The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black

There are a few "medieval" cookbooks floating around, but this is the best I've seen so far. It's the kind of cookbook that you can actually sit down and read through.

The recipes are divided by era, social class, and function. There's a chapter on foods that were primarily associated with the cloister, for example, and a section for remedies. There are simple dishes with few ingredients that would be most appropriate for a side-dish or breakfast, and there are elaborate meals that belong more properly to a great feast.

Each recipe comes with a short introduction or with a contemporary passage describing the dish, followed by the ingredients list and instructions. Some license is taken with substitutions - sometimes multiple substitutions are indicated for choice - to deal with the fact that many of the ingredients are hard to find these days or no longer exist at all.

illustrations from contemporary sources are plentiful and printed in full colour, making this book a lovely source of medieval art as well.

I've tried a couple of the recipes over the years and enjoyed them. I'd love to throw a "Period Party" someday to really make use of this book.

Raising a Secure Child by Zeynep Biringen

Read: 13 September, 2011

Raising a Secure Child starts from the same Daniel Goleman research that informed Emotionally Intelligent Parenting. Since the two were so similar in many ways, I can't help but to review the former in light of the latter.

I complained that Emotionally Intelligent Parenting provided sample dialogues to illustrate their points that were clearly idealized and read like something from the Stepford Wives. It was almost creepy. Raising a Secure Child, while making much greater use of dialogues and sample situations, did a much better job. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this was one of the book's most positive features. Every major point was backed up with a short vignette of a family either doing it right or doing it wrong that helped me see what the point should (or shouldn't) look like in practice. I found these to be a huge help in visualizing how I might out the advice into practice.

While Emotionally Intelligent Parenting focused on always saying the right thing, the focus in Raising a Secure Child was much more on the non-verbal interactions between parent and child. In other words, really meaning it is seen as more valuable than always having the right script handy. This made a good deal more intuitive sense to me.

Both books had the same emphasis on being emotionally present for kids (although, again, I felt that Raising a Secure Child made the point in a way that felt more practically applicable), and both talked about the importance of structure and limit-setting.

Raising a Secure Child spent a good deal of time on helping me to analyse my own upbringing to help me see how that might affect how I interact with my son. While it's something I have thought about a lot, I still found it helpful to go through in a more methodical sort of way.

And while it isn't applicable to my family, I do think the sections on children with special needs and getting through a divorce could be very useful.

Both books covered the full range from baby to young adult. I think that both are worth reading, but Raising a Secure Child is by far the better of the two.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth

Read: 9 September, 2011

There's a trick to reading parenting books: Never read them reactively.

It's a rule I'm normally really good at following, but I broke it when I picked up Health Sleep Habits, Happy Child. To make a long story short, my son sleeps wonderfully at night but is a terrible day napper. This often leads to some horrific bouts of crankiness, so I looked up infant sleep books at my local library to see if I could find something to help.

The central advice of Healthy Sleep Habits is to have babies take regular naps (and he does emphasize the "regular"). Great! I agree! Now how do we accomplish this?

Well, that's where the book starts to fall apart. Weissbluth recommends a sleep routine that may include things like reading a bedtime story (which excites my son because books are OMGWTFAWESOME!!), a bath (which excites my son because water is OMGWTFAWESOME!!), a massage (which excites my son because physical contact is OMGWTFAWESOME!!), and a lullaby (which... Yeah, I think you get the point).

I realize that my son is a bit weird. The grandson of two professional track-and-fielders (one of whom held a world record for a year) and a professional mountain climbing instructor, he's predisposed to some rather heightened energy levels. Not only is he an unstoppable force, he's also hitting all of his physical milestones on the very early end of the spectrum.

So Weissbluth's advice doesn't seem to work for our family (and I refuse to even try the cry-it-out method that he says may help if the stable bedtime routine fails). Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a huge deal. I don't know any adults who need nipples in their mouths to fall asleep, so I can reasonably assume that TurboKid will eventually grow out of his sleep problems, like I did. I could just keep trying with the routine and that would be the end of it.

The problem with Weissbluth is that he peppers his book with comments like:

I think it possible that unhealthy sleep habits contribute to school-related problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities.

and:

Warning: If your child does not learn to sleep well, he may become an incurable adult insomniac, chronically disabled from sleepiness and dependent on sleeping pills.

These sorts of friendly reminders are helpfully printed apart from the text, presented in bold and segregated in little boxes, lest you fail to notice that you are irrevocably breaking your baby.

There were aspects of the book that I enjoyed, such as the breakdown of strategies by age. But these were so overshadowed by the fear-mongering that it's hard for me to write anything other than a negative review. It's bad enough that I'm dealing with a cranky baby and that I can't get the method to work. To add a level of desperation, to make my failure something that will turn my precious babe into a disabled drug user, is just cruel.

Bad, Weissbluth. Bad.

Emotionally Intelligent Parenting by Maurice J. Elias, Steven E. Tobias, and Brian S. Friedlander

Read: 26 August, 2011

Since my son is now moving from the "pooping lump" stage into the "destroyer of worlds" stage, I figured that it was about time I start reading some books to help me control this little monster. So apologies to anyone who isn't particularly interested in parenting books, but I've got a stack to get through. Then it'll be over for a while, I promise!

Emotionally Intelligent Parenting has very little fact in it. For the most part, it's just a discussion of strategies that the authors think are beneficial and how to execute them. I found it rather worrisome, however, that when facts were presented, they were incorrect. It started early, in the introduction by Daniel Goleman, when he says that parents today "have less free time to spend with [our children] than our own parents did with us." I'd say that's intuitively true, one of those common sense things, but it's factually false.

So that made me wonder about the advice given in the book, which, for the  most part, seemed intuitively true. Plus, there was something about the repeated advice to talk about feelings that doesn't sit too well with my old New England Protestant family upbringing!

A lot of the advice was centred around acronyms like FIG TESPN, which is supposed to remind you (and kids) of how to work through problems. It seems to me that this is needlessly complicated and of dubious worth - not to mention absurd to implement on a daily basis.

My final major complaint is that I really wasn't wowed by the dialogues in the book. These were usually there to illustrate how to put the ideas into practice. Thing is that it made the parents sound like robots and I'm pretty sure that any kids subjected to these kinds of speeches would interpret them as insincerity. And then, to illustrate how well the method supposedly works, the  dialogues invariably end with kids saying: "I never really thought about it like that [...] Can we talk later? I have to do my homework now." Yeah right.

That's not to say that the book was all bad, not by any means. There were some gems, such as the parenting Golden Rule to "do unto your children as you would have other people do unto your children." There was also a lot of emphasis on modelling, so making sure that you display the behaviour you want to see in your children. And the last bit that really resonated with me was the advice to focus on goals. For example, focus on specific behaviour that you want corrected and work on that, or think about whether punishment is really the most effective means of prompting change.

Overall, I'd say that this was an interesting read and I did get some ideas, but I found that most of it was not realistically implementable. It also lacked evidence to back the assertions made.

How To Have Your Second Child First by Kerry Colburn and Rob Sorensen

Read: 25 August, 2011

As a new parent, it seems that I'm always one step behind my son. Just as I've figured out how to deal with one of his quirks, he passes into a new phase and my awesome new strategy is no longer useful.

That's where How To Have Your Second Child First comes in. The idea is to have parents who've already been through the process 'spill the beans' so that first time parents can avoid making all the mistakes that first time parents always make. For example, how important is it to warm your baby's bottle? Does a household really need to be kept in total silence while the baby is sleeping? Does everything your baby might touch need to be sterilized?

The book is organized like a list of lessons, each with some explanation and quotes from 'experienced' parents. Like most of these books, it's a mix of really good advice and advice that may simply not fit your family. So I'll give the same speech I always give for parenting books: Have a read through and take away what makes sense for you, ignore the rest.

That being said, I do think that the book's underlying message is incredibly important. Don't sweat the small stuff, you won't break your baby.

My son is nearly six months old, so I definitely read this too late for it to be of much help. It would be far better as a baby shower gift, or a 2nd-3rd trimester library take-out. I do think it should be on every parent-to-be's reading list.

Shoot-It-Yourself Wedding Video by Andrei Filippov

Disclaimer: The author is a relative, so I'm incredibly biased.

A practical, non-nonsense guide to shooting wedding videos. While I've only been on the other end of a wedding shoot, I can easily see how useful this little handbook would be. It is divided into situations (the bride getting ready, the couple at the altar, etc.) and the author explains concisely all the most important aspects of each of these scenes. These can sometimes be counter-intuitive, especially for a guest who is "in the moment." It's true that what we notice when we are in a situation is not always what will look good on tape 20 years later!

I had the good fortune to have the author himself shooting my wedding and the end product was a classy movie I could send out to all my family members. Andrei Filippov is an artist with the camera and his skill shines through in his writing.

Portions of the guide can also be found on the author's website: FAQ Video.

Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin

Read: 2 September, 2009

Your Money or Your Life is one part financial advice, two parts general life advice. The nine steps of the "program" are designed to help the reader think about their values and align their life so that there is as little that contradicts those values as possible. That these steps also help the reader get their finances in order, cut down on living expenses, and, eventually, become financially independent is almost incidental.

In following the steps and, according to the authors, learning to live (to truly enjoy being alive and filling the day with meaning as opposed to obsessing over how to get money, how to spend money, and how to pay the bills), the reader may also have more money available. Rather than 'your money or your life,' the end lesson of the book is 'your life and the money that facilitates its living.'

Whatever small flaws this book may have (the assumption that the reader is religions and American, some repetitive passages, the occasional Nervous Nelly advice), it more than makes up for by being among the first logically sound, no-nonsense, 'this won't be easy and the onus is on you to make it work' self-help book I've ever read.

While my family benefited little from the financial advice (nearly all the tips are things that we already do), I found the general life advice to be very thought-provoking. My husband and I have been inspired to re-evaluate our values and goals. In other words, there is something in this for everyone - even those who are not in debt and relatively financially secure. It would not be an overstatement for me to say that everyone, regardless of age and financial situation, should read this book at least once and, preferably, going through the first four steps.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Read: 26 August, 2009

Given all the positive reviews that Rich Dad, Poor Dad has received, I had high hopes. Unfortunately, this was a fairly large disappointment.

Rich Dad is incredible repetitive - not only in terms of content, but also in the actual words used. For example, compare this passage on page 59: "In fact, if you really want to be confused, look up the words "asset" and "liability" in the dictionary. I know the definition may sound good to a trained accountant, but for the average person it makes no sense." to this passage on page 61: "If you want a lesson in confusion, simply look up the words "asset" and "liability" in the dictionary. Now it may make sense to trained accountants, but to the average person, it may as well be written in Mandarin." For all Kiyosaki's talk of spending big bucks to hire smart professionals, he doesn't seem to have felt that this applies to editors as well.

The book itself is short, but should have been much shorted. The first half is devoted to a sermon about how poor dads tell their kids to do well in school so that they can get a good job while rich dads tell their kids to learn to make money work for them instead of working for money. That's it, the first half. Once the actual meat of the book starts, at least the content is somewhat interesting (thought the writing style is as awkward and repetitive as ever). I hesitate to assume devious motives, but I wonder if the lack of content was a deliberate move to allow Kiyosaki to write several books instead of only getting royalties for one.

That a self-help book is lacking in content and practical ideas comes as no surprise. However, Rich Dad also failed to be inspiring. I don't think that this book would be a worthwhile read for anyone, especially since all the advice he gives is available in better-written form for free on the internet.

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

Read: 18 August, 2008

Overall, I'd say this book isn't terribly useful. It didn't present very much new information and I felt that I had read much of his advice before in a better form. In fact, the only part I was truly pleased with was his explanation of MICE. I also enjoyed the final chapter that brought down the all-too-common sense many amateur writers have that they can just sit around doing nothing and inspiration will come to them and make them great.

If you are considering writing for the first time (and, really, this book applies to any writing, not just Science Fiction and Fantasy) and have never before tried to learn anything about the craft, this book would probably make for a reasonably good starting point. If, on the other hand, you've been writing and reading about writing for a while, this book will largely be a waste of time.

That being said, it is a very short read (it took me about two hours to plough through) and something may resonate for you, so why not? Also, I really enjoyed the portion about MICE (found a little more than half way through the third chapter) and I would say the book is worth checking out from the library just for that part.

Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway

Read: 1 November, 2007

I have read quite a few books on writing fiction and I must say that this is the only one that I have ever felt had any merit at all. Most books of this type give instructions, personal opinions, and leave it at that. I've often felt somewhat disappointed because I learned little from reading them. Reading this book, on the other hand, I frequently felt that I was learning a great deal.

The format for each chapter is an explanation first, then some short story examples, and then single and group exercises for readers to try. I found this format to be extremely helpful. The examples were well-chosen and referenced during the explanation sections and the exercises were creative and fun.

Usually, I would not recommend creative writing guides simply because they tend to be full of crap, but this is one that I urge anyone who is interested in creative writing to pick up.

6 Steps to Songwriting Success by Jason Blume

Read: 3 August, 2007

The six steps covered are how to develop a successful song structure, writing effective lyrics, composing memorable melodies, producing a successful demo, the business of the music industry, and how to develop realistic expectations. All in all, the book covers every step of the creative and marketing aspects of songwriting. It includes a number of fun exercises to practice the concepts discussed.

Overall a great addition to any aspiring songwriter's library. If you are interested in making music or in the music industry, this is a great read. Even if you are merely a performer and do not write your own songs, the later steps on marketing may still prove useful. I am not a songwriter myself, but I do have an interest in writing poetry. Even in this field, I found many of the sections applicable. By far the best (though only) book on songwriting I've come across.