Sub-titled "portraits of the near poor in America",  The Missing Class by Katherine S Newman and Victor Tan Chen was frankly a disappointment to me.   While the title and introduction suggest the authors are doing an analysis of American families with incomes between twenty and forty thousand dollars per year,  the book is very tightly [...]

Happy Thursday!   It’s time once again for an Easy Picture Book roundup and today I have one (nearly) perfect,  one not so perfect and one Positively Piggy book for your entertainment and edification.   The Perfect Nest,  written by Catherine Friend and illustrated by John Manders is a wonderful story about a cat who builds the [...]

So I’ve been wanting to do a link love post for my top ten droppers.   I have ten "reject pile" books but by and large they are not a good fit for my top droppers.    I need architects and real estate fans,  parents and pre-schoolers, history buffs and green living types.   What I have, mostly, [...]

If you’ve come to fear that you spend Way too much time watching House Hunters on HGTV,  if you’ve found yourself Zillow-ing everyone from your neighbors to a blind date or if you have spent so much on buying and upgrading your home that you are "house poor",  you may well have developed a case [...]

Back in 2002,  while traveling to New Orleans for my father’s funeral,  I first read The Practical Nomad by Edward Hasbrouck.   Subtitled "how to travel around the world",  this is The definitive guide to long term international travel.  Hasbrouck,  a San Francisco travel agent and highly experienced world traveler covers absolutely everything you need to [...]