Nonfiction Book Reviews

I picked up Living Well on a Shoestring: 1,501 Ingenious Ways to Spend Less and Have More by Yankee Magazine on a whim.  I tend to like “how to live thrifty” books, and am always looking for a new money saving tip.  I’ve already reviewed America’s Cheapest Family and I have several similar books in the queue.

Well, this thrifty living book left me with mixed feelings.  I would read an entire section where there wasn’t a single new idea that I hadn’t heard before, and then the next section I would read a tip or two that I think, “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily do that myself, but at least it is new idea.”  Overall, there just wasn’t much originality to the book.

Then there was a tip that was completely and utterly wrong.  It was in the getting-out-of-debt section, and it advised the following:

Do you have a credit card that has gotten out of hand, and you have to struggle to pay even the minimum balance every month?  Do yourself a favor: Cancel the card immediately.  That way, you can’t make new charges while you’re getting the balance under control. Living Well, page 28

Warning!  Warning!  Warning!  Do NOT, any ANY circumstances, follow the above advice!  Once you cancel a card, the credit card company has exactly zero reasons to work with you.  It makes your credit report look even worse than it already is, and your credit score will drop.  Your interest rate will likely zoom up into the stratosphere because, again, the credit card company has no reason not to twerk you off.  In fact, they’ll kinda want to because they want that money back so they can lend that money out to other people who will borrow it over and over again.  You, however, are officially no fun: You’re never going to borrow anymore money from them.  Why play nice?

So that part made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  Then there was the section about saving money, where the tip was to assign each household chore a specific monetary value that you would’ve had to pay a housecleaner in order for it to be done, and then pay yourself that amount.  No, wait: It gets even better.  They said to put the money in a savings account instead of spending it - that way, you’ll have a nice fat savings account, and a clean house!

Yeah…Not so much.  If I could afford to pay a cleaning woman to clean my house A) I would and B) Why would I be reading this book?  And even if I did, do you honestly think I’d have the self control to clean my house, give myself money for cleaning, and then not spend that money?  Not a chance, Sunshine, not a chance.  But it wasn’t just cleaning the house - they suggested doing the same thing for mowing your lawn, repairing household appliances, and other chores like that.  I wasn’t impressed.

There were a few ideas scattered in there that I hadn’t heard before, but overall, it was a recycling of the same generic tips you hear everywhere, not to mention a few tips that completely led you astray, and more tips than I care to think about that just left me scratching my head.

I just can’t give Living Well higher than 2.75 out of 5 stars.  It was a disappointment - there are better books out there on this subject.  I’ll be reviewing a favorite of mine, The Tightwad Gazette, later on.  Watch for that.

Havs

PS Looking for some thrifty tips?  Be sure to visit A Frugal Mom here at Today - she’s got a great blog packed with good ideas.

True Ghost Stories by Hans Holzer was not my favorite ghost story collection, but it was average.  He said at one point in the book that he’d written over 100 books (I checked out his Wikipedia article, and it looks like he’s written exactly 138 books thus far) and that made me wonder just how old he is.  So I looked that up too, and apparently he was born in 1920.  I’m not surprised.  His style of writing is that of an older person, and it was obvious enough that it bugged me throughout the book.  Here’s a quick excerpt as an example:

“This was very necessary, you see, because she had just been through a nervous breakdown due to an unhappy love affair…The conversation at the dinnertable had been about art and poetry, two subjects very dear to Dorothy’s heart…That night she went to bed with anticipatory fears, but nothing happened.” Page 95-95, True Ghost Stories.

Maybe it’s just me, but that narrator voice is very annoying, and after reading 502 pages of stilted phrases, it made me want to poke my eyeball out with a fork. No, I’m not overly dramatic, why do you ask?

As a redeeming quality, there was quite a bit of interesting information in it.  I really don’t read many paranormal books (I read Don’t Call Them Ghosts and another book about ghosts in New England, and that’s been it for me, ever).  So perhaps the information he gives would be review for other people, but to me, it was all new.  He talked about the differences between ghosts, and how sometimes people think they’re experiencing a ghost when in actuality it’s a psychic imprint, and other random information like that I’d never heard.  If those interesting tidbits had been put by themselves into a book, it would have made for an interesting book.  As it was, you had to wade through chapters of poorly told ghost stories to get to them.

Oh, and he also talked some about how he became a Psychic Investigator, which I thought was one of the most interesting parts of the book - I wish I had learned more about that transformation, because he had started out as a pure skeptic.  There was no such thing as ghosts, period.  To go from that to being a leading expert in the world on paranormal activity is quite a jump, and I enjoyed the little bit that he did explain.  Perhaps I need to see if he wrote an autobiography and read that if he has.  Maybe I just picked up the wrong book by him, I don’t know.

Overall, I would say that the book tends to wear on - it’s long, the ghost stories start to run together, and the narrator voice is grating.  If you’re looking for a plethora of ghost stories as inspiration for story or skit that you’re writing, you’ll find all you want here and more.  But it wasn’t a book that would keep you up at night, reading, too scared to go to sleep.  In fact, I had a hard time forcing myself to read it at all.

I give True Ghost Stories 2.75 out of 5 stars.

Havs