Friday Review: My Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me

Today's review is by BookSpin contributor Evangeline Han. You can read her blog at http://www.sugarpeach.wordpress.com . Her twitter name is @EvangelineHan .


My Boyfriend Wrote A Book About Me: And Other Stories I Shouldn’t Share With Acquaintances, Coworkers, Taxi Drivers, Assistants, Job Interviewers, Bikini Waxers, And Ex/Current/Future Boyfriends But Have
by Hilary Winston
Sterling Publishing Co., Inc
Hardcover
May 2011 $17.95
240 pages

My Boyfriend Wrote A Book About Me is a collection of personal relationship stories by Hilary Winston. Winston writes about all the ups and downs of quirky relationships she has been in. The main focus of the book is Winston’s nearly five-year relationship with Kyle. After their break-up, she visits a bookstore and finds that he has written a book based on their relationship. To set the record straight about their relationship, Winston penned My Boyfriend Wrote A Book About Me.

This book should have a too much info warning in its beginning. Winston did not spare blushes in this candidly written book about her boyfriends. If I were any of her boyfriends, I would be squirming in my seat.

Hilary Winston

Winston pokes fun at all the heartbreaking and hilarious relationships she has been in. She describes her ex-boyfriends in telling details. More often than not, they are placed in a negative light and it seemed as if she thought that there could be no perfection in her any of her exes. It was a relief to read her self-examination at the end of her book. She keeps herself grounded by admitting that she has character weaknesses too.

The more pages I turned in the book, the more I wondered if Winston had used hyperboles. Characters in the book frequently had dramatic reactions to incidents. Either they were very colorful people or their reactions were exaggerated.

This book is a collection of very personal of stories. Right from page 1, Winston practiced the no holds barred attitude. I was amazed at the way she doesn’t shy from being brutally honest when narrating her stories. It takes plenty of guts to publish such an intimate, telling book.

The ending of the book leaves something to be desired. Winston still hasn’t fully gotten over her relationship with Kyle. Perhaps, there is a sequel in works? If there is a sequel, I will definitely want to read it. The thing I enjoyed most is Winston's writing style. She writes in a casual and humorous style. She is frank and expresses her emotions well in the book.

My Boyfriend Wrote A Book About Me was a hilarious collection of stories about the ups and downs of Winston’s relationship life. Its openness left me a little uncomfortable sometimes, but hey, this book is about real incidents in a real person’s life.

As for who “Kyle” is, read this book and then do a spot of Googling!

About the author: Hillary Winston is currently working as a writer and producer of the critically acclaimed comedy Community and was one of the writers for the Emmy®-award-winning show My Name Is Earl. She began her writing career by getting people coffee at various places like National Public Radio and Hollywood Squares. She can now proudly say someone else gets her coffee. Unfortunately, she doesn’t like coffee. Winston lives in Los Angeles with her cat Lolly. 

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Evangeline Han is a student from Malaysia. She is a voracious reader with a penchant for books with humor and intrigue. Besides reading, she also enjoys listening to music, surfing the Internet,  checking out the movies and browsing through the latest news.

Thursday Review: The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

Today's review is by BookSpin contributor Rita Hernandez.  You can read her blog at http://ritaliccious.wordpress.com .  Her twitter name is @Rita_liccious .

The Woman Who Fell From The Sky 

by Jennifer Steil

Broadway / Crown / Random House

Hardcover

This is the story of an American journalist who finds herself running a newspaper in Yemen. It really is so much more.  The depth to this story is what isn’t said. This book was interesting on many different levels.  The only thing I knew about Yemen, prior to reading this book, was what I saw on television and from what I knew when a high school friend served for a year in the Peace Corps teaching English over there. My friend video taped the entire experience. She lived in a hut and many third-world details such as that were absent from this book. But perhaps, that is one of the things that I like most about the book.  The author didn’t need to expand on the lack of plumbing to express her frustrations that many first-world Americans would feel. She did include enough details and had an amazing grasp of imagery that allowed me to visualize the small Yemenis village and I have never left this side of the Atlantic.

Reading this book made me realize that many of the things that I complain about really are third-world problems. The author, Jennifer Steil, managed to adapt to a very misogynistic society by having respect for a culture so very different from ours. Her depictions of all of her reporters and all of the characters in the book made them very real, and while you may not have agreed with the viewpoint of several of them (especially the men) you couldn’t help but empathize for their plight. And yet, while their culture was so very different from ours, the similarities were also clearly shown.

There are also many light-hearted passages where you couldn’t help but almost want to visit Yemen just to see the images that she was able to create with her pen. The sad part about that, is that, according to this novel, many of the population in Yemen are illiterate and many of the countries problems are attributed to this.  In fact, my favorite quote from the book clearly outlined this problem, but could be attributed to our society as well. “The more complicated the story, the more important it is that you make it clear to your readers.”

The underlying story here, is one of friendship. A friendship that transcends culture, space and time. Jennifer and Zuhra, one of the reporters, begins slowly and develops throughout the book that you almost feel as if there are elements of “chick-lit” to this book. That’s one of the things that I enjoyed the most. The narrative was so well-written that as the story unfolded you couldn’t help but turn the page wondering what was coming next.

I really enjoyed reading this book as I am not very familiar with the lands in the Middle East and while there were some very uncomfortable moments for the author, I have to say that it was quite an enjoyable read.

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher to review.

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Rita Hernandez is on the List of Extinct and Endangered Species as she is is a native South Floridian who still lives in South Florida. Proud mom to three beautiful children. She is a bibliophile, an anglophile, a political junkie and a General Hospital addict. Don't let that fool you though as she will read and write about any topic. A modern day Renaissance Woman.

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

NOW IN PAPERBACK!

Composed: A Memoir
by Rosanne Cash
Penguin
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

"One of the best accounts of an American life you'll likely ever read." -Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

As moving, disarming, and elusive as one of her classic songs, Composed is Rosanne Cash's testament to the power of art, tradition, and love to transform a life. For more than three decades she has been one of the most compelling figures in popular music, having moved gracefully from Nashville stardom to critical recognition as a singer-songwriter and author of essays and short stories. Her remarkable body of work has often been noted for its emotional acuity, its rich and resonant imagery, and its unsparing honesty. Those qualities have enabled her to establish a unique intimacy with her audiences, and it is those qualities that inform her long-awaited memoir.

Author website

Book Review (Washington Times)

Interview with the author (NPR)

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut's Journey to the Moon
by Al Worden with Francis French
Smithsonian Books
Hardcover

From the distributor website:

As command module pilot for the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 1971, Al Worden flew on what is widely regarded as the greatest exploration mission that humans have ever attempted. He spent six days orbiting the moon, including three days completely alone, the most isolated human in existence. During the return from the moon to earth he also conducted the first spacewalk in deep space, becoming the first human ever to see both the entire earth and moon simply by turning his head. The Apollo 15 flight capped an already-impressive career as an astronaut, including important work on the pioneering Apollo 9 and Apollo 12 missions, as well as the perilous flight of Apollo 13.

Nine months after his return from the moon, Worden received a phone call telling him he was fired and ordering him out of his office by the end of the week. He refused to leave.

What happened in those nine months, from being honored with parades and meetings with world leaders to being unceremoniously fired, has been a source of much speculation for four decades. Worden has never before told the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career. Readers will learn them here for the first time, along with the exhilarating account of what it is like to journey to the moon and back. It's an unprecedentedly candid account of what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut, with all its glory but also its pitfalls.

Author website


Kirkus Reviews

Co-Author website

Monday Review: THE HOBO HANDBOOK by Josh Mack

If I were rich I would travel.  If I were poor I'd be a hobo.  But I repeat myself.


The Hobo Handbook: A Field Guide to Living by Your Own Rules
by Josh Mack
Trade Paperback
Adams Media

Being lazy is hard work.  When most of us think of hobos our minds turn to dirty and stinky unshaven men with in filthy rag-clothing who hang out in rail yards.  Thanks, Hollywood.

But Josh Mack tells us it isn't so easy being "lazy."  While recognizing the quirky and humorous slant of the book, the author is clearly serious about his subject. He traveled across the U.S. nine times.  This is a man who knows of which he speaks.

First up, we are given a "Hobo Aptitude Test."  This test is used to weed out the contenders from the pretenders.  Readers are asked to give answers to statements such as:

"A lot of the people you'll be meeting are a bit more "out there" than the people you met at the poetry slam who you thought were "out there." Most folks are good, but like anywhere - now even more so - people can be..."challenging."

Your choices:
1. That's just what I'm looking for.
2. I can handle whatever comes my way.
3. Hmmm...I was kinda hoping not to meet anybody.
4. Forget it, just the thought creeps me out and makes me want to watch a Disney movie instead.

If, after completing the aptitude test, you decide you still want to be a hobo, plenty of helpful advice follows.

Readers are given the "hobo code." It may surprise you that many hobos don't look like the stereotype to the right.  Many of them are "...just as likely to find a job on Craigslist while sipping a soy latte the put on a debit card as they are to brew a pot of cowboy coffee over a small campfire by the tracks as they wait for word to arrive on where the jobs are."

The author provides helpful advice on how to get started as a hobo, how to travel light, modes of transportation, finding places to sleep and eat, where to find work (and how to secure the job - even as a hobo.)  Advice is also given on how to make your money last, how to keep clean and even how to read "hobo symbols" left by others who have blazed your trail.  Read the book and you'll get tips on how to stay out of trouble and how to spend your "down-time," (for example, you could attend the National Hobo Convention (no joke.))  You'll learn how to post bail, how to tell north from south with a paperclip and water and how to treat various injuries and ailments.  Helpful advice is also given on how to make hobo delicacies such as dandelion salad.

Sound like fun?  Hurry, your train is leaving.

(But please first read the section on how to hop a train.)

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA
by Joby Warrick
Doubleday / Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

A stunning narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated both the inner circle of al-Qaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a devastating impact on the war on terror.

In December 2009, a group of the CIA’s top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden’s top deputy. Instead, as he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped to his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agency’s worst loss of life in decades.

In The Triple Agent, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Joby Warrick takes us deep inside the CIA’s secret war against al-Qaeda, a war that pits robotic planes and laser-guided missiles against a cunning enemy intent on unleashing carnage in American cities. Flitting precariously between the two sides was Balawi, a young man with extraordinary gifts who managed to win the confidence of hardened terrorists as well as veteran spymasters. With his breathtaking accounts from inside al-Qaeda’s lair, Balawi appeared poised to become America’s greatest double-agent in half a century—but he was not at all what he seemed. Combining the powerful momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, Warrick takes the readers on a harrowing journey from the slums of Amman to the inner chambers of the White House in an untold true story of miscalculation, deception, and revenge. 

Book excerpt

Book review (L.A. Times)

NPR

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59
by Douglas Edwards
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis or bystander’s account can capture it. Now Doug Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company. Edwards, Google’s first director of marketing and brand management, describes it as it happened. We see the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company’s young, idiosyncratic partners; the evolution of the company’s famously nonhierarchical structure (where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feature to create and works independently); the development of brand identity; the races to develop and implement each new feature; and the many ideas that never came to pass. Above all, Edwards—a former journalist who knows how to write—captures the “Google Experience,” the rollercoaster ride of being part of a company creating itself in a whole new universe.

I’m Feeling Lucky captures for the first time the unique, self-invented, yet profoundly important culture of the world’s most transformative corporation.

Author interview

Review

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

Beneath the Sands of Egypt: Adventures of an Unconventional Archaeologist 
by Donald P. Ryan
William Morrow / Harper Collins
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

Ancient Egypt, with its spectacular temples and tombs, its history, gods, and legends, has enticed the human imagination for centuries. This fascination—and the irresistible drive to unearth the buried secrets of a lost civilization—have been the life work of archaeologist Donald P. Ryan. Beneath the Sands of Egypt is the gripping first-person account of a real-life “Indiana Jones” as he recalls a career spent delving into the remains of Egypt’s past—including his headline-making rediscovery of a lost tomb in the Valley of the Kings containing the mummy of the famous female pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Infused with the irrepressible curiosity and the incomparable wonder of discovery that have fueled Ryan’s lifelong journey, Beneath the Sands of Egypt is the extraordinary story of a man who has always embraced adventure whenever—and wherever—he finds it.

Review

Author website

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

Sex On the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
by Ben Mezrich
Doubleday / Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea—a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally.

Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA—past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.

But what does one do with an item so valuable that it’s illegal even to own? And was Thad Roberts—undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a possible astronaut—really what he seemed?

Mezrich has pored over thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts, and NASA documents and has interviewed most of the participants in the crime to reconstruct this Ocean’s Eleven–style heist, a madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride.

Kirkus Reviews

Book Review

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure
by Craig Robinson
Bloomsbury USA
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

How many miles does a baseball team travel in one season?

How tall would A-Rod's annual salary be in pennies?

What does Nolan Ryan have to do with the Supremes and Mariah Carey?

You might never have asked yourself any of these questions, but Craig Robinson's Flip Flop Fly Ball will make you glad to know the answers.

Baseball, almost from the first moment Robinson saw it, was more than a sport. It was history, a nearly infinite ocean of information that begged to be organized. He realized that understanding the game, which he fell in love with as an adult, would never be possible just through watching games and reading articles. He turned his obsession into a dizzyingly entertaining collection of graphics that turned into an Internet sensation.
Out of Robinson's Web site, www.flipflopflyball.com,  grew this book, full of all-new, never-before-seen graphics. Flip Flop Fly Ball dives into the game's history, its rivalries and absurdities, its cities and ballparks, and brings them to life through 120 full-color graphics. Statistics-the sport's lingua franca-have never been more fun.

(By the way, the answers: about 26,000 miles, at least if the team in question is the 2008 Kansas City Royals; 3,178 miles; they were the artists atop the Billboard Hot 100 when Ryan first and last appeared in MLB games.)

Craig Robinson is, among other things, an Englishman and a New York Yankees fan with a soft spot for the Colorado Rockies and a man-crush on Ichiro. Last season he played outfield for the Prenzlauer Berg Piranhas in the Berlin Mixed Softball League (.452/.548/.575). His previous books include Atlas, Schmatlas: A Superior Atlas of the World and Fun Fun Fun.

Author website

Review of Flip Flop Fly Ball

Author tumblr page

On My Radar (Thursday Edition)

The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City
by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti
Faber & Faber / Macmillan
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

Should neighborhoods change? Is wearing a suit a good way to quit smoking? Why do people think that if you do one thing, you’re against something else? Is monogamy a trick? Why isn’t making the city more fun for you and your friends a super-noble political goal? Why does a computer last only three years? How often should you see your parents? How should we behave at parties? Is marriage getting easier? What can spam tell us about the world?

Misha Glouberman’s friend and collaborator, Sheila Heti, wanted her next book to be a compilation of everything Misha knew. Together, they made a list of subjects. As Misha talked, Sheila typed. He talked about games, relationships, cities, negotiation, improvisation, Casablanca, conferences, and making friends. His subjects ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. But sometimes what had seemed trivial began to seem important—and what had seemed important began to seem less so. 

The Chairs Are Where the People Go is refreshing, appealing, and kind of profound. It’s a self-help book for people who don’t feel they need help, and a how-to book that urges you to do things you don’t really need to do.

Book website

Publishers Weekly review

Review by BookSpin friend Harvey Freedenberg on Shelfawareness.com

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

BookSpin review by Doni Molony

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter
by Mark Seal
Viking Press
Penguin
June 2011  $26.95
323 pages, 18 pgs. illustrations


This is the mesmerizing true story of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, who came to the U.S. in 1978 as a seventeen-year-old German citizen, then perpetuated an elaborately fabricated scam that lasted for 30 years. Mark Seal spent 2 years interviewing 200+ people for this book, which details the relentless scheming of a psychopathic grifter. It culminates in Rockefeller's conviction for the kidnapping of his daughter after a bitter divorce, and his indictment in March of 2011 for the murder of John Sohus.

The audacity of Clark Rockefeller frankly astounded me. How could so many erudite individuals: business leaders, doctors, lawyers, professors, art dealers, historians, and members of California, New York and Boston society's elite have been so completely duped by the guile of this faux aristocrat? This cunning poseur with the lockjaw accent?

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit reads like a thriller. It is a fast-paced, intriguing story that caused me to do something I've never done before. Ever. When I finished the last page, I turned it over and began re-reading again at page one. Not simply because of the frenetic pace of his "thousand piece jigsaw puzzle of a life," but because I was left with unanswered questions. Why did it take to long for anyone to figure out Rockefeller's con?

This is a hypnotic story complete with blue-blood, high stakes, big money, kidnapping, murder, and a larger-than-life outcome for the good guys. The Boston DA's said in closing, "the DSM IV (Diagnotic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) does not have a diagnosis for liar."

Highly recommended.

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About the Author: Mark Seal is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and the author of Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Death in Africa. Seals was a 2010 National Magazine Award Finalist for his Vanity Fair profile of Clark Rockefeller. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu
by Christopher Heaney
Palgrave Macmillan
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Hiram Bingham

In 1911, a young Peruvian boy led an American explorer and Yale historian named Hiram Bingham into the ancient Incan citadel of Machu Picchu. Hidden amidst the breathtaking heights of the Andes, this settlement of temples, tombs and palaces was the Incas' greatest achievement. Tall, handsome, and sure of his destiny, Bingham believed that Machu Picchu was the Incas’ final refuge, where they fled the Spanish Conquistadors. Bingham made Machu Picchu famous, and his dispatches from the jungle cast him as the swashbuckling hero romanticized today as a true Indiana Jones-like character. But his excavation of the site raised old specters of conquest and plunder, and met with an indigenous nationalism that changed the course of Peruvian history. Though Bingham successfully realized his dream of bringing Machu Picchu’s treasure of skulls, bones and artifacts back to the United States, conflict between Yale and Peru persists through the present day over a simple question: Who owns Inca history?
In this grand, sweeping narrative, Christopher Heaney takes the reader into the heart of Peru's past to relive the dramatic story of the final years of the Incan empire, the exhilarating recovery of their final cities and the thought-provoking fight over their future. Drawing on original research in untapped archives, Heaney vividly portrays both a stunning landscape and the complex history of a fascinating region that continues to inspire awe and controversy today.

Author website

Review of Cradle of Gold (Financial Times)

Another review of Cradle of Gold (Wall St. Journal)

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

A Renegade History of the United States
by Thaddeus Russell
Free Press / Simon & Schuster
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

In this groundbreaking book, noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free.

In vivid portraits of renegades and their "respectable" adversaries, Russell shows that the nation's history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires—insiders versus outsiders, good citizens versus bad. The more these accidental revolutionaries existed, resisted, and persevered, the more receptive society became to change.

Russell brilliantly and vibrantly argues that it was history's iconoclasts who established many of our most cherished liberties. Russell finds these pioneers of personal freedom in the places that usually go unexamined—saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, and even behind the Iron Curtain. He introduces a fascinating array of antiheroes: drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women's liberation, including "Diamond Jessie" Hayman, a madam who owned her own land, used her own guns, provided her employees with clothes on the cutting-edge of fashion, and gave food and shelter to the thousands left homeless by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; there are also the criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America's sexual culture.

Among Russell's most controversial points is his argument that the enemies of the renegade freedoms we now hold dear are the very heroes of our history books— he not only takes on traditional idols like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, but he also shows that some of the most famous and revered abolitionists, progressive activists, and leaders of the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the vibrant energies of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the drag queens who founded Gay Liberation.

This is not history that can be found in textbooks— it is a highly original and provocative portrayal of the American past as it has never been written before.

Author website

Review of A Renegade History of the United States

Excerpt in Fast Company magazine

Introducing BookSpin Reviewer Evangeline Han

Please join me in welcoming new BookSpin reviewer Evangeline Han:

Evangeline Han is a student from Malaysia. She is a voracious reader with a penchant for books with humor and intrigue. Besides reading, she also enjoys listening to music, surfing the Internet, checking out the movies and browsing through the latest news. She blogs at Sugarpeach and tweets at @EvangelineHan .


We will be featuring the normal book previews, as well as book reviews from myself and the three ladies I have introduced this week.  I would personally like to thank each of them for their enthusiastic participation and to every reader for their time.

--Tim