Review of Love You, Mean It: A True Story of Love, Loss and Friendship (Hardcover)

After receiving my copy of Love You, Mean It, I stopped everything else in my life to sit down and read about how September 11, 2001 changed the lives of these 4 special women.I didn't stop reading until the last page was finished..

Well organized and written, I read account after account of how the Widow's Club (WC) coped with the trauma that appears so suddenly after lives are suddenly interrupted.
The women who wrote this book were linked together after the World Trade Center was attacked and after reading their many stories, it was understood by this reader that the love and support that they received from each other was absolutely instrumental in the preliminary stages of emotional and mental repair after the death of a loved one.
Hearing about the love each WC member had for their spouse, the feelings and emotions and heartbreak after "the boys" were killed and the steps taken to repair their lives was incredible..It made me focus on those friends that I have recently lost and made me understand that my feelings after these losses have been experienced and felt deeply by others.

If you have ever had someone, so special in your life, taken from you, read this book.. If you want to be better prepared on how to deal with the loss of life and all the intrinsic feelings that are a result, it is a must read.LUMI is a guidebook detailing the accounts of four women who have cried, coped with internal and external forces, questioned their own existances and somehow, found the strength to forge ahead and continue on.. the reader will understand through the written words of this book, that you can too.

To quote from the last 2 sentences in the book.. "Make the decision to live. It would be wrong not to."

Thanks Patty, Julia, Ann and Claudia for sharing these very special stories.



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Review of Lifetime Wedding Planner, The (Hardcover)

I used this planner as a guide for my wedding. I found the details in each chapter helpful and informative for my planning. There are pockets at each chapter header to allow you to stuff papers, business cards, and the like allowing this to be the only item you'd need to carry around.

Each chapter starts w/ something you can read detailing questions to think about and the best way to handle things like registering for gifts, selecting your officiant, and wedding traditions you may want to include in your ceremonly. At the end of each chapter are pages to keep track of notes, details on vendors you've seen, questions that help you narrow down your choices and a few pages dedicated to questions that allow you to journal your experiences. (Brides are busy and for me, this book covered the basics and more.)

I loved the elastic band that came around the book. It was sturdy enough to keep all my papers and samples in once place while I went throught the decision making & planning processes.

I would recommend this planner for purchase and have given in to multipe friends as engagement gifts.

Product Description
he Lifetime Wedding Planner has everything that a newly-engaged couple will need as they plan for their big day. Filled with information, advice, checklists, timelines, and journal pages, as well as pockets for receipts, contracts, and special keepsakes, the bride and groom can keep track of all their wedding plans in one place, and afterwards have a cherished book of memories. From choosing the date and locale, selecting musicians for the party, and figuring out transportation needs for the guests, to strategizing the rehearsal dinner toasts, The Lifetime Wedding Planner guides couples through every stage of planning their perfect wedding. The book also provides etiquette and guidelines on: ninvitation wording npicking the officiant nregistering for gifts nthrowing the bouquetncutting the cake nreceiving line arrangements nwedding brunches ncost-saving comparison worksheets and checklists And if the details become overwhelming, the couple will find inspiration in the romantic traditions, folklore, and quotations interspersed throughout the book. The Lifetime Wedding Planner will let the couple enjoy the moment of their dreams-their own very special wedding of a lifetime.

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Review of Kaiju Big Battel: A Practical Guide to Giant City-Crushing Monsters (Paperback)

This book is a clever parody of three silly genres all at once: Japanese monster movies, the Manga craze, and professional wrestling. Largely I think it works well as a satirical piece of humor and social commentary, but mostly it is just good old fashioned fun.

The basic premise is that the evil Dr. Cube has created giant monsters that fight each other in the "Kaiju Big Battel" arena for entertainment of the masses. There are good and evil Kaiju, and some rogues that can change allegiances at the drop of a hat. The monsters here are not your typical Japanese Godzilla copycats, but rather creative originals such as Call-Me-Kevin (my personal favorite), the ridiculous looking Sky Deviler, and the heroic tuber, Silver Potato.

The book is broken down into a biography section, a section of famous Kaiju bouts, and assorted other features such as "How Sky Deviler's Digestive System Works" and "Silver Potato's Holiday Miracle". There is even a color spread that has very amusing faux-Japanese translations like: "Who is the sphincter mouth of depth-perception irrelevant monster? Sky Deviler most high ugliness the dive bomb swoop. Special appetite skill combine with brain lentil size create the deadliest!"

I found the book quite entertaining and diverting. I particularly love old Japanese monster movies, and seeing this pay homage to them while concurrently mocking Manga and wrestling made this book totally worthwhile for me.


Product Description
Kaiju Big Battel, a series of live events that revolve around tournament-style performances, is a tongue-in-cheek hybrid of Japanese-monster-movie mayhem and lowbrow pop-culture. These sold-out events feature a roster of over thirty monsters battling in a modern conflict of epic proportions.

Kaiju Big Battel, the official guide, will provide an overview of the Kaiju universe, principally the key monsters and the epic battles, for devoted fans and new readers alike. In addition to a 16-page full-color insert of Kaiju studio photographs and a glossary, Kajiu Big Battel will be ornamented with a safety manual, weapon profiles and a guide to the inner workings of the Kaiju world. A crash course in everything Kaiju, readers would be well-advised to pay careful attention as those uneducated in monster mayhem could be imperiled next time Kaiju Big Battel erupts in their neighborhood!

The Big Battel Rages on in the Kaiju Universe!

Planet Earch is under threat. Scattered throughout the galaxy is a monstrous mob of maniacal villians, alien beasts, and city-crushing monsters that are waging a war against one another. In a recent New Year's Eve Kaiju Big Battel, Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle defeated RoBox:

"Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle couldn't wait for the ball to drop to avenge his shocking loss to the newest Kaiju Hero, RoBox, at Kaiju Rampage New York. As Louden Noxious counted down to the stroke of midnight, the killer klucker burst into the Danger Cage and began to lay waste to the snow-covered cityscape. Seeing this wanton destruction, newly constructed Kaiju Hero, RoBox rushed the Cage to put a shop to the terror. This was perhaps the robotic Hero's biggest mistake of the night.

Fresh from an extended stay in China with his sensei, Mr. Wong, Soup unleashed a barrage of devastating new maneuvers upon Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle. High-flying flips and crushing corkscrews quickly overloaded RoBox's circuts and the new Hero was unable to mount any signifigant counter attack. Finally Soup delivered the Bouillion Back Flip for the pin, earning the right to fufill his new year's resolutions: to kill again!"

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Review of THE TENDER BAR (Hardcover)

This is one of those books that paralyzes the reviewer in its beauty.What can I say to convince you to read this book?Ideally, I'd just highlight every single line and make you read it.

It is nearly impossible to pin down one theme Moehringer's memoir is about:Fatherless boys?Working class moms trying to make ends meet?The search for a father figure in a crowd of bartenders?The genesis of a journalist, of a writer?The life of a blue-collar Yalie?Determining one's purpose in life?An intense character study of men in a bar?The rebellion of a son against his mom's intense love and support?Society's love affair with alcohol? In the end, this memoir is all of this and so much more, told in marvelous prose.

The author biography in the back jacket flap reveals that Moehringer is a Pulitzer Prize winner and national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.These facts will help buoy the reader when our author is failing out of Yale, failing at life, or struggling to get promoted beyond his hard-won copyboy position at the New York Times.Moehringer searches for purpose, reason, motivations, and positive reinforcement (other than from his mother).He especially struggles with his unpublished novel, which he worked on for close to a decade (and which I suspect became the basis for his memoir, since the novel was reportedly largely autobiographical).

This is one of those books one needs to own, for the underlining of critical passages and literary references to review again later.Be prepared to get intimate with the tough, ruddy-faced bartenders and barkeeps of Publicans (especially Uncle Charlie, who I have known in another body in my own life), and to put Steve's bar on the list of places to visit before you die.




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Review of Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI (Hardcover)

This is the most inspiring book I have read about a woman's career since I became familiar with Ms. Jane Goodall's books about her pioneering work in Africa with chimpanzees.

Many people will see Ms. Candice ("don't call me Candy") De Long as a real-life Clarice Starling (the FBI agent in Hannibal).I think she is more impressive than that.This fascinating book recounts her three lives as a psychiatric nurse who worked with violent patients and did home health care for poor people, an FBI special agent (specializing in profiling of repeated, sexually violent offenders) from 1980 through 2000, and as a divorced mother raising a son alone.Each side of her life is equally impressive, and she is the kind of person we all should admire.She has always done her duty, and we are all the better for that.While many pioneering women in "men's" professions often were given "token" roles, Ms. De Long wanted and went to where the action was.During her career, she rescued a child from a pedophile abductor, captured a terrorist who had murdered three men, and caught a Class A fugitive.She was also present and part of many famous investigations.Her memoir will give you a much better idea about crime and how the FBI and DEA combat it.The book also contains many lessons for how women and children can avoid becoming crime victims.

When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, there were no women field agents.By 1980, around 4 percent of the agents were women.At her retirement in 2000, this had risen to 15 percent.Ms. De Long sacrificed a lot to become an agent.She had to leave her young son for 16 weeks for the initial training.She missed a lot of evenings and weekends with him to do surveillance.The training included a lot of harrassment (female and general).For example, she was made to fire a shotgun so often in one day that she developed a permanent injury that kept her from being able to use that shoulder for firing a shotgun again.Another time, she had to box a large man who knocked her out cold.Her starting salary was half what she had made as a nurse.She could accept that."I wanted to lead a heroic life."She certainly did succeed in that objective.She took the men on at their own game, and was proud of being called one of the "b_____s with badges."Her signature was the fedora she always wore at the Bureau.

Some of the famous cases she worked on included the Tylenol tampering, being part of the surveillance team on the Unabomber leading up to the arrest of Ted Kaczynski, and the brothel closings in Chicago.

She correctly says relatively little about her personal life.But some of the anecdotes will keep you laughing for days.When she was asked to be a hot dog mother in her son's third grade class, the children noticed that she was packing.She got a lot more respect after that, and was invited back to talk about her work.Another time, she accidentally noticed a surveillance suspect while driving around and tailed her.The team had lost the suspect.Only well into the chase did she realize that her son was in the back seat.She kept him safe while her eye was peeled on the suspect.

The profiling work will intrigue you.You will learn about all of the different kinds of creeps who victimize women and children.It was amazing how well the profiles predicted who the guilty party was.Using the profiles allowed the FBI and local police to find the suspects much faster than would otherwise have occurred.Since these are repeat offenders, lives were saved and injuries were avoided as a result.Part of the worst of this was that many times the women could have been saved if someone had called the police."If you are ever assaulted, never count on help."

The stories of the harrassment she endured from insecure males in the FBI will amaze you.She indicates that conditions improved over time.One of the most ridiculous examples was when she was sent to the home of an informant to babysit his child while the bust went down.She put up with this only because the safety of an innocent child was involved.

I was even more impressed by her work as a psychiatric nurse.Shooting tranquilizers into writhing, distrubed patients being held down by 7 orderlies was probably more dangerous than any of the arrests she did for the FBI.There she had a gun and usually lots of backup.

Her courage was most impressive.When she arrested the terrorist, she kept waiting for her partner to put the cuffs on while she had the drop on the suspect.Eventually, she looked around and realized that her partner was sheepishly waiting in the car calling for back-up.In her haste to make the bust, she didn't take time to put on her bullet-proof vest.Fortunately, the error did not lead to harm, but she took a grave risk in the process.She was astonished to find that the terrorist was more frightened of her than she was of him.

Money problems eventually caused to need to moonlight as a nurse.The moonlighting stories are very entertaining.At first, she kept bumping into agents while she was working the wards.To avoid this, she started doing home nursing in the poorest neighborhoods.This dual career eventually led to her needing to retire in the middle of administrative hearings about whether she was being unprofessional in her moonlighting.Someone should have cut her more slack.

I was impressed by her courage, her idealism, her persistence, and her commitment to doing the right thing.I hope that all young women (and their parents) who are thinking about taking on a dangerous career will read this book.You will be very inspired.

My hat's off to you, Ms. De Long!You're way more than a five star person.

Ms. De Long and Ms. Petrini have done a fine job of writing about this fascinating life, and you will enjoy what they have to say.

After you finish reading this book, I suggest that you rethink your ideas about what women and men can and cannot do.This book once again proves that anyone can do anything, if they want to badly enough.

Live up to your potential to serve others!



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