Nonfiction Book Reviews

~~~~~~~~~~~

I first heard about Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey With His Wordless Daughter by Robert Rummel-Hudson from a patron who was returning the book. He said that his wife read it, and thought it was excellent. Intrigued, I checked it out and brought it home, only to promptly forget about it.

It sat on my shelf for a while, until a couple of days ago, when I finally decided that I needed to either read it or return it. I figured I’d give it the first chapter to prove its worth, or it was going back to the return bin.

Well, I read it and fell in love with it.

Schuyler (pronounced “Sky-ler”) is a beautiful little girl (yes, that is her on the front cover of the book) who was born with an extremely rare disease that robs her of the ability to speak coherently. It also causes her to have only partial small muscle control, which means that it’s difficult for her to use sign language.  She does it, but it’s hard and some of the more difficult signs are out of her reach. And in the other cases of people afflicted with this disease, there is usually mental retardation, although they aren’t positive that’s something Schuyler has been afflicted with.

But up until Schuyler’s 18-month birthday, nobody realized anything was wrong with her. She was a smiley, happy baby who won the hearts of everyone around her; she was able to walk and eat like other babies, and she did make noises. During a routine check-up with the doctor, however, the doctor started to probe deeper and they started to realize that not all was right in the land of Oz. It took several years and many, many tests to finally receive a correct diagnosis.

The eventual result of the testing and diagnosis was that they realized that Schuyler was never going to be able to speak like “a normal person.”  Up to that point, they had been hoping that with enough therapy and work, Schuyler would eventually be able to speak clearly.  So they started looking at options that would provide Schuyler a way to communicate with the rest of the world.

Like I said before, sign language is something she can do, but not well, so they went after a high-tech option that if Schuyler would have been born 20 years earlier, never would have been available to her.  It was an “alternative augmentative communication device” or an AAC device.

An AAC in its most basic form allows the person to push buttons and then the device says the sentence outloud.  The picture I have posted is of the latest and most high tech version yet, the Vantage Lite, but at $7,295 it isn’t cheap.  The funding would normally come from a school district, but the majority of Schuyler’s Monster is spent chronicling their fight to get an AAC for Schuyler, and to get the teacher support needed for this type of device to work.

So that’s the story in a nutshell. Although it’s a sad story, on the surface there isn’t much there to grab you and hold your attention. But it’s the writing that really does it for me. Rummel is a blogger (check out Schuyler’s Monster blog) and in fact this book grew out of that blog, not the other way around. His writing style causes this to be one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year. I cried, I laughed, and everything in between.

I cannot tell you how thoroughly I enjoyed Schuyler’s Monster.  It is rare to find an author who is willing to be so open about his life and his feelings.  Life wasn’t hunky-dory.  The family went through a lot, and they almost didn’t make it.  I appreciated Rummel being willing to tell it exactly how it was, and to tell it so well, I cared about them through out it all.

For a darling video of Schuyler using her very first AAC (or “box of words” as Rummel calls it) check out the following.  Keep in mind, she’s 5 years old in this video.

I give Schuyler’s Monster 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Good luck, Schuyler - I know you’re going places, girl.

Havs

Although I tend to focus on adult nonfiction books, I do occasionally review children’s nonfiction books too. This is one of those books - if you’re interested, you can find other reviews of children’s books here.

Before I started at the library, I had never heard of the “You Wouldn’t Want to…” series, but now I see the books pass through the library all the time.

You Wouldn’t Want to be an Aztec Sacrifice by Fiona MacDonald is just one of many in the series - other examples are You Wouldn’t Want to be a Viking Explorer or You Wouldn’t Want to Work on the Railroads.  They tend to focus on the more gory aspects of history; the things that a boy in elementary school would think is fascinating, but which the “normal” textbooks tend to pass over.

In You Wouldn’t Want to be an Aztec Sacrifice: Gruesome Things You’d Rather Not Know, the author takes you from the beginning: Who the Aztecs are and who “you” are (yes, everything happens in the present tense, and it all happens to you - the author tells you “Now you are doing this.  Now you are feeling that.”  Etc.  Except not in a boring way, promise.)  Eventually, you get captured in battle and eventually end up as a human sacrifice to the gods (and in case you were wondering, no, no last minute save happens - you really do die as a sacrifice.  I had kinda thought that a “But wait!” moment would happen, and you’d be saved.  Nope - you die.)

The illustrations are bright, colorful, and eye-catching.  I found a two-page spread online that I could download, so here’s two pages in the middle of the book:

I found that the book was both gruesome and humorous. That’s not normally a combination I find in reading materials, but I think the book will strike just the right chord for its intended audience - 4th to 6th grade boys. It is historically accurate (okay, not so much the pictures per say, but the facts and history in the book) and for kids who normally find history “bor-ring!” and “Can’t we do something else?” this might be just the ticket to spike their interest.

MacDonald’s right - I don’t want to be an Aztec sacrifice, but I did enjoy this book, and I would want to read more in the same series.  With an eye towards my eventual job as a teacher, I have to say that I’m excited about this series - I think this is a great way to connect with kids who might not otherwise care.  I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

Hava

I picked up The Polar Bear Waltz and Other Moments of Epic Silliness by the editors of Outside magazine because really, who could resist that cover photo? I thought it looked like a book I could get a kick out of, which would be a nice counterpart to some of the dark and depressing books that I read.

First, the idea behind the book:

The editors of Outside magazine put together a “Parting Shot” concept for their magazine, where each issue ended with a funny, mind-boggling, and/or breath-taking picture. Unlike most pictures in magazines where there are captions to explain what’s happening in the picture (or at least supply a funny line) these pictures are left to stand by themselves. The editors had this to say on the back flap of the book:

In many cases, the situations are so surreal or outrageous that they beg for more explanation. Yet at the same time, the viewer understands that captions would be a letdown, for the imagination supplies a better narrative.

I don’t know if I agree - there were more than a couple that I would have loved for some sort of explanation, but overall, I have to admit that it was fun to come up with my own ideas of what was happening in the picture.

Most of the photos were fantastic - I especially loved the one of the video camera sticking out of the mouth of a lion, taken in Kenya - but there were a couple of duds where I wondered what the editors were thinking. Who found that funny, and why?

The Polar Bear Waltz is short (less than 100 pages), with only 67 pictures, and no captions, so it ends up being a 10 minute look through, something to chuckle over, share with anybody sitting nearby, and then forget about by noon tomorrow. Don’t buy this one - if you really want a pick-me-up, check it out of the library and save yourself the money.

3.5 stars out of 5

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

Okay, first off, I just wanted to say I have never read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.  I have heard that A Brief History of Time is supposed to be the more technical book out of the two, whereas the The Universe in a Nutshell is geared towards people who are not first and foremost scientists.

It is for that reason that I don’t envision myself ever reading A Brief History of Time, since I hardly understood The Universe in a Nutshell.  Here is an example of a mind-bending point that Hawking makes in Universe:

Yang-Mills theory is an extension of Maxwell theory that describes interactions in two other forces called the weak and strong nuclear forces.  However, ground state fluctuations have a much more serious effect in a quantum theory of gravity.  Again, each wavelength would have a ground state energy.  Since there is no limit to how short the wavelengths of the Maxwell field can be, there are an infinite number of different wavelengths in any region of spacetime and an infinite amount of ground state energy.  Because energy density is, like matter, a source of gravity, this infinite energy density ought to mean there is enough gravitational attraction in the universe to curl spacetime into a single point, which obviously hasn’t happened.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 46.

Obviously.

I should confess: My last science class was in the 10th grade, where I took biology.  I’m not exactly a science expert.  But if I understand right, I’m just the type of person Hawking was trying to target with this book - someone interested in science and wanting to learn more about the deeper principles and ideas being explored, but who doesn’t have a PhD in anything, let alone theoretical physics.  (I didn’t realize until I started adding links to that sentence, how many book reviews I’ve written on here about books on science, as compared to books about art [Art books reviewed: 0.]  You can tell what I am really interested in.)

In Hawking’s defense, these ideas are extraordinarily complicated, and that’s not exactly his fault.  I can’t imagine a harder task than trying to explain quantum physics to your average Joe, and that’s what Hawking was attempting to do.

I do give him kudos for sprinkling humor throughout the book.  He talks about bets that he’s made with other scientists on obscure scientific theories, added lots of drawings with little green men in them, and then topped it all off with dry humor comments that added spice to the book.  Here’s an example:

It would be possible to detect the radiation from much smaller and hotter black holes, but there don’t seem to be many of them around.  That is a pity.  If one were discovered, I would get a Nobel Prize.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 120.

Oh shucks.  If only there were more black holes in our general vicinity.

I read on Amazon that some people were upset with how much Hawking “dumbed down” the science, and wrote scathing remarks that if you knew anything about science, you could just skip this book because nothing in it would be new.  Apparently, I know less than nothing about science (no surprise there).

In the end, I give The Universe in a Nutshell 4 stars out of 5.  If you’re really into this kind of thing, and have the patience to try to unravel some of the theories that Hawking presents, then by all means, enjoy.  There is a lot of information to digest here, if you have the grits and determination to do it.  I liked learning what I could from it, but I doubt I’ll pick it up again.

Hava

PS If you are a fan of all things science like I am, make sure to check out a blogger in the Today.com network who also happens to be a rocket scientist.  Her blog rocks, and is not only informative, but very funny. Hi Stephanie!

Shut Up, I’m Talking (And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government) by Gregory Levey was a downright hilarious book.  I spent at least half of the book laughing uproariously.  I think it rather annoyed my husband, actually.

But here’s the general gist of the book: This is the autobiography of Gregory Levey , who grew up as a secular Jew in Canada.  He went to a Jewish school for elementary and junior high, and then went to regular public school for high school.  So he was raised somewhat in the Jewish background, although he is atheist and doesn’t believe in the Jewish religion, or in God in general.

Well, he decides as a second-year law student that law school was just way, way too boring, and he wants to go join the Israeli Army (yes, this is rather random, but as you’ll see as you read his book, most of his life seems to be have been rather random.  In fact, I’d say that sums up his life in a nutshell: Random).  While waiting for his army stint to begin, he decides that he wants to be an intern at the UN for the Israeli government, and so he spends several months trying to do just that.  He ends up getting a job as a speech writer instead.

His story proceeds from there, and I don’t want to give everything away so I won’t, but can I just tell you again how darn FUNNY this book is?  Usually when I read a book, I try to mark the pages that I think are particularly humorous/heartwarming /touching, or otherwise noteworthy, so I can use the quotes in my review.  For Shut Up, I’m Talking, I realized that I would basically have to quote the entire first chapter.  But I’m just not that dedicated to this job, sorry.

But I will quote from the introduction (the Author’s Note).  Here it is:

As I write this note, things don’t look good in the Middle East.  I’m not sure when you’re reading this, but I assume that things still don’t look good in the Middle East, because they never really do.  If things looked good in the Middle East, it wouldn’t look like the Middle East.  It might look like, say, Canada, with camels.

Having been to the Middle East, and having ridden on a camel, that struck me as particularly funny.  Or perhaps my sense of humor has been seriously screwed up by a lack of sleep lately, who knows.

Although this is a great book about the inside workings of the UN and of the Israeli government, it by no means is a definitive book about what is happening in the Middle East.  In fact, that is rather the point of the book: The author realizing that there really is no plan when it comes to politics and policy.  Everyone in the Israeli government is basically playing it by ear, 24/7.  It’s a disheartening, eye-opening, and laughter-inducing book.

I couldn’t put it down.  4.75 out of 5 stars.  Great book - I’m hoping this won’t be the last we hear of Gregory Levey.

Hava

Before I get started on today’s book review, I just wanted to give a special thanks to a fellow Today.com blogger, Michael Nolan at Frugal Living Tip of the Day.  He was kind enough to make a new header for this blog, free of charge, and I now have a header that matches the subject of my blog, instead of a generic one.  I’ve already had compliments on it!  So many thanks to Michael, and for my readers, if you’re wanting to find a great site full of frugal tips, Michael’s is well written, and well done.  Be sure to head on over there.

So on to my book review: I originally checked out A.J. Jacob’s book, The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World from the library and gave it to my father to read. I figured if anyone would understand and love the quest to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica from beginning to end, it would be my dad. I didn’t read the book myself though.

Then I checked out The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible and it came home to sit on my shelf of books-I’m-going-to-read-someday. (And no, I don’t think the similarities in the subtitles are a coincidence…)

My sister came over, saw the book, thought it looked interesting, and checked it out of the library herself (my copy of the book eventually being returned unread). She really liked it, and told me I needed to read it. So I checked it out again. Returned it unread again.

The fourteenth time’s a charm - I finally read it. Funny thing was, as soon as I started reading, I was thoroughly engrossed in the story. He has an engaging writing style - easy to read, with lots of quirky humor and strange obsessions to round out his personality. Obviously, if he’s willing to read a 32-volume set of encyclopedias, or live an entire year as Biblically as possible (up to and including eating locusts, even if they were chocolate covered) then you know he’s not your average Joe.

My sister and I discussed the book and came to the conclusion: This book is great for raising questions in your mind; not so great at answering them. Why did God say that you can’t wear clothing of mixed fibers (such a blend of cotton and linen)? Or that you can’t touch a woman while she’s having her period? Or that you’re supposed to blow a horn at the beginning of each month?

I know that Christians don’t follow these rules now, but why were they put in place originally? What do these rules do for the human race?

A.J. does try to find answers to some of these questions, although more often than not, he doesn’t succeed. He is focusing on these questions because the majority of the book focuses on the Old Testament (A.J.’s family is lapsed Jewish, although A.J. is agnostic himself). He does spend several months on the New Testament, however.

He discusses a lot of red-hot social issues like abortion and homosexuality, and also things like literalism (the idea that everything in the Bible is 100% true, vs the idea that some of it and/or all of it is an allegory), and creationism (the idea that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that God did create the Earth in a mere six days).

Although he pretty much always comes down on the side of a more liberal point-of-view on these issues, it isn’t in an antagonistic fashion, and I don’t think too many people would get mad over his conclusions (they may not agree, but I don’t think they’d get angry at him for how he phrased his viewpoint).

He isn’t all serious - he tells some great stories that had me laughing.  He lives in New York City, and relates the following story about trying to buy some Bibles from a Christian store:

He shows me tables covered with Bibles of all shapes, sizes, and linguistic slants - from the plain-spoken English of the Good News Bible to the majestic cadence of the Jerusalem Bible.

He points out one Bible I might want. It’s designed to look exactly like a Seventeen magazine: An attractive (if long-sleeved) model graces the front, next to cover lines like “What’s Your Spiritual IQ?” Open it up and you’ll find sidebars such as “Rebecca the Control Freak.”

“This one’s good if you’re on the subway and are too embarrassed to be seen reading the Bible,” says Chris. “Because no one will ever know it’s a Bible.” It’s an odd and poignant selling point. You know you’re in a secular city when it’s considered more acceptable for a grown man to read a teen girl’s magazine than the Bible. ~ Page 9 of The Year of Living Biblically

Too true.

Overall, I thought it was an interesting look at one of the most influential books of all time, and I think that although The Year of Living Biblically may not be for everybody, it was well worth the read for me. I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Now I’m going to have to go read The Know-It-All…

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

I hesitated when I first saw this book doing check-in - it looked funny, on one hand (I sped-read the backside, and it seemed like something my Handsome Older Brother would write, quite frankly) but on the other hand, “Poo Bomb”? Seriously? That was pretty crude and yucky, and I don’t tend to like a crude sense of humor.

But in the end, I picked up and brought home The Poo Bomb: True Tales of Parental Terror by Jeff Vogel, and I did read it. I ended the book much the same way that I started it: With mixed feelings.

Yes, there were some pretty funny spots, but overall, I just didn’t appreciate the swear words (LOTS of swear words!!) or the yucky sense of humor. I honestly wish I hadn’t picked it up. I almost didn’t review it on here (now I have to actually claim that I read this book!) but I finally decided in the end that I needed to review it, just so that others could decide for themselves.

It’s a 921, which means it’s an autobiography. Jeff Vogel chronicles the first year of his daughter’s life in a journal - week by week, he goes through what she learned to do and what funny things (he thinks) happened that week (like the Poo Bomb diaper, or her spitting up on other people, etc). Even being childless like I am, I could relate to some of it, and I laughed pretty hard in parts.

Here’s one section that was particularly funny to me, mostly because basically the same thing has happened to my husband and I multiple times:

George and Sharon Vogel - My Parents
My parents. Good, decent people. Who wanted grandchildren. A lot. I soon realized that we had to be very careful talking to them. Actual conversation:

Me: Mom, we got great news.
Mom: Mariann is pregnant!
Me: Uhhh, no. We got a new bedroom set.
~Page xvii of The Poo Bomb

Yeah, I definitely relate.

I do have to say, I feel really sorry for the daughter. When she grows up and people find out that her father wrote a book about her as a baby, forget Prom or Homecoming or anything else remotely sociable. No guy is going to want to go out with the “Poo Bomb Girl.” Lots of pity there.

There are simply funnier people out there (like Dave Barry) and certainly less crude books out there for you to enjoy. I would say that the average person ought to skip this one.

In the end, The Poo Bomb only gets 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Hava
Who can’t believe she’s actually claiming to have read this book…

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

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!

WordPress for Dummies: A Reference for the Rest of Us by Lisa Sabin-Wilson was one of the best reference books I’ve ever read on computers/blogging/website building, and believe me, I’ve read a lot of books on that subject!  I have three brainy brothers who are computer geniuses and although I’m not stupid when it comes to computers, I know that I still have a lot to learn.  I am in awe of their level of knowledge, and have read book after book on HTML, PhotoShop, and website building in general, hoping to catch up to them someday. Well, today is not that day, but I am a little closer, thanks to this book.

First off, as in all great reference books, the author injects a lot of humor into the book, which is fantastic.  Example: In the introduction, there are a string of headers with paragraphs underneath each one, “About This Book,” “Conventions Used in This Book,” etc.  Then comes the next header and paragraph:

What You Are Not to Read

Don’t read supermarket tabloids.  They’re certain to rot your brain.

As I explained previously, this books covers the details of how to set up, use, and maintain the software for the three free versions of WordPress.  I don’t intend for you to read this book from cover to cover. (Unless you’re my mother - then I won’t forgive you if you don’t.) Page 3, WordPress for Dummies

It’s the blasé transition there that I just loved.  If you didn’t think that was funny, you need to go have your pulse taken at the doctor’s office - it could be that you’re not actually alive and breathing any longer.  In that case, see the bright light?  Walk into it.

For the alive people out there, you’ll want to make sure to pick this book up if you have any interest in starting your own blog, or if you are blogging for a company and want to have a better idea of how the whole process works.  Why? you say.  Glad you asked! If you’re a blogger for a company, you probably don’t have to worry about things like picking your own theme and plugins, or how to set up a blog, just like you don’t have know how to change the oil or fix the engine in your car in order to drive it.  But you should know how to do these things (or at least the basics) because it makes you a better driver, and in our case, a better blogger.  (BTW, this is a case of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, because as I mentioned before, on a good day, I might be able to tell you where the engine is at in my truck.  Maybe.)  Luckily, my interest level is much higher when it comes to blogging than it is automobiles.

So back to WordPress for Dummies.  Lisa is not only funny, but she also knows what the heck she’s talking about.  She’s got the “street creds” as they say - she’s got tons of experience doing what she’s talking about, she isn’t just spouting what she’s heard from others.  She is also uber-patient and takes you through every tiny step of the process for setting up all three types of WordPress blogs: WordPress.com, WordPress.org, and WordPress Multi-User.  She explains the positive and negative aspects to each of these choices, and in general makes you a lot more comfortable with the whole thing.

The book does live up to its name: WordPress for Dummies.  If you’re an administrator of a large and popular WordPress blog or group of blogs, there’s probably little in here that you didn’t know already.  It isn’t for veterans of the field to learn from.  But if you’re just starting out into the big, bad blogging world, then this book will be right up your alley.  I started a blog back in March of 2007 with WordPress.com (I transferred the blog over from Blogspot, actually) and I was SOOO lost when I first did that.  I wish I had this book back then - it would have made my life much easier.  Then I transitioned that same blog over to WordPress.org onto its own domain, and was SOOO lost all over again, LOL!  I had to learn the hard way, and by bothering nice people (like, say, my brothers!) to help me.  I would have been 1000% better off reading this book.

Even now that I’m running two personal blogs, managing a group of 50 blogs, and writing on this blog, I still learned from the book.  It also clarified some things that I hadn’t quite understood before.  Now that I understand the basics, I’m going to delve into more complicated matters: Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, anyone?

I can tell what I’m going to be reading next…

4.5 out of 5 stars (marked down slightly because it was published right before WordPress released a huge new advancement in the admin panel of WordPress [think the change from XP to Vista - it was that kind of big], rendering most of the screenshots worthless and/or very dated.  The publishing company did not time that well.  Sorry, Lisa!!)  Other than that, not many complaints!

Havs

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