Nonfiction Book Reviews

Well, as my readers probably remember (and for any first timers, check out my About Me page for more info) I’m going back to school next month to get my Associates in Library Science.  In the long run, this will allow me to advance to a higher-paying job at my local library, so I don’t stay a part-time circulation clerk indefinitely.  (As much as I love my current job, the lack of benefits and the low pay rate doesn’t exactly contribute to long-term wealth).

In the end, going back to school will be worth it.  In the meanwhile though, I’m going to have to cut back on my work schedule.  I can’t continue to work four jobs while going to school full-time.  I happen to like to my sleep a little too much for that.

I’ve debated my options for a while.  My problem is, I like my jobs - that’s why I have them!  I find personal fulfillment from every one of my jobs - I feel as if I am really contributing something to the world by doing them, in my own very small way of course.

My options when it came to my Nonfiction Lover blog were these:

1) Quit completely.  I absolutely do not want to do this, but unfortunately, it is an option.

2) Continue to post as often as I am now, but cut the quality of the posts in half; make the posts shorter and take less time to proofread.  This may be an option to someone else, but in my world, this won’t fly.  I’d rather not post at all than post something that has mistakes in it, and that isn’t actually contributing to the world in the some way.  A quick summary of a book is not why my readers read this blog, and it isn’t what I want to do.

3) Cut the rate of my postings back from almost every day to once or twice a week.  Although this means a lot less books reviewed, at least the quality of the posts being put up would stay the same.  Out of all my non-choices, this was the lesser of the evils, and in the end, was the option I chose.

So starting this week, I will be posting a heck of a lot less than I did before.  I am not quite sure what I’m going to do about Fun Fridays, other than change it to every other Friday or something along those lines.  The kids’ books were supposed to be a small part of this blog, not an every-other-posting on this blog, so I’m definitely going to have to change the frequency of those reviews.  I will continue them in some fashion or another, however - I like reading kids’ books, so I won’t get rid of them entirely.

I’m sad - this blog has been one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever had.  I’m going to miss posting every day, and telling you guys about my great finds (and the horrid misses!)  But at least I’m not going to be forced to give it up altogether, which would break my heart.  I have never enjoyed blogging like I have on here (and I have done plenty of blogging in the past!)

Thanks for sticking with me so far, and I hope you continue to visit, even when my post count drops.  It’s been a lot of fun.

PS I do offer the option to receive an email every time I post a blog, so you don’t have to try to remember to stop by - you will be automatically told every time I post. If you’re interested, make sure to input your email address in the column on the left, and click Subscribe. I abhor spam, so you can be sure that your email address will never be bought or sold. Or if you’d rather, you can also sign up to receive my RSS feed.

Sleeping with a Stranger: How I Survived Marriage to a Child Molester by Patricia Wiklund was filed in the 921’s section at the library, which for the non-librarians out there, means that it was labeled as an autobiography.  I saw it while doing check-in (of course - that’s happy hour for a bookaholic like me) and thought that it would be along the lines of A Child Called It, where the author would talk about her life in general, and in particular, what happened in her marriage to the child molester.

That was not at all what the book was.  I’m thinking seriously of asking the library to relabel and categorize it, because it shouldn’t be counted as a 921 at all, but instead a self-help book focused on wives whose husbands are child molesters.

Patricia Wiklund talks about what happened in her own marriage in fairly generic details from page 3 - 14 (the first chapter of the book).  The entire rest of the book is spent quoting other women who went through the same thing she did, talking about the different theories of whether a child molester really can be “cured” or not, and how to work through the whole thing if you’re a spouse of a child molester.

Very occasionally, she’d mention something that’d happened in her own life (this would last for a whole paragraph - maybe!) and then she was back to focusing on others.

I don’t think I would have minded this, if I had known that was what this book was going to be about.  Of course in that case, I wouldn’t have picked it up at all, because I’ve never dealt with child molestation on a personal level - I have no reason to learn how to deal with being married to a child molester, obviously.

While reading it, I didn’t know that was what the book was going to be like, and I kept waiting (in vain) for the author to focus on her own story again.  I read to the end (skimming in parts, I’ll admit) and it never happened.  It was a self-help book, focused on the spouses of child molesters.  Period.

If this is something that you are personally dealing with, then I’d highly recommend this book to you.  I think you’ll find it invaluable, because I don’t personally know of other books focused on this same subject - this is a pretty specialized subject.

Otherwise, I’d skip the book.  There’s not much to interest someone who isn’t dealing with this issue themselves.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Havs

Have you ever read a book because you felt you “had to” as a part of your general education? That’s why I picked up Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan - it seemed like one of those books that I “had to” read, as a citizen of America and all that good stuff.

Despite that inauspicious beginning, I ended up loving the book. I was shocked by how readable it was, and spent the next week telling everyone that they needed to read it too.

This is a 921 (meaning it’s an autobiography) but Alan Greenspan being who he is, the majority of the book focuses on the financial system of the world. The book actually starts out on September 11th, 2001, then jumps back and focuses on his early life, and goes forward in time from there.  In the excerpt below, he’s talking about his first job out of college, where he was charged with finding data and making it accessible to businessmen and union leaders.

I think this passage really spotlights the fundamental gap between me and him, since I’d rather have my teeth extracted with no painkillers than mess with numbers on a regular basis, but that’s why he was Chairman of the Fed and I’m…well, I’m definitely not.

There was no room to work in the library’s crowded stacks, so I would lug armloads of materials to my desk. Usually I’d have to blow the dust off the books. The chief economist would assign the research projects, and in just a few months people began to tab me as a guy who knew all the data. In a sense, that was true.

It became my passion to master all of the knowledge on those shelves. I read about the robber barons; I spent hours over the census of population of 1890; I studied railroad freight-car loadings of that era, trends in short staple cotton prices for the decades after the Civil War, and myriad other details of the vast American economy.

It wasn’t drudgery - far from it. Instead of reading Gone with the Wind, I was happy to immerse myself in “Copper Ore Deposits in Chile.” ~Page 33 of Age of Turbulence

Great for him and America that he was that way, and even better for me that I don’t have to be.

Although I enjoyed reading about his background, the really interesting part for me came when he started talking about dealing with the different presidents. He’s libertarian (meaning, a capitalist first and foremost - most of his book is spent passionately defending capitalism as the best way of life) but his position was nonpolitical in nature, and he tried to stay out of the political spotlight.

His behind-the-scenes look at each of the presidents was an eye-opener for me. The president who seemed to be the most aligned with Greenspan when it came to economic policy was actually Bill Clinton, and Greenspan had heaps of praise for his policies on economic decisions.

He talks briefly about the Monica Lewinsky affair, and says how disappointed he was in that happening, but he didn’t seem to let it affect his judgment on whether or not Clinton made a good president.

Overall, the book was quite a-political, which I really liked, because I hate having one point of view or another forced down my throat when the book is supposed to be about something else entirely. Now if the book is labeled as a political book (like a book from Rush Limbaugh or something) then fine, at least I know it going into the book. When people try to slide their views in subtly, it really drives me nuts.  Greenspan doesn’t do that.

After going through the presidents up to President Bush, and then his eventual retirement from the Federal Board, Greenspan then dives into what he thinks about each region of the world: China, India, Russia, South America, and more. He talks quickly about why the country is where it is, what changes he thinks they need to make to become more prosperous in the future, and what he thinks will actually happen.

To me, this was the most fascinating part of the book. To have someone as knowledgeable as him give a broad overview of a country and its economic policies was engrossing. I was almost late to work several times, because I didn’t want to put the book down.

After all this, the book finally ends up doing what I was worried about all along: It got boring. He gets into the fine details of how the financial world hums along, and even though I know that understanding all of this would make me a much more informed person, it was just too much for my non-math brain. Here’s a quick excerpt - tell me if you understand this:

A detailed calculation by Federal Reserve Board staff employing data from more than 5,000 nonfinancial US corporations for the years 1983 - 2004 found that growth in the sum of deficits of those corporations where capital expenditures exceeded cash flow persistently outpaced the growth in corporate value-added. The sum of surpluses and deficits, disregarding sign, as a ratio to a proxy for corporate value-added exhibits an average annual increase of 3.5% per year.*

To clarify, it says in the footnotes:

*The surpluses (and deficits) are measured as income before extraordinary items, plus depreciation, minus capital expenditures. The proxy for corporate value-added is gross margin, or sales less cost of goods sold. ~ Page 356 of Age of Turbulence

So glad we cleared that up…

Unfortunately, Greenspan goes on in this fashion for several chapters. At first, I tried to understand it, and then I gave up. I am soooo not a math person. I just started skimming until things got interesting again, and they did. The book ended on a great note, and I finished in awe of the knowledge that Greenspan possesses, and also quite sad that the book was finally finished. At 531 pages, I really should have been celebrating its completion, but it was such an interesting book, I wanted to keep learning.

If you have any interest whatsoever in finances, politics, the economy, or just the world in general, you really can’t miss when it comes to this book. Everyone I’ve talked to who has read it thoroughly enjoyed it, so I know I’m not the oddball out here.

Overall, it rates 4.5 out of 5. I wish I could give it higher, but there’s just one too many dry spots.

Havs

Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys by none other than Dave Barry was a terrific read.  It was an expose on how guys’ minds really work (hint: they don’t) delivered in the classic Dave Barry style.

The book had me smiling by the end of page one, then a little chuckling snuck in.  I soon progressed to giggling, which quickly turned into full blown laughter.  But it didn’t stop there.  Soon (about 10 pages in or so) I was laughing so hard, I was doubled over, struggling to breathe, and wiping tears off my face.

If you don’t laugh when you’re reading this book, you need your pulse taken.  There’s a good chance you’re dead.

Having said all that, there were definitely parts of the book that warrant some warnings.  Dave Barry thinks nothing of including “adult humor” so this isn’t a book I’d hand to a child.  There were some clean and hilarious stories in the book, but there were also some not-so-clean-but-still-hilarious stories in the book. Just be forewarned.

In case some of you have been living under a rock for the past couple of decades and haven’t read any of Dave Barry’s writings, I figured I should put up an excerpt (a clean one, of course) demonstrating Dave’s writing style.  Again, no laughter = dead.  Just wanted to make sure we were clear on that…

Dave talked about medical conditions that only afflict guys: Mainly, Guy Vision (the complete inability to see dirt) and Guy Memory Lapses.  This excerpt is from the Guy Memory Lapses section:

The basic problem here is that guys, as I have noted, devote so much of their brains to remembering vital facts such as who was named MVP of the 1978 Super Bowl, that they cannot always remember minor details, such as they have left an infant on the roof of a car.

You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.  According to a 1992 Boston Globe article, a guy in Massachusetts did this on Mother’s Day.  He had his two children with him, and he was loading them into his car, and he did - give him credit - remember to strap in his twenty-month-old daughter into the car.

But the amount of concentration required for a guy to remember this type of childcare detail can put a lot of strain on his mental equipment, so he went into acute Guy Memory Lapse and forgot that he had placed a car seat containing his three-month-old son on the roof of the car.  As he accelerated onto Interstate 290, he sensed that something was wrong when “he heard a scraping sound on the roof of the car.”

(This is classic guy behavior: He doesn’t notice that he only has 50% of his total children inside the car with him, but he does notice that his car is making a funny sound.)

Anyway, the car was going about 50 mph when the car seat containing the three-month-old boy sailed off the roof and landed on Interstate 290, where - this is strong evidence that God is a guy - the seat skidded safely to a stop, with the boy unhurt.  So, the story has a happy ending, except of course that this particular guy had to tell his wife what happened (Happy Mother’s Day!).  I bet she rolled her eyeballs into the next state.

Perhaps you’re saying, “Dave, aren’t you being unfair?  Aren’t you using purely anecdotal evidence to reinforce an unfortunate gender stereotype about men?  Isn’t it entirely possible that a woman could leave her child on the car roof and drive off?”

No.
~Page 111 - 112

You did laugh, right?  I was a little worried there for a moment…

I hadn’t heard about what was happening with Dave for quite a while, so I decided to do a Google search and see what he’s been up to. Turns out, Dave’s retired from the weekly column business (which is probably why I haven’t heard from him).  Oh, and the Complete Guide to Guys was turned into a movie, which I also didn’t know.

Apparently, I’m not very up-to-date on the latest Dave Barry doings.  Which is sad for me, considering how darn funny I think he is.

I’m giving Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys 4.5 out of 5.  It’s marked down for adult, sometimes crass humor, but overall, it’s just too darn funny to rate lower than that.  Need a pick me up?  Read this book and he’ll have you rolling on the floor with laughter in no time (which, sadly for me, is not an exaggeration).

Hava

Fun Friday - The Weekly Review of Children’s Books

I originally picked up A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money: How to Make It, Save It, and Spend It by Nancy Holyoke and Ali Douglass because my niece (hi Hailey!) had checked it out, and I saw it when she returned it. I figured I had read plenty of guides on how to manage money as an adult - it was time to check out what the kids were being taught.

Again, I was surprised at how knowledge-packed the book turned out to be.  Perhaps I’m just not expecting enough out of children’s books, I don’t know, but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the depth of the information given.

In A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money, American Girl teaches the whole cycle of money - it gives a list of 101 ways to make money (selling items or providing a variety of services) and also how to figure out if the business venture is profitable or not by doing a cost analysis.  It even talks about keeping a ledger and staying on a budget.  If there was a girl out there who read this book and took it to heart, she’d be a miniature Donald Trump (but hopefully with better hair!) by age 25.

The book also tackles sticky subjects from how to ask for an allowance raise, to recognizing and reigning in the impulse buying while at the mall.  It even touches ever so briefly on putting money into the stock market and paying taxes on what you earn.  (I told you I was shocked at how much was in here).

Yet it still managed to stay very readable and interesting to the average tweener (10 - 14 year old range).  It had lots of great drawings and quite a few multiple choice quizzes.

So comes the question: Would a boy read it?  No, I would say probably not - too many references to buying nail polish and new clothes at the mall, not to mention the fact that all of the drawings are of girls.  I haven’t looked to see, but I would hope something similar but aimed for the boy population has been produced, because it really did break down money management into children-sized pieces.

If your daughter wants to make money this summer, or if you’ve noticed that she tends to spend her money too freely and you’re hoping to give her a little direction, this would be an awesome book to get for her.  I honestly can’t think of anything critical or negative to say about it.

Warning: Childless adult is about to give out parenting advice - ignore at will!!

If I had a daughter, I would give her this book when starting her allowance, so she could be pointed in the right direction on how to handle her money, instead of just being handed money each week.  I was a pretty open spender as a child - I once spent $50 on candy and had a stomachache for a week.  I really could’ve used this book as a kid.

Overall, I give A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money 4.75 out of 5.

Hava

Got Sun? Go Solar: Get Free Renewable Energy to Power Your Grid-Tied Home by Rex A Ewing and Doug Pratt was a surprisingly interesting book.  I say that because I am of the non-mechanical variety, so I was prepared to be bored to tears by in-depth information that the average person (me) would never have a chance of understanding.

But I’ve always thought that running your house off solar power, even if it was just a partial supply of the total energy needed, was just such a great idea, that it would be worth it suffering through a boring book to learn more about it.

Unfortunately, most books covering this subject spend their time talking exclusively about how to power your house “off the grid” (meaning, not connected to any power lines - powered exclusively through wind, solar, and/or hydro power.)  I don’t know why, because the amount of people in the US living on the grid outnumber the ones living off the grid a million to one, at least.  So I was excited to see a book covering houses on the grid exclusively.

I also picked this book up because Rex Ewing is a name I recognize.  In the solar and wind industry, Rex is The Man.  He has lived in a house for years that is powered with just solar and wind power, so he knows of which he speaks.  He also spends a large amount of time writing books and consulting with home owners who want to do the same.  If he doesn’t know about it when it comes to solar power, it isn’t worth knowing.

Fair warning: The book does get technical when trying to explain how silicon works, but even then, the authors tried to inject some humor into the explanation.  Here’s a quotation from the silicon portion:

Chemically, silicon has 14 positively-charged protons, and 14 negatively-charged protons.  This would seem to be a happy arrangement, if not for the fact that it has room for four more electrons in its outer energy level.  How does it get them?  It could snatch four passing electrons from somewhere, but there would be no protons to hold them in place, so the kidnapped electrons would soon escape.
~Page 39 of “Got Sun? Go Solar”

It does obviously go on from there, but the point is: It’s readable. Even for people who are not chemists in another life, and who don’t play one on TV either.

Do I think that after reading this book, you’ll be able to go out and install your own solar powering system without a contractor to help you along the way? No way. But it does give you a good base of knowledge so that when you go to talk to an installer, you know the right questions.  Better yet, it will help you figure out if contacting an installer is even worth your time - it may not be in the realm of possibilities for you.

If adding solar power to your house is something you’ve thought about, and you want to learn more about the idea, then look no further than Got Sun? Go Solar. If you’re going to learn, it might as well be from the best.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Hava

Picture Credit: Nevmic

I have three brothers, and all they love to do is give me flack.  It’s their specialty.  So of course, Handsome Older Brother had to give me a hard time about my rating system, where I give out partial stars (3.75 out of 5 stars, etc).  I’ve also had other people comment that I have an “unusual” rating system (in other words, they’re being nicer than my brothers but are basically thinking the same thing.)

I figured it was about time I explained my rating system, so people could understand what I’m doing and how to read the ratings I give.  (Hint: Contrary to popular opinion, on my site, 4.75 is actually a perfect score.)  I wrote up a nice long post explaining everything, but then decided that I wanted to post it as a page instead, so people could refer to it from wherever they were at on the site by clicking on my links at the top of the page.

So now it’s published, and you can check it out here: The Inside Scoop on Ratings.  I almost left it at that, but then realized that a lot of my regular readers may not see it hiding up there, and would miss reading it (heaven forbid!)  Hence this post.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled reviews, with Got Sun? Go Solar as the featured book of the day.  See ya then!

Hava

I picked up How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of the Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill on a whim. What an interesting idea - a story of riches to rags, the antithesis of your “normal” Hollywood plot.

In a nutshell, Michael Gates Gill (whose mother used to call him “Gatesy” as a boy - no wonder he was messed up!) was raised in a very rich family. Nannies, huge mansions, Yale education, lots of celebrities over the house…the whole shebang. He was hired right out of college at an advertising agency, and he spent 25 years there, giving them literally the best years of his life.

They fired him for being too old, at age 53 - they wanted a young group of hard-charging associates who would give the impression of being “cutting edge.” With sparse white hair, he was not the man for the job any longer.

He spent several years trying to run a consulting business but it never really took off. In the meanwhile, his wife divorced him because he was stupid enough to a) Have a mistress and b) Get her pregnant.  Here the book began: He was broke, without family support or friends, and had no job.

Enter Starbucks.

He got a job at Starbucks more or less on a whim. He’s lucky he even got it. During the interview, the interviewer asked if he had ever worked retail. He gave her a blank stare. She clarified, “You know, like Wal-Mart?” Turns out, he had never even been inside of a Wal-Mart, let alone worked at one.

From that less-than-auspicious beginning grew a dedication between Mike (as he called himself at Starbucks) and the Starbucks chain. He sings their praises throughout the book - the health benefits offered, the great work atmosphere, the money Starbucks offers their employees to get a college education. It almost made me want to work at a Starbucks myself, except I’ve already found my perfect job.

There were a few things that bothered me (you knew it was coming!) Mr. Gill spends quite a bit of time reminiscing on his past life, and tells stories about famous people he met.

It got to the point where I felt like all he was doing was name-dropping (look at me, I’m special, I’ve met Jackie Kennedy and Frank Sinatra and Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali and Robert Frost and…the list goes on.) I’m not a big fan of people who name drop, so to me this got to be annoying.

He also talks about how he made the change from being an autocratic snob to now believing in affirmative action, the implication being that if you don’t agree with affirmative action, you are an autocratic snob. I didn’t think that the inclusion of a political subject like that was of much help to the story line, nor did I appreciate the implication that I was an autocratic snob, since I don’t think reverse discrimination is any better than the original discrimination. How is discriminating against a second group of people better than discriminating against the first group of people?

He also had a rather stilted manner of writing that made it obvious this was the first book he wrote, and that no ghost writer helped him out along the way.  He wasn’t horrible, he just wasn’t that great either.

But all of that aside, it was an okay autobiography, and it did make me think about the question of how much of our happiness is our circumstances, and how much of it is our attitude. For Mr. Gill, he was happier working at Starbucks and living in a cruddy apartment than he had ever been living in a huge mansion but slaving away at his job. It’s a great book to help you rethink your priorities.

In the end, How Starbucks Saved My Life garners 3.75 out of 5 stars. If you’re a Starbucks lover, then I’d rate this as a must read.

Hava

A while back, I read and reviewed WordPress for Dummies, and at the end of it, I mentioned I was going to review Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, 3rd Edition by Peter Kent. Well, today is that day.

I had my library order the copy in for me (which is why it took me so long to get it read and reviewed), but it was worth the wait.  There was quite a bit of information in the book that I had never heard before, but even worse, I found out that some of the “SEO tricks” I had been taught before were flat-out wrong.

I have a habit of turning up the bottom of a page when I read something I think is worthwhile and that I might end up quoting later in my review of the book.  It’s easier for me than to sit with a notepad and pen and take notes while reading.

But with SEO for Dummies, there was so much new information that I needed to process that I ended the book with 19 folded-down pages, a new record for me.  Since this is a library book, I can’t keep it as a reference book, so I’m going to end up going back through and taking notes anyway.  So much for being lazy…

Now for the negatives: Peter Kent (at least in this book) has a rather confusing writing style.  He tends to say a bunch of things as if they are good thing, then finish the section by saying you “never want to do that.”  This left me confused - did I not want to do the last thing?  Or all the things?  And if I didn’t want to do those things, then why was he talking about them in a positive light?

Perhaps I’m just slower than most (Brothers, that was not an invitation to make wisecracks) so maybe he was only confusing to me.  But I felt like his writing style could’ve used editorial help.

He also tended to repeat things.  A lot.  Like the fact that when someone uses JavaScript to create links between websites, the search bots can’t read those links, and thus the website doesn’t get “credit” for the link in the search engine’s eyes.  (If that was Greek to you, read the book - he explains all of that quite nicely).

The first time I read that, I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know that!” so I marked the page.  The second and third time, I thought, “Hmm…Didn’t I already read that?” By the fifth time, I was becoming mightily unimpressed with his ability to repeat the information as if it was new to the reader all over again.  By the seventh time, I was sure he was simply trying to pad his word count (and the book does clock in at 408 pages.  This is no small book).

I shouldn’t bellyache too much, because overall, it was a great book on SEO techniques.  There’s a lot of guesswork that goes into SEO work - after all, Google’s not going to announce how it ranks websites, or every web master out there is going to tailor their website to fit those specifications exactly, and then all searches do is return pages of advertisements.

So in that kind of environment of guesswork and to-the-best-of-my-knowledge theories, there tends to be a lot of flat-out wrong information on the web when it comes to SEO techniques.   Peter Kent does do a good job of clarifying a lot of that.

If you’re serious about creating a website that will rank well and bring in a lot of visitors from search engines, you’ll want to read this book.  It’s not a book for a complete newbie (some topics are too complicated for even Dummies books to make completely Dummy Compatible) but if you’ve spent some time online, working on websites and/or blogging, and you’re wanting to take your site to the next level, this would be the book to read.

I give SEO for Dummies 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Hava

I know that this isn’t a book review, but I’ve been thinking lately that with me having an “insider’s view” on a local public library, that I was duty bound to share some of the helpful information I’ve learned with others.  If you’re not a big fan of the local library, perhaps this will kick start you on your way.

As a circulation clerk at the local public library, here are some things that I wish more people knew:

**If your library doesn’t have a book, you can probably borrow it from another library.  Unless your library is in the Stone Ages, they are most likely a part of an interlibrary program, where they are able to borrow books and even media materials from other libraries for free.

This means that if your local library has a cruddy selection because you live in No Man’s Land, you aren’t stuck with just those books.  Call your local library and ask for the Interlibrary Department.  Odds are fantastic that such a department does in fact exist.  Our library allows patrons to borrow up to 3 books at a time from other libraries - yours may have different requirements.  Ask - most librarians love to help out patrons (that’s why they do what they do).

**Most libraries have some sort of website where you can log in to your account, and see when your books are due.  You can also most likely renew your books online, do searches for books in the catalog, and even put books on hold.

At our library, patrons can put books on hold, then come in the next day and have all of their books waiting for them on the hold shelf.  Note to mothers with children who tend to scream: This makes for a much less stressful visit to the library, since you can be in and out in less than five minutes.  Feel the tension drain from your body…

**If you want a book but the library doesn’t have it and they can’t get it in from another library for whatever reason, you can always request the book to be ordered in for you.  I’d bet good money that 85% of the library patrons have no idea they can do that, but in our budget, we have money set aside in our budget specifically for patron requests.

For example: In our library, our computer section really stinks.  DOS for Dummies and How to Make Windows 95 Your Friend are our specialties.  We are in the process of ordering all new computer books and weeding out the old, but in the meanwhile, I’ve taken the liberty to write out a list of computer books that we really ought to have.  You’ll see me review one of those books tomorrow.

Yes, it takes longer for you to wait for the book to be ordered, cataloged, and a letter sent to your house telling you the book is in than it does to run down to Barnes & Noble and just buy it, but ordering it through the library is helpful in two ways: A) It’s free to you [what could be better than free?] and B) When other patrons come along and want to read a book on the same topic, it’s there and ready for them to read too.  After all, how many times do you actually reread those books on your shelves?

**Libraries will often give you the option of receiving email notices instead of mailed notices.  Not only does that save a tree and help keep down the operating costs of the library (thereby helping keep your taxes lower) but you also receive the notice much faster, saving you money in overdue fees.

**There is most likely a self-checkout machine at your library.  They don’t work well when the barcode on the book is worn, but if you’ve got all new books and the barcodes are in good shape, using the self-checkout machine will be much faster than checking out at the desk, if there’s a large line at the circulation desk.

On the other hand, if there is no line, always go to the check out desk and check out with a circ clerk - we check out books all day long.  That is our job.  I guarantee you we’re faster than the self-checkout machine.

So now it’s over to my readers: Any of you have tips to share on how to make the most of your library?  I wish I had used the library more often in the past because it would have saved me a lot of money.  I used to spend all of my monthly allowance on books, and then whine because I didn’t have anything to read (that’s what happens when you can read a paperback novel in four hours.  $20 for books a month just doesn’t cut it).

Now I have books flowing out of my ears, and I don’t buy anything but my absolute author favorites.  Barnes and Noble isn’t nearly the temptation it used to be, which is good for my pocketbook and my bookshelves, which were getting mighty crowded.

Hava

I’m excited to kick off Fun Fridays with Titanic: Discover the Luxury of This Famous Ship by Simon Adams (it’s a part of the Eyewitness Books series).

I’ll admit it: I watched the 1997 movie, Titanic, in the theaters, and cried the whole second half of the movie.  I loved the story line, but it was just too depressing to ever watch again.  11 years later, I own the movie (won it in a contest) but have never watched it.  I just can’t stand the thought of bawling like that for another 3 hours.

But since an Eyewitness Book is not likely to reduce me to tears, I decided to take the chance and check out Titanic.  I haven’t read an Eyewitness Book since I was a kid, so it was fun to browse through the book like I used to as a child.

I was surprised at how in-depth the information was that was included - it had a lot of text amongst all the pictures, and it wasn’t easy text that a young child would easily be able to read by himself or herself either.  The targeted age group for the Eyewitness Books is 9 - 12 years of age, and they mean it.

But for whatever reason, I was expecting huge pictures and very little text, so I was pleasantly surprised by all that the book had to offer.

My only critique was the fact that the pictures had a lot of boats in them, which have a lot of rigging and other thin, long lines crisscrossing everywhere.  Eyewitness Books use long, thin lines to point to various parts of a picture, which meant it got interesting trying to figure out which line went where.  One set of lines was a little darker than the other, but that was the only difference.

They really should have picked a whole different color, like dark red for one and black for the other, or something to help differentiate between the two sets.

But honestly, that’s a small critique of an otherwise well-done book.  Of course, I have to include an interesting tidbit that I hadn’t heard before, so here’s a quotation from the book:

On the night of April 24, 1912, a young Scottish girl, Jessie, was being comforted as she lay dying.  In her delirious state, Jessie had a vision of a ship sinking in the Atlantic.  She saw many people drowning and “someone called Wally playing a fiddle.”  Within hours of her death, the Titanic slowly sank as Wally Hartley and the rest of the band continued to play. ~Page 23 of Titanic

That sent shivers up my spine when I read it.  Uncanny…

Overall, I give Titanic 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Well done, and a great way to kick off Fun Fridays!  Make sure to check out next week’s post on A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money.

Hava

A while ago, I read some posts put up by a blogger, Michael Yon, on his website, Michael Yon Online.  I thoroughly enjoyed his posts and so when a gentleman came into the library with fliers advertising Michael Yon’s new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, I was excited to request that the book be ordered for our library.

I just finished reading it - I read it over the course of two days because I simply couldn’t put it down.  I’m kind of at a loss for words on how to describe the book, so I’ll start with the easy part: A little background about Michael Yon.

He’s a former Green Beret turned journalist/photographer.  He has spent more time embedded with US combat troops in Iraq than any other journalist in the world.  He is completely independent - he does not work for any news organization and is not paid by anyone.  He is equally critical of both the Republicans and Democrats, and he doesn’t pull any punches.  His picture of a soldier carrying a wounded little girl has become iconic (it’s the front cover of his book).

Now for my critiques of the book: It is composed of different “dispatches” (his name for blog posts) that he had written while in Iraq.  They are not connected and do not flow well.  They are not prominently dated, and he jumps around from year to year with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Basically, the book tries to be chronological, but fails miserably.  Also, if you were a dedicated reader of his website, you really don’t need to buy his book (other than if you want the info in a printed and bound form for some reason).  A good editor should have come along and straightened the flow and timeline out, but didn’t.

Speaking of good editing, you can tell that Michael Yon is photographer first, writer second. He’ll change the subject halfway through a paragraph, and never go back to the original subject, leaving the reader confused.  He also had some typos in here that bugged me (again, good editing.  Who worked on this project??)

All of that aside though, the book itself was excellent.  Case in point: When I read a book, I’ll fold down the corners of the book to mark a page that I think I might want to quote in my review of the book.  I try to find a couple of different sections that might be good to quote, so I have a nice variety to choose from in the end when I finally write up the review.

With Moment of Truth in Iraq, I realized that I was folding down every 10th page or so.  I basically just wanted to take the entire book and post it, because it was that good.  I cried a little, I laughed a little, I thought a whoooooole bunch.  Some of these stories that he reports are just amazing, and it’s hard for me to not tell you guys all of the best ones!

I finally decided on the following quote, because although it doesn’t encapsulate the exciting, nail-biting parts of the book, it does show his unique stance on the political point of view of this war:

All news organizations, from the newbie blogger to the New York Times, from right-wing talk radio to NPR, from CNN to Fox, all ultimately depend upon the financial support of their audiences.  So readers and listeners and viewers should not be surprised when media organizations tell them what they want to hear. 

Happy news for the Left was that US soldiers were demoralized and the war was being lost.  Happy news for the Right was that there was no insurgency, then no civil war; we always had enough troops, and we were winning hands-down, except for the left-wing lunatics who were trying to unravel it all. 

They say heroin addicts are happy too, when they are out of touch with reality. ~Moment of Truth in Iraq, page 214

Like I said, he really doesn’t pull any punches. He doesn’t try to make America look all good, or all bad.  He talks about the mistakes we made, and how we’re learning from them.  He talks about how Iraq is doing better now than ever before, and that the war is ours to win or lose.  It is an extremely thought-provoking book for people on both sides of the aisle.

This is one of those cases where the meat of the book is excellent enough that the drawbacks can be overlooked.  I highly recommend this book to everyone, Left or Right, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian.  I wish that every man and woman in America took the time to read this book, but especially the reporters for the mainstream media.  Perhaps they can take notes on how to really report on a war.

In the end, I have to give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.  With some editing help, it could have easily garnered 5 stars - it was that good.  Maybe next time Michael will contact me to help him out.

Hava

PS FYI, he’s put the first chapter up on his site - you have to download it as a PDF file.  That’s a great way to see if it’s something you would enjoy reading.

As you all well know, I work at the local library, and believe me when I say that check-in is for me what “Happy Hour” is for the town drunk.  I’m surrounded by a sea of temptation, and sometimes I manage to escape unscathed, but most of the time, I end up carrying home yet more books that are simply too irresistible to pass up.

During check-in hour last week, I was admiring an Eyewitness Book on Titanic, and thinking how interesting it would be to read and review it.  Sure, it was aimed for 9 - 12 year olds, but I’ve often found that unless you’re looking for dry, scholarly facts that only a professor would appreciate, most adult books tend to be too overwhelming.

I’ve said it myself and I’ve heard plenty of other people say it: Nonfiction books are boring!  And yeah, that’s true - some nonfiction books are boring.  (I do my best not to review any on here mainly because I don’t want to read them, but yes, they definitely do exist).  But children’s publishers aren’t stupid - they know that if they print pages with nothing but charts and/or using 16 letter words every other sentence, the kids aren’t going to make it past page two.

They have to make it interesting.  They have to use large colorful pictures.  They have to include factoids that make you go, “Really?  I never knew that.”  They have to engage the reader and make them enjoy learning.

In other words, they have to write the kinds of books us adults would read, if we weren’t so embarrassed to be found hitting the children’s section for reading material.

I also started to think about the fact that the majority of the people who visit this site are parents, so they would enjoy finding books that perhaps they hadn’t heard of before, to check out for their kids to read.  And hey, I’m sure I have a couple of underage readers too, who would enjoy reading the reviews for themselves.

So without further ado, let me introduce a new weekly feature: Fun Fridays, where we review fun kids’ books, instead of the boring adult ones. This will start this Friday (the 18th) and run into the foreseeable future.  So parents, make sure to stop by then, or if your kids are old enough, send them my way.

I’m excited to bring in a new group of readers who may not want to read Total Money Makeover or Sprinkler and Drip Systems but would like to read an interesting book on, say, astronomy.

The only downfall that I can see is that this is going to mean that a huge group of books will now become tempting to me, basically upping the amount of books that I’ll want to take home.

Willpower?  What’s that?

Hava
Who probably ought to join a 12-step program for book addiction…

I originally read about Jill Price and her amazing memory in a National Geographic article while on break at the library. I was immediately fascinated by her story: Here was a woman who could remember every single thing that has happened to her since the age of 14, and can remember quite a bit of what has happened since the age of 2.

This was especially intriguing to me because I have been cursed with a worse memory than most.  I have watched movies with my husband (mind you, we’ve only known each other for a little under seven years), we’ll enjoy them so we go buy them for our collection, and then I’ll pick up that same movie at Blockbuster and say to my husband, “Hey, this looks like a good movie.  We should rent it.”

I’m sure that at first, my husband thought I was joking.  I really wasn’t.  I can watch entire movies and then not remember them one whit a year later.  I can even rewatch that same movie with my husband, and by the end, still not have a glimmer of recognition, a moment of, “Oh yeah, I do remember this.”  Nope, nada.

Unfortunately, this lack of memory doesn’t contain itself to just movies, but instead extends into all parts of my life.  I won’t remember names, faces, places, people or things that I have said or did.  This tends to make me honest, since I won’t remember later what I told someone, truth or otherwise.

So when I heard that the focus of the National Geographic article had written a book, I immediately went online and put the book on hold for me at the library. The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science by Jill Price and Bart Davis definitely made for a quick (2 hours from start to finish) and very interesting read.

It was a glimpse into the life of a person who literally cannot forget.  She can remember the day of the week and what she did that day for every single date that the scientists asked her.  Do you remember what you were doing on April 23, 1998?  Me either.

Jill Price could.  She could list out where she went, who she talked to, and if she had heard about any large tragic events happened in the world that day, she would also to tell you about that.  And it isn’t just that she remembers, she can relive everything - how she felt, what she wore, what the weather was like.

The downside is not only she can do this on demand (when someone asks her to) but she also does it automatically, all day every day.  She described that it’s like having a split screen in your head, where one side of the screen is what’s happening right then and there, but the other side is a home movie of your life on random shuffle.  She will jump from childhood to adulthood to the teenage years without rhyme or reason.  She does not relive her life in order and does not have control over what she remembers.

This gift (or curse, depending on how you look at it) has nearly wrecked her life several times.  While other people are able to forgive and forget, she can’t.  She remembers every spiteful, mean thing that anyone has ever told her, and worse, can remember every spiteful mean thing she’s ever told anyone else.  Imagine living and reliving your teenage years for the rest of your life.  That definitely would be something I’d opt out of.

Overall, it was fascinating, but for me, it would be hard to get along with her on a day-to-day basis.  She says multiple times in the book that she was hard to live with, and I believe her.  I can’t explain this part without typing out the whole book, but believe me when I say that she has a hard time with the emotional and relationship aspect of life - how to generalize from an experience, learn from it, and move on.

I have to give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re interested in how memory works, this probably wouldn’t be your best bet, since it focuses more on her life, but there is some info on that, and her life does make for a great test study on memory.  They’re hoping to study her brain and learn better how memory works, something she’s all for, and for that, I’m really grateful.

And hey, maybe someday science will come up with a way for me to remember what movies I’ve watched.

Hava

Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park by Greg Breining was an incredibly interesting book, considering the topic.  Sometimes, when you get someone writing a nonfiction book about the history of a place or natural wonder of the world, it can get awfully dry and scholarly, bringing me to wonder how sleeping pills can flourish on the market when a book like that exists. Five pages and anybody would be out like a light.

But Super Volcano doesn’t fall into that trap.  Instead, it was an interesting yet fairly scientific book on how volcanoes form, why Yellowstone is labeled a Super Volcano by the volcano experts, and what the chances are that an explosion will happen again (hint: bordering on 100%).  He also talks about what has happened around the world when a large volcano has erupted in the past.

I only skimmed one portion, and it was only a couple of pages long: It was a summary of how each major volcano in the world was formed.  I really didn’t care, so I skimmed.

There were some eye-opening facts in the book, such as the fact that if Yellowstone let loose with another eruption of the magnitude that it is capable of, it would rate 1000% more powerful than St Helen’s eruption in 1980.  (And not only is it capable of that kind of power, it has erupted with that much force twice in the past).

The bad news is, because of the climate change that such an eruption would cause, basically life on Earth as we know it would cease to exist.  Think worldwide famines because there’s no sun to grow crops.  Think half the United States covered under a layer of ash so thick that people have to shovel out their driveway to get to their car.

Yeah, that bad.

All I have to say is, I can only hope that it doesn’t happen in my lifetime, or the next.

Overall, I give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.  It was well written, it was based on scientific fact (lots of interviews done with scientists to provide the information in the book) and it was interesting.  If you’re fascinated with volcanoes or Yellowstone like I am, make sure to pick this one up.  It covers more than just Yellowstone, so don’t think it’s 256 pages of Yellowstone only, although that’s definitely the main focus of the book.

Hava

Photo Credit: eku125