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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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Review

Review by bookpagedev

Porsches have been an integral part of the American carscape since the death of film idol James Dean at the wheel of a silver 550 Spyder in the mid-’50s. New model introductions are few and far between, with none so auspicious as that of the recently introduced affordable ($40K and northward) Boxster. Taking stylistic cues from the revered 550 Spyder, the Boxster has caused a stirring in the souls of the Porsche faithful.

Early in 1997, shortly before the public release of the new model, author James Morgan importuned the powers-that-be at the German automotive giant to subsidize a road trip (and subsequent book); his car of choice was a late ’70s Porsche 911. Intrigued with the idea, Porsche honchos suggested a slight modification: How about doing the journey in a new Porsche . . . say, a Boxster? With remarkable presence of mind, likely in homage to the late Mr. Dean, Morgan asked, Can I have a silver one? Early on in Distance to the Moon, Morgan professes not to be a car nut, proclaiming himself to be of the soccer-dad persuasion: a two-van man. Still, his automotive past includes a ’62 Impala SS, a ’69 Malibu Super Sport and a Fiat Spyder, so he clearly brings some car-guy credentials to the table. Amidst his meandering tale of life on the road, Morgan reminisces about the love affair Americans have carried on with the automobile over the last few decades: I have a vague image in my head: My father and I are standing outside an automobile showroom as the first bite of fall nips the air. It is early evening; the showroom is closed. But the lights inside are on, and in the center of the room, a new car sparkles like a jewel in a case. We stand silently outside. For a minute my nose is pressed against the glass. We say nothing, each of us lost in hopes, dreams, perhaps regrets. Morgan pilots the babe magnet (a 16-year-old admirer notes: You know, you can get any woman in the world in that car! ) through the south, visiting old friends and reminiscing about people and cars of bygone days: the ’60 T-Bird which belonged to his schizophrenic cousin who died in a mental institution; the ’67 Mustang of a close friend who lost control and his life on a rainy Mississippi night; the ’57 Imperial in which he rode in back with a lovely young lass: (She) rested her head on my shoulder and went to sleep. She wasn’t my girlfriend, and never would be. But forty years later I can still smell her hair, a sweet blend of shampoo and dust and cotton candy. And I can remember how alive I felt during that drive. I wanted it to last forever. Bruce Tierney is a reviewer in Nashville.

Porsches have been an integral part of the American carscape since the death of film idol James Dean at the wheel of a silver 550 Spyder in the mid-’50s. New model introductions are few and far between, with none so auspicious as that of the recently introduced affordable ($40K and northward) Boxster. Taking stylistic cues […]
Memoir

Reflections on rising from the ruins

Behind the Book by Dan Woolley

You wonder what you will feel like in the last moments of your life, when you finally look death in the face . . . how your beliefs about death and the afterlife will play out. For me, it moved really quickly from abstract to tangible, given I was buried under six floors of rubble following the January 2010 Haiti earthquake. I will never pretend to understand why God allowed me to be rescued while many others did not make it out alive.

I traveled to Haiti with Compassion International to document the organization’s work to permanently rescue children from poverty. As I was trapped, I found it ironic that I had come to Haiti to rescue children from poverty. Little did I know that I would need rescue.

Dan Woolley

After a day of capturing footage my colleague and I had just been dropped off and stepped into our hotel when the Haiti earthquake erupted all around us. I was trapped in the wreckage of my collapsed hotel in an elevator car the size of a small shower. My head and leg were bleeding as I fought to stay alive using all the resources that I could—my iPhone and its first-aid app, camera, journal, sock and shirt. In moments of despair, I had time to reflect on how I viewed myself, my marriage, and my faith in Jesus Christ. The earthquake shook loose a lot of things in my life that weren’t important, leaving me with a firmer foundation.

I don’t know why I was spared while others were not—including a Compassion International colleague who was right next to me when the quake hit. I don’t take lightly the difference between my outcome and the suffering of others. But, I tell the story of the 65 hours I spent buried in the rubble of the quake in Unshaken: Rising from the Ruins of Haiti’s Hotel Montana.

As I spend this week in Haiti revisiting the sites and people that I met last year, the sounds and the smells are so familiar as if the island nation was shook by the earthquake just yesterday. Then, I look down at the scar on my leg, a scar that will forever remind me of my time in Haiti and the Haitian people there who continue to suffer and work to get back on their feet post quake.

I have an advantage. Last January trapped beneath six stories of rubble I was taught very literally about how quickly life can change in an instant. I worked hard in the months following the quake to hold onto the clarity and now it share with others through my experience in Unshaken.

Dan Woolley, an interactive strategies director at Compassion International, is the author of Unshaken: Rising from the Ruins of Haiti’s Hotel Montana (Zondervan). In response to interest in the first-aid app he used to save his life, Woolley is currently working on a different kind of first-aid app—one that helps people focus on what matters most. More info at DanWoolley.net.

Rescue photo credit: Los Angeles Times/Rick Loomis.

Return photo credit: Reuters

You wonder what you will feel like in the last moments of your life, when you finally look death in the face . . . how your beliefs about death and the afterlife will play out. For me, it moved really quickly from abstract to tangible, given I was buried under six floors of rubble […]
NonfictionEssays

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Those were the days, my friend I am rare among American males, I venture to say, in liking to hang out clothes on a clothesline. It was traditionally a female task, but I like it. It is evidence of work accomplished, as Barbara Holland says in Wasn’t the Grass Greener: A Curmudgeon’s Fond Memories. It was ritual, she writes. It was what corporations now call job satisfaction. Alas, in this age when what corporations call job satisfaction is anything but, the operative tense of the verb is past. Now I cannot hang out clothes. A whimsical fate has landed us in one of those spanking new, soulless suburban developments where no one, male or female, hangs out clothes. Other than my wife, probably no one else wants to. It would be taken as a sign that you are too cheap to use the dryer, and the hanging clothes would get in the way of the kids on their motorized three-wheelers. Perhaps it’s even forbidden.

Holland writes, in 33 witty and thoughtful essays, not so much about things we have, like soulless suburbs, but about things we haven’t any longer, like clotheslines, that contribute to the soullessness. She argues that in losing them we lost a part of ourselves.

Though there is scarcely a dull page in the book, the chapters on abstract topics, such as idleness and worries, are better or at least more intellectually engaging than those on concrete items, such as radiators and desks.

For instance, in civilized places, she says, idleness, once the prerequisite for religion, poetry, philosophy, and other thought, has become a character flaw, and in America we’ve managed to stamp it out almost completely. Work stole our days, but entertainment ate everything left over. She writes about the homogeneity that is draining out of our culture, and has the temerity to suggest that diversity is not exactly a force of nature: The unnaturalness of diversity is obvious from the number of children’s books trying to sell it. This remark will have the thought police knocking at her door.

Some chapters those on psychiatry and war, particularly are less convincing than others. Each reader will have his or her own disagreements with some items. I take her point on the lack of heroes, but on this I am with Bertolt Brecht, who pitied not the nation that lacks them, but the one that needs them. And each of us could add to her list: personally, I yearn for the time when retired politicians did not supplement their munificent public pensions by shilling in TV commercials.

But probably the most important loss she discusses is childhood. Holland is not the first to report it missing Neil Postman talked about it years ago but she has some interesting reports on what it was last seen wearing. Primarily it wore a more carefree attitude. Children’s lives used to be freer, less supervised. Their recreation was not organized by adults into leagues, teams, and clubs. It wasn’t even called recreation. It was called play.

Children played with one another, big kids, little kids, higgledy-piggledy, and what they learned they learned from each other, for good or ill. Nothing that involved a grown-up telling us what to do, and how, and when, could possibly be called Ôplay,’ Holland writes. In a mere quarter-century of adult interference, games that kids not adults had passed down from generation to generation for centuries, like Ring-around-a-rosy and London Bridge, have all but disappeared.

The author does not make the connection, and I’m not sure I can, either, but somehow I feel that this disappearance is connected to her comment that personal prosperity has come to be the measure of our worth as human beings. We won’t be good so let’s be rich. In similar spirit, Florence King, another insightful essayist, said we live in the Republic of Nice, where, since we no longer believe in personal immortality, we lust after fleeting fame.

You do not have to be over 50 to enjoy this splendid, subversive little book. Its societal concerns transcend age groupings. Consider that four years ago, David Gelernter, a professor of computer science in his forties, wrote a book, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair, in which he argued that his parents’ generation ordered life better. And that Gelernter was one of those severely wounded by an explosive device mailed by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, also no geezer, who had his own quarrels with our society.

Roger Miller is a freelance writer. He can be reached at roger@bookpage.com.

Those were the days, my friend I am rare among American males, I venture to say, in liking to hang out clothes on a clothesline. It was traditionally a female task, but I like it. It is evidence of work accomplished, as Barbara Holland says in Wasn’t the Grass Greener: A Curmudgeon’s Fond Memories. It […]
MusicArts & Culture

Long live the King

Review by bookpagedev

The King may be dead, but the books keep coming. In the 21 years since Elvis Presley’s death, on August 16, 1977, a veritable cottage publishing industry has emerged. A year ago, when I was adding to the bulging shelves as co-author (with Peter Harry Brown) of Down at the End of Lonely Street: The Life and Death of Elvis Presley I counted more than 300 titles. And those were just the English-language entries! Why?

Chalk up the interest, in part, to Presley’s status in popular culture: he was the pulsating force of a revolution that got a generation all shook up. Then there’s the man himself and the enigma. And of course, there is the music. Music is the heart of one of the latest Elvis entries, Elvis Presley: A Life in Music: The Complete Recording Sessions, which is lavishly detailed and illustrated. Written by the authoritative Ernst Jorgensen, the book’s revelations range from the obscure (the first Elvis song to boast percussion was I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone ) to the heart-breaking (during his last concert, a slurry and sadly bloated Elvis introduced Are You Lonesome Tonight? and then, as if to answer, said, and I am. . . ).

Jorgensen, an Elvis fan turned director of RCA’s Elvis catalogue, also underscores an overlooked Elvis talent as a savvy music producer. As a promoter, no one was more savvy than former carnival huckster Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s longtime manager, and subject of My Boy Elvis: The Colonel Tom Parker Story (Barricade, $22, 1569801274).

This is the first of a spate of upcoming titles about the colorful Parker, who passed away in 1997, and though some anecdotes related by Sean O’Neal (Elvis Inc: The Fall and Rise of the Presley Empire) are familiar to Presleyphiles, there are new details about the Colonel’s early years. O’Neal also adroitly analyzes the Colonel’s motives for wanting Elvis to do Army time and details how he masterminded the post-Army career comeback. Elvis’s movie career, pre- and post-Army, is the subject of Eric Braun’s The Elvis Film Encyclopedia: An Impartial Guide to the Films of Elvis (Overlook Press, $23.95, 0879518146). Actually, it’s not all that impartial. In grading the songs from Elvis’s films, Braun gives three stars (out of a possible five) to the embarrassing Confidence, from the movie Clambake. And he gives just two stars to Can’t Help Falling in Love, the great Presley ballad from Blue Hawaii.

Quibbles with ratings aside, the text is informative, as well as lively. The same can be said for most Elvis movies. Early Elvis is remembered in Elvis, Hank, and Me: Making Musical History on the Louisiana Hayride (St. Martin’s, $23.95, 0312185731), in which Horace Logan (with co-author Bill Sloan), recounts his days as producer and emcee of the show, which was broadcast over CBS radio. After bombing at the Grand Ole Opry, a young Elvis found a home away from home at the Shreveport program, which introduced him to much of the country and also featured music legends including Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Slim Whitman. Elvis’s early career is also recalled in That’s Alright, Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis’s First Guitarist and Manager, Scotty Moore (Schirmer, $25, 0028645995), as told to James Dickerson. Way back when, Moore, bass player Bill Black, and Elvis were known as the Blue Moon Boys. From those early days on the road, to his latter-day revival, Moore (a Gibson man) has been a pivotal musical force.

Moving from music to marriage: Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (Berkley Boulevard Books, $7.50, 0425165442), contradicts the official story delivered by Priscilla in her autobiography. Elvis’s famed ex has long maintained that she was a virgin when she finally married The King. Not so per this account, by Suzanne Finstad which relies heavily on the allegations of a former Presley buddy named Currie Grant (who has since been hit with a lawsuit, over his claims, by Priscilla). It was Grant who introduced the 14-year-old schoolgirl to the world’s most famous G.I., then 25, and stationed in Germany. But first, says Grant, he coerced the virginal Priscilla into sleeping with him as a kind of payment. As Finstad put it, She had entered into a Faustian pact to meet Elvis. It should be noted that Grant, at the time of the alleged tryst with the teenager, was 28, married, and the father of two.

Along with sex and drugs, this page-turner includes a good cat fight between Priscilla and an Elvis fan complete with screaming and hair-pulling and a National Enquirer-ish ploy, with the use of a voice stress test to determine who’s telling the truth, in a tape-recorded encounter between Priscilla and Grant. I still don’t know who to believe . . .

On the novelty side, Elvis gets the pop-up treatment in Elvis Remembered: A Three-Dimensional Celebration (Pop-Up Press, $29.95, 1888443456). See Elvis pop-up at the 1956 Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, which marked his landmark return to his hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi. He also cuts quite a 3-D figure in his famous gold lame suit, during his 1968 comeback concert, and during the so-called Jumpsuit Tours. In The Quotable King (Cumberland House, $8.95, 188895244X) Elvis’s words pop-out as categorized by Elizabeth McKeon and Linda Everett in chapters such as Early Elvis, Meet the Press, and Elvis on Elvis. There are Elvis’s observations on movies ( The only thing that’s worse than watching a bad movie is being in one ); his taste in burgers ( I like it done well. I ain’t ordering a pet ); and more.

Speaking of more: Due in November is Elvis Presley 1956 (Abrams, $17.95, 0810908999), featuring photos by Marvin Israel. January will see the publication of Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (Little, Brown, $27.95, 0316332224). This is Peter Guralnick’s follow-up to his acclaimed 1994 early Elvis biography, Last Train to Memphis. Also due in January is Colonel Tom Parker: The Carny Who Managed the King, by James Dickerson (Watson-Guptill, $24.95, 0823084213).

Who said Elvis was dead?

Biographer Pat H. Broeske is also a Hollywood reporter who regularly contributes to Entertainment Weekly.

The King may be dead, but the books keep coming. In the 21 years since Elvis Presley’s death, on August 16, 1977, a veritable cottage publishing industry has emerged. A year ago, when I was adding to the bulging shelves as co-author (with Peter Harry Brown) of Down at the End of Lonely Street: The […]
Parenting

RAISING A READER

Behind the Book by Heidi Murkoff

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon—or even a parenting author—to figure out how to raise a reader. All it takes is a cozy lap, a pair of loving arms, an open book and a few common-sense tips.

Read early. True, newborns don’t know a cat from a hat. And toddlers are more wiggle worms than bookworms. But there’s no better way to get a child in the reading habit than getting off to an early start. Build storytime into your little one’s routine right from the beginning.

Read often. Bedtime is the obvious time for storytime—and a particularly good one, too, especially if it comes after a soothing bath (a wound-down little one is more open to sitting down—and more receptive to listening). Plus, bedtime stories, especially when combined with cuddles, can quickly become a treasured ritual on both sides of the armchair—the perfectly relaxing end to your child’s busy day . . . and yours. Another good time to get a child hooked on books: wakeup time. By catching your bookworm early, while she’s still sleepy, you’ll minimize squirming and maximize attention. And then—there’s any time. Tote a book with you wherever you go and whatever you’re doing and reading will become your little one’s favorite go-to distraction.

Issue an all-access book pass. Keep stacks of books of every variety everywhere in your home—by your bed, on the coffee table, next to the armchair, in the kitchen, in the car and definitely in your child’s room. Don’t make any book (except, perhaps, a very valuable one) off-limits to your little one. Even a toddler who tends to devour literature (as in, bite on edges and chew paper) should be allowed supervised page-turning stints. When shelving your child’s books, keep them accessible on low, open shelves or in easy-to-reach bins.

Be a borrower (and maybe a lender, too). The best way to keep a fresh stash of reading material at the ready? Make a weekly trip to the library with your budding book buddy. Don’t have a library in your neighborhood? Set up your own book co-op with fellow playgroup or preschool parents.

Get ready to repeat. Most toddlers and preschoolers can’t get enough of a good thing—they find it comforting to hear the same book over and over, night after night, day after day. But there’s another reason why little ones benefit from the read-and-repeat approach to storytime: When you’re new to the language game, repetition helps you pick up skills faster. Being able to fill in the last word in a line or anticipate the so-familiar plot is also super-satisfying.

Do some editing—and editorializing. While you can definitely read a book to your tot straight through, don’t feel obligated to stick to the script verbatim. If too many hard-to-understand words are making your captive audience restless, edit them down or out. Paraphrase. Summarize. Simplify.

Make reading interactive. Even a child who doesn’t yet know an A from a Z can point to the doggy, the boy on the bicycle, the sun in the sky, the monkey in the zoo. Or answer simple reading comprehension questions (“What is the girl eating?” “Where is the mommy going?” “Is the boy happy or sad?”). Not only does interaction enhance learning but it boosts enjoyment and attention span, too.

Read to yourself. Children are master mimics—especially when it comes to their parents—and they’re always more likely to do what you do than what you say. So to raise a reader, be a reader. Never had the reading bug? Try contracting it. Join a book club. Check out reading lists online. And make sure your little one catches you reading often.

Power off. Even books that come with dials, flaps and pop-ups can’t compete with the light-and-sound show of computer games and TV. Wired toddlers and preschoolers—or those who spend too much time zoning out in front of a TV screen—may have a harder time sitting still for words and pictures on a page. In fact, research has shown a 10 percent increase in the risk of attention problems later on for every hour per day of TV a tyke watches now. So limit TV time (the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time at all for the two-and-under set) and computer time. Using the TV for background noise? Power that off, too.

Nurture that love of reading, but don’t push it. If you’ve been a parent for any amount of time you know this above all: Pushing will get you nowhere. Not when it comes to using the potty, not when it comes to eating—and definitely not when it comes to reading. Make reading a part of your family’s daily routine—but also don’t forget to make it fun.

Heidi Murkoff is the author of the What To Expect series of pregnancy and parenting guides that have sold more than 34 million copies. The latest book in the series is What to Expect the Second Year: From 12 to 24 Months. Murkoff lives in Southern California with her husband, Erik, and two children.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon—or even a parenting author—to figure out how to raise a reader. All it takes is a cozy lap, a pair of loving arms, an open book and a few common-sense tips. Read early. True, newborns don’t know a cat from a hat. And toddlers are […]
Technology

Review

Review by bookpagedev

John Naisbitt first developed the concept of high tech, high touch in his 1982 bestseller Megatrends. He theorized that in a world of technology, people long for personal, human contact.

Naisbitt re-examines this idea in his latest book, High Tech/High Touch.

What an appropriate time to be checking our technological pulse, an age when most everyone is wired with pagers, cell phones, e-mail, voice mail, and faxes. Ê High Tech/High Touch states its premise up front: The two biggest markets in the United States are consumer technology and escape from consumer technology. It then proceeds to chronicle the advancement of technology in our lives, the dangers it imposes, and our instinct to both embrace and escape it.

The authors gathered their research by culling thousands of newspaper articles and interviewing dozens of experts in science, medicine, sociology, psychology, education, business, and theology. They seek to pinpoint where we are today, and provide us with a roadmap for the future. They place us in what they call a Technologically Intoxicated Zone, a netherworld where we are bombarded with technological stimuli. Here is their partial list of the symptoms: we fear and worship technology; we blur the distinction between real and fake; we accept violence as normal; and we live our lives distanced and distracted.

And how do we struggle to bring the high touch back into our lives? According to the authors, we seek meaning through religion; we buy self-help books; we pop Prozac, Viagra, and other supplements; we seek a tangential connection to nature by driving sports utility vehicles and buying clothes from L.

L. Bean.

There are no surprising revelations in High Tech/High Touch. Every trend and development outlined seems obvious. And the authors offer no unique answers to save us from our technological overload. Their solutions are simple: pull the plug on the computer and TV, turn off the cell phone and beeper, and spend more time with family and friends.

The book isn’t so much a crystal ball as it is a mirror, allowing us to reflect and leaving us to decide whether there is too much high technology and too little humanness in our lives. ¦ John T. Slania is a freelance writer and journalism professor in Chicago.

John Naisbitt first developed the concept of high tech, high touch in his 1982 bestseller Megatrends. He theorized that in a world of technology, people long for personal, human contact. Naisbitt re-examines this idea in his latest book, High Tech/High Touch. What an appropriate time to be checking our technological pulse, an age when most […]

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