Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.
For me, I can't wait to read: The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart. The book is being released by Tarcher on January 20, 2011. The publisher's site reads:

Many families today are governed by a myriad of technological devices. As they scramble to get ready in the mornings, hardly a word is spoken as the kids text their way out the door and their parents jockey between an overwhelming number of new emails and voicemails.

Such was life for journalist, radio host and mother Susan Maushart. But when she realized that she couldn’t go to the bathroom without her iPhone, she knew something had to change (“I was the Amy Winehouse of Windows Live Messenger. Was it time to check myself in to rehab?”). In The Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (And a Mother Who Sleeps with Her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale, Maushart details how her family survived – and even thrived – without technology for six months.

Before undergoing what she and her kids came to call “The Experiment,” Maushart had become increasingly appalled by the way her children, aged 18, 15 and 14, inhabited media: “exactly as fish inhabited a pond – gracefully, unblinkingly and utterly without knowledge of the alternatives.” So when she first pulled the plug on her family’s armory of electronic weaponry, Maushart and her family weren’t sure how to adjust.

But within a matter of weeks, the single mom was astonished to discover that they were actually having meaningful discussions at the dinner table. And before “The Experiment” was all said and done, her daughter rediscovered sleep; her son rediscovered his saxophone; and Maushart rediscovered her relationships with all three of her children.

Insightful and deliciously witty, The Winter of our Disconenct reveals how technology, though often necessary for our lives and work, can prevent us from nurturing our most important relationships. Using the most recent research to support her personal experience, Maushart shows how having fewer tools to communicate with can actually help us to communicate more.