I couldn’t help being reminded of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn while reading The Secret Life of Bees. It is the story of a poor, ignorant white girl and how her world view is changed by her black companion. Our hero is young and ignorant, which may be why this is The Secret Life of Bees instead of The Secret Lives of Bees. Set in the South in the early 1960s the story is about race, ignorance, hatred, and features the usual cast of bigoted white redneck men and noble well-educated black women. As in Dances With Wolves, our…
Category: book review
When Fish Fly-On Becoming World Famous
Reviewed by the World Famous If You Write It Blog During a recent meeting our Boss asked us-How many of you want to work here next year? One person out of ten raised their hand. There is a lot of money here, just not for us. There is a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours-that is for us. As with most companies, the front line people, the ones that the actual customers get to interact with-are the ones that get paid the least and have the least reason to make a good impression. The Home Office…
Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See
Carolyn See is a writer, albeit one I have no experience of except for this book. But Making a Literary Life is a great book, so if I am only going to read one of her books, it might as well have been this one. I like everything about this book, from the old fashioned looking cover to the no nonsense advice to the shocking bits of humor. This was a fun read. Her advice boils down to a few simple rules. Write a thousand words a day, or two hours of revision. And write a charming note a day…
Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins
Steven Jenkins Cheese Primer is easily the best book I have ever read on cheese. Does this mean I have read a lot of books on cheese? Well, not a lot, but enough to know that the Cheese Primer is the book to read if you have any serious notions about cheese. Steven Jenkins was on CBS Sunday Morning a while back in a story called Meet The Cheese Man. Hmm, 2002 according to the website. Must have been a rerun that I saw. It was still fun to see someone so passionate about something that, at least in most…
The Law of Attraction by Abraham Hicks
You get what you ask for, whether you want it or not.-Abraham The Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks and a mysterious disembodied host of Higher Beings called Abraham, is a fun book to read. I have been a self-help junkie for the better part of my life. When you first start reading Self help books, you have this wonderful optimism that the book will actually help you. I have now lowered my expectations to feeling good while I am reading a self help book. The Law of Attraction does make you feel good. The first half of…
I Feel Bad About My Neck-Nora Ephron
Aging Sucks-Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron is a great audio book. Nora Ephron has a great delivery and she is very familiar with the subject matter. Growing old and dying seems to be on Nora’s mind a lot as she was writing these essays. They are both funny and poignant. And I liked all that stuff about the New York Apartment that cost ten thousand dollars a month in rent. Being a man, and not yet that old a man, I am not worried about my neck.…
Confetti Cakes-It’s Fun to Look at the Pictures
My girlfriend was a huge fan of Star Trek, so I set out to make a designer cake that looked like the One Sheet for Star Trek III:The Search For Spock. This was a crude line drawing of Mr Spock with simple lines for all the facial features. I got a book by Wilton from the library and looked at the pictures and thought this will be a snap. Fondue has a mind of its own, in my experience, and I could not get the color or texture exactly right. The cake ended up sort of looking like how I…
Top Five Books People Talk About But Don’t Read
How To Talk About Books You Haven’t ReadWhat a great title. I mean, you have to love a book that tells it like it is. Wanna talk about that latest bestseller everyone is talking about? Go For It! The odds are good that no one else has read it either. I have not read How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, but the title was enough to get me thinking. What are some of the greatest books that most people talk about, but never actually read?Being a bookworm myself, I have read most of the books that I talk…
Chuck Norris A Legend in His Own Mind
A few million years ago there was a Martial Arts Living Legend named Bruce Lee. In Way of the Dragon Bruce Lee kills a bad guy played by Chuck Norris. That was the first time I ever heard of Chuck Norris. It’s been a few years since the rather silly Walker:Texas Ranger was on, and with its passing I kind of felt like Chuck Norris was moving into the Has Been Phase of his illustrious career.But hey, if Sylvester Stallone can still crank out Rocky and Rambo movies, then by God, Chuck Norris can whip out a couple more Delta…
A Home At The End Of The World
Micheal Cunningham’s A Home At The end Of The World, in addition to having a long and pointless title, is a thoroughly depressing book. The main theme is that old standard, Life Sucks and Then You Die. This book feels like someone told Michael that he needed to add a few metaphors, then forgot what ‘a few’ means. Nothing is what it is, everything is ‘like’ some other thing. After a while A Home At The End Of The World is like Russian poetry read by someone that only speaks Chinese.The Audio book version of A Home At The End…