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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Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One reason to read a book of essays about another's quirkily normal family, written with a sense of humor and a laugh at life's foibles is to reassure one that our family is no better or worse than any other family, that the things in our lives that we eventually laugh at are the same things that others laugh at. To that end, David Sedaris has written Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls in such a way that the reader can fully relate with Sedaris's family. Most of the essays deal with his family, childhood, health, and politics.

The book begins with "Dentists Without Borders," in which he describes visits to a French dentist. "Memory Laps" swimmingly wanders from, well, swimming, includes his grandmother moving in with the family and weaves his father's obsession (?) with the Osmond Brothers, among other bits of family history.

There are several places where the essays drag a little, making the reader feel like telling Sedaris to hurry it along or, worse yet, skip to the next essay. But for the most part, the book is well worth the read.

Disclaimer: This is a review of a book that I won from Goodread's giveaway program. Check out the program (located under the "explore" tab) for your chance to win books!

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Atria Books: A Booklovers Sampler, by Jamie McGuire

Atria Books: A Booklovers Sampler by Jamie McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I won this book from the Goodreads Giveaways program; sign up with Goodreads, find their Giveaways program (at the down arrow next to the Explore link) for your chance to win cool books!

Have you ever browsed through a bookstore, found an interesting looking book, read a page or two, bought the book, then found that either: a) you happened to pick what apparently were the most brilliant two pages of the book and that the rest left you cold, or b) the rest of the book was as good as, if not better than, the two pages you read and that you now have to buy every book by this author? C'mon, if you're anything like me, you know that both scenarios have happened to you at least once. And while certain edited compilations have been interesting, while leaving out long blocks of texts, they're not quite what you're looking for.

Atria Books: A Booklovers Sampler, by Jamie McGuire is a wonderful way to read more than that page or two of several books without overwhelming the reader. The premise is that the reader gets a decent section of the book, ranging from four pages of one chapter (Colleen Hoover's Slammed) to a fourteen page segment of two chapters (The Sea of Tranquility, by Katja Millay). (The other book segments in this sampler were fro Jamie McGuire's Beautiful Disaster, Love Unscripted, by Tina Reber, Naked, by Raine Miller, and One Tiny Lie, by K.A. Tucker.)

Each segment was enough to really get a feel for the book that it came from without overwhelming, leaving the reader either wanting more, while knowing that yes, it would be worth the price, or thankful that it wasn't a longer segment. However, the samples were chosen in such a way that each segment prompted me to want to buy the entire book that the segment came from.

Both Atria Books and Jamie McGuire have a hit with Atria Books: A Booklovers Sampler. I look forward to reading other samplers from Atria Books, as well as the entire books that subsequent segments are from.

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