Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon

By Terri Shlichenmeyer



One quick peek at your calendar, and you know it’s time.

Time to figure out where you’re going to get your turkey - two turkeys, in fact, one for November and one for December. Time to start figuring out what gifts you’ll give (and then finding time to get them). Time to drag out the winter stuff and wistfully put away the swimsuits and flip flops for another year.

But when’s the best time to book that winter vacation? Should you be looking for a snow blower now? And what about that turkey? Hmmmm. Maybe it’s time to look for Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon by Mark Di Vincenzo.

“…at about three-thirty one summer morning in 2007”, author Mark Di Vincenzo’s wife jotted down a brainstorm for a book about the best time to do things. But – bad timing – Di Vincenzo was already writing another book. Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about this idea that, he says, “couldn’t come at a better time”.

As Di Vincenzo points out, watching your pennies and using resources wisely has never been more important. That’s why you need this book: it contains hundreds of money-saving ideas and ways to live more efficiently.

When, for instance, is the best time to stock up on various groceries? Is there a better day to shop for clothes at a thrift store? What about toys, gas, or movie tickets? Would you believe there’s a sale season for major appliances?

Okay, you’re saying, but you don’t need to buy anything. You have things to do. So what’s the best time to have your picture taken? When should you sneak forty winks? Is there a time when working out is most beneficial?

Maybe you’re unsure about transplanting those flowers to another spot in the garden, or adding some fancy new shrubs. When should you do that? And what about fertilizing your yard and garden?

In this book, you’ll learn how to avoid the crowds at popular vacation sites (and when to get the camera out for magazine-perfect pictures). Learn what time is best to quit your job (or fire someone) and how to run a meeting on time. You’ll learn tips for health and marriage – and one reason why not to get married.

About this time (here we go again), you’re thinking about a gift for The Person Who Has Everything. May I suggest this book?

Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon is quirky, funny, entirely useful, and not at all expensively priced. Author Mark Di Vincenzo mined articles, books, promotional material, and experts’ opinions to come up with solid information that’s helpful to anyone who’s doing almost anything.

The only thing I would’ve liked to see is an index. Lacking that, though, individual topics are grouped within broad chapters, so what you’re looking for is pretty easy to find.
If you’re punctual, always late, want to save money, or just want to read something different, grab this book. Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon is great to read any time.

Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon
By Mark Di Vincenzo
c.2009, Harper
192 pages, including sources, $13.99
Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

Have A Little Faith

By Terri Shlichenmeyer



It was a lesson you learned the moment you were old enough to sass back: always respect your elders.
When Grandma spoke, you listened. If Grandpa said to do something, it was as good as done. If you valued your life, you answered Mom or Dad respectfully, and Heaven help the kid who spoke to a neighbor in a snide manner.
Always respect your elders. But what if the elder makes a difficult request? In the new book Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom, it took eight years to make good a promise.
Albert Lewis almost wasn’t a Rabbi. Having failed Divinity School, he almost gave up but was encouraged to try again. Later, when he finally got his own synagogue, the tiny congregation consisted of just a handful of families.
One of them was Mitch Albom’s.
As a child, Albom remembered the Reb as an imposing man with an inexplicable love of song and of sermon; basically, someone to avoid. Despite his parents’ anchoring and years of lessons, Albom grew up and grew out of his faith, learning that mouthed prayers, uttered mechanically, were somehow acceptable. He moved away from home and looked upon religion as quaint, invisible.
So Albom was surprised when Rabbi Lewis asked him to do his eulogy.
Because one cannot speak well about a man without knowing him, Albom agreed to the request, but told the Reb that they needed to set meetings so that questions could be answered. And it came to pass that Albom made the trek from his home in Detroit to New Jersey several times a year for eight years.
Back in Detroit, the economy was lashing at the city, jobs were lost, and so were homes. But in a sagging old cathedral near Tiger Stadium, a former drug dealer was feeding the homeless and preaching the gospel, all but abandoned by his Mother Church, trying to do good with what God was giving him.
As Albom began to examine the disparity between the congregations – the wealthy synagogue and the poverty-stricken inner-city shelter-church - he began to wonder about God, trust, and faith. And he learned a lesson you won’t soon forget.
I wasn’t crazy about this book at first. Author Mitch Albom, like one of his subjects, loves to savor an anecdote before he lets it go, and that bogs down the beginning of this book. But once you get past the stage-setting and you move a few pages in, Have a Little Faith soars.
By telling the story of two men who are similar but different, Albom forces his readers to examine their own beliefs, as well as the meaning of hope and miracles. I won’t tell you how this book ends, but suffice it to say that you’ll come away with your heart lifted to the rafters.
Fans of Albom’s first book and anyone who’s ever pondered the nature of belief will want to make room on their bookshelf for a new favorite. Have a Little Faith is a book I believe you’ll love.

Have a Little Faith
By Mitch Albom
c.2009, Hyperion
288 pages, $23.99

Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

By Terri Shlichenmeyer


Pucker up. Gimme a hug. I love you.

What do you do when you say goodbye to a friend or loved one, just even for a few hours? Do you exchange a quick kiss, knowing that you'll be together again shortly? Do you bump foreheads, knuckles, or shoulders as a warm way of farewell? Or do you say “g’bye” and leave without a thought or a look behind?

Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor will forever regret what happened when his wife, Jo, left. In the new book Heaven’s Keep by William Kent Krueger, he wishes he could take it all back.
A hundred times a week, Cork O’Connor imagines what her last day on Earth was like. Jo was on her way to a conference in Seattle, her briefcase full of recommendations on government oversight for Indian gaming casinos. She was flying there with friends and new acquaintances.

And Cork hoped she wasn’t still angry with him in the aftermath of an argument.

He would always wonder.

The plane went down in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies, an area filled with gullies and peaks, arroyos and canyons. Local police thought they knew where the plane had gone down, but long searches indicated that there was no trace of it anywhere. They’d have to wait until the snow melted and search again.

Cork mourned and postulated, but never forgot for a minute. In the meantime, he did his best to raise his thirteen-year-old son, Stephen, who was fast becoming a man. He became a go-between for the wives who lost their husbands in the plane crash that also took Jo. And he forged a strong friendship with the man whose company started the argument Cork had with Jo all those months ago.

But as winter turned to spring back in Minnesota, Cork had two unlikely visitors: the widow of the plane’s pilot and her lawyer-friend came to Cork with strong suspicions. Becca Bodine was sure her husband wasn’t behind the plane’s controls. He wasn’t the cause of the crash.
If Bodine wasn’t flying the plane, who was? Were the Wyoming police and the Arapaho hiding something… or someone? And who – in two states – wanted Cork to stop looking?
Sometimes, when you get ahold of a good mystery, it’s natural to think you’ve got it solved before the killer is revealed.

You can forget all about that here.

Author William Kent Krueger doesn’t insult his readers with early transparency, which makes Heaven’s Keep a good, solid novel. Stepping from his usual setting of Way North Minnesota and into Way Remote Wyoming is new ground for Krueger, and it’s a nice, satisfying stretch. Fans of past Cork O’Connor novels will be happy to see many old friends in these pages, and readers unfamiliar with the series will find a new favorite author.

If you’re used to ho-hum mysteries that reveal too much, too soon, and you’re tired of knowing mid-book whodunit, you’ll find something very different (and very pleasant) here. Pick up Heaven’s Keep and happily kiss a few evenings goodbye.

Heaven’s Keep
By William Kent Krueger
c.2009, Atria Books
336 pages, $25.00

Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

By Terri Shlichenmeyer




You had to have it.

You saw the ad, you wanted the item, it was on sale, you had to have it, that’s that.
So - flier in one hand, debit card in the other – you rushed to the store and, well, you got what you were looking for but the place was a mess, the sales associate was frazzled, and it took forever to check out.

Ever worked retail? If you have, you might sympathize with the poor sap behind the register. If you’ve never worked in a store, though, read Retail Hell by Freeman Hall and get ready to laugh through your new education.

Freeman Hall wanted to be the next Spielberg. He wanted to write a blockbuster screenplay, win an Oscar, and be invited to Hollywood parties. But once he got to Los Angeles, he realized that he needed to pay bills while waiting for the Academy to call. So he applied for employment at a famous high-end retail store he calls The Big Fancy.

During his interview with a woman Hall dubbed Tammy Two-Tone (because she had two tones of voice: sweet and dragon), he was told that he had a “free spirit personality”. Although he assumed Two-Tone was taking advantage of her gaydar and though his inner voice was warning him that it was a mistake, Hall took the job. He would be selling women’s handbags.
Not purses – handbags.

Hall quickly made friends with half of his co-workers. “The Angels” taught him, amused him, and helped him get customers (associates at The Big Fancy worked on commission and most handbags were $500 or more). His other co-workers were demons who sniped at Hall and stole his sales.

As in most retail jobs, though, the customers were what made work, work. Hall met the Shoposaurus Carnivoarus, a woman with a potty-mouth and a propensity for spending five figures on handbags and accessories. He met Discount Rat Patty, who constantly badgered him for “deescount”. There were Nasty Thieves and the Two Virginias, Piggy Raelene, and a retail vampire who sucked the work-blood out of everyone who dealt with her.

But sales, like other industries, are cyclical and Hall was ever-pressured to perform. Could Queer Eye Handbag Guy survive?

As someone who spent ten years in retail (A bookstore. I loved it. Go figure), I laughed myself silly over this book.

Author Freeman Hall is sarcastic, flippant, snarky, and dead-on in his portrayals of both shoppers and co-workers. His stories are hilarious and only, I’m sure, a tiny bit exaggerated. In fact, anyone who’s worked retail, past or present, will be tempted to insert their own store’s name into this book while reading it, and you’ll recognize way too many customers and cohorts here.

The holidays are coming and you might be thinking of taking a part-time mall job to make ends meet. If so – or if you’re already working retail – this book will make you laugh through the season and beyond. Pick up Retail Hell because you know you have to have it.

Retail Hell
By Freeman Hall
c.2009, Adams Media
272 pages, $22.95 Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

A Big Little Life

By Terri Shlichenmeyer




Have you ever seen The Perfect Dog?

Of course you have. It might be a Lab or a Lhasa; maybe miniature but mighty, or huge and huggable. The Perfect Dog understands conversation, has a wicked sense of humor, never does anything wrong, can flawlessly perform several different tricks on command, and might even have a streak of heroism in its furry body.

The Perfect Dog is highly intelligent. And – no matter what anybody else claims – The Perfect Dog is your dog.

Or, if there’s room for debate, Dean Koontz says it was his pooch. In the new book A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog, you’ll read about her.

When you learn about Dean Koontz’s life as a youngster, it’s no wonder where his sense of the edgy came from: Koontz was the child of a “skirt-chasing”, alcoholic gambler and a gentle woman who tried to hold the family together. There was barely enough money to afford four walls then,
let alone a four-footed mouth to feed.

Which is to say that Dean Koontz never had a dog as a child.

Koontz and his wife, Gerda, both loved dogs and worked tirelessly on behalf of Canine Companions for Independence (www.cci.org), but they thought fitting a dog into their lives would be difficult. They always said they’d have a dog someday – when the timing was right and life slowed down.

Over dinner one night, they realized that life was never going to slow down. They then asked to adopt a “released” CCI dog. And Trixie, retired due to a fixable injury, came to “Koontzland”.

She was 60-some pounds of golden fur and doggy smiles. Her face had a wide range of expressions and she had the ability not only to convey what she was thinking but to know what others were thinking, too. Flawlessly trained to assist someone who was wheelchair-bound, she never forgot her training and could be trusted completely in most any situation.

She was welcomed into restaurants, offices, stores, and homes… and firmly into the Koontz’s hearts.

Koontz was not expecting the “force for positive change” that he got in Trixie. He didn’t expect to fall in love so hard. And he didn’t expect to lose her so soon.

Readers of author Dean Koontz’s books expect to feel a little jumpy when reading his novels, but that won’t happen here. Instead, sit awhile with “A Big Little Life” and you’ll only jump up for tissues.

In this, his first non-fiction book, Koontz gives fans a peek at his personal life: his hardscrabble childhood, past jobs and his dream of writing, courting his wife, and becoming a multi-million-selling author. In between his life story is the tale of a dog that was widely loved, a good judge of character, and downright goofy, and a dog-lover who became unexpectedly smitten with a pup with personality-plus.

Don’t expect the usual Dean Koontz fare in this book. Do expect an unusually great story. For dog lovers of all ages, “A Big Little Life” is just perfect.

A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog By Dean Koontz c.2009, Hyperion 271 pages, $24.99


Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

Crooked: A History of Cheating in Sports

You probably heard your father say it when you were a babe in arms. Your coach told you these things the moment you flubbed a catch. Together, they’re Sportsmanship 101: “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”

Also: “Cheaters never win and winners never cheat.”

So how does a sports fan account for Shoeless Joe, Tonya Harding, Marian Jones, Rose, Bonds, Canseco, McGwire, Sosa, A-Rod, BALCO, Skategate, unethical officials, and angry parents at children’s games?

You can’t, that’s how. But in the new book Crooked: A History of Cheating in Sports by Fran Zimniuch, you’ll learn that cheating in sports is nothing new, unfortunately.

Innocently or not, we’ve all seized opportunity to make life better for ourselves at the sake of others. Fran Zimniuch says that cheating in sports is opportunity plus willful dishonesty and ignoring rules to gain unfair advantage. But, since it’s human nature to fudge a little, where do we draw the line?

Surely the line was first crossed during the so-called Black Sox scandal that’s still debated almost a century after it happened. Then again, maybe not: Zimniuch writes of cheating in baseball several decades before the Sox scandal in 1919.

College basketball was “nearly destroyed” by a points-shaving scandal in 1951. Thirty players from City College of New York and six other schools were charged with accepting money to fix games. It may seem insignificant now and there have been many NCAA scandals since then, but the events of 1951 hurt the reputation of several players and cast doubt on the legacy of a talented coach.

Can ball or equipment altering be considered as cheating? Are lip reading and secret videotaping talents or tricks? Can a fight—something fans often expect—be a sneaky way to give your team an advantage? Are officials and umpires trustworthy? Is it unethical for a player to get a “needle in the butt” or should the use of drugs—a nasty little sports secret for well over 200 years—be allowed as a boost-up in the game?

Any way you look at it, says Zimniuch, it all depends on one thing: point of view. If your team is taking advantage of opportunity, it’s all good. If it’s the opposing team, they are most definitely cheating.

Crooked: A History of Cheating in Sports is a nice little surprise of a book. Using psychology, history, sociology, and a fan’s love of the game, author Fran Zimnuich takes a hard look at duplicity in sports, both pro and amateur. His manner is folksy and fan-friendly as he examines dozens of unsavory scandals.

Interestingly enough, he’s also careful to remind readers that the vast majority of athletes “do not cheat, do not use steroids, and do not cross that invisible line…”

I liked that balance, and I liked this book.

If you’ve been shaking your head about the plethora of sports scandals in the news lately, then grab this perspective-giving book. Crooked: A History of Cheating in Sports is a good bet.

Crooked: A History of Cheating in Sports

By Fran Zimnuich

c.2009, Taylor Trade

$16.95

193 pages

Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

Financially Ever After: Couples' Guilde To Managing Money

By Terri Shlichenmeyer Times Columnist




You’re about to make a serious promise. An oath not for the faint of heart.
It starts with the “love, honor, and obey” bit and morphs into “in sickness and in health”.
So far, so good.
But then, you’ll say something like, “For richer and for poorer…” and you’ll suddenly realize that them’s some powerful words. You happen to like a checkbook in the black. How can you make sure your new life with your beloved is more toward the “richer” side and less of the other?
You can start by reading Financially Ever After by Jeff D. Opdyke. With this book in hand, your march down the aisle will start out on the right financial foot.
If you’re like most people, you’ve been taught all your life that money is something you shouldn’t talk about. Chances are your parents didn’t discuss family finances in front of you. But now you’re the adult and before you start your life with another grown-up, there are ten questions you should ask yourself and your future spouse.
None of the questions are easy, but they’ll get you both thinking about money styles and attitudes toward cash and the lack thereof, least of which being: why buy an expensive, shiny particle of carbon to flash on a finger?
Do you have a basic understanding of money? What is your money history? What do you want to do with your life and your career, and how can money make that happen? What assets and liabilities are you each bringing to the marriage? How have you both used debt? How will you merge finances and delegate financial duties? And—just in case—is there a reason for a pre-nup?
But a pre-nup is so anti-romantic. You’re in love and you trust your intended. In fact, you’re getting married soon anyhow, so you’re thinking about merging your finances now. Why wait, right?
Wrong, says Opdyke. Never join finances outside of marriage. Understand that chits happen, no matter the level of trust. Ask for and offer financial transparency. Communicate. Studies show that money issues are one of the three top hurdles couples face, and fights about finances have derailed many a marriage.
Why make yours one of them?
Looking for the right gifts for those inevitable weddings you’ll be attending this summer? It might seem strange, but Financially Ever After could be just perfect.
Author Jeff D. Opdyke uses practical, common sense and good advice to help couples avoid one of marriages biggest issues, thereby, in a way, circumventing other problems that arise because of underlying money matters. Opdyke advocates equality and openness, but he also says prenuptial contracts are sometimes near-mandatory and yes, women should have their own credit histories… within reason.
If you’ve been married for awhile, you’ll wish you’d had this book years ago. You may still find some good coaching here. But if you’re altar-bound in the near future, find this inexpensive paperback, for sure. Financially Ever After is a book you won’t want to miss for love nor money.
Financially Ever After: The Couples’ Guide to Managing Money
By Jeff D. Opdyke
c.2009, Collins Business
$16.99
232 pages

Terri Shlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.