Subjects Books - Page 6

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)

Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp

Amazon Price: $8.97 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 67 new & used starting at $7.79

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 268 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Newbie's Impression of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is the second book I have read of Barbara Kingsolver, the other, The Poisonwood Bible, I must read again because the details of that particular piece are a bit sketchy, but I digress...
Recent events highlighted in the news, bulldozed bloated and sickly cows and salmonella tainted tomatoes make opting out of our national food chain a viable option. This book defined many terms and allowed me to expand my vocabulary for example by defining "locavore" and CAFOs, and just in many ways increased my awareness of what I was putting in my mouth. This book higlighted all the work and preparation required to raise food and the importance of supporting local small farmers. Granted we all do not have a back 20 or 40 to till and grow or own vegetable and raise animals to provide meat to eat nor do we have the time and most of us don't have the inclination to do such. But we can support our farmers by buying direct in local farmer's markets and vegetable stands. By buying directly we also support only our consumption of quality foods. Also we are reminded of seasonality and regionality of food through Ms. Kingsolver's work. Tomatoes and other vegetables and fruits maybe should not be available year round or bred to survive being shipped from around the world because certain vegetables only grow well in certain regions and lose nutrients and disease fighting capabilities when they are bred to withstand the rigors of travel and grocery store shelf life. Hat's Off to Ms, Kingsolver and her family for their commitment to this daunting undertaking. This book encouraged me to become a locavore and I started my own garden this year. I also found out about an organization called Seed Savers and endeavor to produce some of those plants. I have also gained a greater respect for the land that produces the bounty we take for granted and have gained a greater respect for those that are able to coax the bounty from the land and nourish us all.

Editorial Review:

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

5 Meals for $5 - How to Feed 5 People 5 Meals for $5.00 - $8.00 or Less! You Don't Need to Be Wealthy To Eat Healthy

The Queen of More Green, Jaci Rae

List Price: $18.95 By: North Shore Records, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $29.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Food is the second highest expenditure in most peoples lives, yet they don't pay attention to it. Pay yourself by using the information inside of 5 Meals for $5. This cook book is not only filled with delicious and plentiful recipes, it is filled with the information on how you can get the same prices and lower than the recipes listed!

You don't need to change what you eat, just the way you shop! And you don't need to rely on Spam or unhealthy meals to live in today's debt ridden economy. It's not all about coupons and Jaci will show you how!

If you think you might starve because of portion size, think again! If you're single, freeze the leftovers and save or cut down the recipes and eat a fresh meal every day and use the Buddy Shopping System.

5 Meals for $5 also has a weights and measures chart, free date night ideas, measure conversion tables, Jaci Rae's "The Plan" on how to get out of debt and much more!

The delicious recipes inside many times include the cost of a salad, fruit and/or beverage. One recipe example:

Chuck Roast
Cost per person $0.97
Total cost five people $4.87
2 lbs chuck roast ($1.92) (my store just had a sale June 12, 2008 for $0.69 a lbs. A los less than listed here!)
1 lb. potatoes, diced ($0.40)
4 carrots, chopped ($0.10)
1 onion, chopped ($0.30)
1 beef bouillon ($0.16)
1 garlic clove, minced ($0.01)
Salt and pepper to taste ($0.02)
Iceberg Lettuce and Cucumber Salad ($1.45) (recipe listed in book)
Basic Vinegar and Oil Salad Dressing ($0.42) (recipe listed in book)
1 lemon, sliced in 5 wedges ($0.09)

Saute chuck roast in a dash of oil until both sides all dark brown (about 2 minutes on each side on high). Combine all other ingredients into a large stew pot or crock-pot. Once meat is browned, put into pot with other veggies and spices and cook on low for 2-3 hours or until Meat is tender and fully cooked. Make salad and serve with chilled water and lemon wedge.

Recipes range from Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Thai, American, Classics, desserts and more! Time saving and delicious recipes have also helped Jaci Rae lose 48 lbs and save money!

Chicken Lo Mein
Cost per person for one serving $0.98
Total cost for five people averages $4.88

Thai Chicken
Cost per person for one serving $0.97
Total cost for five people averages $4.85

Sweet Potato Souffle
Cost of meal per person $0.96
Total cost for five people averages $4.79

Citrus Chicken
Cost of meal per person $0.98
Total cost for five people averages $4.91

Pasta Fagoli
Cost of meal per person $0.99
Total cost for five people averages $4.97

".... She gives great tips to stretch a dollar-and again, not just on food. Her recipes are kid and picky-eater friendly-which is another way to stretch a budget...." Carine Nadel is on The Reader's Advisory Panel of Woman's Day Magazine

"...This one is huge on my list of must have books..." Lisa Knight The Frugal Momma

"5 Meals for $5, is loaded with recipes like B-B-Q Ham Sandwiches w/Homemade B-B-Q Sauce and Mexican Beef Enchilada Lasagna, that cost, on average, under $1.60 per serving. With many costing under $1. Including a salad." Eric - The Bachelor Guy

About the Author
Jaci Rae Is The Queen of More Green and the Fab and Frugal Diva (be sure to check out her popular blog for more money saving advice). Known for her frugal, money saving ideas and tasty food. Jaci is currently pursing her path towards a Masters / PhD and is a #1 best-selling author.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Jim Collins

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Collins Business Amazon Marketplace: 339 new & used starting at $5.89

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Leadership
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 688 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards

The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett

Amazon Price: $12.00 List Price: $20.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: NAL Trade Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $8.79

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Genre Fiction -> Historical
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Thrillers -> Suspense

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1208 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Ken Follett had long been a staple of the bestseller lists for his novels of intrigue and espionage. Then came The Pillars of the Earth, a grand novel of epic storytelling that readers and critics quickly hailed as his crowning achievement. Now, The Pillars of the Earth is available for the first time to a new audience of readers, in this attractive new trade paperback edition.

In 12th-century England, the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral signals the dawn of a new age. This majestic creation will bond clergy and kings, knights and peasants together in a story of toil, faith, ambition and rivalry. A sweeping tale of the turbulent middle ages, The Pillars of the Earth is a masterpiece from one of the world's most popular authors.

"A novel of majesty and power...Will hold you, fascinate you, surround you." --Chicago Sun-Times

"A towering tale...There's murder, arson, treachery, torture, love, and lust...A good time can be had by all." --New York Daily News

"Touches all human emotions...truly a novel to get lost in." --Cosmopolitan

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

Amazon Price: $9.00 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Riverhead Trade Amazon Marketplace: 721 new & used starting at $3.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2423 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Amazon Price: $8.37 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 207 new & used starting at $4.89

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> Portuguese

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1239 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Like the one-time bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Alchemist presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a highly unique situation. And though we may sniff a bestselling formula, it is certainly not a new one: even the ancient tribal storytellers knew that this is the most successful method of entertaining an audience while slipping in a lesson or two. Brazilian storyteller Paulo Coehlo introduces Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. And so he's off: leaving Spain to literally follow his dream.

Along the way he meets many spiritual messengers, who come in unassuming forms such as a camel driver and a well-read Englishman. In one of the Englishman's books, Santiago first learns about the alchemists--men who believed that if a metal were heated for many years, it would free itself of all its individual properties, and what was left would be the "Soul of the World." Of course he does eventually meet an alchemist, and the ensuing student-teacher relationship clarifies much of the boy's misguided agenda, while also emboldening him to stay true to his dreams. "My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy confides to the alchemist one night as they look up at a moonless night.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself," the alchemist replies. "And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." --Gail Hudson

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Leonard Mlodinow

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pantheon Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $13.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> Biological Sciences
Subjects -> Science -> Physics -> Chaos & Systems
Subjects -> Science -> Mathematics -> Applied -> Probability & Statistics

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Amazon Guest Review: Stephen Hawking
Published in 1988, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time became perhaps one of the unlikeliest bestsellers in history: a not-so-dumbed-down exploration of physics and the universe that occupied the London Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks. Later successes include 1995's A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History. Stephen Hawking is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

In The Drunkard's Walk Leonard Mlodinow provides readers with a wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives. With insight he shows how the hallmarks of chance are apparent in the course of events all around us. The understanding of randomness has brought about profound changes in the way we view our surroundings, and our universe. I am pleased that Leonard has skillfully explained this important branch of mathematics. --Stephen Hawking

---

The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4)

Rick Riordan

Amazon Price: $12.23 List Price: $17.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hyperion Book CH Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $9.61

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Literature -> Action & Adventure
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Literature -> Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths -> Greek & Roman

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 61 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Percy Jackson...You Are My Hero 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Ever since I picked up the first Percy Jackson book, I knew he was the one for me. Percy is caring and brave.. and funny counts for something. I know lots of parents read these too. I have re-read and re-lived the whole series again, which makes me realize how great these books are. I have recommended them to anyone and everyone.
The fourth book didn't disapoint me. Although I won't give the full summary of the story (it's been a month since I read it), basically Percy goes to a new school, whcih has its share of trouble for him. Again, like all the other books, there is a quest. I found this quest to be the most exciting for me. There were lots of new characters introduced, like Hera, so I found that very awesome, since I have always liked Greek mythology.


SPOILERS!!!!
Of course, as I am a true romantic, I found the blossoming romance between Annabetha and Percy addicting. I was literally flipping the pages, going "When do they meet again?" Annabeth kisses Percy at Mount St. Helens, therefore expressing her feelings for him, but Percy is too dense to realized that she does like him like that. He knows he is in love with her but his concentraion on thisdelicate matter is disrupted by the return of Rachel Elizabeth Dare and the landing of Percy on Calypso's island. Calypso is banished to this island because she helped the Titans in the big war. Every thousand years or so, the gods are cruel and send her a hero to nurse back to health. Calypso falls in love with them and begs them to stay, but they must return to their own world. They can never find the island again. Percy is very torn between staying and going to save the world, but eventually leaves. I was really sad actually he didn't stay with Calypso. Although I have always been a fan of Annabetha nd such, something about Calypso made me like her, maybe because she was so accepting. Then there is Rachel. Ahh, Rachel. Annabeth is very jealous of this girl as Percy keeps accidently running into her and is becoming one of her best friends. Matter of fact, Annabeth stalks off mad quite a few times in the presence of Percy and Rachel. Percy, dense as ever, doesn't realize why, but I don't think Rachel would ever take him from Annabeth. She knows waht he doesn't.

And here ends my review of the blossoming romance. I promise I'll be more critical with my next review, but I have troulbe remembering the action unless I just read it. Ohh, Percy Jackson fans: the movie is going to come out next year!! I'm excited of course. I would like to be Annabeth haha. I find her really cool. Sigh. I am not an actress however. So read this book, please!

Editorial Review:

Percy Jackson isn’t expecting freshman orientation to be any fun. But when a mysterious mortal acquaintance appears on campus, followed by demon cheerleaders, things quickly move from bad to worse. In this latest installment of the blockbuster series, time is running out as war between the Olympians and the evil Titan lord Kronos draws near. Even the safe haven of Camp Half-Blood grows more vulnerable by the minute as Kronos’s army prepares to invade its once impenetrable borders. To stop the invasion, Percy and his demigod friends must set out on a quest through the Labyrinth–a sprawling underground world with stunning surprises at every turn. Full of humor and heart-pounding action, this latest audiobook promises to be their most thrilling adventure yet.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan

Amazon Price: $13.17 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin Press HC, The Amazon Marketplace: 108 new & used starting at $8.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Nutrition

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 151 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne Bartholomew