My Ultimate Money Book

Posted on November 22, 2005 by Katy K.

Rejoice with me, my friends, for I have found the book I was looking for, and it is every bit as good as I hoped it would be! I was discussing the last money book I reviewed with a friend, and she had just read this one and recommended it. I recognized it immediately as the one I was looking for – hooray for literate friends!

All Your Worth: the Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi Finally, a money book that doesn’t assume that you really have enough money, but just want a little more or are using it badly. I was so tired of reading that if we just cut back on our mochas (necessary for Naked’s mental health) and stopped eating out (already doing that), that our finances would be fine. This book starts with the assumption that you are already trying as hard as you can and just aren’t quite making ends meet. They propose a step-by-step plan for getting your finances in order, and include financial CPR in case the bill collectors are already at your door, though it’s too bad that the section on bankruptcy is already out of date.

The heart of the money plan is their formula for spending: 50% on must haves, 30% on wants, 20% on savings. These percentages made me laugh when my friend told me about them, and you are probably laughing yourself, because you, like us, like just about everyone I know, are spending far more than 50% of your budget on needs. Don’t give up yet – the authors make a very convincing case for this. They don’t include some things that I am used to thinking of as needs in the needs category – food over a certain amount, clothing, and some other things. But the basic argument is this: unemployment usually pays you 50% of your regular earnings. If you’re living with their low level of needs spending, in case of a major emergency, you’d be able to keep your life going, and a little emergency won’t throw you into a tailspin. With Wants, their only suggestion is that you stick to cash so you can’t overspend. The Savings section outlines a plan for paying off outstanding consumer debt, building up an emergency fund, and saving for retirement, in that order.

I know that the folks on Marketplace Money really like Personal Finance for Dummies by Mike Tyson. We have it; it’s a good book and explains all the financial terms. But for actual help with day-to-day money management, this book is my favorite. Here’s some more reasons:
– It explains that it easier to get in over your head with house and car payments than it used to be.
– No guilt trips.
– It says that you deserve to have money to spend on whatever you want, no questions asked.
– It suggests places to cut that sound like they would actually work.
– It says you have better things to do with your time than make complicated budgets and keep logs of everything you spend.
– It has a chapter on money and relationships that starts by saying that the Big Money Talk probably will end in an argument, and ways around that.
– The ultimate goal is not to have to think about money.

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Rococo

Posted on November 14, 2005 by Katy K.

Rococo by Adriana Trigiani B – short for Bartolomeo di Crespi – is a decorator who puts his heart into his work. Although he could have stayed in New York after design school, he chose to return to his small Jersey hometown in an effort to make it beautiful. Life is full of its ordinary concerns – the big fortieth birthday bash that his sister refuses to cancel, the engagement his mother and her best friend made when he and Capri were babies that they’ve never gotten around to breaking off. Then he hears that his church is due a renovation. It’s been his lifelong dream to decorate Our Lady of Fatima, but will he get the job? And is he really up to the challenge of a design to suit a whole parish, meant to last 100 years? As always, Trigiani’s work is chock full of colorful characters (mostly Italian), a feel-good plot that still manages to avoid too much sugar, and a trip to Italy. In this particular book, there’s also a fair amount of gold bullion fringe and Italian-American recipes. Stephen Hoye narrates in the perfect Jersey tones to bring out both the humor and the genuine emotion of the whole book.

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good teen reading

Posted on November 14, 2005 by Katy K.

Letting Go of Bobby James, Or, How I Found My Self of Steam by Sally Jo Walker by Valerie Hobbs Sally Jo “Jody” Walker is 16 years old, and the first member of her family to graduate from eighth grade. She’s from Texas, but in Florida on her honeymoon, when her new husband ups and slaps her. Shaken, she hides in the gas station restroom. He leaves without her and she decides she’s not going to go back to Texas and a history of abused wives. While this book really has the potential to be just another depressing teen issues book, and the issues are indeed there, and serious, the reader ends up taking a delightful journey with a wonderfully spunky heroine, who does end up finding her “self of steam”.

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On Not Having Millions

Posted on November 11, 2005 by Katy K.

You Don’t Have to Be Rich by Jean Chatzky I’m looking for a book that will help us solve our trying to pay the mortgage, the car payments, the student loans, daycare, plus saving for retirement and college and a new roof on one and a half incomes dilemma, or at least let us know which pennies can be spent without fear. I guess that’s a pretty tall order, and I have yet to find the book to do it. Still, this book was very interesting, especially in the earlier chapters. Chatzky did some homework for this book, taking surveys of people and comparing happiness to attitudes and relationships with money. The goal was to find out what people who are happy overall and especially happy with their money situation do with their money. Basically, once you have enough money to meet your basic needs, more money won’t make you happier, but money always has the power to make people unhappy. She went through and abstracted some behaviors and attitudes that make a difference. Some of these were novel to me, though they make sense: if you balance your checkbook, you’re more likely to feel in control of your money, and feeling in control will make you happier. Spending your free money on events will make you happier than buying a new toy for yourself. She did kinda lose me in the later chapters where she breezed through finding the money to save with the standard make your coffee and meals at home kinda thing – not too helpful if you’re already making the cuts she suggests. And without money to invest, her advice on investing, while it did seem good, really doesn’t seem to applicable. Still, if you’re looking for ways to improve your relationship with money, this book is a good start. And you can always just read the summary in the last chapter.

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Certified Tree Hugger

Posted on October 31, 2005 by Katy K.

Green Living: The E Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth by E Magazine I don’t normally include the post-colon parts of book titles here, but this one explains the book very well. I have it on loan from my friend A., but unlike many of my borrowed books, this one is very new. It’s divided up into chapters on things like food, home construction, baby stuff, and gardening. All of the chapters talk about the environmental and health risks of whatever methods or products are commonly used, practical things to do about it, and – perhaps most helpful of all – annotated resource lists. If you want to know where to get low VOC paints, or insulation, or fairly traded clothing that you could actually wear to work, this book will tell you where to get them. And by the time you’ve read the convincingly argued first part of the chapter, you’ll want to. I have to admit that the baby stuff still depresses me, as there seems to be no good solution for bottles, but on the whole, this book is matter-of-fact about the serious issues, and upbeat about ways to help. And if, like most everyone we know, you can’t afford to do it all right, it also talks about how to prioritize and which things are most important to put your money into. I hope my friend doesn’t want it back too soon.

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AP from the source

Posted on October 18, 2005 by Katy K.

We started on the road to parenthood with the philosophy that we listen to various parents, read different books, and then would do whatever worked for us. Now, with almost a year of parenting under our belts, we’re mostly doing what’s generally called Attachment Parenting. I’d never read the book, and I thought it would be helpful for explaining to other people, and for knowing better myself what we’re doing and why. So here it is.

Attachment Parenting by William and Martha Sears It is really lovely to read a parenting book by the Sears. Their style is relaxed and reassuring, based on their own experience raising eight children, working in pediatrics for, um, 20 or 30 years, and backed up by research. They usually say, “This works well in our experience. Try it. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t worry about it.” So the idea of attachment parenting is that if you let yourself get to know your child, you’ll be able to trust yourself to give your baby what he or she needs. This book really focuses on the first year, which was actually disappointing for me, since we’re just about through that. What’s there is good info, though. They talk about the Seven Bs of attachment parenting –tools to try, not necessity. They are: Birth Bonding, Breastfeeding, Babywearing, Bedding close to baby, Belief in the language value of your baby’s cries, Beware of Baby trainers, and Balance. There’s also a chapter directed towards fathers, including very helpful advice on staying connected with your baby if you have to travel a lot and keeping the romance alive with your partner. And all through, the message: Trust your baby. Trust yourself. Take care of yourself. Your baby doesn’t need a perfect parent. Your baby needs you, doing the best job you can.

It’s a little late for Birth Bonding for us, but here’s some thoughts on aspects of this that are still relevant for us. The cry-it-out philosophy is so prevalent out there, and is one of the parenting issues that I’m least able to react rationally to. It’s good, then, to hear more rational arguments, seeing studies that show that responding to cries is healthy for babies. Thoughts like, if you want your baby to grow to be a person who will respond empathetically to people in pain, you need to respond to your baby in pain now. If you are feeling pushed to the edge by a baby who’s very needy at night and are considering cry-it-out, they say that in their experience, it’s mostly the easy babies that cry-it-out “works” for. And that yes, you don’t need to hop on an older baby’s cries quite so quickly as you do with one under six months. On bedsharing: no, you’re not a bad parent if you don’t do it, but since we are and it’s working for us, it’s very reassuring both to read about the multitude of studies showing its safety and positive results long-term, and to hear about the flaws in the studies that say it’s bad. (Mostly, they take any co-sleeping infant deaths as proof that co-sleeping is horrible, without looking at whether or not the parents were using safe co-sleeping practices, and not comparing that to the number of infant deaths in cribs, which is much higher.) Also, after that awful pediatrician told us that if we didn’t stop co-sleeping at five months, he’d be in our bed until 9 or 10 – Dr. Sears says that around 2 or 3, most children start wanting to be in their own beds. And on the other hand, if Dr. Sears, the originator of the term “Attachment Parenting” says that it’s OK to put your child in a separate room if co-sleeping doesn’t work for you, or to let your baby cry in Daddy’s arms if Mommy really needs a break – then I just don’t have to listen to the uber-AP types who say you can’t. So there.

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Goth Wear Optional

Posted on October 5, 2005 by Katy K.

So I’m supposed to review a teen book for the library web site for next month. I think, “I could review another fun fantasy, but maybe I should see if the teen librarian has any good ideas.” So I go ask her. Lesson One: Do not, I repeat, do not, ask the teen librarian for assistance picking a book unless you have at least 15-20 minutes to spend listening to her talk about at least one book on every shelf in the section. Lesson Two: Teen literature can be really awfully depressing. Oh, wait, I already knew lesson two. That’s why I so often stick to fantasy.

Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton Note that this book won a Printz award, the highest ALA gives to literature for young adults. As the book opens, 16-year-old Chanda, who lives in an imaginary but representative sub-Saharan country, is out shopping for a coffin for her 18-month-old baby sister, which the family can’t afford. And events do indeed go downhill from there. Chanda’s best friend starts skipping school to turn tricks to earn enough money to bring her scattered family back together, her parents having died of AIDS, though no one will admit it. Her drunken stepfather, her third since her father and two brothers died, leaves and looks to be very ill. She suspects her mother may have AIDS, too. It tries to end hopefully, will Chanda working for people not to be so ashamed of AIDS that they refuse to try to prevent it or treat it. But really, I can only recommend this book to people – probably teens – who feel that they need to drown themselves in a very depressing and very real problems not their own.

I’m not even sure I want to go so far as to put this one on the web site.

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Castles and Earthquakes

Posted on October 4, 2005 by Katy K.

The Secret of Castle Cant by K.P. Bath This is a delightful little fairy tale novel. I guess you could call it fantasy, but there is no magic involved. The Barony of Cant is a tiny little country in Europe, so tiny that it disappears into the fold of your map. In Cant, people still prefer to wear the clothes and use the technology of a century or so ago, even though the American Mission has been busily at work. Lucy is an orphan and maidservant to the Honorable & Adorable Pauline, heir to the Baronial Cap. She’s fond of her young charge, even if said charge is subject to Whims for which Lucy invariably gets punished, like launching wet bloomers from the catapult. But when Lucy hears something that sounds like a plot against Pauline, she joins the revolutionaries trying to rid the land of the scourge of chewing-gum and becomes a spy.

Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner It was perhaps a mistake for me to listen to a book about four new mothers so soon after becoming one myself. I had thought that ten months would give me enough of a buffer, but I was wrong. This book, Breakfast Club-like, features four mostly dissimilar women who meet in pre-natal yoga class in Philadelphia. Becky is plus-sized, Jewish, a chef and cursed with the mother-in-law from hell. Kelly, trying to escape her impoverished New Jersey Catholic roots, lives in a too-big apartment with no furniture in the living room, until they can save up for the perfect brand-name items she’s book marked on-line. Ayinde, the biracial wife of newly traded ‘6ers player Richard Town, flounders as she tries to adapt to motherhood and a new city at the same time. Leah, watching only from the outside at first, who fled Hollywood in a fog of depression after the death of her baby. Though the characters seem like they ought to be too stereotyped to work (diversity mix? Check! Diverse parenting and birth styles? Check! Big problems? One per character!), they all ended up feeling very real, even in situations where I wanted to chuck the cd case at them. Their struggles coping with new motherhood felt disturbing familiar, the friendship that helped them all through it genuine and touching. And, being Jennifer Weiner, there’s a good dose of humor mixed in with the sleep deprivation and unfolded laundry. You just have to decide if you’re in a place to appreciate feeling the pangs of new parenthood four times over.

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Starred Review

Posted on September 25, 2005 by Katy K.

Sometimes, when I read a review of a book that sounds good, I just go to the catalog and put a hold on it (usually, it’s still on order.) Then it pops up in my box and I have no idea what it’s about or why I put it on hold. This was one of those. And I was right – it is a good book.

Melusine by Sarah Monette It’s never a good sign when your main character is raped and his magical power used to bring down the city in the first chapter of a book. You just know that things are going to go downhill from there. And it does, as court magician Felix Harrowgate descends into madness, clinging to the hope of a man in a dream who told Felix he could help him. The narrative alternates between Felix’s court speech and the colorful slang of Mildmay, a cat thief from the ghetto. Mildmay tells us a story in the preface of why magicians can’t be trusted. But when he takes on a job for a beautiful woman, he finds himself drawn into places he knows he doesn’t want to be. As the city of Melusine falls apart, Felix and Mildmay are thrown together and find themselves traveling towards Felix’s dream. The gutter language, violence, rape, and disturbing depiction of madness make this a book best for adults, and I never quite figured out their time system, using septads. However, the magic is straightforward and the world, with very few non-human species, is easy to understand. The world described is vivid, the characters believable and sympathetic, the plot compelling. This is Monette’s first book; if you like good fantasy, read it now and keep an eye out for her future books.

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I haven’t died, Really

Posted on September 21, 2005 by Katy K.

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares In this sequel to the teen bestseller The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, we follow – you guessed it – the summer after our four friends’ sophomore year of high school. The magical pants that fit everyone are taken out of storage as Lena, Carmen, Tibby and Bridget prepare to go their separate ways for the summer. Lena has broken up with the handsome Greek boy she started dating last summer, but can’t stop thinking about him. Tibby goes off to film camp. Carmen is distracted from her first date by the horror of her mother going on dates of her own. Bridget, who gained 15 pounds and dyed her blond hair brown in her depression during the winter, goes off to Alabama to visit her grandmother anonymously. The storylines might be a bit predictable, and the book is difficult to follow if you aren’t familiar with the first one. But on the whole, it’s a wonderful example of teen literature. The characters are supportive of each other, but all different, three dimensional and full of teenage flaws and plenty of angst. The writing is vivid in a way that feels authentically teen. I do wish that the narrator on the audio version had been able to create different voices for the girls, and distinguish between male and female voices. But this is again a minor quibble, as on the whole, I really enjoyed this book.

Adorable Knits for Tots by Zoe Mellor Yep, the little outfits are adorable. But, on the whole, I think this book is for a more advanced, less busy knitter than me. Nearly every pattern uses intarsia, and I just don’t think I can follow complicated charts right now. Maybe if I’m feeling ambitious one day, I’ll try the pirate sweater, which features a skull and crossbones on navy for the body, with red and white striped sleeves. Or maybe I’ll try to see if Grandma will knit it.

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