The Wall Street Journal. Financial Guidebook For New Parents By Stacey L. Bradford

Bringing home your bouncing baby boy or girl should be an exciting time of celebration–not cause for worry about how you’re going to pay for feeding, clothing, and caring for your new bundle of expenses. The average family will spend between $11,000 and $16,000 during a new baby’s first year, and more than $200,000 before a kid’s eighteenth birthday. Unfortunately, a second child only doubles your costs, with little economy of scale for each additional baby.

Before you start using these statistics as birth control, take a deep breath and know that you can have a family and make a comfortable future for your children while saving for your own important goals. The Wall Street Journal Financial Guidebook for New Parents shows you the way, with information on how to:

• Safeguard your child’s well-being with wills, trusts, and life insurance
• Best weigh your child-care options and decide whether to go back to work
• Save on taxes with child-friendly tax credits and deductions plus tax-advantaged benefits at work
• Manage your family’s health-care costs
• Save for long-term costs by setting up a college fund
• Spend smart and save money at every stage of your child’s development
• Continue to contribute to your own retirement savings

From maternity (and paternity) leave to flexible spending accounts to 529 college plans, The Wall Street Journal Financial Guidebook for New Parents provides all the information you need to meet your child’s expenses while also protecting your family’s financial security.

Read Full Post »

Id Trade My Husband For A Housekeeper: Loving Your Marriage After The Baby Carriage By Amy Nobile

Customer Reviews & Opinions

Marriage, Post-Baby, from Your Wife’s Perspective
My wife and I are the proud parents of a 7-month-old son. He has changed our lives, as well as our marriage. I read this book in order to get a woman’s perspective on marriage after motherhood. It was enlightening about the struggles women experience after childbirth. It also helped me understand how I could be a better husband by being more involved with my wife in the rearing of our child. The book is humorous, honest, and helpful. I highly recommend that husbands read it. It will help improve your marriage.

Read Full Post »

I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood By Amy Nobile

Customer Reviews & Opinions

Awesome book
I enjoyed the realistic view of motherhood most mothers don’t talk about for fear of other moms viewing them as anything else than a “happy” mom.

A good laugh
I loved this book. As a fairly new mom (daughter just turned 5) I could relate to everything in this book. Even though I know others have the same troubles, it was comforting to see that mom’s across the country are just as tired and frustrated though blessed as I am.

This book was a quick read (which is good since I have only 5-10 minutes at a time of quiet time)….I nodded my head in agreement so many times. And laughed alot too. I great, casual read!

Great book
I am still reading this but it’s a great book so far! It has helped with how guilty I’ve felt about not doing EVERYTHING! I’d recomend it to a girlfriend, in fact I already have to several!

Read Full Post »

Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics) By Charles Dickens

Customer Reviews & Opinions

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted …

What is it about Oliver Twist that keeps people coming back to it so often and for so long? Oliver Twist is actually one of my favourite all-time reads. I try to read it once every few years, and every time I decide to re-read it, I go in search of a copy that I don’t already own because it’s fascinating the different publishers, typefaces, bindings etc, that this book has gone through. Maybe I’m like Mel Gibson from Conspiracy Theory, collecting all those The Catcher in the Rye copies, but at least I’m reading them. Mel was just trying to save the human race … or something like that. Poor fool.

A few years ago, I thought that I had run my course with the young Rascal and had actually come away feeling pretty badly about the development of the ending of the story, which, in my honest opinion, is not as strong as the beginning or the arc of Mr. Brownlow. But Dickens was writing in a time when books were not as prevalent and Twist, as we all may know, was a Newspaper column that had developed into a bound and published work due to its popularity. Standards have changed and agents and publishers are more discriminating. But in no way should anyone let that stop them from the experience of reading Oliver Twist as it really is a masterpiece before its time.

Recently though, watching MSNBC (a new hangout for me, I admit), I saw a documentary regarding the global sex trade of young woman forced into boarding, shipped around, mistreated, taken advantage of, stolen, uprooted, you name it … and my mind wandered to a comparison of Young Oliver and the Ageing and scheming Fagin. In the lives of the girls they covered, there always seemed to be the `Artful Dodger’ character who would start off as the mentor, but meet a bad end eventually, and the `Fagin’, who controlled the roost and kept the girls feeling dejected and trapped, thus benefiting monetarily from their toils and of course the ‘Sykes’, who was the one who met head-first with the law. I felt incredibly bad for those girls and disgusted about the habits of some of my fellow “men”.

It really is a shame that in 150 years, this year, Dickens moralist tale of child abuse is still just as prevalent, just as relevant and unfortunately just as insidious and heart-breaking as it was on the cold night that he penned the first article.

Citizens of Victorian England
Charles Dicken’s classic tale of Oliver Twist and the people he comes across is a definite must-read. The poor orphan is one of the most memorable protagonists in English literature. The supporting cast is something worth mentioning, also. The distinctive portrayals of Master Bates, the artful Dodger, Fagin (who is sadly a Jewish caricature), and Bill Sykes make this novel a page-turner.

Much of the satire in this story involves the 19th-century English social class, political upheaval, and daily life in the slums of London. And they work so well here.

A-

Much More than a Social Commentary..
Oliver Twist is comprised of incredibly rich and unforgettable characters. It is immpossible not identify with young oliver, for we are all thrown into this crazy world in some sense or another. I found book one to be one of Dickens most prosaic masterpieces. Book two is not quite as well crafted and becomes bogged down in parts bringing everything together. However, the read is well worth it and i find it to be Dickens most inviting and enriching work.

A powerful story. One of my favorite classics.
Originally published in a serialized format, OLIVER TWIST represents some of Charles Dickens very first writings. It is easy to imagine his first readers eagerly (and impatiently) awaiting the next installment of little Oliver’s saga. Evocative of so much compassion, this powerful tale has reached the hearts of readers for over 150 years, and is every bit as powerful now as it was originally. Both its message of personal triumph despite overwhelming odds, and its broader admonishment for us all to look more closely at the plight of the destitute and homeless, speak powerfully to every reader.

This book gives you a very disturbing glimpse into life in England during the early 1800s (or at least Dickens’ view of that life). Dark, cold, dangerous, and filthy are some adjectives that are nearly always at the fore when reading OLIVER TWIST, as Dickens employs his unparalleled talent for bringing his settings to life with words. The worst in human attributes are also on prominent display in this work, with Bumble, Fagin, and Sikes being the epitome cowardliness, cruelty, and brutality, respectively. Rather uncomfortably, this book also highlights the all-too-common failures of society in general. While we may have come a long way since the time of Dickens, there remains much that we would rather not have to face about our own culture. Abuse and neglect of innocent children has not altogether faded away, but maintains its evil hold on parts of society.

Not to make you think that this book is all about the negatives of humanity. It is also a tale of triumph over evil, goodness coming from love and compassion, and innocence being preserved. Oliver’s friends in the second half of the book represent all the best things about humankind and turn this tale into an essentially happy one. That being said, I actually liked the first half of the book (prior to the failed house-breaking attempt) better than the second, primarily because from that point on, while events occur at an increased rate, they are essentially taken out of Oliver’s hands.

This is a great book, highly enjoyable, humorous, and evocative of powerful emotion. The famous wit of Charles Dickens is in full display here, with puns (Master Bates), sarcasm, and all manner of plays on words and phrasings, being found throughout. It is also a good example of Dickens’ penchant for overly verbose writing. Sentences that simply HAVE to be run-ons are found in nearly every paragraph, to the point where you forget the subject of interest as you get lost in flowing descriptive writing (was that a run-on?). For that reason only, I’d suggest this book for more experienced readers looking to sit down and enjoy one of my favorite classics.

Read Full Post »