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Archive for the ‘Other Nonfiction’ Category
Friday, March 4th, 2011
Pros: Incredibly moving and visceral account of what it can be like to deal with a serious mental illness
Cons: Not for people who will never comprehend how difficult it can be to have a mental illness
Rating: 5 out of 5
Disclaimer: Violet Wilson has been one of my closest friends for nearly 20 years. I can’t claim to be objective or unbiased, although I can say that if I didn’t honestly believe this e-book was good, I wouldn’t write about it here. This is my take on what she’s written, not an attempt to review as usual.
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Tags: child abuse, cutting, depression, dysfunctional families, memoir, mental illness, PTSD, violet wilson
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, November 8th, 2010
Pros: Easy to read and follow along; good examination and analysis of ancient sources.
Cons: The footnotes were slightly confusing; it took me a minute to realize that they weren’t alluded to in the text but included in the back numbered by what page they appeared on.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Cleopatra has had numerous biographers through the ages, from Romans to modern historians, and yet how much have we really examined these accounts to try and distill the true queen of Egypt from these accounts? Was she a brazen seductress, or was she a brilliant politician, scholar, and linguist? Ms. Schiff not only brings Cleopatra back to life in Cleopatra: A Life
, but examines and explains historical accounts in a way that gives the reader a much greater insight into who Cleopatra might really have been and what her real political goals were.
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Tags: Caesar, Cleopatra, Egypt, Marc Antony, Rome, Stacy Schiff
Posted in Other Nonfiction, Other Reviews | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, March 15th, 2010
Pros: Absolutely gorgeous, if heartbreaking, memoir of a woman with cancer; unflinchingly honest
Cons: Tough to read!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Review copy courtesy of Lisa Roe, Online Publicist.
Visit Carrie Host online.
Also posted at Epinions.com.
Carrie Host’s Between Me and the River
is the memoir of a woman who discovered she had a particularly slow-growing, and difficult to treat, form of cancer. It took me until halfway through the book to fully realize that unlike a Hallmark movie, this book wasn’t necessarily going to have a happy ending, and I had to flip to the author bio at the end to at least reassure myself that Ms. Host was still alive at the time the book was published. There’s something very raw and tough about realizing that this person you’ve grown in some ways very close to over the course of such an intimate book is still facing something so difficult.
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Tags: cancer, carcinoid, Carrie Host, memoir
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Pros: Interesting look at the private lives of some of the more famous (or infamous) European royals.
Cons: The genealogy can get confusing because many names were passed down through generations.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Many of us are curious about the private lives of royalty, both in the past and the present. What could be more tantalizing than the relationships (or lack thereof) that occur between the royal sheets? Leslie Carroll has created a fascinating read about not only some of the more famous unsuccessful royal marriages, but of successful ones as well. It’s a journey into the past showing that while some things change throughout the years, others stay the same.
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Tags: Diana, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry VIII, history, King, Marie Antoinette, marriage, Napoleon, Queen, royal, Victoria
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | No Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Pros: Funny, hysterical, and lots of other synonyms for hilarious; plenty to make it valuable beyond the website
Cons: Obviously it would be cool if all the photos could be pro-quality, but by nature they can’t, and this has its own sort of charm
Rating: 5 out of 5
[This is one of those rare books that is not a review copy.]
Also posted on Epinions.com.
The Cake Wrecks Blog began when Jen Yates decided to post, for the amusement of herself and a few friends, photos of professional cakes gone “hilariously wrong.” Of course, as occasionally happens on the internet, she’d hit on something that had a far wider audience than she’d imagined. Soon she was getting thousands of hits a day and submissions of “cake wreck” photos from all over the globe—and eventually she even got a book deal. The result of that deal is Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong
, a wonderful organized collection of both best-of-the-blog photos (with snarky commentary) and additional material that never made it into the blog.
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Tags: cake decorating, cake wrecks, cakes, Humor, Jen Yates
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 4 Comments »
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Pros: Deliciously vulgar and offensive; sarcasm paired with darling vintage illustrations
Cons: Deliciously vulgar and offensive
Rating: 5 out of 5
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Tags: booze, Chocolate, coffee, Darren Wotz, Ed Polish, food, Humor, vintage
Posted in Gourmet, Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 6 Comments »
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
Pros: A lot of very useful information
Cons: Some one-sided information; VERY dry at times
Rating: 4 out of 5
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Tags: Dr. Davis Liu, health care, medical insurance, medicine
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Pros: Hysterically funny; surprisingly insightful; beautifully balanced; intelligent yet blunt
Cons: Frank language will be a bit much for some
Rating: 5 out of 5
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Tags: Humor, memoir, the waiter, waiter rant
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Pros: Entertaining read for us overly-curious trivia buffs
Cons: Some entries stop a bit short
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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Tags: Dane Sherwood, facts, idiot's guides, Kara Kovalchik, Sandy Wood, trivia
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 4 Comments »
“Admit One,” Emmett James
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008Pros: Original, darkly humorous, straightforward, mischievous, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny
Cons: Didn’t notice a one!
Rating: 5 out of 5
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Tags: acting, Admit One, Emmett James, film commentary, memoir, non-fiction
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | 6 Comments »