How to Get Things Really Flat - Review

How to Get Things Really Flat: Enlightenment for Every Man on Ironing, Vacuuming and Other Housekeeping Duties
by Andrew Martin
Publisher: The Experiment
Publication Date: September 1, 2009
ISBN: 9781615190027
240 Pages
Nonfiction: Self-Help


Summary & Review:

Because this title is marketed to men, I couldn't resist browsing through it in the library to see if it had any cleaning tips or tricks I hadn't heard of. I was also curious to see if it was insulting to men or truly helpful.

The format of How to Get Things Really Flat is very informal and chatty, and manages to impart basic cleaning information with such a nice balance of humor that you don't feel like you are reading a cleaning manual, so much as one man's journey to not only help his wife with the cleaning, but understand why certain methods work better than others.

With headings like: Household Aesthetics: A Brief Introduction for the Tasteless Man, it's obvious that How to Get Things Really Flat is the antithesis of a run-of-the-mill cleaning encyclopedia. I have seen cleaning encyclopedias before that are so overwhelming in their vast array of information that I wouldn't know where to start to implement all of the methods listed. How to Get Things Really Flat, however, is filled with funny cleaning anecdotes from the author's life and interesting trivia. It entertains; imparting valuable tips about household chores while managing to avoid insulting men or women.

I thought it was interesting that the author found during his research, that some of women that he talked to about cleaning were not much more informed about cleaning than he was. He also addresses the stigma that cleaning has both for men and women, stating that, "There is almost as much of a stigma attached to the woman who demonstrates a knowledge of cleaning as there is to the man who does." (Page 103)

And just for fun, here are a few of my favorite quotes:

My own wife spends the whole of Christmas Eve cleaning, while playing Christmas carols very loudly on a portable CD player. It’s all 'Peace on earth, and mercy mild,' but if you get in her way, you’re dead." (Page 159)


"And don’t climb stepladders and lean out precariously in order to dust high shelves, because that’s just another way the dust mites have of killing us all." (Page 93)

In addition to learning some new housecleaning tips, I also enjoyed seeing cleaning tasks from a man's point of view. The author is English, and some of his stories include bits of information about English culture of which I was unaware.

Tips range from the basic (if your vacuum cleaner does not have great suction it's probably time to change either the filter or the bag) to more advanced (like which vacuum cleaner attachments work well for which jobs). I lack a certain amount of common sense when it comes to some cleaning jobs, so I was excited to learn some easy new tips. Now I know that instead of feeling guilty about not dusting the blinds (because the duster never seems to get all of the dust off anyway) I can use the upholstery attachment to vacuum the dust away.

There is also a section on eco-friendly cleaners such as baking soda, lemon juice, and vinegar and some of their possible uses. I look forward to testing a few of them out in the near future.

I enjoyed reading How to Get Things Really Flat, and found myself laughing out loud in many parts. If you already know a lot about how to clean your house from top to bottom then this might not be the book for you. This would; however be a great book for newlyweds, or men who are living on their own for the first time.

Rating: 4/5


About the Author:

Andrew Martin trained as an attorney before becoming a journalist and novelist. A regular contributor to the Guardian, he has also written for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Independent and Granta, among many other publications. His seven novels include five titles — beginning with The Necropolis Railway — featuring the young Edwardian detective, Jim Stringer. He has also written short stories and radio plays. He lives with his wife and two children in London.

Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg - Giveaway

Home Repair
by Liz Rosenberg
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 9780061734564
352 Pages (Paperback)
Fiction


Publisher's Description:

Can lighting really strike twice? Just ask Eve, whose husband walks out on her in the middle of a garage sale.

Eve's beloved Ivan died thirteen years ago in an automobile accident. Her charming, boyish Chuck has taken a different exit out of her life: hopping into his car in the middle of a garage sale with no forewarning and departing their formerly happy upstate New York home for points unknown. Now Eve's a boat adrift, subsisting on a heartbreak diet of rue, disappointment, and woe-left alone to care for Ivan's brilliant teenaged son, Marcus, and Chuck's precocious, pragmatic nine-year-old daughter, Noni, while contending with Charlotte, Eve's acerbic mother, who's come north to "help" but hinders instead.

But life ultimately must go on, with its highs and lows, its traumas and holidays, and well-meaning, if eccentric, friends. A house and a heart in disrepair are painful burdens for a passionate woman who's still in her prime. And while learning to cope with the large and small tragedies that each passing day brings, Eve might end up discovering that she's gained much more than she's lost.

Giveaway Information:

I have one paperback copy that was provided by the publisher for review. Unfortunately this book just wasn't my cup of tea, so I didn't finish it, but I wanted to pass it on to one of my readers in hopes that someone else would enjoy it. If you like stories about women dealing with broken relationships then you might like this book.


To enter this contest do any of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include an email address in at least one of your comments. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway. (Posting the giveaway on your sidebar is also acceptable.) Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

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4. Tweet this post on Twitter. Leave me a separate comment with your twitter user name. (1 entry)

5. Stumble this post, digg it, or technorati fave it. Leave a separate comment. (1 entry)


There are a lot of ways to enter, but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count.

I will be using random.org to pick the winner from the comments. This contest is open to entries from the US and Canada.

The deadline for entry is midnight, February 21, 2010. I will draw and post the winner's name on February 22, 2010.

Ulysses - Impossible to Understand?

There were a few things that I didn't realize when I started reading Ulysses, and if I had known them I think I would have prepared differently to read it. The first is that one of the main characters in the novel, Stephen Dedalus, is the same Stephen that appeared in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The second is that the storyline is meant to mimic that of The Odyssey by Homer. I think it would have been more productive (but not entirely necessary) to have re-read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as well as reading The Odyssey (or at least becoming more familiar with it), prior to reading Ulysses.

To be completely honest, this book has intimidated me since the first time I heard about it. When I was a teenager I remember one of my English teachers telling me that Ulysses is one of the most difficult books to understand in literature. So of course I went straight to the library and checked it out. I didn't get past the first few pages before giving up, and returned it to the library unread.

So when my husband suggested that we read and discuss Ulysses together, I already knew I was going to need some outside help if I was going to attempt it again. I started by reading the first section of the book (Telemachus) in the graphic novel format online. I love this resources because all you have to do is click on the graphic and it takes you to in-depth notes and explanations of what is happening in that particular scene. You get historical background, discussions of parallels to the Odyssey, and definitions of foreign words and phrases.

Unfortunately the online graphic novel is not finished, so it wasn't long before I had to turn to my physical copy of Ulysses and crack it open. By then I was enthusiastic about reading it because I actually knew a little bit about what was going on in the story. I have to admit that I went back and re-read the first fifty pages, and felt that I was finally getting a feel for the book and its characters with the second reading. I have a feeling that this is a book that you can read many times and still discover new insights into it each time. Which is why I would recommend that when you embark upon reading Ulysses you don't get bogged down in trying to understand every single allusion and symbol that James Joyce throws in. If you do you will have a hard time hanging onto the thread of the story. I found that by reading it through once I got the gist of what was going on, and the second read through allowed me to pick and choose which parts to research for more details.


Which brings me to the point of saying the exact thing that has been said to me by everyone I have encountered who has read Ulysses: get an annotated copy. They didn't have any at the used bookstore, so I had to check one out from the library. The Cliff's Notes are also useful in that they give you a roadmap for what is happening in each section.

James Joyce really has a unique style of writing in Ulysses, in that a great portion of it is written as stream-of-consciousness. This would not be so bad, except for the fact that it is mixed in with the regular text and conversation, and so can be very confusing at times. (Dashes are used to mark the beginning of speech, but not the end. No quotation marks are used.)

The story starts out in much the same form as any other, yet as it progresses you are drawn further and further into the thoughts of the characters. It is like listening to every random thought that passes through the character's head, yet you are still reading about the actions that are going on around them.

Here are a couple examples from the text; the first being easier to follow, and the second more difficult:

Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.

Page 55


The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose doublet, fortune's knaves, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives.

Page 46

Then of course you have what Joyce himself said about the book (as quoted by Richard Ellmann):

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

So, is it impossible to read Ulysses and understand it? I don't think so, at least not in the broad sense of understanding - as long as you can accept that you won't recognize or understand every single reference in the book. It also makes me feel better to know that James Joyce wrote the book to contain elements that would puzzle people. If professors are supposed to be debating it for centuries then I think it's okay if there are some things that I just don't get.

Over the next few weeks (or however long it takes me to finish Ulysses) I plan to post occasionally about the content of the story, but for now I just wanted to share what the reading experience has been like for me.

The Sunday Salon - February 7

I had plans to publish a post about the first hundred pages of Ulysses yesterday. The end of my week, however, was far busier than I had imagined.

On Thursday my husband decided to work from home (because he has an awesome job that allows him to do this from time to time). Everything was going along just fine until the afternoon when my youngest son wanted to play in the backyard and couldn't find his boots. My husband went out to the garage and started digging around for them. I eventually found the boots in the closet, on the shelf in plain sight (where my son swore he looked but didn't see them). My husband, on the other hand, found something much less pleasant - evidence of a mouse in the garage.

He spent the next four hours scouring the garage from top to bottom, tossing out garbage and getting rid of stuff we didn't need (it's amazing how much of that ends up in the garage). He said that he saw the mouse run back and forth a few times, and that was enough to keep me out of the garage. It's funny, back when I was growing up in an old house out in the country mice didn't bother me so much. I guess I've become somewhat urbanized.

While my husband was out running errands we tossed the cats into the garage and figured maybe they would like to take a crack at the mice.
They were less than enthusiastic. Tiger (the cat on the top) has been scratching at the garage door, begging to go out there for weeks (I'm assuming his super-cat hearing made him aware of the mice). You wouldn't have known that he wanted to be in the garage at all from his reaction. Both cats were meowing at the door and scratching to get in. I am assuming that they were probably just cold, because I would think that they would have loved to have chased the mice around. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad they didn't go after the mice because I hadn't even thought about the fact that the mice might pass on fleas (or something worse) to my cats.

My husband picked up some traps that trap and kill the mouse inside so that you don't have to see the dead body, and some sticky traps. The first day we didn't catch anything. The second day I peeked in the garage to see my husband stalking the mouse with a golf club. Evidently it didn't think much of our traps, and jumped right over them as my husband chased it with the golf club.

That night my husband went out and bought old-fashioned mouse traps. As of this morning I am horrified to say that we have caught five mice. He thinks he has discovered how they have been getting in (a gap next to a pipe or duct of some sort) and will be sealing it off. I'm avoiding the garage at all costs until then.

Oh, and as a side note, it was obvious that the mice were drawn into the garage by our dog food. We store the dog food in the garage, and sometimes the boys spill some of it behind the bag when they're feeding the dog. My husband has remedied this by getting an easy open and close bin for the food that the kids should be able to use, but that the mice can't get into.

You would think that was enough excitement for the week, but my youngest son came down with the stomach flu on Friday. I'm not going to go into the details because they are pretty graphic. Let me just say that cleanup involved multiple cleaners, many loads of laundry, latex gloves, and one of those surgical/dust masks. Oh, and me repeating over and over to myself, "I can do this!"

Thankfully he is feeling better, and we are trying to get back to our regular activities. Which means that you may actually see a post about the first hundred pages of Ulysses this week, as long as nothing else crazy happens at our house.

Today I plan to finish reading Mornings With Mailer by Dwayne Raymond. I hadn't planned on reading this so soon, but when I received a copy in the mail from the author I couldn't resist reading just a little bit of the introduction. I really didn't know anything about Norman Mailer or his writing prior to reading this, so it has been a fascinating (and fairly quick) read. Look for my review sometime in the next few weeks (just as soon as I catch up on my backlog of reviews).


Finished Last Week:

I didn't finish any books last week, it was just too busy.


Still Waiting to be Reviewed:

Shirley, Vol. 1 by Kaoru Mori
How to Get Things Really Flat by Andrew Martin
An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon



Currently Reading:

One Hundred Great French Books by Lance Donaldson-Evans
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
Ulysses by James Joyce
Mornings With Mailer by Dwayne Raymond
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Audiobook)


Abandoned:

Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg - The writing style in this book reminded me a bit of Barbara Delinsky's (although I've only read one of her books, so I couldn't say this definitively), and it is not a style that I am enjoying lately. It kind of makes me feel bad, because I know that a lot of people would probably love this book, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. So, I'll be posting a giveaway for it in the next few days.


Giveaways:

Mornings With Mailer by Dwayne Raymond - ends 2/9
Last Snow by Eric Van Lustbader - ends 2/14
Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb - ends 2/16
You are Here by Christopher Potter - ends 2/16
February Bookshelf Cleaning (4 titles) - ends 2/28

Friday Finds - February 5

Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. This week I added the following books to my wish list.


Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - Found at You've Gotta Read This!

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

---

Look Again by Lisa Scottoline - Found in a BookBrowse Newsletter.

When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a “Have You Seen This Child?” flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops—the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and won’t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can’t shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? She investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, and when she digs too deep, she risks losing her own life—and that of the son she loves.

---

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri - Found via the blog At Pemberley.

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.

---

Me and a Guy Named Elvis by Jerry Schilling - Found while browsing Amazon.com.

On a lazy Sunday in 1954, twelve-year-old Jerry Schilling wandered into a Memphis touch football game, only to discover that his team was quarterbacked by a nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley, the local teenager whose first record, "That’s All Right," had just debuted on Memphis radio. The two became fast friends, even as Elvis turned into the world’s biggest star. In 1964, Elvis invited Jerry to work for him as part of his "Memphis Mafia," and Jerry soon found himself living with Elvis full-time in a Bel Air mansion and, later, in his own room at Graceland. Over the next thirteen years Jerry would work for Elvis in various capacities — from bodyguard to photo double to co-executive producer on a karate film. But more than anything else he was Elvis’s close friend and confidant: Elvis trusted Jerry with protecting his life when he received death threats, he asked Jerry to drive him and Priscilla to the hospital the day Lisa Marie was born and to accompany him during the famous "lost weekend" when he traveled to meet President Nixon at the White House.

My Favorite Reads - February 4

Each week I am featuring one of my favorite reads from the past. If you would like to participate, please leave a link to your post in the comments. This week I chose:

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas.

Summary (from Wikipedia):

The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. Set in the seventeenth century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a guard of the musketeers. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; inseparable friends who live by the motto "all for one, one for all."

The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances.

The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844.


Why I Chose This Book:

My first introduction to the Three Musketeers story was via the 1993 movie starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O'Donnell and Oliver Platt. What I loved about this movie was that it was filled with adventure, action and a lot of humor. After seeing the movie in high school I had every intention of reading the book. However, when I tried to read the book soon after I found myself bogged down in the slow-moving, old-fashioned language of the story, and gave up on it after only a few chapters.

Years later, in the last weeks of pregnancy with my second son, I had a lot of time on my hands and was trying to find some way to keep my mind off of how miserable I felt. (There's nothing like enduring that third trimester of pregnancy without air conditioning in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record. Ironically the weather cooled the day after I gave birth, but that's another story.) I picked up The Three Musketeers on the off chance that it would distract me from the heat.

Once again I was surprised at how slow-moving and dry the writing style was, but I was determined to finish this time. An interesting thing happened as I read. I realized that Alexander Dumas' writing style, while long-winded (it was serialized, so I'm assuming he was being paid by the word), was also filled with an entertaining dry humor. If you read the book closely enough, you will find that this is really just as funny as the 1993 movie, but you do have to pay close attention in order to get the humor.

I ended up finishing this book about a month after my son was born, which may seem like a long time, but I did have a three-year-old and a newborn to care for, so in reflection I think it speaks well for the book that I was able to finish at all (considering how sleep-deprived I was).

I know that my description of the book here may not make it seem all that attractive. I'm not going to lie, it is a book that requires a bit of effort and concentration, but the payoff is well worth it. The Three Musketeers is one of my favorite classics of all time. After spending some time thinking about the story today, I have the notion to re-read it someday soon, or failing that, at least watch the 1993 movie again for fun.

As a side note, I haven't been able to find the sequel, Twenty Years After, anywhere locally (including the library). So I'm wondering, has anyone read Twenty Years After? If so, is it worth buying? (I did find it on amazon.com.)

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish by Douglas Adams - Review

So Long and Thanks For all the Fish
by Douglas Adams
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks; Dramatized Edition
Publication Date: October 2005
ISBN: 9781572704886
Science Fiction: Audiobook


Product Description:

Many are familiar with Douglas Adams's classic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, but few know that these books started out as a multi-part series performed on BBC radio. This installment, part four, is a robust radio dramatization of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. The Earth has miraculously reappeared and Arthur Dent is in love with the otherworldly Fenchurch, but Ford Prefect has an idea that might burst Arthur’s happy little bubble. What is really going on with Arthur’s dream girl, where have all the dolphins gone, and what was their departing message to mankind?


My Opinion:

This fourth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series brings back the magic and wackiness of the first books in the series. I wasn't as enthralled with Life, the Universe and Everything, but So Long and Thanks for all the Fish really lived up to the first books in the series, and may even be my favorite so far.

It starts out with a big surprise for the reader: earth as reappeared - but how is this possible, and why? That is what Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect set out to discover.

Arthur also has a love interest in this book, and I have to say that I quite enjoyed that part of the storyline. The ending of the book really made me wonder what happened with that relationship. It was a bit of a cliffhanger, so I can't wait to read (or listen to) the last book.

Speaking of which, I listened to the dramatized version of this book (produced by the BBC and it was absolutely fabulous! I can't speak highly enough about the dramatized version - the difference between it and the regular audiobook was like day and night. Even though I have read and listened to most of the series already, I would love to listen to the dramatized versions of the first three books just for the fun of it.

As I have stated with other books in this series, I advise that you read (or listen to) these books in order so that you can understand what is going on with the plot.

Rating: 5/5

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, The Universe and Everything


Author Information:

Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and educated at Cambridge. He was the author of five books in the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy, including The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; and Mostly Harmless. His other works include Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency; The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff (with John Lloyd); and Last Chance to See (with Mark Carwardine). His last book was the bestselling collection, The Salmon of Doubt, published posthumously in May 2002.

You can find more about Douglas Adam's life and works at douglasadams.com.

You Are Here Giveaway

You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe
by Christopher Potter
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: February 2, 2010
ISBN: 9780061137877
304 Pages (Paperback)
Nonfiction


Summary (from the publisher):

You Are Here is a dazzling exploration of the universe and our relationship to it, as seen through the lens of today's most cutting-edge scientific thinking. Christopher Potter brilliantly parses the meaning of what we call the universe. He tells the story of how something evolved from nothing and how something became everything. What does a material description of everything and nothing look like? What is it that science does when it describes a reality that is made out of something? In between nothing and everything is where we live.

Here, for the first time in a single span, is the life of the universe, from quarks to galaxy superclusters and from slime to Homo sapiens. The universe was once a moment of perfect symmetry and is now 13.7 billion years of history. Clouds of gas were woven into whatever complexity we find in the universe today: the hierarchies of stars or the brains of mammals. Potter writes entertainingly about the history and philosophy of science, and he shows that science advances by continually removing humankind from a position of primacy in the universe, but the universe responds by placing us back there again.

With wisdom and wonder, Potter traverses the cosmos from its conception to its eventual end—while exploring everything in between.

Giveaway Information:

The publisher has generously offered two copies of this book to my readers.


To enter this contest do any of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include an email address in at least one of your comments. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway. (Posting the giveaway on your sidebar is also acceptable.) Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

3. Subscribe to my rss feed, follow me on blogger or subscribe via email (current subscribers are eligible too). Leave a separate comment for this. (1 entry)

4. Tweet this post on Twitter. Leave me a separate comment with your twitter user name. (1 entry)

5. Stumble this post, digg it, or technorati fave it. Leave a separate comment. (1 entry)


There are a lot of ways to enter, but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count.

I will be using random.org to pick the winners from the comments. This contest is open to entries from the US and Canada.

The deadline for entry is midnight, February 16, 2010. I will draw and post the winners' names on February 17, 2010.

Crazy Heart Giveaway

Crazy Heart
by Thomas Cobb
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: February 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780060915193
256 Pages (Paperback)
Fiction


Summary (from the publisher):

At the age of fifty-seven, Bad Blake is on his last legs. His weight, his ticker, his liver, even his pick-up truck are all giving him trouble. A renowned songwriter and "picker" who hasn't recorded in five years, Bad now travels the countryside on gigs that take him mostly to motels and bowling alleys. Enter Ms. Right. Can Bad stop living the life of a country-western song and tie a rope around his crazy heart?

Now a Golden Globe Award winning movie.


Giveaway Information:

The publisher has generously offered two copies of this book to my readers.


To enter this contest do any of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include an email address in at least one of your comments. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway. (Posting the giveaway on your sidebar is also acceptable.) Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

3. Subscribe to my rss feed, follow me on blogger or subscribe via email (current subscribers are eligible too). Leave a separate comment for this. (1 entry)

4. Tweet this post on Twitter. Leave me a separate comment with your twitter user name. (1 entry)

5. Stumble this post, digg it, or technorati fave it. Leave a separate comment. (1 entry)


There are a lot of ways to enter, but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count.

I will be using random.org to pick the winners from the comments. This contest is open to entries from the US and Canada.

The deadline for entry is midnight, February 16, 2010. I will draw and post the winners' names on February 17, 2010.

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel - Review

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel
by Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel
Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books
Publication Date: September 5, 2006
ISBN: 9780689867477
64 Pages (Hardcover)
Nonfiction Children's: Ages 9-12



Summary (from the publisher):

Dancers are young when they first dream of dance. Siena was six -- and her dreams kept skipping and leaping, circling and spinning, from airy runs along a beach near her home in Puerto Rico, to dance class in Boston, to her debut performance on stage with the New York City Ballet.

To Dance tells and shows the fullness of her dreams and her rhapsodic life they led to. Part family history, part backstage drama, here is an original, firsthand book about a young dancer's beginnings -- and beyond.

My Opinion:

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel was a very quick read (ten to twenty minutes depending on how much time you spend looking at the illustrations). It is geared toward a younger audience though, so in that respect the short length of the book seems appropriate.

I enjoyed the artwork and seeing what life was like for the author at dance school. It was inspiring to read of the author's achievements. Siena had some pretty amazing experiences at a young age, including: performing many times with the New York City Ballet, seeing Barishnikov around the building, and watching performances backstage.

The hardships of dancing are not left out of the story either. Along with images of Siena working hard in her dance practices, there are also drawings of the injuries sustained and the sore and bleeding toes. In addition she relates how she missed out on a lot of normal school experiences, and had to go to a special performer's school because she danced for so many hours during the day.

I recommend this graphic novel to anyone who loves dancing or knows a young dancer. The story of the author's younger years training to become a dancer was so inspirational that it made me wish that I had taken ballet lessons as a young child.

Rating: 4.5/5

Awards:

ALA Notable Children's Books
ALA Robert F. Sibert Award Honor Book
Beehive Award Master List (UT)
Garden State Children's Book Award Nominee (NJ)
Garden State Teen Book Award Nominee (NJ)
IRA/CBC Children's Choices
Keystone to Reading Book Award Master List (PA)
NCTE Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year