A blogger becomes inspired by a friend’s troubled marriage in this relationship guide.
While working in Arizona, La-Paz (Why Do Married Men Cheat with Unattractive Women? 2011, etc.), “a five-foot- seven-inch black woman who had to watch my weight continuously to fit the bill as a print model,” met blonde, “regal” Judie on a photo shoot. Although Judie “had graced the cover of numerous high-end magazines,” she was desperately unhappy, having recently discovered that her photographer husband was cheating on her with an unattractive fast-food worker. Judie’s angry pal Jessie encouraged La-Paz to write a book about this phenomenon—men having affairs with women less attractive than their wives—which led to La-Paz meeting Judie’s soon-to-be ex and his girlfriend. She also gathered together a focus group of “seasoned women who have overcome every aspect of a challenging marriage” and created a blog in which other people could sound off about infidelity. In this book, La-Paz shares highlights of these meetings and submissions; she also weaves in the relationship challenges of her own girlfriends and of the women in her Bible study group. She wraps up by sharing Judie’s 40-day journal, revealing the model’s post-divorce journey to greater self-love and a new, happier relationship; she also reveals the testimony of one of the “seasoned women” who got over her rage and bitterness—and saved her marriage—by turning to God. The author brings a lively, wry tone to this book, which includes many of her own entertaining opinions (“There was a new queen in his life, Ms. Burger Queen. Judie was now an outcast vegetarian, tossed to the side like a bag of soggy lettuce”). Overall, this is a compendium of raging, amusing, and ultimately balanced perspectives, including those of many men and their girlfriends. La-Paz’s advocacy of Bible study is admirable; however, it sits a bit oddly at times in this book’s worldly, “jaded” mix.
Pleasurable venting with a positive, uplifting ending.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9665400-5-5
Page Count: 226
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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