deliver Unforgettable Presentations: How to Speak To Be Remembered and Repeated, In Person, Online, And Onstage’ by Patricia Fripp, Darren Lacroix and Mark Brown, and get ready to wow them.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20) You always like to think and talk your way through most things, so the idea of using mostly instinct to make decisions this year might seem crazy. That’s why we insist you read ‘The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work’ by Gary Klein. Let it be your guidebook in 2023.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22) Everyone loves Brene’ Brown, but her message is especially personal for you this year. That’s why her book ‘Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead’ should be your personal manual in 2023.

Leo (July 23 – August 22) This year expect an explosive career trajectory if you focus on creating a team. The book to help you with this is ‘The Partnership Economy: How Modern Businesses Find New Customers, Grow Revenue, and Deliver Exceptional Experiences’ by David A Yovanno

Virgo (August 23 – September 22) Your 2023 is about focusing on any ‘Other’ who might be significant. To help you, we recommend ’The Power of Two: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships in Work and in Life’ by Rodd Wagner. Join forces and shine.

Libra (September 23 – October 22) This is your year to be money-smart and practical. ‘The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need’ by Andrew Tobias has been an investors guidebook since 1976, but the newly revised edition was released in 2022, just in time for your powerhouse invest-in-your-future year.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21) Contrary to the usual obsessive/compulsive way you handle your life, we are going to suggest a book that might seem counter-intuitive—‘That Sounds Fun: The Joys of Being An Amateur, the Power of Falling in Love, and Why You Need a Hobby’ by Annie F Downs. Yes, it’s going to be that kind of year. You’re Welcome.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21) You should be changing the way you work, make money, and even how you live day-to-day, and the changes need to be radical. That’s why we recommend ‘Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Your Life’, by Adam Markel, to ease the way. Be your usual brave self—you’re going to enjoy this.

When I was in my twenties, a boyfriend gave me a bottle of ‘Le Must de Cartier’ perfume. I was too young to understand the concept of a ‘signature scent’ but I wore that scent everywhere. It smelled woodsy and spicy and exotic to me. He owned a jewelry store, so picking up a bottle of Cartier perfume was easy for him, but with the end of our relationship came the end of my pipeline to that particular perfume, and I had no practical reason for shopping in a jewelry store. My connection to that scent faded away. I think someone may have even commented to me that the smell reminded them of their grandmother. At the time I didn’t take it as a compliment.

This was before internet shopping became a thing.

Apparently, unbeknownst to me, my youngest daughter believed ‘Le Must’ was my signature scent. She had strong memories tied to it and to her childhood during the time I wore it and was determined to track it down. She remembered it was from Cartier and she stood in a Cartier jewelry store sniffing bottle after bottle until she recognized the distinctive musky scent of ‘Le Must’.

When I opened the birthday box and found that bottle, I sprayed some on my wrists and began to cry, not only because it triggered the memory of how much I loved that scent, but for the realization that my daughter always associated it to her mother and went through so much effort to find it for my birthday.

That’s how powerfully scent is connected to memory.

After that bottle was completely gone, I searched for its replacement everywhere, and it was hard to find. For a while it even felt discontinued so I scoured airport duty-free shops for bottles of Le Must. My husband brought home assorted Cartier perfumes from his overseas trips, but he never remembered the ‘Le Must’ part. I now have a beautiful collection of Cartier perfumes that I seldom wear. I just have no emotional response to them. They are not ‘Le Must’.

And, I think eliciting an emotional response is what perfumes aspire to do. When it happens, you know it.

I’ve since learned even Nordstrom carries Le Must now, so I began buying it for myself, as a treat when I’m very good. I hope one day my granddaughter will get a whiff of that scent and think of me the way her mother did, and that it elicits an emotional response in her too. Now I’d take that as a compliment.