Archive for the ‘Non-Fiction’ Category

Understanding Movies: The Art and History of Films

One of the wonderful things about being a movie fan or a serious student of cinema today is the confluence of technologies that give us unprecedented access to all those films produced across the hundred plus years motion pictures have existed. If you are looking to go beyond the latest blockbuster where [...]

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes From an Accidental Country Girl

I absolutely enjoy reading this cookbook. It covers an interesting mix of  food and family life. She starts out as a single, vegetarian food snob in Los Angeles. Decides to move to Chicago. But before leaving she meets the man of her dreams. Then ends up married and living on a
cattle ranch. Her husband is [...]

The Rough Guide to Manga

Manga have exploded in popularity in the U.S. in the last twenty years; growing from a hard to find cult item to spilling across the shelves of major bookstore chains. A shorthand description might call Manga the Japanese equivalent to comic books in America, but that would be a disservice to the breadth and variety [...]

10,000 Ways To Die

Spaghetti Western is one of the most delicious terms ever coined to describe a film genre. It was invented in the pages of Variety, the entertainment industry bible, as a mocking way to describe a wave of new westerns washing up in America in the mid-1960s from that most unlikely of sources Italy! Today fans [...]

Quick, cheap comfort food

Now that I am juggling a career and motherhood I find myself dreading the question - what’s for dinner?  I have no time and no energy to cook elaborate meals and found a cookbook that has helped me immensely in the kitchen. It contains over a hundred recipes, including slow cooker meals which i love [...]

Dawn Light

This is one of those works that I really should have read in print rather than listened to while driving.  The eclectic subject matter shifts very quickly, and I feel like I daydreamed a bit too much at times to catch everything.  I’ve meant to read this author for ages now and am glad to [...]

Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

The entries in this book seem so honest and direct. But I suppose that was the point in using only six words. I expected a few memoirs to make me laugh. But I forgot just how heavy heartbreak can be. The pain and sadness was there even with so few words. I didn’t expect to [...]

The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

While I’ve always thought it would be fun to design and conduct sociological experiments, it never occurred to me to undergo them myself. Each chapter of this book describes the process and results of the author’s assorted undertakings, including outsourcing his personal tasks to India, impersonating an absent Australian actor on the red carpet at [...]

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

“The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” is the book by Michael Lewis that is the basis for the surprise smash hit film starring Sandra Bullock. At the center of both the book and the movie is the incredible true story of Michael Oher and his climb from desperate poverty, neglect and dysfunction to wealth, [...]

Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments

Dominick Dunne, crime journalist for Vanity Fair for nearly 25 years, passed away in August at the ripe old age of 83. I’ve been reading Vanity Fair for the last couple of years and his column was always my favorite, so, in honor of his passing, I decided to pick up this “best of” collection [...]