True Review : If You Have A Story, We Have You Covered!

Number 75 Vol.19 No.4 June 2010

Skinny Bastard:

SKINNY BASTARD, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. Running Press (www.runningpress.com), 2009, 287 pp., $14.95. ISBN 978-0-7624-3540-1

This guide for the fat guy, written in the same kick-ass spirit as SKINNY BASTARD, holds a guy’s feet to the fire. The authors get us guys to “unlearn” all the crap we think we know about nutrition and food and how to manage our lives.

So they tell us:

Throw away the meats.
Throw away all processed foods.
Stop drinking milk.
Stop all smoking, drinking, drug usage, and other vices.

Instead:
Learn to eat whole, fresh, natural fruits and vegetables.
Learn to eat from a multitude of natural protein sources.
Get off your lazy, sedentary, fat ass and exercise, and do some cardio.

When I was a kid, I grew up with a father who earned his master’s degree in physical education. He believed (to the dumb chagrin of his immediate family – this was the 1960s, after all) that Vitamin C prevented colds. He also believed that, when it came to adult-onset diabetes, it wasn’t so much the foods we eat but that Americans are far too SEDENTARY – we don’t exercise near enough and it is killing us! This was back in 1968! Dad would agree with the lifestyle choices in this book – he did eat a LOT of natural foods and told us that junk food is flat-out bad for us. And this book proves Dad right.

Andrew M. Andrews

Skinny Bastard - Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

The Intrigue At Highbury - Carrie Bebris

Making Rounds With Oscar - David Dosa, M.D.

WINGS OF FIRE, ed. by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon. Night Shade Books (www.nightshadebooks.com), 2010, 499 pp., $15.95. ISBN 978-1-59780-187-4

Of all these classic tales in the WINGS OF FIRE anthology, it was certainly a lot of fun to read “The Dragon on the Bookshelf” by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg. Also, it was a pleasure to look over and read again many of these classic tales, collected as a treasury of the best dragon fiction of our era.

THE ARK, by Boyd Morrison. Touchstone/Fireside/Simon and Schuster (www.simonandschuster.com), 2010, 420 pp., $24.99. ISBN 978-1-4391-8179-9
An archeologist’s father may have found Noah’s Ark, but is missing, with the only clue about his whereabouts coming from a man who dies at Los Angeles Airport – and the quest to find the truth begins.

NEVERLAND by Douglas Clegg. Vanguard Press (www.vanguardpressbooks.com), 2010, 288 pp., $15.95. ISBN 1-59315-541-4. A woodland shack on an island off the southern U.S. coast becomes a forbidden place, a key to an age-old mystery. Kids, of course, find it and are caught up in its mysterious past.

INTO THE WORLD OF MIGHT BE, by W.A. Harbinson. BookSurge Publishing (www.booksurge.com), 2002, 2008, 167 pp., $13.99. ISBN 1-4196-7639-3

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, by Piper Kerman. Spiegel & Grau (www.spiegelandgrau.com), 2010, 298 pp., $25.00. ISBN 978-0-385-52338-7

RECOVERING APOLLO 8 and Other Stories, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Golden Gryphon (www.goldengryphon.com), 2010, 316 pp., $24.95. ISBN 1-930846-62-2

THE GREAT LIFE MAKEOVER, by Daniel A. Monti, MD & Anthony J. Bazzan, MD. HarperCollins Publishers (www.harpercollins.com), 2008, 248 pp., $24.99. ISBN 978-0-06-143540-9

THE DERVISH HOUSE, by Ian McDonald. Prometheus Books (www.pyrsf.com), 2010, 359 pp., $16.00. ISBN 978-1-61614-204-9