Double Book Review: Ex-Girlfriends United by Matt Dunn

Being a sequel to previous best seller ‘The Ex-Boyfriends Handbook’, the book picks up again with main character Dan Davis and Ed Middleton and their escapades with the women of Brighton.

Ed is still happy with personal trainer girlfriend Sam, but Dan is suffering a bit of a woman drought. He quickly finds out that all of his ex-girlfriends have been rating him on website SlateYourDate.com. Dan’s determined to rectify these poor ratings, and Ed decides to help him change his caddish ways.

But just as Ed is finally settling down, a blast from the past makes their way back into Ed’s life to disrupt everything…

As I mentioned, I absolutely adored this book’s prequel, and consequently it got a glowing review from me! I recommended it to a few people who also loved it, so I’m glad it wasn’t just me! I was really hoping for the standard writing to be the same, and the relationships between the main two characters of Ed and Dan to be the same once more. Luckily for me, I was thrilled to discover that it was and within the first couple of pages I was hooked again! Despite it being a few months between reading this book and its predecessor, I found I got into the characters so quickly because of Dunn’s writing, and it was like getting back with old friends.

The previous book chose to focus mainly on Ed’s character and Dan was more of a subsiduary one, albeit most definitely the comic relief throughout the book. This book however follows more of Dan’s life, his disastrous lovelife being the main plot. The idea of a website being created to rate awful men after dates is fantastic, and the way it is done in the book is brilliant! Dan’s got such a bad reputation its not surprising no woman will touch him with a bargepole and his discovery of these reviews is simply hilarious. It’s nice to see the womaniser being taken down a peg or two, btu despite his awful behaviour I just can’t help but love Dan! He’s such a prat but he’s great for it lol!

It was nice to see some old familiar characters come back, from the main pair to Wendy the barmaid and as I said a face from Ed’s past even makes an appearance which throws an interesting twist onto the book and an element we didn’t really get from the first book. Dunn seems to have a really natural way of putting men’s feelings onto paper, yet making it incredibly funny and appealing for women to read as well. Because of this, I can easily see that this is going to be a book that both men and women can read and both enjoy. Women will probably be glad they don’t know any men like Dan and men will be glad that they aren’t Dan! Being written again from Ed’s perspective, you get right into the story and the characters, and just get so absorbed into it, you can’t put it down!

As you probably tell from my glowing review of yet another Matt Dunn book, I just can’t recommend this book enough to anyone who enjoys a fun and easy read that is 100% guaranteed to make you laugh! I would say that you should read the two books in order, so read ‘The Ex-Boyfriends Handbook’ before you read this to set the scene and get to know the characters and why they are like they are in this book. So that’s 3 out of 4 books of Dunn’s I have loved, and I’ll be getting the first of his books from the library soon enough and I can’t wait! It’s a brilliant read, with an easy to read writing style, great characters, great plot and is just brilliant. I loved it!

Rating: 5/5

For a review of the book’s prequel The Ex-Boyfriend’s Handbook, please click here

HERO: Becoming the Man She Desires

During our Re:Married series I mentioned the book Every Man’s Battle by Fred Stoeker and Mike Yorkey. It covers sexual purity for a man and is very good. Their lastest book, HERO: Becoming the Man She Desires, includes Fred’s son Jasen in the writings.

Written primarily for single men, this book can be read in two or three nights because the 16 chapters are captivating and fast moving. This doesn’t mean though that married guys can’t learn from this book…the guys give very practical examples from their lives and others in how to become the not just man, but man of God that will make you desirable to a woman. Essentially the book looks at 9 modern day myths that guys believe about marriage, dating, relationships and sex. Written in many ways to tell the story of Jasen growing up, then meeting his wife Rose and doing it all in a pure way, this book is a full of ideas that will challenge your thinking. I also liked that Rose from time to time writes a little to give the female perspective on what’s being discussed.

Released just last month, this book would make an excellent gift for graduates or any guy who has the rest of the Every Man series. Highly recommended.

Ambition 10, Fame 3 -- Nancy Balbirer’s 'Take Your Shirt Off and Cry,' a Memoir of Near-Misses as an Actor in Hollywood and New York

Did she miss out on fame because Hollywood is ruthless or because she consulted wackos like the psychic who spoke in the voice of an ovary?

Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences. By Nancy Balbirer. Bloombsbury USA, 256 pp., $16, paperback.

By Janice Harayda

Nancy Balbirer updates the saying that acting is a hard way to earn an easy living in this uneven memoir of two decades of near-misses in show business. Balbirer tells lively stories about how she landed modest roles on Seinfeld and MTV while paying her rent through jobs like cocktail-waitressing and blow-drying friends’ hair for $20, all the while yearning for stardom that came neither in New York nor Hollywood.

But it’s unclear how much of her book you can believe, and not just because an author’s note warns – here we go again – that some facts have been changed “for literary reasons.” Balbirer takes her title and theme from a warning she says she got during a private conversation with the playwright David Mamet, one of her acting teachers at the Tisch School of the Arts. As she tells it, Mamet said that as a woman in show business, she’d be asked to do two things in every role she played:

“Take your shirt off and cry. Still, there’s no reason that you can’t do those things and do them with dignity and the scene properly analyzed.”

Did Mamet really say those lines as written? Good writers tend to keep related words together unless they have reason to split them up, and you wonder if Mamet said, “Take your shirt off” instead of the more graceful “Take off your shirt.” And his “still” seems stilted for a conversation between two people walking toward a Seventh Avenue subway stop.

In the years that followed her talk with Mamet, Balbirer took her shirt off – literally and figuratively — more than once. Yet her willingness to expose herself may have had more to do with a lack of self-awareness than with the raw exploitation envisioned by Mamet. On the evidence of Take Your Shirt Off and Cry, Balbirer has that paradoxical combination so often found in actors: enough intelligence to welcome complex Shakespearean and other roles but too little of it to stay away from con artists, whether they take form of tarot card readers or manipulative lovers. She’s hardly alone among would-be stars in having found an eviction notice taped to her door before she earned redemption (which came, in her case, from writing and starring in the solo show I Slept With Jack Kerouac). But you wonder if she might have avoided some disasters if she’d given less money to people like “a psychic in Tennessee” who spoke to her in the voice of one of her ovaries.

“Wacky, yes, and even wackier that my ‘ovary’ had a thick Southern accent,” she admits, “and still … I believed.”

Best line: Two of the “the enormous angry placards” Balbirer saw in the waiting areas of casting offices: “ACTORS MAY NOT EAT IN THIS AREA!!!” and “ACTORS: CLEAN UP YOUR GARBAGE!!” See also the quote posted earlier on May 20.

Worst line: No. 1: Some parts of Take Your Shirt Off and Cry are so neat, they leave you wondering if they include made-up scenes, dialogue, or characters. Balbirer doesn’t clarify the issue in a vague author’s note that says that she has “in some instances, compressed or expanded time, or otherwise altered events for literary reasons, while remaining faithful to the essential truth of the stories.” No. 2: Balbirer likes cute words (such as “humonguous,” “bazillion” and “suckiest”) that at times work against the serious points she is trying to make.

Published: April 2009

About the author: Balbirer co-owns the Manhattan restaurant Pasita.

One-Book Reviews is for people who like to read but dislike hype and review inflation.

© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.twitter.com/janiceharayda

New Favorite Chapter Book: Rumblewick's Diary!

Everyone likes a good cat book, and we all love a touch of magical hijinx.  So what’s not to love about Rumblewick’s Diary?

Newly imported from England, Rumblewick’s Diary by Hiawyn Oram is a series revolving around witchcraft and mischief.  Rumblewick is a cat – a witch’s familliar – who can’t keep his witch in line.  Haggy Aggy would sooner dress up in fancy clothes and drive a pink car than scare children, stir potions, or ride a broom.  She’s so naughty that she’s even sold Rumblewick’s PERSONAL diaries to a publisher.  Too bad for Rumblewick, but perfect for you and me – now we get to read about Haggy Aggy’s misadventures and Rumblewick’s trouble with the High Hags!  With Quentin-Blake style illustrations by Sarah Warburton, goofy humor, and a fundiary format, these books will be a hit with early readers and parents alike!

The first book in the series is already on BookKids shelves, with the second on its way later this summer.  Don’t miss out, come in and snag a copy!

The Chicago Tribune review request for "Strapped Into An American Dream"

My publisher just received a request for a review copy of my book, “Strapped Into An American Dream,” from the Chicago Tribune, which has “Resourceful Traveler” within its Sunday Travel section.  This Travel book review column would do wonders for my book, so I am very much hoping that they will do the review, but they could not guarantee it. I can guaratee that I will be thrilled if the Chicago Tribune reviews “Strapped Into An American Dream.” 

MIA

I know that I have totally been MIA and I’m totally sorry.  Work the last week has really pushed me but not in the bad way. Yes, I have been stressed out and yes it’s been a lot of work but I feel like I came out on this end of things having learned something and being a little more confidant about things. And I get to put the new skills into work next week.

On the family front, Izzy and I pretty much spent the weekend fighting. It never seems to end. He doesn’t feel like I do enough, even though he’s on his way out the door to the movies right now and I’m at home alone with Nate.  I don’t feel like he appreciates everything that I HAVE done and takes advantage of me, so we end up resenting each other and fighting about the building resentments. There are times that I know he’s upset but he won’t be respectful in telling me that he’s upset, instead he attacks and that’s not how I operate. If I get attacked, I go into attack mode myself – that’s my default position, especially considering my training.  Now, I have to step back and remind myself to say “Ooook, that’s not really what you meant is it because this is how I’m taking it.” And so far, it’s seemed to work. I can see him thinking about how to say things and trying to be more respectful. Let’s hope that this works.

On a brighter note:

I have completed another book in my goal!  It’s:

The review can be found here. Please enjoy!

A Gospel Primer

“This book is offered as a handy guide to help Christians experience the gospel more fully by preaching it to themselves each day. It is also offered as a correction to a costly mistake made by Christians who view the gospel as something that has fully served out its purpose the moment they believed in Jesus for salvation. Not knowing what to do with the gospel once they are saved, they lay it aside soon after conversion so they can move on to “bigger and better” things (even Scriptural things). …God did not give us His gospel so we could embrace it and be converted. Actually, He offers it to us every day as a gift that keeps on giving to us everything we need for life and godliness” (5).

That statement from the introduction of Milton Vincent’s short book, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love (2008), was only an appetizer to the gospel feast he prepared in the following four chapters. The first provides thirty-one brief (paragraph-sized) meditations on the gospel, paying special attention to its present effect for life, joy, godliness, the pursuit of holiness, etc. The second provides a brief-though-sweeping narrative of the gospel followed by the same narrative retold in a poem. Both of these chapters serve as memorization tools to help store up within our hearts all that God is for us in Jesus, so that these truths might be used mightily by the Spirit throughout our daily walk. Scripture verses also appear as footnotes on each page. In the final chapter he gives his testimony of God’s triumph in suprising him with the power of grace in the gospel.

What I appreciated and thought was rather unique was that Vincent uses the first person (”I,” “my,” “me”) throughout the first three chapters, so helping his readers already to preach to themselves the infinite riches of God’s love. Overall, Vincent’s book serves as a very practical tool that cultivates ongoing love for the gospel itself and fruitful reflection on the gospel’s effects. Young believers and seasoned believers would do well to read through this book (or at least carry out the preaching found in its pages). If more Christians lived out what Vincent encourages, the gospel would cease to be viewed as merely a class to get through, and instead be seen as the school we enter as Christ’s disciples.