Call for Guest Bloggers

Help! Like most other readers, I can't find time to read all that I want to. Would you like to share some thoughts on something you've enjoyed lately? I'm looking for guest bloggers. It's this easy: tell us what you've read recently - old or new, any genre - what you liked about it, and why you'd recommend it. It's a fact: there are too many books, and too little time. Your recommendations can help others use their reading time wisely, and find books they might have otherwise overlooked.

Please contact me if you're the slightest bit interested.  I welcome your reviews, and your fellow readers will appreciate it, too.

If only I had more time to read...

If there were just a few more hours in each week, I'd read...

...The Why Files, from top to bottom. I think of it as the science-lover's weekly, for non-science majors.

The editors do a fabulous job of delivering in-depth content, with most of that content being connected to current events and headlines.

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What about you? What would you read if given an extra hour or two to do so?

Just gave up on The Big Short

The Big Short by Michael Lewis is an excellent book, and I heartily recommend it - if you can stomach it. It doesn't go down easy - and I'm not the only one who gave up on the book. Wall Street Journal blogger Peter Lattman took on admittedly more work by reading the thesis by a recent Harvard grad, cited in Lewis' acknowledgement, instead of reading the book itself. 

Before I quit reading, I was surprised to learn that Lewis, who also wrote Moneyball (film adaptation starring Brad Pitt now in theaters) and The Blind Side, spent a few years in his early career working on Wall Street. In this book, he exposes the smoke and mirrors and BS that passes for "complicated math" and reveals what most of us know, in our guts: most investment schemes are, first and foremost, schemes. Flat-out thievery in many cases.

Look, Lewis is an outstanding storyteller with superb research skills (translation: hard-working journalist) and I'll try to read just about anything he writes. Unfortunately, I just couldn't handle this particular tale. Probably because it's a true story, about a bunch of crooks who got rich and got away with it. And we're still paying the bills.

Sigh.
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Attention book clubbers bound and determined to figure out the financial mess: this is your book. 

On Libraries: Gotta check this out

Is anyone reading this Huffington Post series on libraries? I'm not a big Huff fan; but this is worth reading.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/libraries-in-crisis/

White Water invites us to wade in

Set in the segregation-era South, White Water is based on one particular memory author Michael Bandy just couldn't shake. The memory: not being allowed to drink from the white fountain.

As Bandy's (fictional) main character, also named Michael, puts it:

"I was just sure it must be pure and icy cold, like mountain water. Suddenly I just had to know what that white water tasted like."

And (spoiler alert) he finds out.

It's a children's picture book, so there's no space for a detailed history lesson and it's not the place to assign blame. It's a 32-page opportunity to open a window and begin a discussion with kids about racism. Or not.

I repeat, it's a picture book, so it's difficult for adults to gauge what the book's intended audience might read into it. And that's OK.

We should read it to them, ask them to feel what Michael feels - think about his thirst for that white water - and see if they can grasp the irony, as Michael did, when he realized that the same pipe fed both fountains. It's the same water.

Michael (the character) realizes the only difference between the water in those fountains was in his imagination.

"The signs over the fountains had put bad ideas in my head," Bandy writes.

Whatever our differences, the easy, politically correct way to handle them is to pretend we are blind. Color blind or unable to see the yamaka, turban, veil, dreadlocks, wheelchair, whatever makes the person (apparently) different from one's self. It's not completely wrong to pretend we don't notice labels or differences and instead choose to "see inside" the person. But it's only half right.

What if we go all the way? What if we see the labels, read the signs and then ask questions? Of each other?

How would that water taste?

That's a big question, and this is a book for little people. But we should ask. Maybe they'll lead us to the answer.

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I received a free review copy of White Water (copyright 2011) from Random House.

Can you believe what you read?

So far today I've read about Obama's trip to Mars and Newt's suggestion that we pay middle- and high school students to take math and science classes. Before the world ends (on 12/21/12 in case you need to put it on your calendar...wait for it...the last calendar you'll ever need) I'll post a review of a children's book that I received from Candlewick Press (Random House) last year. 

White Water by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein, is one of many free review copies I received last year. For the record, I rarely accept them and review them even less often. While it's flattering to be contacted by publishers (and fun to get free books), it becomes something of a pain sometimes, especially - I know this will draw nasty replies - when the books are sent by self-published authors along with such a huge amount of hyperbole in the accompanying press material, it's matched only by the typos and grammatical errors in their books. I understand why many good writers choose to self-publish and self-publishing is certainly gaining (deserved) respect but I stand by my assertion that self-published shouldn't mean self-edited. But I digress.

Back to my point and headline: can you believe what you read here? (It's the only place I have complete editorial control. You're on your own with the Obama-on-Mars thing.) The answer is yes, because when I receive a review copy, I say so somewhere in the review. If I've reviewed a book for another publication - such as The Plain Dealer or Kirkus - I explain that in my reviews on this blog.

If you read much online and reviews in particular, you know that's how it's supposed to be done - and that it's not always. So. Yeah. You can believe what you read here. Next up: my review of White Water, a very interesting book for young kids, about racism. Until then...well, don't believe everything you read, ok?

Best books you read in 2011?

What books are you glad you cracked open in 2011? What books were most rewarding? Are there some you'll re-read, or recommend to complete strangers, because they so moved, shocked, educated, or entertained you?

Well by all means, don't keep secrets like that. Please share the titles you loved the most this year. Or - just as importantly - tell us which ones aren't worth the time.

I'm partial to Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto, and not just because I think it's accurate to call it a lifesaver. I'm recommending it to just about anyone who will listen (or not run away). Thirteen Reasons Why is still top-of-mind. Not just for the young adult (YA) market, it may also interest parents of YAs.  And I'd be remiss is if i didn't mention 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Cleveland, now wouldn't I?

OK! It's you're turn. Please, tell us all about those gems you pulled from library shelves, snagged at your neighbor's garage sale, ordered for your Kindle or other e-reader, or just finally (!) uncovered on your nightstand. We're about to turn the page to 2012, after all, and we're going to need something to read...