Will Love for Crumbs, by Jonna Ivin

Will Love For Crumbs by Jonna Ivin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Will Love For Crumbs, by Jonna Ivin is an interesting memoir of a woman whose life was anything but easy. Raised by an alcoholic mother (her father disappeared when she was young), Ivin and a boyfriend get a house so that they can care for her now aging mother. However, when her mother dies, Ivin and her boyfriend split up.

Ivin becomes a volunteer with the Red Cross, helping to clean up an area hit by a hurricane. It is while doing this that she meets Chris, a charming man with more stories than substance. Ivin and Chris soon become involved. At first, she feels that he is the love of her life; it soon becomes apparent that he is the man she should have run from.

Compelling and, at times, almost frightening, the reader roots for Ivin, hoping she will become strong enough to leave. Does she? Read and find out...

The only real down side to this book is that it ends too abruptly. If one is looking for a happily-ever-after book, the ending might disappoint, in that we don't know whether she ever finds Mr. Right. But then, this is real life.

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River of Hidden Dreams, by Connie May Fowler

River of Hidden Dreams by Connie May Fowler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some writers have a knack of weaving a story that draws a reader in so seamlessly that it's difficult to put the book down. That is what Connie May Fowler did with River of Hidden Dreams. Her second novel, published in 1994, River of Hidden Dreams is the story of Sadie Hunter, a forty-something woman whose past haunts her, keeping her captive, even as she keeps Carlos, her passionate Cuban lover, at arm's length.

As a child, Sadie lived on the boat that her Mulatto grandfather built with her mother and Cherokee grandmother. Years after her women die, dancing, during a storm, Sadie is back living on the boat, giving tourists rides while spinning stories of her history. Even as she is afraid to let anyone close, fearing another unbearable loss, Carlos, a man who has experienced his own heartache, loves her, helping her to finally face her demons in order to heal.

Weaving Sadie's voice with those of her mother and grandparents into a beauty story, River of Hidden Dreams is a story that will haunt the reader well after the book is finished.

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Wild: From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of us have, at one time or another, wondered what we would do if we had several months of free time. I had thought it might be interesting to walk the Appalacian Trail; Cheryl Strayed decided, instead, to walk the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which she chronicled in her memori Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

In her early twenties, Strayed went through a rough several years: the death of her mother to a recently diagnosed cancer, the slow drifting away from her step-father and siblings, and the end of her first marriage. Needing to get away and find her center, Strayed decided to hike the PCT, a feat made even more remarkable when one considers that she had not hiked any distance prior to starting out.

Wild is, for the most part, an intense, quick read. The beginning of the book describes her mother's relatively sudden death after an advanced cancer diagnosis and how Strayed cares for her mother is slightly reminiscent of parts of Anna Quindlen's novel One True Thing. While this section seemed to drag a little, as well as the break-up of Strayed's marriage, both sections are needed to help the reader understand her state of mind and why she felt the need to get out and hike the PCT. Her descriptions of the trail, the people she meets along the trail - who are somewhat few and far between and predominantly men - and the sense of peace the hike gave her make the book an interesting read.

There were only a few places in the book that, I felt, Strayed could have condensed. One place was when she and her brothers had to put down her late mother's old, sick horse, Lady. It was obviously quite traumatic for Strayed. However, she goes into way more detail of the horse's death than is necessary. Also, near the end of the book, she met up with a man working at a bar who she got to know very intimately during the few days they were together. That section, too, could have been condenses; suffice it to say that what she's written of the encounter would have made a fantastic erotic short story. Then there's the heroin experimentation. Those three sections - or, rather, the elaboration in those three sections - make Wild questionable for very young or very sensitive readers.

This is not to say that the book should be ignored. It is, for the most part, a truly amazing memoir, one that should be read more than once.

View all my reviews Note: To read my review about two books on hiking the Appalacian Trail, click here. There, you'll read aboutAWOL On The APpalachian Trail, by David Miller, and Dennis Blanchard's Three Hundred Zeros.

Kidowed, by Jessica Kenley

Kidowed by Jessica Kenley


What would you do if you outlived your children? How would this affect you? In Kidowed, Jessica Kenley tells how the death of her two children to a rare genetic disease affected her.

Kenley had planned to divorce her husband of two years when she discovers she's pregnant with their son. After Ethan's birth, Kenley learns that her son has epidermolysis bullosa, a disease that affects his skin. According to www.debra.org, approximately 200 children a year are born with e.b.; the disease can range anywhere from mild to extremely severe. Ethan dies from the disease. Not long afterwards, Kenley becomes pregnant with her daughter, Kaylee, who also dies from e.b.

The first half of the book deals mainly with Kayley's life and death, both singly as in comparison to Ethan's life with the disease, while the second half deals with how Kenley copes with the after-effects of her children's deaths.

Jessica Kenley's family and her sense of humor both help her through the dark days of dealing with her children's illness and the after-effects where she tries getting her life back together. Early on, Kenley writes, "I got married. Two years later, right after we had decided to get a divorce, I found out I was pregnant. Whoops." She and her husband, "who we'll refer to as 'Bobo the sperm guy,'" split up the month before Ethan is born. (She also writes that Joy, her therapist, has told her that "anger is my biggest issue. Who knew?") She also gives most people nicknames, rather than their real names, such as Bobo (her ex-), her friend "Nice," and her Aunt "Sweetheart."

When Kaylee dies, half-way through the book, the reader is left to wonder how Kenley can fill another half a book without her children. While she writes how she falls apart on various levels, and how she attempts to cope, Kenley could have drastically shortened the second half of the book. It was almost as though there were two books - before the deaths, and after them. However, there were several places in the second half that I had to scan to keep from putting the book down completely, places where Kenley could have drastically condensed what she was going through in an effort to assuage the pain of her children's deaths.

In the end, though, Kenley writes a sympathetic memoir about the pain of her children's death.

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Evolving Toward Peace: Awakening the Global Heart, by Jalaja Bonheim

Most of us want to find some semblance of peace in our lives, a way to shut up the chattering voice of doubt, anger and/or dissonance in our lives. In Evolving Toward Peace: Awakening the Global Heart, Jalaja Bonheim attempts to lead us toward gaining that peace, while building toward "a peaceful global community" (from the back cover).

While the book's introduction is a little long, it helps give the reader some background on where Bonheim is coming from, both physically and emotionally. My main concern with the intro came from its New Age-y feel, which almost made me put the book down. Bonheim also introduces us here to her idea of "circlework," in which people gather in circles to strengthen their "capacity for heart-thinking." This circlework is her method of helping people find peace.

Near the end of the intro, Bonheim writes, "...Together, we can move...from violence to peace" (page 23). She also recommends that the reader "not try to absorb whole chapters in a single gulp." I found this to be good advice, as it is too easy to become overwhelmed. Much of what is written in Evolving Toward Peace seemed repetitive, making the reader possibly want to skip over sections while missing some of what Bonheim has written.

The body of the book is broken down into four main parts, each with several chapters to read through. Each chapter is filled with anecdotes from Bonheim's observations, as well as quotes from a wide variety of people, places, books and points of view to help drive home the point that each chapter is trying to teach. The chapters then end with several exercises for the reader to do, and which are described fully in Appendix II.

In the end, while much of what Evolving Toward Peace: Awakening the Global Heart has to offer is relevant to helping better one's self, the idea of a "global movement" may be a difficult undertaking with one book, and the New Age-feel may be a turn-off to many of those Bonheim is trying to reach. That said, I would advise a potential reader to check out a copy, as there are portions that, even among skeptics, can help one's understanding of one's self.

Disclaimer: I received this book as part of Goodreads' giveaway program. (Thank you!)

Fox Tracks: A Novel, by Rita Mae Brown

Fox Tracks: A Novel by Rita Mae Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received Fox Tracks: A Novel, by Rita Mae Brown from Goodreads' Giveaway program.

There's an adage that a writer should write what he or she knows. Rita Mae Brown has taken that advice to heart. In her latest "Sister" Jane novel, Fox Tracks, Brown has Sister Jane still living in Albermarle County, Virginia, and reigning over the local hunt club. An equestrian who lives in Virginia and who rides with a hunt club, Ms. Brown has many of her books firmly set in Virginia, with characters noted for their strength and indepence. Brown's Miss Murphy mysteries - my first foray into Ms. Brown's writings - also take place in Virginia, as do many of her non-series books.

In Fox Tracks, Sister Jane and members of her hunt club gather with other hunt clubs for their annual event in Manhattan. The festive mood, however, is dampened with the murder of a local tobacco shop owner. Later, another murder takes place in Boston. Of course, this is not the end of the trail of murders. Even the beloved Sister Jane becomes a target, hunted with more zeal than a hunt club hound chases a fox. Does she smoke out the killer or killers before she becomes a victim? Read this quickly moving book to find out.

There are a few things that bothered me with Fox Tracks, all of which are relatively minor. There are times when Ms. Brown's wording seems a little stilted, with a slightly strange syntax. On page 17 of Fox Tracks, Ms. Brown writes, "Hailing from Lexington, Kentucky, where she was Master of the Woodford Hunt, Jane Winegardner walked across the ballroom straight toward Sister,..." It would have made more sense if "Jane Winegardner, the Master of the Woodford Hunt in Lexington, Kentucky, walked across the ballroom..." Meanwhile, on page 18, we learn that Jane "wave[d] at Lynn Lloyd, MFH, from Red Rock in Nevada." Adding the MFH seems to slow down the flow of the words a little. There are several other places where the writing is a little off, but not so much to where the reader would want to walk away from the book.

One thing that Brown does that I have found helpful, both in the Miss Murphy books, as well as Fox Tracks, is the habit of giving a list of characters at the beginning of the book. For a new reader in either the Sister Jane or Miss Murphy series, it helps to know who the characters are we'll encounter along the way. Readers who have followed each series from the start will be able to get a quick idea of how far the characters have come from the previous book, as well as any new characters who might either be a new permanent addition, or simply here for the current book.

Despite the slight quirks in Ms. Brown's writing, Fox Tracks is as enjoyable as other Rita Mae Brown novels and worth the read. Fans will thoroughly enjoy this book, and first time readers may become fans after this novel.

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The Obituary Writer, by Ann Hood

The Obituary Writer: A Novel by Ann Hood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been a fan of Ann Hood's writing for years, ever since reading her novel Somewhere Off The Coast of Maine (1987). So when I stumbled across her book The Obituary Writer: A Novel, I had to read it.

The Obituary Writer is about two women who are faced with life-changing dilemmas, albeit years apart. Clair's dilemma takes place between the November 1960 election of John F. Kennedy and his January 1961 inauguration, while Vivian's happen during the first two decades of the Twentieth century.

Clair and her suburban neighbors are fascinated, bordering on obsessed, with JFK, and his stunning wife Jackie. The neighbors plan to have a party to watch the inauguration on TV, a party that Clair and her husband will miss. Instead, they will be with her mother-in-law to celebrate the other woman's eightieth birthday.

Clair's dilemma is that she is unsure if the child she's carrying is her husband's or her lover's. Her husband managed to catch the two together, and he, too, is unsure whose baby his wife is carrying.

For Vivian, 1906 was the year she lost the love of her life. The San Francisco earthquake strikes while the two are apart. Vivian is sure that her married lover is alive, but she can't find him. Over the next few years, she becomes an obituary writer to learn how to deal with the pain of loss. Finally, with the help of another man, Vivian learns the truth of her long lost love.

Back in the '60s, the reader discovers the link between Clair and Vivian. Part love story, part mystery, The Obituary Writer vaguely resembles Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine in that Hood brings the reader back and forth between two time periods and several women's stories to show the commonality of life.

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Financial Books

Recently, I decided to read through several books geared toward helping one with his or her finances. The books I read through are: How To Reduce Your Debt Overnight: A Simple System To Eliminate Credit Card And Consumer Debt, by Tom Corson-Knowles, How To Beat the Financial Monster At the End of this Book, by Tomny Elam, How To Make Money Online, by Mike Omar, How To Make Your Money from Passive Income Websites in 3 Days, by Dennis Eagle, 701 Money Saving Tips: A Huge List For Frugal Living, by Ron Tomby, and Couponing For Busy People: Learn How to Coupon Without Making it a Full Time Job, by Elle Marshall.

Taking Care of Your Credit

How To Reduce Your Debt Overnight: A Simple System To Eliminate Credit Card And Consumer Debt by Tom Corson-Knowles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How To Reduce Your Debt Overnight: A Simple System To Eliminate Credit Card And Consumer Debt, by Tom Corson-Knowles is a very clear, concise book on eliminating credit card and consumer debt, and definitely one of the better books on the subject.

Unless you're one of the mythical 1%-ers with more money than time to spend it (read: millions, if not billions), there's a good chance that you've struggled with your personal finances at some time in your life. Heck, you might be there now. Most of us have been there. And most of us could benefit from Corson-Knowles' advice throughout this book. Don't have a credit card? Doesn't matter; you'll still find plenty of helpful advice here on how to take charge of your finances.

One of the things Corson-Knowles has the reader do is write down to write put together a financial journal. (I used an old notebook I had lying around.) In this, he has the reader write down his or her monthly income from every source, expenses, debts, assets, goals, and much more. He guides the reader through the process of seeing where one's financial strengths and weaknesses are, then guides us through overcoming the hard parts while keeping the strengths intact.

Definitely worth reading several times, as each time, you're bound to find a few more tidbits to get your finances turned around. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give this book a good, solid 4 - 4 1/2.


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How to Beat the Financial Monster at the End of this Book by Tony Elam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How to Beat the Financial Monster at the End of this Book (Knock Out Past Due Bills and Credit Card Problems) by Tony Elam is another good book to help the consumer get rid of credit card debt and past due bills.

Justin Lukasvige of http://coachradio.tv states in the book's intro, "The plan you follow isn't as important as actually having one to being with. Even more important, is doing the work. How to Beat the Financial Monster at the End of this Book is a great place to start, if you take Tony's advice, create a plan specific to you, and do the work." Fortunately, a lot of the advice in Elam's book is relevant and helpful, though not quite as helpful as Corson-Knowles' book.

On a scale of 1 to 5, this one would rate a 3 1/2 - 4. Definitely a good book to help with one's finances.

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Making Money Online

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE by Mike Omar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How To Make Money Online by Mike Omar is a good book to read through if one wants to make money online. However, while the book shows the reader the steps to go through to make money online with several websites that (theoretically) will pull in money, it is not a magic wand.

This book is best read several times. My first read came across leaving me stuck between awe, excitement, and wonder at the ability to create several websites that might create passive income. It took a second read to see the amount of work it would take and then decide whether it was a path I wanted to follow. This is what most readers will have to decide on their own.

That said, for those who choose to follow Omar's path and put in the amount of work it will take, the advice he gives and the path that he shows seem to be a great place to start. Definitely worth reading several times.

How to Make Your Money from Passive Income Websites in 3 Days by Dennis Eagle
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

How to Make Your Money from Passive Income Websites in 3 Days by Dennis Eagle is a book designed to guide the reader to making money online with websites. However, I found the book to be disappointing.

While the book started out with glowing reviews (the first 10% of the Kindle version of the book), the book itself was a little difficult to get into. The first half of the book announced that if one follows the steps set forth in the book, one could make a decent income using passive income websites in a matter of days. Near the beginning, Eagle mentions using one's websites to teach others what one has learned and enjoys. However, that is just one small tidbit in the beginning; the rest of the first half is spent on "follow my advice, follow my advice" that I tended to skip ahead and missed a lot of the actual advice. As any reader knows, if the writer continuously says the same thing over and over and over, we tend to skip ahead. If the paragraphs or pages we skip have the one bit of advice that will make the book worthwhile, the writer has done a disservice by not keeping our interest. I'm afraid that this is what has happened in this book.

I did go back and reread the book to find what I may have missed, which was this: If one is to have a successful passive income website, one should write what we have learned over the years and enjoy doing, whether it's niche cooking (Veganism, Italian cooking, diabetic meals, etc.), knitting, music, what-have-you, and use that interest and learning to teach others. The other thing he mentions is writing copy.

If one has the patience to read through this book, it is possible to pick out good pieces of advice. I feel that a good editor could have helped chop away much of the repetitiveness in the book. Having to wade through the repetitiveness warrants a 1 1/2 on a 5-point scale. If you are going to buy only one book on making money online, go with Mike Omar's book.

Being Frugal

701 Money Saving Tips: A Huge List For Frugal Living by Ron Tomby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

701 Money Saving Tips by Ron Tomby is basically a list of tips to save money in your life. The book is divided into sections, with tips on saving on food ("Save on Groceries," "Bulk Buying," etc.), electricity and energy ("lights," "refrigerator & freezer," "Computers & Electronics", etc.), water, heating, cooling, driving & transportation, clothing, and other areas of our lives.

This book is great for someone just starting out in life on his or her own. While many of us who've been struggling to cut corners will find many of these tips no-brainers along the lines of "Well, duh, I've been doing that for years," there are still the occasional tip that one might not have thought of.

Great for those who are just starting out...and for those of us who've been around for a while, this one is best borrowed.

And finally, Couponing For Busy People: Learn How To Coupon Without Making It a Full Time Job, by Elle Marshall is a great book for learning the finer points of frugality by using coupons and store websites to find when stores' sales are on. I found many tips that made this book more than worth the read. 4 to 4 1/2 points on a five point scale.

On The Road, by Jack Kerouac

We all have a list of books that we have meant to read but have never quite gotten around to. Some of them finally make their way into our hands and we start reading. Most of us will think What's the big deal about this book? It's garbage! about some of the classics, while others fall into the I can't believe I waited this long to read it! category.

Then there are others that leave us feeling so ambivalent throughout the reading that we end up wanting to give it a second reading just so we can decide. That is how I felt when starting On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. It was one of those classics that many people talk about ("Have you read...? No? Really, you should...") while not having actually read. I'd picked up a copy of it from a now-closed bookstore near the University of South Florida St. Petersburg when they were promoting books by many of the Beat writers, especially Kerouac.

Note: Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg's St. Anthony's Hospital in 1969. His name, address and phone number remained in the St. Petersburg phone book for quite a few years afterwards. He is said to have frequented several bars while in St. Pete.

The first few paragraphs very nearly turned me off. I had tried reading it when I first bought the book, but those first couple of paragraphs were what caused me to put it down. They were wordy, bordering on almost flowery. If Ernest Hemingway was known for short, concise sentences, much of Kerouac's On The Road seemed the opposite in its wordiness. While Kerouac did rein this in a bit after the first few paragraphs/pages, he never quite moves completely away from it.

The further I got in the book, the more engaging it became. It is easy to imagine being carefree and on the road, going from place to place. Sal Paradise (based on Kerouac) meets Dean Moriarty (based on Neal Cassady), someone he has heard about, at the beginning of the book. They are soon criss-crossing the country separately, meeting up in different parts of the country, just missing each other in other parts. The one thing Sal hears numerous times is that others are not as fond of Dean as Sal is. While Sal finally sees that others might be right about Dean, he still defends him. By the end of the book, we find Sal wandering off after sending Dean on his way. But he mentions occasionally thinking about Dean Moriarty.

By the end of the book, I had to admit: This book deserves to be considered a classic, and deserves to be read. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for?

Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone, by Sean Murphy

Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone: A Memoir for My Mother by Sean Murphy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of us have lost loved ones and know the sorrow of missing that loved one. Sean Murphy's Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone chronicles the loss of his mother to cancer shortly after her fifty-ninth birthday.

While many memoirs tend to follow a straight-forward path for the period of time that the book follows, Please Talk... reads more as journal entries and conversations, with a poem or two. At first, I found the fluidness of the book - the back and forth across time - a little disconcerting. But Murphy's writing, his descriptions kept my attention long enough that the ebb and flow caught me. While the journal-and-background way of writing is definitely a different approach from the straight-forward path, it definitely worked with Please Talk....

Sean Murphy's love for his mom, as well as a mother's love for her family, come through wonderfully clear in Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone, leaving the reader with only two or three regrets: that Linda Murphy died, that cancer still strikes, and that we all lose people who are very important to us. Sean Murphy has written a beautiful memoir that will stick with the reader.

Note: I won a copy of Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone by Sean Murphy from Goodread's giveaway.

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The Girl in the Italian Bakery, by Kenneth Tingle

The Girl in the Italian Bakery by Kenneth Tingle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Memoirs are a funny thing: some tell about an idyllic life where the main person was born with the proverbial silver spoon and grew up to be a wonderful person who appreciated his or her life and status, while others tell of hardships that the person had to escape and crawl out of to become a productive and (preferably) happy member of society. The latter seems to make the better reading . Kenneth Tingle's The Girl In The Italian Bakery falls into this second category.

Tingle was the youngest of three brothers being raised by a single mother in poverty. While his mostly absent father does occasionally show up, he is seldom able to care for all three boys when they need him the most. Tingle's descriptions of living in the projects, of the disappearance of a young friend, of life in several foster homes are enough to make the reader wonder how he escaped his past. One brother has mental health issues and ends up institutionalized, while the middle brother blocks out much of what happens to the family, becoming part of the cycle of poverty/helplessness.

Throughout the first half of the book, the reader is left to wonder who the girl in the Italian bakery is and how she fits into Tingle's story. We finally see her as Tingle trudges home from a new high school one afternoon. While he never actually meets her, he falls in love with her - with the idea of her - and continues to walk home by the same route so that he can catch a glimpse of her. The one day he finally finds the courage to go in and speak with her, she disappears into the back of the bakery. Does he get to finally meet her?

The Girl In The Italian Bakery ends with Tingle and his wife living not the high-life, but rather a better life than he had grown up in. By the end, he has acknowledged that while he never officially met the girl - who he has seen several times since, but from a distance - he still has feelings for the memory of her, and how, in some way, he was helped want a better life because of her.

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