Nonfiction Book Reviews

For those of you who haven’t been around since I wrote my review of No Plot? No Problem! and have no idea what NaNoWriMo is, I thought I’d quickly fill you in.  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and is an annual event put on by Chris Baty and team where huge groups of people spend the month of November trying to write a 50,000-word novel.  It’s quite exciting, and no, I’ve never done it.

But I decided that although there’s no chance I’ll get a novel written in a month, there is a pretty good chance I can manage to write one post every single day on this blog this month.  There are months I’ve come close to doing this, but as of yet, I don’t believe I’ve ever managed to put up a post every single day.

So this is my New Year’s resolution for January - to post every day, and get some traffic flowing into this place.  At the moment, my traffic stats are rather dismal (probably because I tend to be very sporadic about posting, which isn’t a good thing, to say the least) so not only will posting every day sharpen my writing skills, but help the influx of traffic.  I hope.

To help me on my journey, I have found a cool new toy that I really like, called Now Do This.  It is a website where you input a simple to-do list, and then when you finish with each item, you click “done” down at the bottom, until you get to the end of your list (which I have no idea what happens at that point, since I haven’t gotten there yet.  Darn it.)  But I have opened it up in my sidebar (love Firefox!!) and so I have a giant reminder on the side of my screen at all times, telling me what to do.

Which is awesome, because I have the attention span of a gerbil.  *I* like to think of it as having a special talent to get sidetracked easily.  If only this was a good thing…

So that’s my New Year’s goal for January.  Anyone have any goals they want to share with the world?  Feel free to leave a comment below. Oh, and Happy New Years!!!

Havs

PS Make sure to check out and vote in the poll all the way to the right —-> I’m curious about my reader’s reading habits, so please, indulge me.

Dave Ramsey is one of those guys who a person either loves or hates. He tends to inspire pretty dramatic feelings both ways. Luckily for him, the majority of America seems to love him.

The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey was the first book that I ever read by Ramsey, and it was such an inspiration to me, that I instantly joined the Ramsey Fan Camp. I was struggling with some pretty large debts at that point (at least large in comparison to my income!) and I was barely keeping my head above water. I was told to read The Total Money Makeover - that it would help me. They were right.

I wish I could say that because of this book, I made major life changes and became debt free, but instead I just got a little better at juggling.  Eventually my husband and I were able to move and get into a better situation, to where we are now debt free. But the problem before was not Ramsey - it was me. Ramsey actually sums it up pretty well on page 4:

Winning at money is 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge. What we do isn’t the problem; doing it is. Most of us know what to do, but we just don’t do it. If I can control the guy in the mirror, I can be skinny and rich. We will let other books work on the skinny, and I will help you with the rich part. No, there are no secrets, and yes, this will be very hard. Hey, if it was easy, every moron walking would be wealthy.

If that kind of bluntness appeals to you, you’ll love this book.

The baby steps that Ramsey gives to get out of debt and stay there are the following (in order!):

1) Save up a baby emergency fund: $1,000.
2) Snowball your debts (a focused way of paying off your debts)
3) Finish your emergency fund: Save 3 - 6 months of expenses
4) Invest 15% of your income into a retirement fund
5) Save for your kid’s college fund (if you have children)
6) Pay off your mortgage on your home
7) Build wealth

My problem previously had been saving the $1000 baby emergency fund. When your bank account is perilously close to zero, it’s hard to fathom having $1000 in your savings account, waiting for a rainy day.  He talks about how to save the $1000 and gives some inspirational stories from people who did, so again, that was me, not him.

Okay, so onto my critiques (you knew it was coming!) As I said in Financial Peace, Ramsey is a Christian who quotes the Bible fairly regularly to make his point. If you’re not Christian, do keep that in mind. It isn’t overwhelming, but it is there.

Secondly, it has been said that Ramsey is too conservative when it comes to savings, but overly liberal when it comes to retirement numbers. I would have to agree with that. He says that you can afford to put your savings for retirement on hold until after you’ve paid off all your debts, plus saved a 3 - 6 month emergency fund, by being very generous when it comes to his estimates on a “normal” return on investments. I don’t agree that you ought to expect a 12% rate of return every year on your stocks. Yeah, it would be nice, but hardly likely. Ramsey’s great for advice on getting out of debt, but I would pick someone else to get investment advice from.

These shortcomings aside, this is a very inspirational book - it’s liberally dosed with stories from couples who have worked through debt and came out the other side debt-free and liberated. Reading stories of these “gazelle intense” couples makes you want to stand up and yell, “I can do this too!” I think this is the monetary equivalent of No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty - Dave Ramsey makes you truly believe in yourself.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Yeah, he has his shortcomings, but overall, this is just a darn good book.

Hava

Photo Credit: Scol22

No Plot? No Problem: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty has more than a heck of a subtitle, it also humor in high doses, which every reader (serious about writing or not) can appreciate.  I picked it up on a whim - I saw it at the library (where else?) and thought it looked like an interesting concept.  How could you write a book in 30 days, let alone attempt it without an established plot in hand?  Does the plot just appear out of nowhere?

Apparently it does.  At least it did to Chris.  He decided back in 1999 that he would write a book in a month.  He had no ideas for the book, he had no background in writing books, or in writing fiction at all for that matter.  He did it on a lark, and convinced coworkers to go along for the ride.  They named it National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.

The month was both incredibly fun and incredibly difficult, as they progressed through the “Wow this is fun!” stage in the beginning, to “Can’t I just kill everyone off and finish the book 50 pages in?” stage, to “I’m starting to make progress here - I think I may allow the characters to live after all” and finally to “I did it, I finished!!”at the end of the month.  It was a hilarious recounting - I almost snorted milk up my nose at one point, and I actually read a couple of paragraphs outloud to my husband because they made me laugh so hard.

NaNoWriMo became an annual event, and the size of the group grew quickly, especially after they were featured in USA Today and other national newspapers and magazines.  The whole point to the exercise is this: Nothing ever gets done without a deadline.  Example: When do I clean my house?  When my in-laws have called and are coming over.  Why am I cleaning?  Because I have to, before they come.  What if they didn’t come - would I still be cleaning?  Not likely!  I can always find something better to do than clean my house, trust me! 

NaNoWriMo works with that principle, and makes you finally finish a book, because you have to - you have a deadline!  For those Great American Novelists who have been writing and working on a book for the last 10 years, this kind of thing can be liberating, because it frees you from perfection, and lets you - no, forces you! - to let it all hang out.  You have to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  You don’t have time for perfection!

If you’re interested in more info on the NaNoWriMo concept, make sure to check out the National Novel Writing Month website for lots of fun info and a chance to see Chris’s style of writing in action.  If you don’t think the website is funny, then you won’t enjoy the book. I would have to question if you’re alive or not, but that’s besides the point.

Is this a book to pick up if you want help polishing prose, or figuring out the finer points of characterization?  Not hardly.  But it is a good book to read to get pumped about writing, and really cranking out a book that just might end up being a decent story in the end.   NaNoWriMo is a great concept that apparently a lot of people have participated in - I even found a Today.com writer who has participated in NaNoWriMo: Our Creative Writing blogger.  How cool is that?!

I give No Plot? No Problem! 5 out of 5 stars.  Any nonfiction book that makes me laugh this hard is worth the stars!

Havs