We were the lucky ones by Georgia Hunter

Impressive. We were the lucky ones is this and much more.

At first I picked up this book for the beautiful, romantic cover and the title. There are moments in our life that we can think are close to the perfection and other ones where we can pronounce these words: "We were the lucky ones..." A disgrace, some illness able to change the face of a family.

Life is long and can be plenty of events, sad and happy. In this family these words can be used with a double meaning: in this case we don't analyze exactly the sad destiny of a family because of the departure of a beloved one for an accident or the illness of a person. No.

In this case we talk of Holocaust. In this case we are back to the atrocities of the last 1930s perpetrated by Adolf Hitler at certain people. The idea of the creation of a pure white race and the suppression of all the Jewish existing in the world including sick people has meant the departure in the various camps established by the same Hitler of more than 6 millions of poor people and a total shame for the world.


So the title can have two meanings: "We were the lucky ones" because of course there will be a long period in which the family will suffer great pains because of the atrocities wanted by Hitler, but at the end when all that horror gone they can repeat this same phrase with a certain relaxation and a complete different meaning because in comparison with most of the people killed in lagers, camps wanted by Hitler this family survived at all of it.

Every time I read a book about the Holocaust is always a sufferance.
Georgia Hunter will introduce to you her family and the problematic that her relatives lived during the Second World War. Her family lived in Lvov, a little village in Poland and during all the years of the war the reports of the facts of the various protagonists.

The book is written with great class, culture and calm. There are not too many dialogues, nor a great sentimentalism although you will find memories, letters exchanged between the various protagonists. What I love the most of this book, because I read various  books about the Holocaust is a true happy end for once. At the end of every chapter, the bulletins of what was going on in Europe, America and other part of the world in that  tragic moments in which world was like suspended.
My favorite characters the one of Addy the granddad of the author and his mom.

What it is important to do with Holocaust and tragedies like these ones is to continue to tell, and never never never think for a second that atrocities like these ones won't never exist anymore.

It's important to remember at the new generations that the freedom obtained has been the fruit of all the people who died during the last Second World War and the men who helped to set free again countries taken hostage by an absurd, absolutely cruel dictatorship.


I thank First to Read and Penguin Random House for this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

Soul Music Discover your personal type so YOU can lead a life of happiness and success by Awen Finn

Awen Finn is a hurricane of joy and she has been able to transform her life in a gift for many other people in difficulty. I had review time ago her wonderful wonderful book: How to beat Criticism and Feel Good. Awen is back now with Soul Music Discover your personal type so YOU can lead a life of happiness and success.
 In the book you will find many singers or bands's from The Police to the U2, passing from John Lennon or the Foo Fighters, with many songs explained in detail. Your favorite song will define your character

Why?

Movies of course but first of all songs are able to speak directly to our soul.
Songs are the soundtrack of all our life. When you will discover your favorite song you can also understand much better your character and your can build a most successful life  because you will have discovered your real YOU!

I love and appreciate the biography of Awen because through sufferance she has been in grade to become a successful person! And like her, you can do that as well.


I thank LibraryThing and Awen Finn  for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue

What a wonderful book is The Motion of Puppets written by Keith Donohue!

While I was reading this book I tried to guess the books this author had previously read for writing such a touching book. Profound, plenty of meanings The Motion of Puppets can be "read" and you will see by yourself at many levels.

First of all: let's ask to ourselves who a puppet is, apart of course to be a beautiful toy. It's an inanimate toy in general maneuvered by someone else who will give him life.

A puppet is driven by someone else to do and to be exactly what he wants and what he desires that this puppet must be: the owner of the puppet can changes his/her clothes, he can changes hair, he can changes everything of this puppet. Read it in metaphorical sense and you will obtain also what it can happens to a weak person.

The puppet couldn't never say anything, because he/she wouldn't have force to do that, no mouth, or to be someone listened by the society.
The force of a puppet raises only in this: who there is behind him/her.

There is someone more strong than the same puppet able to give him/her dignity, strength, value, and all the sentiments she/he will perform that night during the show.

The puppeteer.

This book can also be read socially. A society of many puppets, driven  by the desire of gratification, driven by the desire of being all similar to our neighbors, without to search for our own differences. We should all have similar thoughts and we should all stay calm and quiet. The book according to my point of view can be also read like it. And trust me when I tell you that I am not wrong.

The part of the book in which for example a puppet, Noe, the most intolerant one to be and live like a puppet needs a certain "operation" to its head for removing some bees entered for case while they were re-building the puppet during the reconstruction read by me like a sort of "revolution".

She couldn't hear anymore all that noise and she needed to open her brain, but opening her brain what does it mean? Thinking with our own head and saying what we think.

The puppet, as told by the other puppets should have kept all her/his thoughts in her/his head because in opposite case what can happens to the world and to the society if these thoughts go out? Well, I found the passage pretty interesting.

Surely Donohue has read the Metamorphosis by Kafka and while I read that the puppets loved to performed The Trial by Franz Kafka I smiled thinking that in this case we were anyway in a Metamorphosis and change. A sort of Wizard of Oz by Baum but without to find characters as happens in Baum's book that asks for specific treats of their characters, but differently people transformed for the purpose of re-creating the reality and plasticity that can be found just by the old remembrance of people realistically alive once. 

Are, these puppets sad? As said before: no. Most of them don't love to remember who they were and they don't remember who they were in some cases. In other cases they remembered but they don't mind anymore. Just few puppets would want to go away, refusing to be, as in the society, many sheep or many puppets.

For Kay Harper new, happy married girl with her wonderful husband Theo it happened while she was staying with her husband to Quebec for performing with a circus. Kay is an acrobat and this occasion succulent.

She loves the magical atmosphere of a circus and she loves mainly to spend her free time with her beloved husband. Theo is a translator and he is spending his time at the moment with a translation from a book written by Muybridge, This man dead more than a century ago interested at the motion of human and not only, bodies.

Their life is happy like can be the life of a romantic new couple. Theo in love for Kay so badly although of course he still needs to discover some aspect of her character, and vice-versa. Their love very powerful and quick, they became groom and bride without to think too much.

Kay is powerfully attracted by a toy shop located at rue Saint-Paul. In particular she is attracted by an ancient puppet. Oh: she loves to look at that one with the desire of buying it, and she confess all to her husband. But...What to do?

This shop is systematically closed. Possible that no one can be seen or spotted somewhere close to it? Upsetting.

One night Kay enters in the shop and starts Theo's story and at the same time Kay's sweet and terrible own metamorphosis.

Can be considered a death the departure by a dimension in this case of a person, so with a human body to a puppet? Of course it is. It's a transformation, a metamorphosis. There is an end and a new beginning.
Death and re-born under another semblance that just the ones loved that person a lot can recognize in a new shape.

There is life also in a puppet after all. In a common puppet. A puppet can be considered alive. They're appreciated, loved, treated well. Just this give them a reason for being "alive" for us all.
In this case you will discover how happy are the puppets of this book when no one can see them.


Again we find a big devotion and love: the one of Theo for her Kay! that I loved so much for the wonderful expressions and phrases of love expressed in the book. Such tenderness from a man is terribly moving.

Theo is destroyed when he understand that Kay can't be found anywhere and she is missing. No one knows where she went after with some colleagues  left the restaurant after a good evening spent all together. No one knows if she knew anyone in the city. Theo excludes every possible other men, other stories, friends where she could have stayed in the city or the return to their city. No, impossible.

Kay becomes a phantom and Theo, destroyed, returns to NYC where he re-starts to work as a professor. But he is strained, absent, he talks with the guys of the publishing house. He can't complete the translation so soon as hoped because with the mind is somewhere else. At the publishing house they understand and give more time to him.
His colleague are distant. No one wants to talk to him. His tragedy mustn't effect other people. Students joke with it: "Sure that he didn't kill her?" "Who knows..."

Prof.Mitchell a devoted man and teacher of Greek and Latin, a man of few words, starts to be his friend and later Egon another member of the cast of the circus, reaches his friend telling him that he slept in the bedroom upside the toy shop where Kay disappeared and he bring him very good news. That shop wasn't normal, that shop was weird. A cursed place, animated. The return to Quebec, the discovery of some new puppets in Vermont, (the second departure for Kay...) the call with the mom of Kay. "I recognized my daughter Theo...On TV. Please, that one is Kay I am sure of it. Please help me..."

The three men all motivated will leave for this farm where are now located these puppets, but what will happen will be poetically sad but also powerful.

Meeting someone you thought you had lost forever, discovering the great simplicity of getting lost and transformed by the circumstances. It's simple to lose your self and at the same time to be transformed or killed metaphorically.

I won't reveal you the end of the book but I can tell you something: what Theo knows for sure is that a man won't never stop to love the woman he loved so baldy although someone changed him in many ways, because love can reach her under many aspects and shapes.
The end is impressively beauty. And it teaches us the strength of love, able to fight also when the impossible become possible, the surreal become only the language you can speak and recognize.

I was to my favorite city bar when I picked up this title months ago. It was my idea to read this book and write my review for the book launch but the illness and death of my dad changed the cards on the table of Life.

What I thought for sure when I requested this book was this: if it is written well it is a masterpiece.
I wasn't wrong!

This one is a masterpiece.

The cover is powerful. There is Kay, transformed in a puppet and waiting to be moved by someone else more big than her. There is behind her a big farm with a light. The light of the night, able to give life to lifeless puppets during the day and new hopes and some hours of freedom from their immobility. Most people can find attracting that light but that attractive light would mean also danger if a human wants to stop by in a wrong moment?

What can I add more?

That I hope someone will create a movie from this book as beautiful as this book is.

You can be sure: The Motion of Puppets has a great story and great message. I love this book so badly and I want to thank NetGalley and the publishing house for this dream.


Anna Maria Polidori

The 5 Love Languages: Singles Edition The secret that will revolutionize your relationship by Gary D.Chapman

There are more singles in America than married couples and the numbers of these people all alone for personal choice, because scared of the times and too pressed for building a career and investing in themselves than not also at the same time in love and devotion for a partner destined maybe to increased. Plus divorced, separated people are other singles of return.

In The 5 Love Languages: Singles Edition The secret that will revolutionize your relationship by Gary D.Chapman all the answers and methods if you want to interrupt your spiral of "singletude."

Why sometimes, when the egoistical approach with life is not involved, when career is more than OK, people are not able to build a good relationship with the other sex?

Sometimes the fault must be searched in the childhood and the education given by the parents of these children.

In many cases if a man has had a mom with which he lived a strange maternal relationship, plenty of conflicts with great difficulty will be in grade to build a happy marriage and same is if problems the one with his dad.

The story of Brian I think will help most of the readers in this sense. Brian is a successful player. He is wonderful in his genre, he is as beautiful boy so surely he could have a lot of women and he could pick up the one he wants the most with great simplicity. He tried to do that but all these stories a real failure.

Why this? The main surprise to Brian himself: his parents and his childhood!

Yes, he told to Mr. Chapman, when he was little he lived some conflicts  with his parents. His dad drunk too much and his mom depressed for reasons we can understand.

The toddler and then the teenager never received a compliment from his parents but a lot of criticism and complaints.

Growing up with these bases it means that the man he became is still insecure:  how to develop a good relationship also with the other sex? The fear of saying something wrong, the fear of failing,  the fear of not being accepted can become real obstacles for the realization of a happy marriage/relationship and of course for the creation of a harmonic family.

But, of course the therapist insisted with Brian: he had to start, and he had to start from...the beginning.

"Tell to your parents that you love them. Tell them: I love you when you end your conversation with them by phone.

Brian did it and not only his relationship with the parents bettered everytime they talked, but the positive approach suggested  by Mr Chapman passed of course also through a new and more profound vision of his relationship and understanding with his dad and mom. This behavior after several months brought him at the next step: going out successfully with a girl.

Brian's main problem was that he wasn't able to make any kind of compliment. No one had told him that he was a good boy, no one in his family remarked some skills he had and so of course he didn't know what to tell and how to tell how special that girl was to him. Thanks to Mr. Gary Chapman he learned that after all yes, love means dedication and hard work but that after all it's a mountain that can be climbed.

In the book you will learn the five languages of love for singles. You will learn that love passes through two important stages and that if you arrive at the second one safely probably your relationship will continue without too many problems.

You will understand how precious can be to give to a person your love, time, dedications, gifts in every sense, exploring the wrong behavior of some parents with their children, their lack of attention and for being forgiving the attitude of buying too many material gratifications. We will understand how much important is to be kind with other people.

The examples brought by Mr Chapman many but the one I love a lot the one of a girl. She tells to a friend: I want to start a diet. It's important not to put down the person but saying: If you will start a diet I am sure not only that you will lose weight but that you will succeed for sure because I know your strong character.

Suggestions, tips able to create a more loving attitude with people close to us, life and a best environment that will be in grade to change also the course of your destiny!

The book will treat also the relationship with co-workers for a good and positive work-environment.

Try this book and I am sure that in a few months you won't be single anymore and your approach with life bettered!


Many thanks to NetGalley for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Power of Breath The Art of Breathing Well for Harmony, Happiness and Health by Swami Saradananda

Power of Breath The Art of Breathing Well for Harmony, Happiness and Health by Swami Saradananda is a new book released by Watkins this January 17th.

We all know the power of Yoga and the importance of taking some time for ourselves for loving ourselves and for some exercises able to let us connect with the most profound part of ourselves.

The joy, happiness and mental stability able to give Yoga thanks to exercises able to work at a different level if compared to common gym is substantially important.

Breathing and harmonic movements of the body: the most important treat of Yoga is this one.

Every gesture is a synchronization with our breathing and a general knowledge of our self for a general harmonization and wellness of our body, soul and mind.

We don't pay attention at our breathing but it's not just fundamental. Breathing is vital. Without breathing we die.
Good breathing means a good oxygenation for brain and other organs as well.
The book is divided into various sections dear at Yoga: Prana, Samana, vyana, apana, udana.

At the end of the book the author doesn't forget the various illness can affect people suggesting them various exercises for a best breathing without forgetting tips and exercises for all that people involved in music and sport.

Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Watkins for this book.

Christmas in Paris by Anita Hughes

Nothing wrong with Christmas in Paris by Anita Hughes. Just, wow, it's too rich in many senses.
There are too many brands and too many rich places in this book that at the end you think: let me breath a bit, I can't go on.

I tried to check out if the author had also included the restaurant where Hemingway loved to eat but, no. Hoooray: that one is not a place where snob people go and so I will stop by there when I will visit Paris.

So, more than the capital of love this one is the capital of richness and rich people and of a profound richness able to let you develop a profound nausea. I found the book pretty snob although there is to add that the characters are portrayed well in the system where they live in.

The story the one of a girl Isabel who split up from the boyfriend at just few days from the wedding because of futile reasons. And I found also this fact pretty irritating.
I found all of it pretty pretty irritating because if we live in a society like this one let's say that it's a senseless society.

The couple if married had chosen to go to Paris for spending their happy honeymoon. Wedding gone, Isabel will afford to Paris where later she will meet Alex...

Sexy scenes, sophisticated atmospheres, rich menus, Christmas in Paris is a well-structured book, just it's...empty.

Empty of human touch, empty of humanity, empty of that real love-story able to let you say: WOW, what a book. The story unable to communicate with the reader.

I would have wanted to see much more not the rich part of the city or just the rich part of the city, constantly under the lenses of the protagonists but the human part of this capital, the atmosphere, the warm that exists in Paris. Let's say that the gypsy has been the most human part of the capital.
It's for a certain unique particular, peculiar atmosphere, magical and plenty of atmosphere because of books, culture, paintings, art that you want to afford to Paris for visiting the capital of France. Many people in the cinema portrayed a wonderful Paris: Woody Allen in movies like Midnight in Paris and Everyone says I love you (and Woody Allen is not poor, and a man plenty of culture), Billy Crystal in Forget Paris, Disney with Ratatouille: Meg Ryan explored the french capital but also the South of France in French Kiss, without forgetting all the books written by Joanne Harris and Hugo Cabret by Selznick and the movie produced by Johnny Depp. It's for that reasons that you want to afford to Paris one day: because a city that deserves to be visited.

A city able, being the capital of France to speak much more loudly than what can do Louis Vuitton or the Charles V! That ones are brands and places for a niche of people and with this crisis and poverty I would give a different portrait of cities where possible and people as well also when the protagonists of these stories are rich, because if rich people are like these ones, do you know what?
They're pretty boring.

I would save for obvious reasons the mention at Shakespeare&Co.


I thank NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

The Best of the Harvard Lampoon: 140 Years of American Humor by The Harvard Lampoon

The first volume of the Harvard Lampoon was published in February 1876 written by seven undergraduates.

The idea? Re-create Punch, a British magazine all dedicated to humor.
Twelve hundreds copies all sold out.

Since there what characterizes the Harvard Lampoon is satire and great humor.

The Golden period from 1926 to 1945. In that case students were influenced by the The New Yorker following more or less the same guidelines of the prestigious New Yorker's magazine.

With the decades the students considering also the weight that their reality was assuming decided to start a good tradition: the ones of the honorary members.

It was simple to include Winston Churchill. Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, Jay Leno, Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace
.
In this book the first one of the series: The Best of the Harvard Lampoon: 140 Years of American Humor published last Nov 15t an introduction at  the humor, characteristics, modus vivendi and thoughts of the Harvard students through the time and and thanks to the reality that they created long time ago with many sketches, little short stories, historical covers. My favorite short story remains the one of the finger. So funny!

With the time Hollywood interested at The Harvard Lampoon. The students became collaborators with the creators of the Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, and other countless prestigious shows.

I fall in love for the funny introduction by Simon Rich, and the cover is absolutely wonderful!

Contributors: B.J. Novak, Henry Beard, Andy Borowitz, George Plimpton, Conan O’Brien, John Updike, Patricia Marx, and many others.


Many thanks to NetGalley for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living by Manjula Martin

Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living by Manjula Martin was published these days by Simon & Schuster.

So: what a messy world the one of writing. I am a freelance reporter and so I feel the problem so badly.

While I was reading the preface of the author, Manjula Martin I was also thinking at my condition.
I don't remember anymore when it was the last time I have been paid for my work.

Yes it is sadly true what written by the author: if we write for love and passion why other people should pay us? It's scaring more than sadly true, thinking better.

It's what it is happening with some contracts in fact in which it is specified that people are in love for writing (and so there is not the necessity to paying them for intellectual work - implied -)

And I ask to myself: but if I pay my mechanistic, if I pay the baker for the bread, if I pay the hydraulic, electrician, all people who read newsmagazines after all,  in too many cases they will read our words for free? Why no one should pay all of us for our daily, weekly, monthly articles?

What the hell is wrong?

But I know: of course these thoughts won't bring us too far.

In part because of the net, a real devastation for communication and common media.

If you think that some newsmagazine are thinking of using Facebook as their main resources cutting out collaborators, it gives to you the idea of the real danger of the power of the net and the problems connected with it. Collaborators are the salt of a newsmagazines. We know how to work; a news posted by someone else can be wrong and anyway should always be verified by a reporter in the place before to be printed.

Of course maybe at a certain point the profession of reporter opened at too many people when places for giving dignity to everyone there weren't at all. 
Simple but true.
And now we are in the sh...
Ahem: I meant, in miserable conditions.

Luck is another important factor in this profession. If you meet people of quality along your way, who believe in you, you will obtain a great guidance and of course you can develop your ambitions much better arriving at destination. Realities where you are treated with dignity, where your work is recognized. It says a lot to a person. It says all because she/he will be feel he/she is treated as every human being should be treated.

I found beautiful stories in this book  and I cried a lot as well. I loved the one of the first author's essay who said she was a book addicted because in her family she was the only one who read.

In our family my dad, my dad's aunts read a lot.
My granny Marietta in fact was the only lady in our rural community to have completed all elementary studies because she lived previously in another rural area when still a girl where there was a great dignity: there were all elementary classes.
In our rural community all elementary classes arrived later.
She read, she wrote and during the Second World War when people received letters of their dear beloved dear ones from the various wars' places the person who replied to all these letters was granny Marietta. Our house for what they told me was very crowded during the last Second World War Conflict..

Dad loved to read my articles. He was so proud of me. Aunt Dina read 'til the day she died. They all transmitted me this great passion and desire for knowledge. Reading is a passion that, thanks also to my British and American friends I enlarged with a lot of books and author in most recent decades.

A friend of mine, American, Connie presented me wagons of books when she returned to the USA and before as well! She knows I love reading and she knew I would have loved to read that books :-)
Anyway she helped me to create a good library not just of italian books and to start to read in English in a daily base. It's important.

Other British ladies founded a dog association in a close city, Umbertide where they sell Books for Dogs (the name of the charity) and so I could discover every week new authors still unknown to me or known but still unread. In general I return home with 15-20 books per time. At the end I had some little problem of...space.
I buy used books online, I didn't want to forget to tell this. 

I thought I wouldn't never have read a fresh printed book in all my life but then I discovered NetGalley and I consider a privilege to read books with anticipation. It's stimulating, wonderful, seriously funny.

What it is remarked in this book is that not all of us have had a wonderful rich life plenty of books from the beginning and so we suffered more.

Let's also say that you can be the son or the daughter of the richest man of this world and you don't love to read and write or you do that pretty painfully.

Reading and writing are at first beautiful hobbies and passions.Sure, in a house in which everyone read it's more simple and less complicated to transmit this passion. You will read the newsmagazine at the beginning of the day and then various books during the day, but it's not said.
Money can be very very helpful for buying new books and magazines and newsmagazines. This is true.

Not everyone at 10 years read this world and the others thanks to the big libraries of their parents, very acculturated  but really: it's not a fault to be born rich and it's not a fault to be born less rich and sometimes poor and to climb the mountain and to do the hard work on the road. Maybe at the end it will be more satisfying.

In my case every magazine bought and every book bought has meant a sacrifice in terms of costs. They still are a sacrifice!
Culture cost money and renounces and sometimes I prefer to buying culture than not a clothe, or a pair of jeans.
Something mom can't understand (she is a tailor)  but I understand what I am doing. In the first case I give oxygen to my brain in the second case I would feed my vanity. Oh: I would also want to feed my vanity so badly of course, but...
Sacrifices...

Please read this book because in the diversified situations you will meet, in the different authors' essays and their different approach with the written words maybe you will find the best inspiration for going on in this sector.


I started to cry when I read the story of a writer who said: although no one paid me I wrote for free for a long time. Book reviews etc.
Her boyfriend said her that of course this behavior wouldn't have brought her bread to their table and she was very offended but you can't never know, she add. Writing mean also to keep our brain working and focused and active. If we should wait always for a paid occasion...

Now she is a published author.
You can't never know.

The net is not negative, it can also give the possibility to come out.

Very interesting book! The various essays include also Cheryl Strayed Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster.



Anna Maria Polidori

Smashed, Mashed, Boiled, and Baked--and Fried, Too! A Celebration of Potatoes in 75 Irresistible Recipes by Raghavan Iyer

Smashed, Mashed, Boiled, and Baked--and Fried, Too! A Celebration of Potatoes in 75 Irresistible Recipes by Raghavan Iyer published by  Workman Publishing Company last November is a great celebration of the most known tuber of this world: the potato. Loved by everyone I have always loved potatoes so badly as well!
Maybe I don't eat all the rest of veggies, I prefer the first, in general pasta and a good fruit for lunch but during dinner-time potatoes are a constant in our kitchen. Maybe it's because we plant them, maybe because potatoes are versatile dishes that can be as said properly by the title of this book smashed, mashed, boiled, and baked, fried sometimes. So cooked in so many ways that they can meet the favorable thumb up from everyone or most of us.

We also cook them in the fireplace and they're delicious. Different taste for sure. More profound and intense.

In this book written by Raghavan Iyer we will be introduce in the reign of potatoes so many kind! and different, very diversified recipes taken from different places in this world.

A great tribute at the potato-world and at the diversified ways in which it's seen, baked, cooked, "treated" in the world and at the different kind of tubers as well!
I loved the enthusiasm  with which this book has been written, a topic loved by the author so badly you will see!

I highly recommend it to all the potato lovers but in general this cookbook is indispensable in every kitchen of every American family.
It's colored, funny, plenty of great recipes some of them exotic, and also wonderful pictures. More than this: what can you ask?



Anna Maria Polidori

The Lonely Teddy Bear: Janie's Story by Chelsea Radojcic

When I firstly read The Lonely Teddy Bear by Chelsea Radojcic I was undecided what kind of book I would have picked up after a beautiful biography and review I wrote about Louisa May Alcott.
A rural reality, sometimes the life of Alcott appeared like the one of a beautiful fairy-tale. The author of Little Women, had had an eccentric but also poetic dad. I was orphan although plenty of books to read of a good choice? Of a poetic book? Mmm.... I thought that maybe The Lonely Teddy Bear by Chelsea Radojcic the best choice.

Oh: at first I thought that the atmosphere was the same. A wonderful man, Jink, and a lot of friends he met during his solitary trip for re-meeting this mysterious Janie. I couldn't classify well Janie because of her age and at first: "Let's hope that this man won't be a perverted!"

I was worried.

I learned thanks also to the new book written by Chelsea Radojcic that the profundity of horror can be masked not only by a sensation of familiarity, but that for and in certain minds this one is the normality.

I discovered at the end of the tale "The couple." With horror, because I don't tend to read this genre.

Before to read these books by Chelsea Radojcic I had read and sometimes I also laughed for the absurdity of the horror contained in that book (I know, it's me!) of these couples who, for a reason or another stayed together in the past centuries for killing many other people. Children, couples, singles mom and so on.
Of course these people are in love, of course they have a projectuality. Let's just say that their projectuality is not exactly the one that you find in a normal couple. Why? Because their obsession is for killing.

Jink and Janie don't kill horrible people, don't kill negative people, - not that the ones of these categories should be killed, let's precise it -  but very good people. Compassionate people. Kind people. People who helped them in crucial moments of their existence. Who helped them. who grew up them.

And both these stories are powerful.

The second book The Lonely Teddy Bear: Janie's Story is the story seen under the perspective of Janie. Again powerful because it touches the chord of your soul and going in profundity and revealing also your darkest fears.
Maybe it's the writing-style of Chelsea. Close to the horror, she doesn't use horrific words, but tender, gracious words able to invoke tranquillity and serenity and it's this proximity, nearness, able to create the profound turmoil that the reader will feel. The horror is close to the celestial life that the two protagonists spend together.

How can it be possible that two people like Jink and Janie exist?
How can it be possible that the badness can triumph on the goodness?

Sometimes happens. Sometimes these couples are discovered and put in jail the place where they should stay.

The writer  again has been in grade to give a beautiful psychological serious portrait of Janie. A toddler not understood by the parents, nor by the teachers, or by her friends, who, became, seeing these feelings brought in an extreme condition, a little girl without any kind of compassion for anyone and just for a personal  egoism. A girl who started to kill who could have been responsible for her own unhappiness dreaming just,  to be reunited once with Jink her special friend and companion of too many horrors. Her not too lonely Teddy Bear Jink.

The book will be released this March 11th and I thank NetGalley and Chelsea Radojcic for the advanced copy they sent me.



Anna Maria Polidori 

Your Cholesterol Matters What Your Numbers Mean and How You Can Improve Them by Richard Furman, MD, FACS

No I don't have cholesterol if you want to know that. In my latest blood exam I complained because it was 156 so high to my point of view. My family doctor reassured me: "More than good." I think it's the Parmesan I add in a daily base in the pasta...It would be better to keep cholesterol under 100.

Said that: considering that I have seen the hell in terms of people with very big problems associated at bad customs and wrong life-style I picked up this book Your Cholesterol Matters What Your Numbers Mean and How You Can Improve Them by Richard Furman, MD, FACS published by Revell immediately after the festivities ;-) with great joy.

One day I was talking with a schoolmate. We were speaking about people and doctors and we agreed on a fact: that always more young people fall, and fall seriously ill, sometimes at a point of no return, for strokes or heart attacks, something never seen in the past decades, when strokes were associated to old people, at the end of their existence but not at people of 30-40-50 years or sometimes younger than that.
We concluded saying: "It's not normal at all!"

I hate to see dying very young people because of smoke, bad habits in terms of food. I hate to see sufferance because I have seen sufferance.

Written by a doctor who, for more than 30 years cleaned up the arteries of many patients, the book is plenty informative regarding our body, our car, let's put this comparison and how we can maintain it efficient, and cholesterol free.

Richard Furman add that keeping your weight ok, eating properly without exaggeration in terms of bad fat and doing some exercise you will be fine and... You will avoid the cholesterol pill plenty of collateral effects as also explained.

In the USA first of all before to prescribe the cholesterol pill doctors suggest these three things: losing weight, exercise and a good diet for bilancing cholesterol. Most people don't read what their physician say and they start to take this pill that in most cases can cause serious problems, muscular problems.

There are two kind of cholesterol: the one in our blood affecting directly the arteries and the other one of the food. This one will have the most important impact on our blood cholesterol.

Cholesterol is in good percentage a great allied of  our body: it helps the assimilation of vit. A,D, E.

There are two kind of cholesterol: one is lethal for the health and another one considered by the doctor a real hero.
It is important to keep the bad one as low as possible and the hero one as high as possible.

It's important to use good sense affirms Richard Furman: first of all much more than a medication we must take care of ourselves. Silly to take the cholesterol pill and then eat all the food you were eating in the past because "I take the pill for the cholesterol."

Cholesterol will pass through a good life-style and three words: exercise, weight control/loss and food. In this way you won't take the cholesterol pill.
Exercise is tremendously important because a heart kept strong, the heart is a muscle, will be in grade to work much more efficiently and plus it will be possible to lose weight bad cholesterol.

This book will reveal to you how, in a society plenty of temptations (remember that all good food is bad food for your body!)  in culinary term better to avoid to eat more than the necessary.

It's possible to change. It's possible to say: no I want to stay health!
Try it.

It will save your life.

Please: read this book and then spread the word and start to live a new chapter of your existence.


Anna Maria Polidori

Too Blessed to be stressed....Inspiration for Every Day 365 Devotions for Women by Debora M. Coty

I thought that maybe I had to request Too Blessed to be stressed....Inspiration for Every Day 365 Devotions for Women by Debora M. Coty published by Barbour Publishing this Jan .1 because it could be great for me. It promised a lot of fun passing through religion.  When you think at religion you think at a serious topic.
Well, I can tell you this, women: go immediately at your local bookstore or order your copy of this book online through Amazon, because it's a real bomb of enthusiasm! Pure joy, the book is fresh, pleasant, great, plenty of good and healthy humor.
This devotional book introduces the daily problems trying to see in most cases the funny side them and in a word of life and the positive side of it thanks also to the joyous writing-style of the writer.


This book is perfect for giving new hope through a smile to everyone and for encouraging also all of us when situations can be pretty stressing. You will find many situations in the book and in each of them the approach will be light and...smiling most of the times.
I can't wait to read another book written by Debora M.Coty!

I thank NetGalley and Barbour!

Anna Maria Polidori

Angels on Earth Inspiring Stories of Fate, Friendship, and the Power of Connections ,by Laura Schroff, Alex Tresniowski

Angels on Earth Inspiring Stories of Fate, Friendship, and the Power of Connections ,by Laura Schroff, Alex Tresniowski and published last October by Howard Books is the real story of a beautiful magical meeting.

I was firstly intrigued by the title.
I have in fact a long subscription with Angels on Earth by Guideposts thanks to my Memphis aunt Bobbie and I appreciate so badly. Plus: I do believe in angels.

Well I can tell you that this book is more than what you will wait! It's plenty of great humanity, kindness, it's moving, while you will read this book you will think a lot at the power of solidarity, good heart, generosity able to make the difference in the existence of less lucky people.

For Laura Schroff, the author of the book everything started in 1986. We are in NYC and a successful, busy ad sales executive lady as everyday walks all frenetic the way for going to work, when she is stopped by Maurice a 10 years old boy asking for some money because "I am hungry." Laura continues her walk. Oh come on: she meets a lot of people like this homeless boy after all everyday and she never stops, but then...The wind changed.

Maybe it was the words I am hungry, maybe the age of that boy, maybe it was destiny, she decides to turn on and to talk to this boy. She didn't offer him money but instead she  offered him the possibility of eating with her at lunch at a close McDonald's.

Laura will discover that Maurice didn't eat from two days that he lived at just two blocks from her but not in a comfy house like her but in a place not great for a boy.

Since there Laura will spend a lot of time with Maurice and her experience became a NYT bestselling book called: An Invisible Thread.

Laura thinks that most of us are Angels on Earth. When we meet someone and we change in better his/her destiny, when we are helpful in particular in desperate condition as for example the story of the man and the penniless boy that you will find in the book, when we grow up children that are not ours but then later will be loved as if they would be ours.

There are many ways for being real good people in this world. We must just want to become different people, less selfish, less blind to the necessities of our neighbors, and we must also understand that we are not strangers but friends.

This new books of stories of other people necessary because Laura after the publication of the book started to receive a lot of letters, e-mails and calls of people with same or similar experiences. And so: why not tell them to a largest public? Sharing goodness create other goodness and world can just become a better place where to live in.

I highly suggest this book to everyone!!!


I thank NetGalley and Howard Books.

Anna Maria Polidori

Where Angels Walk (25th Anniversary Edition) True Stories of Heavenly Visitors by Joan Wester Anderson

Where Angels Walk (25th Anniversary Edition) True Stories of Heavenly Visitors by Joan Wester Anderson published this Dec first a true moving, beautiful book plenty of wonderful true human stories.
The author starting from a personal story decides to ask to some newsmagazine and magazines to publish a letter: she was searching for stories of people who had met an angel.

With the time she started to receive dozens of letters from people of all the entire USA.

Why this idea?

Well firstly published 25 years ago this book has seen a lot of changes and the most important one the terrible terrorist attack at the WTC on 9/11/01. As I say always History changed from that point and nothing returned anymore peaceful. With the time I also developed the theory that the souls of people dead in that way can't find immediately peace, but ok this one is another story.

Of course the angel-theory developed by many authors including Joan Wester and supported by all our religions, catholic, muslin, Hebrew one, regarding guardian angels, seemed in crisis.

Where were all these Guardian Angels when the terrorists caused all that messes? And mainly: was the destiny of that people the one of dying? And why?  Some of them have been heroic, I remember, able to change the route of the terrorist, because Americans have a great sense of the State and they wanted to preserve their institutions but there was also the sacrifice of all of them-

No one knows God's scheme for all of us on this Earth but angels, according to the author became less fascinating than not in the past from that moment.

Hollywood after the terrorist attack at the WTC maybe thinking also at the future and at a sort of protectionism and strong of the fact that an icon and a symbol of the USA mortally attacked with all the departures that caused the terrorist attack developed movies, speaking of  Heaven, afterlife. Movies, but also books changed giving to the readers and viewers a Gothic perception of the world and angels put in a corner.

Our world needed urgent answers: also of an afterlife, also of a dialogue with someone passed away in that horrible way. The precariety of the here and now and who knows if I will die tomorrow or in a hour, caused by the terrorist attack of 9/11 and a new terrible, perfidious invisible war started, established and wanted by some terrorists  for create a global destabilization of our reality asked for the Occidental creative minds new answers and Guardian Angels, angels more in general where not in the "human agenda" anymore.


Angels are our guardians.
When I think of them I think at the postmen of God. They're the most directed messenger of God and my prayers often are directed to them.
I live them with great joy! I imagine them always busy, here and there sometimes able to create messes as well because their messages are quick and they run with their lights in every direction and in every possible corner of the world.
I always think God can be too busy wherever He is and He can't listen to me. Not all the time. That's why I prefer celestial creatures.

My dad's name was Angelo and once he died few months ago I put him under the protection of the Angels, deciding for a beautiful gravestone written in cobalt. I know something: that Angels are very powerful and beautiful divine creatures.

Back to the book Joan developed so the idea of creating a book with a lot of real Angel-stories where people had met these ethereal creatures.

I strongly suggest to everyone this wonderful book!

I thank NetGalley and Loyola Press.


Anna Maria Polidori

The Best Customer Service Quotes Ever Said by John R. DiJulius III

You mustn't never think that when you go to a store for buying something it's only something you desire. In most cases who will make the difference will be the person who will follow you, will serve you, during your choice. It can be a clothe, it can be a pair of shoes, it can be a book, it can be a perfume you want to present.

It's clear with this motivational quote: "Be the brand customers cannot live without."

True that selling in period of crisis is more difficult, there is to add that a positive attitude, and great a motivational impact in particular from the owner of the store who should be in grade continuously to remember a positive approach of his sellers with the customers can make, absolutely can make a great difference.

Giving importance to the seller is the best condition for...selling in fact.
And sometimes a lot.

Because as  John R. DiJulius III  adds in his motivational book: The Best Customer Service Quotes Ever Said published last October, "Be the best part of your customer's day." No more nor less than this.

What a seller should able to do is to create a "Positive experience on every interaction, wheter it is face-to-face, click-to-click (if you are buying online) or ear-to-ear (if your experience is by phone.)

Isn't it true? When we buy something and in the other side of phone, pc, or in the story we find good answers to our problems, perplexities or questions aren't we reassured?

Creativity a word that must enter in the mind of sellers and customer services. Banned the word: no.
Everything can be changed, every objects not liked can be changed because it's important to remember that: "Customers are not always right; however they're just never wrong."

It's also important to try to remember that it's not the quantity of money that you can make with a certain  customer that can make the difference but the return of this customer under many aspects. He can remembers you and he will want to return to make business with you or  he can suggest your name to someone else, and you will grow in terms of importance for the structure, business, customer care where you work in.

Another advice: "Focus on what you can do, not what you can't."

But who is a seller?
Substantially as says the author in the book: "When you serve people your goal is not to make money or to get them to do what you want but to take care of their needs and desires."

And this is true.

Workers, sellers are the most and crucial important factor in a store. As says the author we can also create a wonderful space, a wonderful store but who will make the difference, who creates the experience that keeps people coming back? They are the people you will employee.

Most important also will be the ability from the owner of the store, web company, to look forward because as writes the author citing Simon Sinek: "A revolution starts with a clear vision of a world different than the one we live in today."

It could be a great idea to present this book to all the sellers so that they can learn the best strategy for bettering their approach with customers.

I truly suggest it to you and also to customers as well.

I worked as Avon's representative and with just a catalog I was able to sell a lot of products every campaign, but I have been also a shopgirl and I can tell you that the psychological approach with the customer is the most crucial one.

Happy Reading!

I thank NetGalley and Greenleaf Book Group for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

365 Ways to Live Generously Simple Habits for a Life That's Good for You and for Others by Sharon Lipinski

365 Ways to Live Generously Simple Habits for a Life That's Good for You and for Others by Sharon Lipinski will be released this January 8th by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
It's the story of a lady plenty of success born in a family with a mom very generous with everyone.Her mom, tells Sharon helped everyone in every possible ways and necessities, while the author grew up pretty selfish and without any kind of compassion for other human being.
Sharon doesn't know the reason why from a mom such generous she became at least someone so closed with other people. Maybe it was because of work, maybe it was because absorbed by a full-time job with zero private life and plenty of responsibilities. Sharon started to get up during the night with frequent panic attacks. Responsibilities, pressure was very high, she couldn't cope anymore with all of it: living in a system like that one, constantly under pressure and she decided to resign starting a more spiritual and real trip along the USA.

Once she met a man abandoned to himself with a very sad story behind. That man wouldn't have been invited tells he author to spend any minute at the house where he previously lived in with his dear ones, he was considered a sort of failure from his dear ones, and so Sharon invited this man for the Thanksgiving dinner in the closest place they would have found, and there she discovered what it meant to go out with a stranger that it is not anymore a stranger but a friend and someone with which you are able to establish a great and good connection thanks to his human story that it is after all also your human history because each of us is in this world for a certain purpose.
Not only: Sharon discovered how a little gesture of generosity like spending some time with a stranger since at few minutes before could mean the world to him.

The book is very captivating, because after this experience Sharon learned what it means to be generous with other people and now she wants to give to all of us the opportunity to change our mind, our body for becoming best people and for becoming great new generous helpers in this world.
Create your Best Life thought Generosity one of her motto.

I found the story touching and the entire book stimulating.
Change is possible just we must want it.

Buy it if you think to be a little Scrooge in every sense, and you will start a new real beautiful chapter in your life!

I thank NetGalley and  Llewellyn Publishing.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Little Big Book of White Spells by Ileana Abrev

Do you want money, love, power, friendship, more color in your life, and are you interesting to defeat your most common disturbs? Maybe The Little Big Book of White Spells by Ileana Abrev will be the answer for you! The book will be published this January 8th by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.

You can have good luck, you can attract the world, you can avoid negativies, you can be more...colored do you know? Yes you can, also that thanks to the help of... Colors! Yes colors, and in particular choosing them carefully for your wardrobe.

Crystals, another chapter of the book will be able to cure a lot of symptoms and little illness, and then magical bath, herb and plant magic...An important chapter to me the one of candles.

I don't know you but I love candles. After my dad passed away I sure enjoy everyday to bring him some candles for avoiding any kind of obscurity.

Each candle and each color of the candle you will pick up will have a different meaning. If you will choose the white one you will search for protection and purity, purple for family and so on. It depends the use you must do with candles and the message you want to spread to the Universe and the answers you are searching.

A special section of the book all dedicated to love, and self-love, break-up, negativities connected to love.

The book written with great enthusiasm by Ileana Abrev  The purpose: helping you to realize your dreams and desires using remedies pretty old, more commonly used by pagans. Fascinating.

It's a great book! and I like the cover so badly. When I meet a black cat I can tell you my day will be extra-lucky! Oh, what a terrible witch I am! ;-)


Anna Maria Polidori

The Magic of Trees A Guide to Their Sacred Wisdom & Metaphysical Properties by Tess Whitehurst

The Magic of Trees A Guide to Their Sacred Wisdom & Metaphysical Properties by Tess Whitehurst will be published by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. this Jan 8th and it treats the sacrality of trees.
Why trees are so important in our existence?

Because our life will be followed from the beginning to the end by wood. Wood is a warm and familiar material able to give us warmth and able to let us feel well.

Every tree is sacred although Celts thought that there were certain types of trees more sacred than others for example.

The author will follow the reader through an interesting magical trip where trees are evoked, trees are searched, hugged, taken in the proper consideration in a reality, the one where we are living in where what we are missing the most is poetry and the ability of the enchantment and dream.

A tree is viscerally important for our existence. Under a big tree we can find restoration in a very warm day, we can organize a picnic, we can read a book. Trees accompany our existence. My father loved trees. He planted many fruits trees. He always said me a tree live a long life like a human being although soon or late it will a die for a reason or another just as a man will do one day.

Many kind of trees taken in consideration from A to Z for discovering the magic that there is in every tree and the most important factor why a tree can be important for our life.

Many thanks to NetGalley and  Llewellyn for this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

Classic Prayers for Every Need by Donna K. Maltese

An important book Classic Prayers for Every Need by Donna K. Maltese that will be published this February First launched by Barbour Publishing.

Why? Because you will find every sorta of prayers for every kind of problems first of all with the particularity that these prayers are not the common prayers Christians know.

No: they're the ones of beloved and inspired people who during the centuries made the difference in the christian history.

From C.S. Lewis, to Mother Theresa of Calcutta,wagons of other important men and women of faith will bring good mood, inspiration to your life, they will let you understand much better your problems.

These prayers with their importance and their wise words are here, waiting for you, your human problems and miseries for bringing a sparkle of light in your existence, if you need it, or a word of comfort, or just some seconds of reflection.

This book is for every possible needs and for being used everyday of course, because each day is different from the other one  and each day potentially needs a different prayer.

Or many different prayers :-)

Bring it in your purse and wherever you will go you will find a great instrument of prayer and a moment for staying all alone with God and with these inspired men and women born with the ability to speaking with God with simplicity and humanity.
 
Many thanks to NetGalley and Barbour for this book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Choose Joy: 3-Minute Devotions for Women Compiled by Barbour Staff

Choose Joy: 3-Minute Devotions for Women Compiled by Barbour Staff will be published this next February First and it is a wonderful little book for each of us, women. Bring it wherever you go and read it often. You will find thanks to these christian words inspiration, peace, harmony and joy!


The book is plenty of devotions that can be read in just few minutes everyday and there are so many topics treated in the book!

All optimistic topics the book is structured first of all in a verse, then a short devotional reading that will explain the verse previously read and/or meditate as well, and later a little conversation with God. I found the book truly captivating for the many thematic treated.

The cover is wonderful, relaxing, friendly. A great book for each of us! and a wonderful and precious gift as well!

And remember always: Choose Joy!


Anna Maria Polidori

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler Illustrator John Jennings and adapted by Damian Duffy

As always another stunning graphic novel Kindred by ABRAMS Books that it will be published this January 10th.

Inspired by the masterpiece created by Octavia E.Butler, Kindred,
firstly published in 1979  a sci-fiction classic. The book is also taken in consideration in school for trying to understand the racial problem and what it meant to live in the USA in the 1800.

It is a science-fiction because the story the one of a girl, Dana transported from the present, the 1970s, in the rural USA of 1800. After 35 years from the publication, the wonderful adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings. 

Dana is a young woman, black, that for some strange reason ends up is transported by Time in the pre-years of the Secession War, so in a world where communication between black ad white people pretty impossible.
In the reality of the 1970s this woman is free. Free to be who she wants to be and free to express herself. This condition will change abruptly although it will become intriguing because she will also discover her ancestors, her personal family tree and not only...

The book has been thought from ABRAMS for reaching a new generation of readers.

Highly recommended!

Anna Maria Polidori

The Gingerbread Girl by Sheila Newberry

The Gingerbread Girl is the latest book by Sheila Newberry. I am sorry for the delay but the loss of my dad that I recently experienced altered my reading and my reviews.

When I read today the notes of the author I understood: Sheila Newberry has had nine children and maybe that's why the story is seriously crowded, the plot frenetic, you will find many dialogues and an action that will pass also through the dialogues of the various protagonists, but also many historical facts regarding the moment pre-Second World War and most of the facts touched UK during the latest world war conflict.

You won't find a moment of relaxation while you will read this book because you will learn a lot while at the same time you will follow the adventures of many many characters.

Everything starts in 1936 when Cora Kelly to the hospital because sick receives the visit of her mother. Her mother brought her a gingerbread man as gift  disappearing forever from her existence. She died in fact some months after this meeting. Pregnant of another child she died because of it. Dede and Cora will be grown up so by Eliza, one of her mom's best friends.

And trust me when I tell you that these stories in the past and I would want to hope also in the present, pretty common, in our area as well.

What is Christmas for a child? Surely the best holiday of all the year. And gingerbread cookies? The perfume, smell and taste of the festive season.

For this reason once the feasts over and Cora understood her mother was dead because Eliza would have told her that, like also of the arrival of her new sister and well the fact that in the future they would have lived all together, Cora kept that gingerbread man as a relic. Obvious.

For recovering Cora will spend some time in a farm becoming friends with the boys, children of the owner of the farm, but other events will constrict her to return to London, stopping by at the house of her dad in various occasions but mainly at Eliza's house.

We will see during the various years the evolution of this kid of 7 years in a young woman, a telephonist at first once she started to work, and then a girl in search of that love that at least will arrive, always remembering the sacrality of Christmas.

Christmases not very happy, of course the ones celebrated during the war, where the word sacrifice the first one in the mouth of people including for ingredients of common recipes that couldn't be found.

Christmas sad also for other reasons like some member of the family sick.

Nothing was perfect during the years of the war. 

Refuges, fear, terror, the war, and then the end of a nightmare and the reconstruction of a place and identity of people.

It is a beauty book, intense, it will let you think and it is moving, because it speaks to the heart of people telling of good values, help, generosity, good heart, difficulties, hard times and the force of people always able to going on, re-inventing their own destiny with the reality they were living in. In optimistic view.

I want to thank NetGalley and also Bonnier Publishing House.

Anna Maria Polidori