July Reviews

Oh Grow Up! Toddlers to Preteens Decoded by Kathy Fray Early in 2009, I was given a copy of Fray’s first book, OH BABY... Birth, Babies & Motherhood Uncensored.  It’s a book I thoroughly enjoyed, both for the recap of all things a pregnancy brings, as much as for the refreshing, down to earth language that the author used. So when I learnt that there was a second book I was pretty excited.

Our eldest son is ten, so I had to turn to that section first. One of the opening paragraphs I looked at stated “Ten-year-olds can talk and talk and talk, and especially love dramatic adjectives.” Yup, she nailed that one.

The book is divided into four main sections – Age-Stage Overviews (covering physical, intellectual & social-emotional development), Children’s Bodies (nutrition, natural healing, therapies, common diseases, drugs and natural alternatives), Children’s Minds (about the different types of IQ) and Children’s Spirits.

Personally, I devoured the parts about ages & stages. Agreed wholeheartedly with the chapter on being environmentally aware and responsible. Where she lost me was the emphasis on new-age spirituality. If, as Fray herself points out, four out of five adults believes in God, why the need for an extensive section on divination, astrology and numerology?

But as with Oh Baby, the real gems are the common sense “magical” secrets. 21 of them. Brilliant stuff that is sometimes easy to forget. We’ll be reinstating Number Seven – Dine Together & Whine Together, even as we struggle with Number 12 and realizing silence is golden. Umm, not always, especially if there is a toddler in the house!

Read this if you like – Diane Levy, Nigel Latta or want a Kiwi version of Penelope Leach.

How to Survive a Leaky Home by Yvonne van Dongen  In 2006 we entered into a sale and purchase agreement for a gorgeous house, two years old. We were lucky – our lawyer insisted that we get a building report, due to the value of the home and the extent of the mortgage. It saved us around 60k in repair costs - it was the best $900 I’ve ever spent. Six months later the eventual buyer was in rented accommodation, struggling to find the money to reclad. It could have been me.

A quick check on the NZ Herald site shows that as of last July, the Government estimated that there were 42,000 dwellings in New Zealand that were likely to be leaky. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimate this to be in the region of 80,000. There are plenty of stories in print and television media or even on the street about the huge cost to families who find themselves in this situation, which is why it’s important to have a local resource such as this book to assist.

Van Dongen & her husband lived through this and have brought together a comprehensive knowledge of the ins and outs of owning and repairing a leaky home, from discovery to the decisions around repair, knock-down, mediation, the Weathertight Homes Tribunal and the Courts. While throughout the book the use of professional surveyors is recommended, there is a chapter describing possible signs of a leaky home, taking into account cladding and design among other things; chapters on “what to do now”, and on lodging claims. The legal advice is in clear, concise terms – minimal legalese.

Recommended for anyone considering buying or renovating a house, and especially for anyone caught up in the nightmare of a leaky home.

Medium Raw, Anthony Bourdain The sequel to the best selling Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain is back. The problem is, I’m not so sure he knew where he was coming from nor where he’s going to.

We begin in a New York restaurant, with a group of un-named but brilliant chefs having a top secret meeting. There’s no naming so we don’t know who exactly ate the ortolan (illegally, I should add). I read on wondering if he’d drop those names into the conversation later on – if so, I haven’t worked it out yet.

The book moves along slowly, with stories from Bourdain’s childhood to present day, with plenty of profanities dropped in (how did I miss them when watching No Reservations?). While the words can be cutting and sometimes funny, there’s a little double standard. You can’t slam one person for using pretty little non-names when writing about others if you do so yourself. But all can be forgiven with some of his descriptions about fellow chefs, waiters and the nouvelle riche; and with the final chapter, a catch up on some of the heroes and villains of Kitchen Confidential.

All in all, it’s a rambling but entertaining read for a rainy afternoon.

Kobo e-reader I love, love, love my Kobo. The other half should too, given his recent complaints about my (over flowing) book cases, but I’m smart enough not to have let him use it yet.

Kobo comes in black or white, and holds 1000 eBooks before you need to clean it out or add an SD card to extend the memory.  100 classics are pre-loaded, with favourites such as Pride & Prejudice, Alice in Wonderland and Great Expectations.  Any eBooks you download are available in the “cloud”, so even if you lose the reader, you can retain your library for future downloads. Best of all, there are free apps available so that you can read on your Blackberry, iPhone or iPad and if you swap devices, whatever you were reading is book-marked. Genius!

For more free titles, visit www.classicbookshelf.com.