Nonfiction Book Reviews

Today, we are being given a rare treat: A guest post from a fellow blogger here at Today.com. Ravyn has been blogging on her site, Exchange of Realities, since June of 2008, and is (as you’ll be able to tell below) a very talented writer.  If you are at all interested in role-playing games (the topic of her blog) then you’ll definitely want to check out her site.

For us, Ravyn wrote up a review of a nonfiction book called The Language of the Night, written by a popular science fiction author many moons ago.  Read through and be sure to leave her lots of praise in the comment section.

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I found The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula K Le Guin by accident. My original goal in asking for reading material had been finding linguistics books, so I could write about slang. And where better to go than my mother and her shelves full of references on language? But amid the pile of pieces on semantics and colloquialisms and the evolution of language, she handed me this book. In a way, I haven’t put it down since.

Having read a few of Le Guin’s pieces, I’d expected the writing to be excellent. What I hadn’t expected was for it to call out to me so perfectly. Yes, the book was published thirty years ago, and most of the essays therein are at least a decade older than I am. But they’re still true, and with every essay I read, I found one more point that I’d always wanted to make but never known how to say.

What I find particularly interesting about it is her approach. Le Guin doesn’t talk about how to write, in the way that many ‘how to write’ articles do, with should and shouldn’t filling every other page. Instead, she talks about how she writes, and how other people write; what was out there at the time, and what she wanted to read; she grounds the essays in the real world with personal anecdotes, but at the same time couches them in terms of archetypes and ideals. Like the author, the book stands with feet in two worlds, and without one the other makes no sense.

And most importantly, she laughs at all of it, even as she tackles issues that go far beyond science fiction.

Did you know that I am a very rare creature? My species was at first believed to be mythological, like the tribble and the unicorn…I am extremely puzzled, even embarrassed, at my own rarity. Are they going to have to lock me up in pens, like the Whooping Cranes and Duckbilled Platypuses and other species threatened with extinction, and watch eagerly to see if I lay an egg?
~In “The Stone Axe and the Muskoxen” essay

Every six months I read this book, and every time I do something ends up as a blog article. The first time, it was a rail against the lack of proper critique in science fiction, something that from what I can see hasn’t changed a bit since the essay that inspired me was written. This read-through, I penned my own opinion on where to find that elusive image of humanity in fiction known as Mrs. Brown. Next time - who knows?

The advice here is eternal; it’s something every writer of science fiction or fantasy should go through at least once, every teacher of how to write should treat as a reference book, and anyone merely interested in the written word should at least consider skimming. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Ravyn

Thanks again to Ravyn for her wonderful review of The Language of the Night.  Now I’m going to have to add another book on my To Be Read list!  Again, be sure to visit Ravyn at her site, Exchange of Realities.  ~Hava

PS Do you have a favorite nonfiction book that you’d love to review for my site?  I’m open to either exchanging guest posts, giving payments for the guest posts using EntreCard credits, or any other idea that sounds reasonable to you.  Drop me a comment through my contact page and we’ll see what we can figure out.

Earth: The Biography by Iain Stewart and John Lynch was intellectually stimulating.  I know that sounds boring, but just stick with me here.

I had it sitting on my bookshelf for forever (I won’t tell you how long because my boss at work reads this blog sometimes, but believe me, it was a while) and I decided that I was going to clear off all of the books on that shelf that have been there too long.  A clean start with the New Years, and all that.

Boy am I glad I did.  I love it when I read a book, and walk away having a better understanding of how the universe as a whole works.  I knew, in a fuzzy sort of way, that nature is intricately intertwined, and that the world is one giant balancing act, but I don’t think I truly understood it until I read this book.

I think the best part of this book is how it makes the connections between various sciences.  It isn’t just about space, or the beginning of life, or the ocean, or volcanoes, or hurricanes, it’s about all of this and more.  It’s like the joke we’ve all heard a million times, about the blind men who were each trying to describe an elephant, but were only describing the part that they themselves could feel.  Although each blind man was technically getting it right, it’s only when you combine the trunk with the tail, ears, legs, and body that you actually know what an elephant looks like.

I feel like I’ve been learning about each individual part of this world, without being able to “see the big picture.”  Earth: The Biography has shown me the big picture.

This book becomes a grand slam when you add in the beautiful pictures and great writing style.  I was never bored nor lost even once while reading, which you have to admit is quite the feat, considering I am not a geologist (nor do I play one on TV).

Here’s a quotation I loved:

In his book Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, the esteemed American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould offered perhaps the most resonant of metaphors, compressing 4.5 billion years of planetary history into a 24-hour day.  Our planet’s birth takes place on the stroke after midnight, and the “Cambrian explosion” - in which complex animals first start crawling about - doesn’t happen until 10 p.m. 

Dinosaurs don’t show up until after 11 p.m. and are snuffed out 20 minutes before midnight, while modern humans arrive on the scene in the last two seconds of the day.  Human civilization - some 6,000 years of empire, art, religion, and politics - is squeezed into the last tenth of a second.

Talk about mind-boggling.

Earth almost makes me wish we could really go hog wild and actually get cable television, so I could watch the National Geographic channel.  I think I’d really like it.  Unfortunately, I can just see me spending lots of time watching junk instead, so we’d better not.  I am a reader, through and through, so perhaps I wouldn’t get as much out of the National Geographic channel as I do the books anyway.

Earth: The Biography wins the rare 5 out of 5 stars rating from me.

Hava

I picked up Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand while doing check-in.  When I saw the book, I thought, “I’ve always wanted to read that book.  I wonder if I should take it home with me.”  Within seconds, I was pulling another copy of the book out of the book drop.

“Hmm…” I thought.  “Kinda weird two people would return the same book on the same day.”  And then I pulled out another copy.  And another.  All together, I pulled out seven copies of that book - I’m guessing that some local group got together and read it as a book of the month or something. ??? But I took it as a sign that I ought to get my rear in gear and read this book that was apparently so good, they just had to make it into a movie.

Now that I’ve read Seabiscuit, I understand why it became a Hollywood blockbuster.  This book is absolutely fantastic.  The writing is superb, the pictures are terrific (I read the “Special Illustrated Collector’s Edition” which I highly recommend - the pictures definitely added something special to the book) and the pacing impeccable.

By the end of the book, I felt like I knew Seabiscuit as well as an old friend.  And when he died (sorry if I ruined the ending there, but this story did take place in the ’30s) I cried.  I know that’s rather ridiculous (what was I expecting to have happen?) but it’s just that this horse had so much spirit, it was heart-breaking to finally say goodbye to him.

One thing that made this book so fantastic is that it wasn’t just about Seabiscuit.  It was also about the Great Depression, about horseracing, about what it takes to be a jockey, and especially about the people around Seabiscuit, who saw his true potential.  Seabiscuit was doomed to a life of obscurity, until these men saw something in him that no one else did.  I felt like I got to know the men who loved Seabiscuit, and came to love them too.

A couple of things to keep in mind: I don’t particularly count myself as a huge horse lover.  My grandfather had horses that I rode as a child, and they were quite simply some of the orneriest things you’d ever come across.  I got stepped on and thrown off more times than I care to count.  So yes, you can love this book even if you don’t love horses.

Secondly, I have never watched Seabiscuit the movie, so I did not pick up the book with preconceived notions.  Since I have never paid attention to the world of horse racing before, I knew almost nothing about Seabiscuit.

So if even someone like me (with little knowledge or understanding of horses, horse racing, or Seabiscuit in particular) could absolutely love and adore this book, it seems like pretty much anyone could.

Now I just need to watch the movie.  While I’m watching Seabiscuit, I also need to watch Marley and Me, another book that I’ve read and reviewed that’s been turned into a movie.   I really loved Marley the book, so I’m hoping I’ll love the movie just as much.

As for Seabiscuit: An American Legend I give it an easy 5 out of 5 stars.  Heck, I should probably give it a couple of extra stars just ’cause.  If you haven’t read Seabiscuit yet, you need to.  It is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

Hava

Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe by Robin Kerrod & Carole Stott is a flat-out gorgeous book.  I picked it up because the front cover was eye catching and because my inner child still wants to grow up and be an astronaut.

And I fell in love with it from page one.  I have always been a huge astronomy fan, starting from when I would take long walks with my father out in the desert. We’d look at the different constellations, with him giving me info on each one.

So it’s not surprising that I’d be interested in a book about the Hubble telescope.  What is surprising is how much I learned from the book, and how much I enjoyed reading it.  Some of the pictures taken by Hubble are jaw dropping.  Spread over two pages, they are colorful, gorgeous snapshots of deep space.

The pictures are the best part of this book, but that’s not to say that the text isn’t interesting.  The book was loaded with everything from black holes to pulsar stars, and the history behind each discovery.  I felt as if I had taken an in-depth astronomy class by time I finished reading the book.  Even better, it wasn’t dry, boring facts, just thoroughly engrossing reading.

I was really excited to find a site online that allowed me to download a picture from the inside of the book.  Now granted, this picture isn’t one of the larger ones, and it isn’t as colorful as some of the other pictures, and it’ll definitely lose something in translation (from the book to the website to my computer to my website to your computer - whew!!) but at least it gives you an idea of what the book offers.

Isn’t that a cool picture?  One of the things that I was excited to find out is that none of the pictures in the book were “touched up” to provide brighter or more eye-catching colors.  All of the pictures were published exactly how the galaxies look in outer space.  I had no idea our universe was so colorful!

So whether you’re a homeschooling mom who wants to do a section on space, or just someone with even a mild interest in astronomy and the universe, you really need to pick this one up!  I honestly cannot think of a single thing to change about it.  I enjoyed the book from beginning to end.

A rare 5 out of 5 stars for Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe.  Kudos to Robin Kerrod and Carole Stott for a job well done.

Havs

I have to confess: I’ve never read a single Nicholas Sparks book. I own the movie The Notebook, and only found out by pure chance a couple of weeks ago that it was based on a Nicholas Sparks book. I had no clue. I check out a lot of Nicholas Sparks books to patrons, and quite frankly, all of the titles just run together in my mind. I had never paid attention to the fact that one of them was named The Notebook. A keen eye for details, I have not.

So why did I read Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks? Well, I was wandering about Barnes and Noble with my husband, and for once, I was waiting for him to finish reading a book before we could go. (Needless to say, it’s usually the other way around). I wandered over to the biography section, and there was Three Weeks With My Brother. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized that Nicholas Sparks had written anything but fiction. I picked the book up and started reading.

And just loved it. I was laughing (quietly, of course - heaven forbid I get kicked out of B&N!) just a few pages in. He has an excellent writing style, which after I thought about it, realized it only made sense. The guy makes his living by writing. If his writing style left something to be desired, I rather think he wouldn’t be on the New York Times Bestseller list regularly.

I can’t testify myself that his fiction writing style is fantastic, but I can his memoir writing style. His parents were unique in their child-raising techniques, to say the least. The following is a little long, but I think captures the childhood of Nicholas and his older brother, Micah, quite well:

On the first day of kindergarten, Mom walked with Micah to the bus stop; from there forward, he walked by himself. Within a week, he told my mom that some older girls, 7th grade or thereabouts but huge to a kindergartener, had cornered him in the junkyard and taken his milk money. Then they threatened him; they said that if he didn’t bring them a nickel every day, they were going to hurt him.

“They said they’re going to beat me up bad,” Micah cried.

There are a number of ways a parent could handle such a situation. My mom could have started walking him to school regularly, for instance, or walked with him one day, confronted the girls, and threatened to call the police if another incident occurred…Not my mom. Instead, after Micah told his story, she rose from the table and…when she returned, she was carrying an old Roy Rogers lunchbox; rusty and dented, it had been her younger brother’s years before.

“We’ll put your lunch in this tomorrow, instead of a brown bag,” she said, and if they try to take your money, just wind up and hit ‘em with it. Like this…”

Cocking her arm like a lion tamer, she began swinging the lunchbox in wide arcs, demonstrating while my brother sat at the table watching.

The next day, my six-year-old brother marched off to school with his hand-me-down lunchbox. And just as they’d threatened, the girls surrounded him when he wouldn’t give them his nickel. When the first one charged, he did exactly as my mom had told him.

In our bedroom that night, Micah related to me what happened.

“I swung with everything I had,” he said.

“Weren’t you scared?”

With his lips pressed together, he nodded. “But I kept swinging and hitting them until they ran away crying.”

The girls, I might add, never bothered him again.
~Page 25 - 26 of Three Weeks With My Brother

Yup, the mother actually showed her son (a kindergartener) how to beat up a group of 7th graders, and more amazingly still, he succeeded.  The parents were big fans of the Tough Love School of Parenting.

They were…relaxed, I guess is the kindest way to put it, in their parenting style. They gave their kids BB guns, which Nicholas (they called him Nicky as a child) and Micah used with wild abandon until the sheriff came and took them away. To console the children, the parents then gave them a bow and arrow set, with real arrows. None of the wussy plastic shafts and bunted tips for them. The kids played with that until (you guessed it) the sheriff came and took that away too. They came a little too close to killing other people one too many times.

So where does the three weeks part come in? Well, in 2002, Nicholas and Micah embark on a trip around in the world, which lasts for three weeks. It’s quite an adventure, and Nicholas always starts the chapter out in present time, and then jumps back in history to their childhood. It is their autobiography, not just a story about those three weeks in 2002. And I do mean “their” - really, it’s an autobiography of the whole Sparks family, with the emphasis on Nicholas and Micah.

I cried hard and laughed a lot too - it is one of the best autobiographies that I have ever read. Even if you’ve never read a lick of Sparks’ writing and have no interest in learning more about him (hmmm…sounds familiar) if you like autobiographies, you’ll love this book. Heck, if you just love a good story, you’ll love this book.

I’m giving it a rare 5 out of 5 stars. Thanks for the amazing book, Nicky. I just might have to read one of your fiction books someday…

Havs

In honor of Independence Day, I decided that there was no better book that could I read and review than 1776: The Illustrated Edition, David McCullough’s account of the momentous year that our nation first declared its independence.

I had not read 1776 before picking up the illustrated edition from the library, so you’ll want to bear that in mind when reading my review.  I actually have 1776 on my bookshelf (given to me by my older brother several years ago) but I just never got around to reading it.  I spied the illustrated edition at the library a couple of weeks ago, and thought it just looked too cool to pass up. I’m so glad I checked it out!

1776: The Illustrated Edition is a large book - over a foot tall and almost 2 inches thick - but it needs that much space to hold all the author wanted to contain.  In a rare move, the book contains 10 different envelopes with a total of 61 pieces of paper that the reader can take out and peruse at their leisure.  Copies of maps, letters, and important documents are in the envelopes, and you get the feel that you’re on an archival mission, digging up scraps of paper from the past that are an important part of our history.  It’s really quite cool.

Along with the envelopes and papers, there are also pictures on almost every page of the book - portraits painted of various generals and leaders, or maps drawn by spies of where encampments were made…It’s a visual feast that I thoroughly enjoyed.  It was fascinating for me to read the ledger kept by George Washington as commander-in-chief, and to see the entries made where he paid for spies to collect information.

With all of this visual information, it would have been incredibly easy to go light on the text, but honestly, the story was even more intriguing to me than the pictures.  I read the book in two days, which is really fast even for me, but I just had to know “what happened next.”  I told my husband that, and he drolly replied, “We won the war, honey.” Thanks, babe.

Mr. McCullough has an absolutely amazing ability to make his readers feel as if they are living what he’s saying.  The story of taking Boston from the British literally had me on the edge of my seat.  It was a daring exploit that could have so easily gone wrong.  After I finished that story, I thought, “That was like the plotline for a Hollywood blockbuster!”

It was Mr. McCullough’s storytelling abilities that made me feel that way.  I’m definitely going to be reading more of his books, including 1776.  I’ll make sure to review it on here when I do.

Meanwhile, 1776: Illustrated Edition was just the reminder I needed this 4th of July that the founders of this country sacrificed and struggled and died so we could be free.  Several people, including George Washington, talk about how they are fighting for the millions who are yet unborn, so they could have freedom.

They fought for me.

I have never been so thankful for America and our founding fathers, as I was when I finished this book.

5 out of 5 stars.  For the budding historians out there, or anyone interested in American history, this book is an absolute cannot miss.

Hava

In the cheapskate community, Amy Dacyczyn reigns supreme. And it’s not hard to see why, when you flip through her books.

Amy originally started out by producing a newsletter with tips she thought were helpful. She eventually put those tips into books, and produced three amazing books that every tightwad in the country owns (bought off eBay at a discounted price, of course). They are (originality in naming not being her strong suit) The Tightwad Gazette I, The Tightwad Gazette II, and (drumroll please!) The Tightwad Gazette III. I know, you didn’t see it coming, did you? Neither did I.

Lack of originality aside, there is little here to criticize. Seriously. This is the frugal person’s Bible. Too often, a “how-to-be-frugal” book will simply regurgitate the same tips over and over again. (Great example here. Or here’s another one that did it too, although not to the same extent.) How many times can people say, “Save up money and pay cash for big items” before publishers start to say, “Wait a minute, I think this has been covered before”?

Apparently a lot.

Amy stands at the pinnacle of frugalness for a very good reason: None of her “tips” are recycled stuff that someone slapped together from an hour of Googling. Amy never takes the easy way out by saying, “I’ve heard that it’s cheaper to…”

Instead, she sits down with a calculator and figures out, down to the penny, how much something will cost. And then she does it again the other way. Math is not my strong suit, so she completely lost me when it came to some of her calculations, but I was mightily impressed by her conclusions.

Here’s an excerpt on freezing food in bulk that illustrates that point nicely:

The first step was purchasing a humongous, $7.99, 2,000 foot-roll of 12-inch-wide clear plastic wrap from a warehouse store. One could make the argument that free bread bags are cheaper, but this wrap costs just 4/10ths of a cent per foot and allows a stretched-tight wrap that gives good protections from freezer burn. If this quantity is too much for you, we found that store-brand plastic wraps are 6/10ths of a cent. (But be aware that name-brand wrap costs as much as 2 and 3/10ths of a cent per foot.)

Am I just the laziest person alive? I never, no never, would have thought to calculate something like that down to the tenth of a penny.  She does this constantly.  Reading her books is like peering into the mind of a frugal genius, truly.

If you’re really observant (as are all of my readers, naturally) you might have noticed that I reviewed book #3 first.  I did that to make the point that you don’t have to read these books in order.  She does refer back to stories in previous books occasionally, but she always makes sure to give enough of the backstory that you’re not lost.

My only gripe (boring name aside) is that there isn’t anything more to read.  Amy Dacyczyn has retired, and is no longer producing newsletters, books, or even a simple blog. Others have tried to fill the gap by producing their own books and blogs, but none of them are as good as The Frugal Zealot.

Amy, we miss ya.

5 out of 5 stars

Hava

Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan was an absolute joy of a book.  I laughed so hard I cried, and then did it all over again three pages later.  And then again five pages after that.  At one point I was doubled up on the bed, gasping for air, as the tears streamed down my cheeks.  I don’t know if it’s because I have two terrible dogs of my own (as I briefly mentioned in my review of Be the Pack Leader) or if it’s just because John’s that darn funny and would be to everyone, but either way, I adored this book.

The greatest part of all is, I didn’t want to read it.  Have you ever heard about a movie or book that you knew would be a real tear jerker, so you purposefully never watched/read it, because you didn’t want to cry and go on the emotional rollercoaster that a truly wonderful story puts you on?  When Titanic came out into movie theaters, I didn’t want to go watch it, because I knew I’d cry.  I went anyway, and sure enough, I bawled.  I haven’t watched the movie since, despite owning it (I won in it a radio contest, but never got the guts to watch it again).

Well, I had heard that Marley and Me was also a tear-jerker, and quite frankly I wasn’t in the mood to cry.  So it sat on my bookshelf for several weeks.  Then I looked at my schedule of books (yes, I’ve gotten to the point where I have so many books that I want to read, that I have actually written up a schedule to keep track - I’m pathetic, don’t remind me) and groaned when I saw Marley and Me on the list, up next.  I pulled the book off the shelf and decided that if I was going to suffer through reading the book, I might as well enjoy a nice long soak in the bathtub while doing it.

Well, I read until the water got freezing cold, and then just kept going.  I was mesmerized by the story, and laughing so hard I thought I’d surely burst a blood vessel or two before the book was done.  I’ve been having good luck with journalists lately - perhaps I should start looking specifically for autobiographies written by a journalist, because they seem to be of a much higher quality than a regular “first-time” book by an amateur.  Ironically enough, both of the journalists-turned-authors that I’ve read lately (Jeff Gammage and John Grogan) work for the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Just how many novelists do they have working there?

Anyway, back to the book, and an example of a great snippet: Basically, John had given his wife, Jenny, a plant as a gift.  A plant she killed off in no time flat.  She got upset about that, and decided that they needed to get a dog, because she was worried that if she couldn’t keep a plant alive, how could she raise a child?  So she wanted to get a dog to practice on before advancing to an “actual” child.  Here’s the story in his words - see if you agree with me on the funny quotient:

 …she promptly went on to kill my gift to her with an assassin’s coldhearted efficiency.  Not that she was trying to; if anything, she nutured the poor thing to death.  Working on the assumption that all living things require water, but apparently forgetting that they also need air, she began flooding the plant on a daily basis.

“Be careful not to overwater it,” I had warned.

“Okay,” she had replied, and then dumped on another gallon.

The sicker the plant got, the more she doused it, until finally it just kind of melted into an oozing heap.  I looked at its limp skeleton in the pot by the window and thought, “Man, someone who believes in omens could have a field day with this one.”

Now here she was, somehow making the cosmic leap of logic from dead flora in a pot to living fauna in the pet classifieds.  Kill a plant, buy a puppy.  Well, of course, it made perfect sense.

~Page 3 of Marley and Me

I laughed hard at that, because my husband and I made the same (not-so-logical) leap.  To a woman who is worried about becoming a mom for the first time, killing a plant is a very worrisome thing. Thus, getting a dog to practice on only makes sense.  Right?  Right.

So that’s how John and Jenny ended up with Marley, the goofiest, most neurotic, and fiercely loyal dog that ever walked the earth.  His antics put my two dogs to shame, and I started to realize that on a scale of 1 - 10, with Marley being a 13, my dogs are really only a 4 or so.  They have never torn up a couch cushion, mattress, or door (yes, you read that right: A door.  Marley used to eat his way through wooden doors.  And drywall.  And electrical wiring.  And anything else he deemed interesting).  My dogs yank and pull on a walk, and sometimes they escape out the front door when we don’t want them to, but really, in comparison to Marley’s antics, my dogs are full-blown saints.

If you’re an animal lover, you’ll absolutely adore this book.  And even if you’re not a dog owner/lover, the humor and the fast-paced read (I read it in roughly two and a half hours) will make this worth it to pick up.  John Grogan is an extremely talented author, and I hope to be hearing more from him in the future.

5 out of 5 stars.  I would not change a thing about this book.

Havs

PS If you do love dogs, make sure to check out the Canine Connection here at Today - great blog for the dog lovers out there!

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

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand up to the Facts by Popular Mechanics is an excellent book on one of the biggest conspiracies out there right now. Move over UFO’s, forget JFK - did the federal government and/or another “shadowy group” orchestrate September 11, 2001? The resounding answer is no, and this book explains exactly why that is.

I had read several websites claiming to have inside knowledge on the federal government’s involvement in 9/11, and when I read their claims, it did sound plausible. Why did the 7th tower fall? Why didn’t someone intercept Flight 93? But despite their claims to be laying out the “true facts” of the case, the side “no one” wants you to know, I was fairly certain that something was missing here. The biggest question in my mind was the fact that it would have taken huge manpower to pull off a stunt like this, to coordinate it to look like an Al Qaeda job. Hundreds of people would have had to have been in on it. What are the chances that all of them would have kept quiet for all of this time? I’ve heard the saying that the only way to have three people keep a secret is not to tell the secret to two of them. How about keeping hundreds of people quiet? No way.

So I read this book with relish, because I was interested in seeing some real facts on what happened on 9/11. It was extremely well written, with a great format, and no technical jargon at all but instead laid out in layman’s terms. It went through conspiracy theory by conspiracy theory, and blew each of them to little smithereens. If you have any doubts about what happened on 9/11 - if you’ve read one too many wild conspiracy websites and started to wonder if what you’d read was true - you need to read this book. If you’re interested to see what Rosie and Charlie Sheen are blathering about, you need to read this book. Your opinion of them and their intelligence will fall immeasurably after reading it (and I like Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men. I just try to ignore his political views if at all possible. ;-)) If you want a book to explain why things happened the way they did (why didn’t we shot down the second plane when we realized that they were being used as missiles, why did the 7th tower fall when no plane struck it, etc) then you need to read this book.

I thought it was an excellent and quick read - I give it 5 stars!

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I ran across Don’t Call Them Ghosts: The Spirit Children of Fontaine Manse on accident at the library tonight, and decided that it looked interesting enough to preview on my 15 minute break. I was instantly hooked. It was almost physically painful to close the book after 15 minutes - I wanted to know what happened next!! I took the book home and finished it in about 2 hours (it’s a pretty quick read - simple narration, and only 255 pages long).

The true story is of a family who moved into a house and two days later found out (in a very dramatic fashion) that it was haunted by ghosts. As time passed, Mrs. McConnell eventually figured out that there were three of them, and they were all children. Although she was quite terrified of them at first, she eventually realizes that the children are harmless, and she ends up calling them her “other children” and loves them as much as she loves her own children.

Most ghost stories are about terrible hauntings where the ghosts do horrible things to the inhabitants of the house - this book was not like that in the slightest. Sweet, simple, and cozy is how I would describe both the book and the author. She was quite hilarious when it came to writing up her inner dialog - she would talk along to herself, calling herself a “dumb butt” for not understanding something fast enough, and often said that she was just a simple country girl. Mrs. McConnell is unbelievably believable in this book. I could see myself curling up with a cup of hot cocoa and talking with her like an old friend - she comes across as being very approachable and down to earth. A down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth woman who just so happens to love three children she can’t see or hear.

My only small quibble with the book is the fact that there are so many mistakes in the printing of it - misplaced quotation marks are the worst offenders, although misplaced apostrophes and commas also rate high. I don’t know if this was a mistake on the author’s part or the layout person in charge of printing, but either way, the editor in me had a hard time with that. But overall, this is one of the best books that I’ve read in a very long time. I give it 5 out of 5 stars, and highly recommend that if you’re interested in ghosts or spirits at all, to pick this one up. And make sure to pick up a box of Kleenexs too!

Two giant thumbs up!

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