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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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rmdmphilosopher has commented on (3) products
What to Expect When Your Child Leaves for College A Complete Guide for Parents Only
by
Mary Spohn
rmdmphilosopher
, June 25, 2008
Sending your child off to college is one of those terrifying experiences that can result in heaven or hell--or so it seems. Your mind has been wracked by the horror stories of children estranged, sick, pregnant, partying, falling from their parent's faith, slipping into terrible lifestyles, being corrupted by sickening and demented ideologies; but your conscience has been just as wracked by the image of the helicopter parent, the nagging, puritanical, ultimatum-giving, hen-pecking, fun-stealing, ultimately repudiated parent. What will you do? How will you cope? Just what is college like today? And not only this, but how will you pay for this headache? What's the deal on scholarships, financial aid, saving for college? Most parents have to deal with it. As with any major event in life--it's best to be prepared. And in this book we have a fascinating and searching opportunity for you to become prepared. Starting right out from the beginning--the last days of highschool, the process of picking out which college your child will attend--Mary Spohn describes what you can expect in very readable, frequently humorous, prose. She doesn't skimp on the details, either. I laughed at chapters like Things To Teach Your Children Before They Leave Home, when they included things like How To Send a Birthday Card or Thankyou to a Relative--but I had to shake my head, remembering my own unpreparedness in these very areas. It took me two years and several estranged Aunts before I got around to learning how to write thankyou cards--some things parents expect their children to pick up by osmosis, which they would learn better with a little explicit advice. The book is divided into three main sections--Planning for College, The Student's Experience, and The Parent's Experience. This is wise--as is much else in the book--in that it emphasizes the most important things in considering college. First planning. No amount of preparation is too much. Second, the value of maintaining the perspective of the student while dealing with your own experiences--especially your worries. Things like the "random act of independence" are sympathetically described, so that if you come home during one of your child's breaks to discover your clothes being improperly washed (and shrunken) you too will be able to see the assumption of responsibility, clumsy though it may be, for what it is. The section on financial concerns--the subject of so many other off-to-college books--is not reason to buy the book. As far as it goes, the advice there is accurate, but you will not discover how to pay for college from this book. Instead, the real insight is into the daily concerns and tiny details of living that both children and their parents must deal with when they go off to college. Particularly valuable is the chapter that addresses the college student's changing relation to "home"--especially the routinely messed-up ritual of coming home for the summer. Wisely and graciously, Mary Spohn advises parents and college students how to get along with one another during these difficulties periods, and how to shepherd their relationship through the changes that come with independence and changing beliefs. I would recommend this book to any parent anxious to know what will come of the momentous event of sending their child off to college. It is surprisingly inoffensive considering the many potentially difficult subjects it addresses, putting forth an idea of the good parent as one easy-going yet strong, accepting yet firm. And it brings to light many aspects of the event that will simply not occur to you unless or until you actually encounter them. I give it a five.
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The iPod & iTunes Handbook: The Complete Guide to the Portable Multimedia Revolution
by
Contel Bradford
rmdmphilosopher
, June 25, 2008
The way we listen to music has evolved over the years from great clunky phonographs that, whatever their charm to some people, forced listening to be a major operation and rigidly communal, all the way to the intimate, private, and portable iPod. The world is in love with iPods--small, streamlined, even stylish. But for some of us, those of us not members of the thumbs generation, for whom "backlight" brings to mind more of the theater than of a small cellphone or iPod screen, the job of managing this simple modern convenience remains all but impossible. Our iPods come with manuals and "help" features with their software--but the more intricate, and sometimes even the most simple, operations remain opaque to some of us. What is a shuffle? How does one get a film from a DVD into an iPod? You can record on an iPod?! How does it work with iTunes? In this extremely easy-to-follow book, these questions and many more are comprehensively answered. This book contains information for everyone--it assumes nothing, so that my Grandpa who still can't figure out how to turn his iPod on could profit just as much as my cousin, who uses hers every day but needs some advanced tips on getting the most out of it with the calendar and voice memo features. Divided into short chapters and prefaced by a clear and simple table of contents, this book is eminently navigable, useful as a reference work when you have an emergency--for example when your iPod freezes--but it is also incrementally written so that by reading it straight through you will not feel like you are reading the dictionary but like you are gradually learning a subject. Even apart from these obvious benefits of utility, the beginning of this book--a history of the iPod--makes a good read. It's a success story, but not just that--it chronicles the rise of digital music and also the pitfalls of legality and music sharing that come together in the history of this device. The iPod is a fundamental part of our culture not merely as an icon and ubiquitous commodity, but as a rally point for some of the most violent debates about commerce, copyright and the music industry. This book will open the world of iPod for the first time to some people and open it further for others. It is useful for almost anyone--and absolutely necessary for my Grandpa. I give it a five.
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Complete Guide to Medicaid & Nursing Home Costs How to Keep Your Family Assets Protected Up to Date Medicaid Secrets You Need to Know
by
Joan M Russell
rmdmphilosopher
, June 25, 2008
Aging is expensive. Although the conditions of nursing homes and the quality of health care is better than it has ever been--the prices are higher than they have ever been as well. Long-term medical care can completely deplete your savings and assets--a monster than adds penury to pain. But the greatest amount of trepidation will not keep us from the brink--we cannot slow the years to save our bank account or stop the failing of our bodies to buttress our investments. Instead, we must prepare, and prepare now, both for our own expenses and for the expenses of those who are dependent upon us. But how to prepare best? What programs deal with long-term medical expenses, like nursing homes? What laws are in place to help or hinder preparation? They vary by state, so you will need to contact an elder-care lawyer, but even to do so seems to require at least a basic understanding of the programs and types of laws that govern these vitally important financial and medical questions. This book seeks to answer these questions as best it can, in a general way and with the constant proviso that you will need to contact an elder-care lawyer to determine your actual best moves in your own area. But the concepts it illuminates, the programs it describes, and the techniques it illustrates are invaluable. It begins with simple definitions--what is medicaid?--and moves on to the pressing and important issues of how to deal with assets and how to protect them when applying for aid, how to qualify for medicare, what to do with homes, how to compose wills, where to deposit deeds, and whether and how to purchase annuities. In short, it provides a general overview of the whole field, bringing to mind issues you may not have thought about before (such as alternatives to nursing homes), as well as clearly laying out the options concerning issues you have worried about for a long time. The last few chapters, however, seem the most valuable to me--as this book serves not just as a general guide, but as a springboard to more particular assistance. These chapters include advice on how to find information about laws and programs specific to your state, as well as advice about how to find a good elder-care lawyer (the essential next step). A final chapter on Alzheimer's Disease and Medicaid cements the conclusion that this is a comprehensive book in its general way, well-preparing those who read it to step confidently forward in their planning for their own and their dependent's old age. Anyone who will have to deal with the problems of long-term health-care--that is to say, everyone--ought to be familiar with the financial issues surrounding it, so no big surprises await them just beyond the golden gates of retirement, and this book provides exactly the right sort of introduction. I give it a four.
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