Review:The Blue Star by Tony Earley

From Hatchette Book Group.com

Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two. Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the Navy on the eve of war. Jim vows to win Chrissie's heart in his absence, but the war makes high school less than a safe haven, and gives a young man's emotions a grown man's gravity. With the uncanny insight into the well-intentioned heart that made Jim the Boy a favorite novel for thousands of readers, Tony Earley has fashioned another nuanced and unforgettable portrait of America in another time--making it again even realer than our own day. This is a timeless and moving story of discovery, loss and growing up, proving why Tony Earley's writing "radiates with a largeness of heart" (Esquire).

I've carried this book about with me for the past week.
If work and Life hadn't got in the way, I would have finished it long before now.
Truthfully, it flowed along so easily that I didn't really want it to end.

The story is set in 1940's America just before World War II.
Jim Glass is poised to graduate high school and take his place alongside his kinfolk, and more than likely live out the life he has always known in the small town of Aliceville.

Jim has also fallen in love.
He's fallen the way that we all fall when we are young and hormones are raging.
Of course Chrissie Steppe is not the perfect girl for Jim. Slightly wrong side of the tracks and all, so to speak, with a boyfriend overseas to boot.
And that naturally, is what makes her all the more desirable.

This is a beautifully written novel, I felt like I was watching it happen, and even if you wern't born or raised in that time, you are drawn back to it.
This book is sweet, funny and sad.
And as corny as it sounds, Tony Earley has written a Norman Rockwell painting.
I don't know how else to describe it. Just read it.
My thanks to Valerie from The Hatchette Book Group for this review copy.

About the author from hatchettebookgroup.com

Tony Earley is the author of four books: Here We Are in Paradise, a collection of stories; the novel Jim the Boy; the personal essay collection Somehow Form a Family; and The Blue Star, a novel forthcoming in Spring, 2008. A winner of a National Magazine Award for fiction, he was named one of the twenty best writers of his generation by both Granta, in 1996, and The New Yorker in 1999. His fiction and/or nonfiction have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Oxford American, The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South and many other magazines and anthologies. He is a native of western North Carolina and a graduate of Warren Wilson College and The University of Alabama. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and daughter, where he is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

Cooler Contest

Get Your Read On: Dancing With Ana by Nicole Barker

From the website dancingwithana.com

Beth is a lucky girl…

She comes from a loving family. She has three best friends. She loves to surf and lives five minutes from the beach. She also recently discovered that the boy she’s grown up with has the most amazing green eyes…
Beth has every reason to smile. Every reason to be happy. Every reason to feel blessed.

Then why is she sticking her fingers down her throat?

Sixteen year old Beth Baxter’s life merely resembles the one she’s always known. Her father has left. She is falling for Jeremy Duscana and the diet she started has somehow turned into an obsession. Yet her three best friends remain the same, always there for her.

But even their love can’t save her from herself.

Dancing With Ana. A story about the journey to acceptance of one’s own reality, the incredible bond that exists between friends and a love that truly endures all things.

In Dancing With Ana, Nicole Barker has written a fine, sensitive book that looks at the very real issues young girls face. The peer pressure to be perfect, and unrealistic views of body image begin young, and are enforced by the media daily.
If you're an adult reading this, you'll find yourself looking back and remembering that one "perfect girl" in high school-the one you both revered and hated because try as you might,
you could never be quite as popular, or pretty.

Or maybe you were that "perfect girl"...but you had a secret...

From the website:dancingwithana.com

...Ana is definitely a character in the book…a main character. She is a strong force, a reliable friend found in despair, a manipulative enemy. You want to please her, earn her acceptance and admiration. You want her to go away, forever...

...Ana will take you away from your family, friends, life.

This is the truth. This is anorexia...


Although the genre of this book is Young Adult, I believe this is a story that should be read and shared by both parent and child.
This story begins with four friends who decide to go on a diet, but for one of them, it quickly spirals out of control.

Fueled by not just the desire to be thinner, but by a deep need to have some kind of order in her life,
Beth Baxter's unhappiness due to her parent's recent divorce, and feelings of rejection by her father is played out by her obsession with the one thing she has found that she can control-her weight.

Also touched upon is another issue of self-injury or self-mutilation.
Beth's friend Rachel has chosen this sad, seldom talked about, and self-destructive mechanism of coping to deal with the pain and anger of a neglectful, abusive home life. (I found myself really wanting a happy ending for Rachel and I hope that perhaps this subject will be explored more fully by Mrs. Barker in another book.)

In summary I believe that this is an excellent book to be read,shared, and discussed by teens and their parents, and educators as well. I'd like to thank the author herself for sending me this review copy. To learn more about this book, please check out her website
dancingwithana.com.

About the author:

Nicole Barker grew up in Portland, Oregon and attended Southern Oregon State College in the town of Ashland.
Nestled in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains, Nicole took to writing while pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities with a strong emphasis on early childhood development.
Shortly after graduation, she spent several months traveling around the United States and parts of Canada.
Nicole now lives in south Florida with her husband, two kids, two dogs, toads,
frogs, hermit crabs and fish. She is currently working on her second YA book.

Book Review: Now What? by Laura Berman Fortgang

It's been a while since I read a "self-help book".
It's not that I have anything against them-in fact I find them useful-(Raise your hand if you read Dr. Wayne W. Dyer's Your Erroneous Zones back in the seventies)

And tell the truth. Even if you didn't read it, weren't you just a little bit curious about The Secret by Rhonda Byrne?
Now that book just made me feel bad to learn that I had brought all my troubles upon myself, just because I thought about them, therefore I attracted them-(hey, I'm not making this shit up-it really says this in the book...)

I personally loved Dr. Dyer's book. I caught him on PBS the other night promoting a new book and he's really "Zen-like" now, but darn-it-I still like him and will probably buy his new book as well. Much of what he says now is oddly similar to what I read in The Secret but I guess I just like the way he says it better.

Which brings me to the book I want to talk about today,
titled Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction by Laura Berman Fortgang.
First a bit about the author.

From FSB Associates.

Laura Berman Fortgang is a nationally renowned speaker and life coach, helping individuals, small businesses, and corporations forge new directions and weather change. Recently ordained as an interfaith minister, she lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

and from laurabermanfortgang.com

...Laura appearances on Oprah, The CBS Early Show, NBC's Today, Good Morning American, various nationally syndicated and cable outlets and many others, combined with major print media such as USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, MONEY and many international newspapers have paved the way for most of the successful coaches in the industry today.

Through her coaching company, InterCoach, Inc./Now What?™ Coaching, Laura has provided coaching to diverse clients ranging from homemakers, celebrities and Fortune 500 companies to NASA and the Army Corps of Engineers. Her company was voted one of the top 100 companies to watch in NJ...

First off, this isn't a book you sit down and read in one or two sittings and suddenly you are this brand-new person.
It's really a guide with good, sound, practical, and doable advice, and you find yourself flipping forward and backward to research the individual chapters as they pertain to you.

Or if you prefer, you may follow each chapter through the weekly program laid out in the two parts of the book.I particularly liked the small self-reflective exercises that appeared throughout each chapter.
There's also a resource guide in the appendix with valuable leads and tips for your quest toward self-growth and change.

I think it's a great book to keep on your desk or in your bag for easy reference, because the author writes with contagious energy-she walks the talk-and you can feel it, and as I read through, I couldn't help but wish that I could hear her speak in person.
I guess I like the way she says things too. :-)

My thanks to Caitlin at fsbassociates.com for this review copy.