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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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NonfictionHistory

The Writing of the Gods

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Edward Dolnick, author of The Clockwork Universe, has a remarkable ability to explain and contextualize complex topics and create compelling, lucid nonfiction narratives. In his new book, The Writing of the Gods, he tackles the Rosetta stone, a broken stone slab weighing three quarters of a ton that was discovered in a heap of Egyptian rubble in 1799.

Once news of this discovery got out, linguists and scholars were ecstatic. The stone contained three different kinds of inscriptions: Egyptian hieroglyphs (undecipherable at the time), a mysterious middle section (which turned out to be another form of Egyptian writing) and, at the bottom, 53 lines of Greek.

“The first guesses were that it might take two weeks to decipher the Rosetta stone,” Dolnick writes. It seemed plausible that the task would be simple: If all three sections were the same text in different forms, the Greek section should provide the key. The reality? It took 20 years to interpret. Along the way, Dolnick clearly lays out the high stakes of this battle to translate Egyptian writing for the first time.

Readers are immersed in the urgency of these scholars’ task and the weight of why it mattered.

In a conversational, accessible tone, Dolnick draws readers into the mystery. He introduces linguist rivals Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion and takes immense care to illustrate the daunting nature of their quest. The result is a book that’s much more than a simple biography or dull history. Readers are immersed in the urgency of these scholars’ task and the weight of why it mattered.

Reading The Writing of the Gods is like tagging along for a dazzling intellectual journey of discovery, akin to listening to a fascinating lecture. Dolnick brings this period of history to life in the same way the Rosetta stone revived ancient Egypt.

With a conversational, accessible tone, Edward Dolnick draws readers into the dazzling intellectual mystery of the Rosetta stone.
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Fitness for the future This time, it’s going to be different. Think about it. One year from today, you could be 70 pounds lighter and ready for a marathon or triathlon. Whether you’re a beginner who’s new to weight loss and aerobic and strength training, or whether you’ve already made proper diet and exercise a part of your lifestyle, there’s enough information in the following books to motivate and invigorate you over the next 12 months.

Joanie Greggains, author of Fit Happens (Villard, $19.95, 0375500367), focuses on the fundamentals of weight loss and physical fitness by demystifying fad diets and demonstrating that you can make time in your day for fat-burning exercises. She also gives you the latest information on 13 health foods that really aren’t healthy and offers helpful suggestions for handling your food cravings. Greggains believes that losing weight and staying fit are simple processes that anyone can learn. The official Chub Club Coach’s Workout Program that Judy Molnar features in her new book, You Don’t Have to Be Thin to Win (Villard, $19.95, 0375504141), will move you from an unfit to a physically fit person in no time. Molnar transformed her 330-pound body, and at the end of her two-and-a-half year program, began participating in triathlons. The goal of her program is good health and fitness not thinness. She offers strategies for finding a way to exercise that’s right for you and even includes a 12-week marathon training program and an eight-week sprint triathlon training program for beginners who are ready for a new challenge.

The Tae Bo Way (Bantam, $25, 0553801007) by Billy Blanks provides the dynamic blend of martial arts, dance, and boxing that has been called the most energizing workout in America. No matter what your level of physical fitness, you’ll find his program exhilarating and simple to learn. Blanks’s strength is that he motivates as he explains. Will is everything to him, and his message to people of all ages is inspirational. If you have his video workout programs, this book will give you even more information to assist your total body conditioning. Don’t miss this one.

As aerobic and strength training become a part of your life, add Arnold Schwarzenegger’s paperback The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding to your library. Seven-time Mr. Olympia and winner of three Mr. Universe titles, Schwarzenegger has written what is universally recognized as the definitive sourcebook for bodybuilding. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder (or a man) to learn from this pro. Anyone in a simple strength-training program can benefit from this information. The book covers every facet of the sport, and methods of training are outlined to take the novice from early to advanced stages of training. You’ll refer to this book often.

Fitness expert and personal trainer Brad Schoenfeld has written an excellent book for women who want to strengthen, streamline, and shape their bodies. Sculpting Her Body Perfect (Human Kinetics, $19.95, 0736001549) involves a three-step program that is based on the unique needs of women. Loaded with training tips, illustrations, special maintenance programs, and safe workout routines for pregnant women, the book is a perfect guide to sculpting a beautiful physique in ten to 25 minutes, three times a week. This is a good book for women who are just beginning a strength-training program.

Fitness, however, isn’t limited by age. In Slim and Fit Kids: Raising Healthy Children in a Fast-Food World (Health Communications, $12.95, 155874729X), Judy Mazel and John E. Monaco tackle the serious problem of overweight children. Surprisingly, more than 30 per cent of American children are presently overweight, and one in five is considered obese. The authors discuss combining foods to maximize a child’s energy and meet nutritional needs, along with kid-proof recipes and suggestions on how to talk to your child about this sensitive subject. Their 28-day exercise program (designed by a personal trainer) could set your child on the wellness path and perhaps create an interest in fitness that lasts a lifetime.

Pat Regel pumps iron in Nashville.

Fitness for the future This time, it’s going to be different. Think about it. One year from today, you could be 70 pounds lighter and ready for a marathon or triathlon. Whether you’re a beginner who’s new to weight loss and aerobic and strength training, or whether you’ve already made proper diet and exercise a […]
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Fitness for the future This time, it’s going to be different. Think about it. One year from today, you could be 70 pounds lighter and ready for a marathon or triathlon. Whether you’re a beginner who’s new to weight loss and aerobic and strength training, or whether you’ve already made proper diet and exercise a part of your lifestyle, there’s enough information in the following books to motivate and invigorate you over the next 12 months.

Joanie Greggains, author of Fit Happens (Villard, $19.95, 0375500367), focuses on the fundamentals of weight loss and physical fitness by demystifying fad diets and demonstrating that you can make time in your day for fat-burning exercises. She also gives you the latest information on 13 health foods that really aren’t healthy and offers helpful suggestions for handling your food cravings. Greggains believes that losing weight and staying fit are simple processes that anyone can learn. The official Chub Club Coach’s Workout Program that Judy Molnar features in her new book, You Don’t Have to Be Thin to Win (Villard, $19.95, 0375504141), will move you from an unfit to a physically fit person in no time. Molnar transformed her 330-pound body, and at the end of her two-and-a-half year program, began participating in triathlons. The goal of her program is good health and fitness not thinness. She offers strategies for finding a way to exercise that’s right for you and even includes a 12-week marathon training program and an eight-week sprint triathlon training program for beginners who are ready for a new challenge.

The Tae Bo Way by Billy Blanks provides the dynamic blend of martial arts, dance, and boxing that has been called the most energizing workout in America. No matter what your level of physical fitness, you’ll find his program exhilarating and simple to learn. Blanks’s strength is that he motivates as he explains. Will is everything to him, and his message to people of all ages is inspirational. If you have his video workout programs, this book will give you even more information to assist your total body conditioning. Don’t miss this one.

As aerobic and strength training become a part of your life, add Arnold Schwarzenegger’s paperback The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (Fireside, $25, 0684857219) to your library. Seven-time Mr. Olympia and winner of three Mr. Universe titles, Schwarzenegger has written what is universally recognized as the definitive sourcebook for bodybuilding. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder (or a man) to learn from this pro. Anyone in a simple strength-training program can benefit from this information. The book covers every facet of the sport, and methods of training are outlined to take the novice from early to advanced stages of training. You’ll refer to this book often.

Fitness expert and personal trainer Brad Schoenfeld has written an excellent book for women who want to strengthen, streamline, and shape their bodies. Sculpting Her Body Perfect (Human Kinetics, $19.95, 0736001549) involves a three-step program that is based on the unique needs of women. Loaded with training tips, illustrations, special maintenance programs, and safe workout routines for pregnant women, the book is a perfect guide to sculpting a beautiful physique in ten to 25 minutes, three times a week. This is a good book for women who are just beginning a strength-training program.

Fitness, however, isn’t limited by age. In Slim and Fit Kids: Raising Healthy Children in a Fast-Food World (Health Communications, $12.95, 155874729X), Judy Mazel and John E. Monaco tackle the serious problem of overweight children. Surprisingly, more than 30 per cent of American children are presently overweight, and one in five is considered obese. The authors discuss combining foods to maximize a child’s energy and meet nutritional needs, along with kid-proof recipes and suggestions on how to talk to your child about this sensitive subject. Their 28-day exercise program (designed by a personal trainer) could set your child on the wellness path and perhaps create an interest in fitness that lasts a lifetime.

Pat Regel pumps iron in Nashville.

Fitness for the future This time, it’s going to be different. Think about it. One year from today, you could be 70 pounds lighter and ready for a marathon or triathlon. Whether you’re a beginner who’s new to weight loss and aerobic and strength training, or whether you’ve already made proper diet and exercise a […]

The Correspondents

Judith Mackrell’s biography of six female journalists during World War II feels almost like a novel with its rich details.
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Fitness for the future This time, it’s going to be different. Think about it. One year from today, you could be 70 pounds lighter and ready for a marathon or triathlon. Whether you’re a beginner who’s new to weight loss and aerobic and strength training, or whether you’ve already made proper diet and exercise a part of your lifestyle, there’s enough information in the following books to motivate and invigorate you over the next 12 months.

Joanie Greggains, author of Fit Happens (Villard, $19.95, 0375500367), focuses on the fundamentals of weight loss and physical fitness by demystifying fad diets and demonstrating that you can make time in your day for fat-burning exercises. She also gives you the latest information on 13 health foods that really aren’t healthy and offers helpful suggestions for handling your food cravings. Greggains believes that losing weight and staying fit are simple processes that anyone can learn. The official Chub Club Coach’s Workout Program that Judy Molnar features in her new book, You Don’t Have to Be Thin to Win, will move you from an unfit to a physically fit person in no time. Molnar transformed her 330-pound body, and at the end of her two-and-a-half year program, began participating in triathlons. The goal of her program is good health and fitness not thinness. She offers strategies for finding a way to exercise that’s right for you and even includes a 12-week marathon training program and an eight-week sprint triathlon training program for beginners who are ready for a new challenge.

The Tae Bo Way (Bantam, $25, 0553801007) by Billy Blanks provides the dynamic blend of martial arts, dance, and boxing that has been called the most energizing workout in America. No matter what your level of physical fitness, you’ll find his program exhilarating and simple to learn. Blanks’s strength is that he motivates as he explains. Will is everything to him, and his message to people of all ages is inspirational. If you have his video workout programs, this book will give you even more information to assist your total body conditioning. Don’t miss this one.

As aerobic and strength training become a part of your life, add Arnold Schwarzenegger’s paperback The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (Fireside, $25, 0684857219) to your library. Seven-time Mr. Olympia and winner of three Mr. Universe titles, Schwarzenegger has written what is universally recognized as the definitive sourcebook for bodybuilding. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder (or a man) to learn from this pro. Anyone in a simple strength-training program can benefit from this information. The book covers every facet of the sport, and methods of training are outlined to take the novice from early to advanced stages of training. You’ll refer to this book often.

Fitness expert and personal trainer Brad Schoenfeld has written an excellent book for women who want to strengthen, streamline, and shape their bodies. Sculpting Her Body Perfect (Human Kinetics, $19.95, 0736001549) involves a three-step program that is based on the unique needs of women. Loaded with training tips, illustrations, special maintenance programs, and safe workout routines for pregnant women, the book is a perfect guide to sculpting a beautiful physique in ten to 25 minutes, three times a week. This is a good book for women who are just beginning a strength-training program.

Fitness, however, isn’t limited by age. In Slim and Fit Kids: Raising Healthy Children in a Fast-Food World (Health Communications, $12.95, 155874729X), Judy Mazel and John E. Monaco tackle the serious problem of overweight children. Surprisingly, more than 30 per cent of American children are presently overweight, and one in five is considered obese. The authors discuss combining foods to maximize a child’s energy and meet nutritional needs, along with kid-proof recipes and suggestions on how to talk to your child about this sensitive subject. Their 28-day exercise program (designed by a personal trainer) could set your child on the wellness path and perhaps create an interest in fitness that lasts a lifetime.

Pat Regel pumps iron in Nashville.

Fitness for the future This time, it’s going to be different. Think about it. One year from today, you could be 70 pounds lighter and ready for a marathon or triathlon. Whether you’re a beginner who’s new to weight loss and aerobic and strength training, or whether you’ve already made proper diet and exercise a […]
NonfictionTrue Crime

Review

Review by bookpagedev

A title wave of beach paperbacks Whether you’re contemplating a trip to an exotic beach, or planning to spend the warm weather months in the back yard, you’ll want to bring along that most necessary of seasonal accouterments. No, not sunscreen. We’re talking summer reading. Especially the easy-to-tote paperback variety. A hardcover sensation, John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story, literally spent years on bestseller lists. This month the 1994 title at last debuts in soft cover. Never mind that Clint Eastwood’s movie version has come and gone. If you haven’t read this account of life and death and murder Savannah-style, replete with its parade of beguiling eccentrics, you’re in for a mint-julep-flavored treat. Southern accents and sensibilities also abound in Rebecca Wells’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (HarperCollins, $14, 0060928336). Flashing back and forth from the 1990s to the 1960s, the book explores Siddalee’s efforts to understand her seemingly incomprehensible mother, the Louisiana magnolia Viviane, and her three chums. Booted out of a Shirley Temple lookalike contest when they were just six, the girls spent their college years blazing a bourbon-splattered trail, buffered by the motto (from a Billie Holiday tune), smoke, drink, don’t think. As much a paean to sisterhood as it is a mother-daughter tale, Ya-Ya is a kind of follow-up to Wells’s much darker first novel, Little Altars Everywhere, (HarperCollins, $13, 0060976845), and is being developed for a movie by Bette Midler’s production company. Yet another girly story is recounted in Bridget Jones’s Diary (Penguin, $12.95, 014028009X). Helen Fielding’s book which originated as a column in a London newspaper is the first-person odyssey of the thirtysomething Bridget, who is obsessed with such ’90s issues as learning to program her VCR, finding Mr. Right, and, of course, weight loss (in one year she manages to lose 72 pounds . . . and to gain 74). The producers of the quirky Four Weddings and a Funeral plan a movie version of the quirky Bridget.

Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel, by first-time novelist Arthur S. Golden, may also be headed for the screen with Steven Spielberg’s involvement. For now, enjoy it in print (Vintage, $14, 0679781587), as the geisha Sayuri details her metamorphosis from peasant child she was nine when her widowed father sold her to a geisha house to her prewar rise as a leading geisha and on to her role as mistress to a power-broker. Golden spent nine years researching and writing this intricately detailed saga, which takes us on a memorable, eye-opening journey.

And last but not least, we mustn’t forget Margaret Mitchell’s monumental (and perennially best-selling) classic, Gone with the Wind (Warner Books, $7.99, 0446365386).

Hollywood journalist Pat H. Broeske is also a biographer who has chronicled the lives of Howard Hughes and Elvis Presley.

A title wave of beach paperbacks Whether you’re contemplating a trip to an exotic beach, or planning to spend the warm weather months in the back yard, you’ll want to bring along that most necessary of seasonal accouterments. No, not sunscreen. We’re talking summer reading. Especially the easy-to-tote paperback variety. A hardcover sensation, John Berendt’s […]
NonfictionMemoir

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Review by Sarojini Seupersad

In 2011, the Chinese government imprisoned the prolific artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei for 81 days on charges of “economic crimes”—though the real reason was his outspoken political activism. Though harrowing, the experience spurred Ai Weiwei to see the parallels between his father’s tumultuous life and his own. Now, in his moving and passionate memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, Ai Weiwei looks back on growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution and recounts the extraordinary life of his father, the exiled poet Ai Qing.

The first half of the memoir is dedicated to Ai Qing, who, along with his family, was forced into exile in 1957, the year Ai Weiwei was born. Because of his status as a writer and poet, and his strained relationship with the Communist regime, Ai Qing was viewed as a threat and forced to do back-breaking work in a labor camp, such as cleaning camp latrines and pruning forests, all while facing constant public humiliation and sometimes physical abuse. As conditions became more dangerous for political prisoners under Chairman Mao Zedong’s rule, Ai Qing’s family was relocated several times, with precipitously worsening conditions. At one point, they were sent to “Little Siberia” in northeast China, where they were forced to live in a lice- and rat-infested dugout.

Through it all, Ai Qing remained stoic and never allowed anything to break his spirit. He did his work well, never complained and waited patiently for the punishment to end. Although Ai Weiwei was still a child at the time, he, too, knew better than to complain. He hated the blind obedience to Mao but understood that it was necessary. After Mao’s death in 1976, Ai Weiwei’s family moved to Beijing, and in 1979, Ai Qing was considered fully rehabilitated by the government and no longer a “rightist.” He continued writing and publishing poetry, and one of his poems was read during the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The second half of the memoir turns to Ai Weiwei’s life—his artistic study in the United States, his move back to Beijing, his career as an artist and his many encounters with political censorship. He writes of his arrest and imprisonment with clarity and detail, and readers can feel the anxiety of political turmoil and the power of disobedience as he defies Chinese authorities, over and over again.

Sprinkled throughout the book are lovely black-and-white sketches and drawings by Ai Weiwei, as well as many of his father’s emotive poems. These pieces of art remind readers that, although this memoir is a political and personal history, Ai Weiwei is first and foremost committed to artistic expression.

This heart-rending yet exhilarating book, translated by professor of Chinese Allan H. Barr, gives a rare look into how war and revolution affect innocent bystanders who are just trying to live. It’s simultaneously an informative political history of the last 100 years in China, an intimate portrait of familial bonds through the generations and a testament to the power of art.

Ai Weiwei’s heartrending yet exhilarating memoir gives a rare look into how war and revolution affect innocent bystanders who are just trying to live.

Baggage

In Cumming’s second memoir, he pivots easily from sassy and self-effacing to sensitive and serious, perhaps because he embodies all those qualities himself.

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