Good Stuff! A great place to eat

ByJohn Brown

huhot-fb-defaultNellie and I recently celebrated our anniversary and enjoyed a delicious meal at HuHot Mongolian Grill in Logan, Utah.

If you’ve never been to a Mongolian grill, here’s how it works. You take a plate, pile it with your desired selection of fresh meats and veggies, douse it with sauces, then hand the plate to the chef. He then spreads it on his gigantic, circular Mongolian grill and cooks it before your eyes, then hands your hot meal back to you. You take it to your table and enjoy a fine, fresh stir fry of your own making.

If you want more, or want to try something different, when you’re finished, you go back because it’s an all-you-can-eat grill. I can happily report that Nellie and I did go back. We wanted to go back a third time but were stuffed.

The food was excellent. The service was friendly. If you’re looking for something different, I think you’ll want to give HuHot a try.

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  • Good Stuff! 3 Remakes That Will Go Down Into Your Bones

    ByJohn Brown

    Sometimes a remake of a song is better than the original. Or if not better, different and equally as good. I have three that I think fit that bill.

    First is a mix of “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals and “Amazing Grace.” It was sung by Jerry Lawson and the Talk of the Town on NBC’s The Sing-Off, which used to be one of the best music competitions on TV. It was all voice, all a’capella, and the things some of the groups did were simply amazing. But then NBC decided to shorten it all into a one-night competition and basically ruined it by removing the multi-week build of the competition and, more importantly, letting us get to know the groups and hearing a range of songs. Oh, well. At least we got this. Turn up your speakers and let it fill you.

    You can get the single here on Amazon.

    The next is a remake of “Go Down, Moses” by The Lower Lights, who have taken this old choral and infused it with a new folk, soul, revival-style groove that makes me think this is probably how the song was originally sung.

    Every time I hear it, it goes down into my bones and calls forth this desire to sing. You can get it here on Amazon.

    The last is a remake of “Glorious” by Stephanie Mabey. This one was part of Meet the Mormons and sung by David Archuleta.

    You can get the exclusive free download of the single here.

     

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  • A Wowser Mouse & Financial Peace

    ByJohn Brown

    Dis Eez A Mouse

    I’m a Luddite, which means that even though I work in the software industry, I do not rush out to purchase the latest and greatest gadget.  Our family computer, for example, is running Windows 98, primarily because we purchased the computer itself in 1999.  In human years that computer is like 432 years old.  Maybe we’ll retire the old boy this year.  The point is that I don’t like to churn through tons of gadgets.  I want something to work.  I want it to work well.  And then I want to use it for a long time. 

    Recently, my mouse started acting up.  So I went out and found a new one.  I settled on a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000.  It comes with three parts: the mouse, an AA battery, which is supposed to last for up to ten months, and a tiny transceiver you insert into one of your computer’s USB ports.  The mouse has a great hand-feel.  The clicks are smooth.  If you want to take your mouse with you somewhere, there’s an easy storage slot inside the mouse for the transceiver.

    But the best thing of all is its BlueTrack technology.  This is not an ancient mouse with a track ball that you have to clean every so often.  It’s an optical mouse.  But unlike earlier versions of optical mice (why do I have a terrible urge to use “mouses” or “meece”?) that didn’t work very well on a number of surfaces, this BlueTrack technology works like a charm on everything I’ve tried it on, including glass. 

    You need a new mouse?  This is a good one.

    Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money

    If you’re like 70% of America, you are living paycheck to paycheck, which means that if you or your spouse (assuming you have one) were laid off, you would probably have difficulties meeting your mortgage the next month.  If you didn’t go into default on the house, you certainly would on other payments and bills. 

    You also have very little retirement. 

    You probably have around $7,000 in credit card debt.  Maybe a lot more.

    You also have a car payment or two.  Or, heaven forbid, a lease. 

    You might be house poor—the house payment is so large you can’t seem to do anything else. 

    You might have creditors hounding you. 

    You might be one of those folks throwing their money away on the lotto instead of investing it. 

    Did you know that if you invested $50 a month, an average of what many lotto players spend, in the stock market for 40 years, you’d very likely end up with $316,000 in the bank  (over the last 40 years of ups and downs, the annualized return of the market was almost 10%). You would have put in only $24,000 over that time period, which means you would have made $292,203!  But instead, if you’re a lotto player, you just throw all that out the window.  (No, you’re not going to win; not even maybe in your dreams.)

    You probably think your kids will have to take out loans to go to college. And you think that’s a good idea.  In fact, you probably think it’s a good idea to have a credit card just in case there’s an emergency because you don’t have any savings to cover any emergencies.

    The list goes on.  The sad part of this is that our finances cause us average Americans a lot of stress in our lives and marriages and families (even if we’re in denial) and very often heartbreak. 

    I know that a lot of us look at our financial chains and throw our hands up in despair—what can I do?  The mountain of debt and bills are just too high.  Besides, this is how everybody lives.

    But it’s not.

    There is a way out.  And it doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s not too late.

    Dave Ramsey has written his hands-down best book ever, which will take you step-by-step through the process of turning a financial mess into financial peace.  He’ll do it in a down-to-earth easy-to-read style. No confusing ten dollar words that make your head spin.

    Ramsey himself went through financial hell.  He was the guy that made all the mistakes with his money.  Lost everything.  Had collection agencies coming after him.  Didn’t know how he was going to feed the family.  He turned that all around.  Yes, he’s a millionaire, but more importantly, he has been working for the last twenty years to teach regular people with regular jobs the simple principles that lead to financial peace.  They’re becoming debt free and working their way towards huge net-worth.  

    You want a step-by-step plan?  You want to educate yourself about money and family finances from one of the nation’s leading experts?  Then go and purchase Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money today and start reading it.  You will not regret it.  If you already have his Total Money Makeover and don’t think this will be worth it, think again.  This goes into all sorts of things the Total Money Makeover doesn’t.

    Be free, people.  Be free.

     

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  • La Brea Bakery Breads Cookbook, Very Young Girls

    ByJohn Brown

    Divine Nature

    I became a fan of bread when I lived in Europe. But not just any bread. I’m talking about the kind of bread with a crust that crackles and is chewy. With an inside that’s soft. Bread that doesn’t need anything on it, but makes you sing when you eat it with soup or a thin smear of butter. Alas, I came home and could not find such bread. It was all Wonder Bread nonsense and its many sandwich bread relatives.

    Luckily, I married a gal who had lived in Europe as well. And who, for a few years, actually had some time to bake. It took some time to find a cookbook with recipes that worked. It took some practice. But she was finally able to recreate that crackle, chewy, soft (not the shattering, roof-of-mouth cutting stuff either). And we enjoyed great bread for a few years. Then she took a job outside the home and we’ve been relegated to American sandwich bread again.

    Enter four daughters. Three of whom are working through a church program like the Boy Scouts that’s meant to help them develop key virtues. Each of the virtues requires they complete a number of tasks to educate them about that virtue. When they’ve completed the tasks for a virtue, they are to devise and undertake a ten hour project to help them practice what they’ve learned.

    Recently, I sat down with my oldest to see where she was and found to my surprise that she still had a number of things to complete. As I reviewed the requirements with her, I pointed out that she’d fulfilled the requirements for all of these virtues many times over. But she refused to count her activities that might apply because she didn’t perform them at the time with the intent to fulfill the requirements. She wanted her accomplishment to be purposeful. She’s focused on the intent of the program, not the award for the award’s sake. (Where do such children come from?) I saw her point, applauded it, and went back to work trying to help her brainstorm what she could do.

    We came to the virtue called Divine Nature, which states: “Be partakers of the divine nature. Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” Many of the activities revolve around womanhood and family. But it was the big project she needed to complete, one that “will help you practice what you have learned. This should be a significant effort that will take at least ten hours to complete.”

    Some of the suggested projects had to do with service in the community, others with talents. Then I read: “Develop a skill you could use in your future home, such as cooking, sewing, making repairs, organizing, or designing.”

    Cooking?

    My bread soul stirred.

    Cooking?! Baking is cooking.

    Memories of crackling crust and soft centers filled the mind of my bread beast. “Bread!” I declared.

    Luckily, Daughter Number 1 had also eaten her mother’s bread and missed it. “Bread,” she agreed. And we pulled the book out that my wife had found so useful, and began.

    The book is Nancy Silverton’s Breads From The La Brea Bakery. Silverton is a master chef.  She owns and operates the Campanile restaurant and the La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. Her bread is sought for all over the nation. Her breads and the breads she shares in this book are all made with a sourdough starter that she teaches you to make from scratch with grapes. Actually, you don’t make it, but feed it. Because it’s a living thing. And after a while it becomes almost like a strange family pet growing on the counter and in the fridge.

    Some might hear “sour” and turn away, but Silverton explains how to keep the starter from becoming too sour. The result is a crackling, chewy, soft bread with a light tang that’s delicious. In fact, Daughter Number 1 just made bagels from the recipe in the book. There’s no tang at all. They’re the best bagels I’ve had. She’s also made the regular loaf, pancakes, and waffles from this same starter. They’re all delicious.

    The book starts off with a lesson in bread making then shares about 60 recipes, everything from baguettes to whole-wheat sandwich bread to sourdough onion rings. The only downside to the book is that I wish it had more pictures. An illustration, for example, in the section on rolling bagels would have been helpful. But we found one on youtube, and it sufficed. And I will confess that I didn’t think once about pictures when eating the bread.

    BTW, we’ve stopped calling this bread. Now, when it’s time, one of us will say, “I think it’s time to make some divine nature.”

    Our Young Girls

    I was recently reading about organized crime and their main activities.  In the section about what ties such groups have to prostitution, the authors reported that it’s estimated that 20% of all prostitutes are street walkers. Another 15% are call girls or escort service workers, and the remaining number, 65%, work in an establishment of some kind—massage parlors, brothers, bars, and hotels.  

    The authors reported that most street walkers have a lover or companion relationship with their pimp. This didn’t make sense to me at the time. But after watching Showtime’s Very Young Girls, I now understand what they’re talking about.

    This film is a documentary about teenage girl prostitutes in New York City and the GEMS (Girls Education and Mentoring Services) that helps them to find a new direction, which is not always easy.

    One of the awful statistics the film reveals is that the average age of entry into street walker prostitution in the United States is just thirteen.

    No, that’s not a typo. It’s thirteen. THIR-TEEN.

    The film introduces us to Rachel Lloyd who dropped out of school and became a teenage stripper and hooker. But she got out. She changed her life and then started the GEMS program to help young girls who found themselves in situations like the one from which she escaped. Lloyd began the program in her apartment and eventually got funding to open a recovery center where girls can seek shelter while they’re trying to redirect their lives.

    The film profiles a number of the girls working through the program. Some of these kids are kidnapped off the street and forced into the “life” as they call it. Some are lured away by pimps who initially act as if they want them to be their girlfriends, flattering them and showing them a good time, and only after they’ve been sleeping together for a while do the pimps then explain that they need to make some money.

    Many of these girls come from broken homes. Many have grown up believing the sexual messages portrayed by the media. The girls are beaten and given drugs.

    Some have been so psychologically manipulated by their pimps that they feel compelled to return. Others have successfully broken with their pasts.

    And all of them are just kids. KIDS!

    This is a movie that’s hard to watch. It’s not graphic in any way. It’s simply the subject matter. It’s also eye-opening and, while the problem is huge, does provide some hope. Thank the Lord for people like Rachel Lloyd. And for people everywhere who live upstanding lives and by kindness and good teaching save their children and others in their communities from this terrible waste. Rent this movie on Netflix. I think you’ll find it’s well worth the time.

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  • Navy SEALS Buds Class 234, Crackting the ACT, & Running the Green River

    ByJohn Brown

     Of the 1.4 million people in the armed forces, only 2,800 of them are Navy SEALS (acronym for “sea, air, and land”). That’s 1/5th of one percent. They are one of the most elite fighting forces in the world. However, less than 20% of those who attempt to become a SEAL ever succeed. To even try you must pass a physical screening test which requires you to swim 500 yards in ten minutes or less, perform seventy-nine push-ups in two minutes or less, and eleven pull-ups. You have to be able to run 1.5 miles in at least 10:20 minutes, and that’s while wearing boots and trousers.

    Some may think: well, that’s not too difficult. I could work up to that. However, the reality is that this level of physical fitness will not be enough. Because once you get into the initial training, you’re going to be doing far more than this every day.

    Can you knock out 500 push-ups in a day, along with a four mile run, hours of paddling out in a six-man raft into a ten foot wave that tumbles you again and again into chilling waters, hefting your share of a 160 pound log over your head until you can barely lift your arms, and running an obstacle course with obstacles three-stories high. You’ll do a lot of this while covered with sand, your thighs and armpits chafing. On some days you’ll have to swim a few miles in a cold sea. And then you’ve got to get up and do it all again the next day. No wimpy hour-long workouts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with rest days in between. Heck, on the third week, you’ll get only about four hours of sleep over four days.

    Can you do it?

    Maybe you can. But before you try, or assure yourself that you could have if you’d only had the chance, let me suggest you watch Discovery Channel’s Navy SEALS BUDS Class 234 to witness what it takes to become the best of the best. It’s a fascinating three-DVD set, just over five hours of programming, that follows class 234 through the initial six-month SEAL training called BUDS (basic underwater demolition/SEALS). You’ll see 114 men start the six-month course and only 17 finish it. In fact, less than thirty make it past the first three weeks, which include the most grueling and punishing training I’ve ever seen. Those initial weeks are designed specifically to weed out all but the most committed and able.

    The Discovery Channel does a great job with this six-part series. And it’s not just for guys. It only took about three minutes for each of my daughters to get hooked as well. And why wouldn’t they? It’s as fascinating as any American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance. In fact, in many ways it’s far more interesting. Heck, it was so good I think I’m going to watch it again. You can get it on Amazon, rent if from Netflix, or check it out from the Logan library.

    For more info on the SEALS, let me recommend you start with these two sites: http://www.seal.navy.mil/seal/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_SEALs

    *** 

    My high school age daughters took the ACT last year and got good scores. But we wanted to make sure that they had excellent scores. High enough to put them in the upper levels of those applying to their desired universities. But how would we prepare them?

    Back in the olden days when I was preparing to get my Masters of accounting degree, I knew I’d need some help to get a score on the GMAT that would be competitive. I looked at a number of study guides and ended up choosing the Princeton Review guide for the GMAT. I studied hard, got a great score, and became a believer. The guide made everything so easy. More importantly, everything the guide prepared me for was on the test. This is why, when I wanted to get a Masters of fine arts in creative writing, I used the Princeton Review for the GRE. Again, the study guide was easy to follow, and I got an equally good score on that test. Having had two great experiences, it’s no surprise I turned to Princeton Review again to help my two girls with their test. (BTW, some may see an attempt to get more than one graduate degree as smart, others as masochistic, and yet others as simple ivory tower bone-headery—I’ll let you decide which it might be in this case.)

    The Princeton Review guide for the ACT is called Cracking the ACT. A new edition is published every year and includes general ACT test-taking tips, everything you need to know in the specific content areas, and practice tests. It also includes access to the Princeton Review’s online resources which include another practice test. It’s a big guide (this year’s edition was 619 pages), but the size is deceptive. There’s plenty of white space for taking notes, and the text is written so clearly, and everything broken down in such an easy manner to follow, that you’ll start only to suddenly realize you’ve just read thirty pages. Besides, you don’t have to study it all. You can focus on specific content areas, if that’s all you want to do.

    This spring, both daughters worked through the book. We looked at their previous scores, identified areas for improvement, and set up a six-week schedule that required them to study about an hour per day, sometimes with help from Mom or Dad, but mostly on their own. One daughter studied hard, took the test in June, and improved her score by five points. The other daughter studied a little less diligently, took the same test, and improved her score by four points.

    When 36 is the highest possible score, such jumps become significant. However, they’re not the result of special DNA. While I tend to think my girls are everything and a bag of chips (especially when they give me back scratches), the truth is the ACT doesn’t test some mumbo-jumbo innate intelligence. It tests skills. Skills anyone can learn. What my girls supplied was consistent effort. All they needed was expert guidance in how to apply the effort. And Cracking the ACT provides boatloads of that.

    If you’re looking to improve your own score or help your children improve theirs, get this book. I have no doubt that anyone who supplies a bit of effort will be able see some nice results.

    ***

    Imagine emerald pools, steep red canyons, and a gentle breeze. Imagine water so clear you can see the plants and rocks sixteen feet down on the bottom. Imagine trout swimming only feet away. Imagine swimming with those trout and then getting back into your raft to ride some rapids. Imagine picnicking a the water’s edge or atop a flat, shaded rock forty feet up that gives you a grand view of the river. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll see an osprey dive for a fish or watch a pair of river otters swim by. Imagine doing this with family or friends, all in a short twenty-four hour period.

    This experience is only about three hours away from Laketown, Utah. Well, everything except the swimming with the trout bit. The fish don’t really swim with you. They mostly just flee, but you get the idea. To enjoy it, all you need to do is raft the seven mile stretch of the Green River from the Flaming Gorge dam down to the Little Hole campground.

    My family and I just did this with some friends and had a grand time. Because the river is relatively slow and the rapids are relatively moderate and short, parents don’t have to worry every second that someone is going to fall in and drown in a man-eating surge. In fact, along many of the calm areas we actively helped the children into the sparkling cold water (grin), including one rafter who was only three years old. One of the most enjoyable moments was when we pulled the rafts up into the gentle backwash of a large rock in the middle of the river, climbed the rock, and took turns jumping into the current and letting it carry us downstream.

    The sun was shining, the weather warm. It was a wonderful trip. A total memory-maker. We put in just before noon and hauled the raft out just before 6 PM. But we could have taken much longer to play along the way.

    The experience was fairly cheap. It cost about $70 to rent an eight-man raft. Perfect for six people. But there are other smaller and larger raft sizes. You’ll need to arrange a way to get the raft to the river and back again. We simply tied our raft to the top of our minivan. You can pay the rental people to drive your car to the exit ramp at Little Hole after you put into the river, or bring two cars (or a bike) and drop one at the exit. Or you can pay for a shuttle service where they drive you to the River and pick you up.

    You’ll want to bring a small cooler with drinks, snacks, and sunscreen. You’ll also want to have good footwear. The river bed is rocky, and when you pull into shore, you don’t want to be ouching it the whole way in. I don’t recommend flip flops. They’re no better than bare feet. Old sneakers are fine, but they don’t dry quickly. And they waterlog and get heavy, which makes them less than ideal for swimming. Your best bet is to get real water shoes that are made to be light and drain quickly and yet still have a decent sole–a sandal or mesh covered shoe that uses Velcro to strap up. You can be fancy and spend a lot, or do what I did and get yours at Wal-Mart for less than ten bucks.  

    You could make it a long trip and drive to and from the gorge and run the river all in one day, but why push it? Just find a place to stay overnight. There are some motels in the area, but we elected to camp. The spots at the Firefighters Memorial campground were $27 per night. The campground was beautiful and tidy with restrooms and running water. One of the most surprising things about this particular campground was that I didn’t see one mosquito while I was there.

    I’m one of these types that attracts the villains. If there’s only one mosquito within a mile radius, it will smell me, pass up many other suitable victims (including my wife), and risk its life and limbs to sink its #@!* proboscis into my flesh. I think my blood must be some kind of mosquito crack. There’s probably some mosquito black market out there for it, run by some nasty mosquito cartel, which is led by a murderous, malaria-ridden mosquito boss making piles of evil mosquito money and spending it on opulent mosquito yachts and guns!

    Anyway, not one bite. We watched the sun set and then fell to sleep with the stars overhead and the wind gently soughing through the boughs of the pine trees.

    To make campsite reservations, go to www.utah.com to get a good map view of possible camping sites. Then go to www.recreation,gov to make the reservations online. Make sure your specific camping spot has everything you need. Our campground was very rocky and not all of the sites had tent pads. If you want to scope the lay of the land, the recreation.gov site will give you GPS coordinates of the campground. Enter those into Google maps then switch to satellite view and zoom in. You see exactly what you get. This way you can avoid accidently booking the site right next to the bathrooms or road or the one that features no trees.

    Finally, when you’re done, you might want to top it all off by stopping at the The Flaming Gorge Lodge restaurant, just a few miles south of the dam, and enjoying a monster-sized cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream and one of their fabulous desserts. The blackberry cobbler and ice cream was delicious.

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  • Good Stuff! How to Make Meetings Work

    ByJohn Brown

    Do you regularly sit through meetings that seem to accomplish nothing?

    Meetings where people drone on and on and on.

    Meetings where people discuss and no decision is ever made.

    Meetings that always slide off topic.

    Meetings that should never have been held in the first place.

    In many cases, the reason these meetings stink is because those organizing them are not aware there’s any other way to hold a meeting. But there is. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to it just out of college while working for a business consulting firm in San Francisco. (And why they didn’t teach this in my business degree I will never know!)

    After learning the simple and powerful principles, I was eventually paid to plan and facilitate meetings for clients. In some of these meetings they were making incredibly important decisions. I remember a client flying me and a colleague from San Francisco to Delaware for two days of meetings.

    You might be groaning at the thought. But they paid thousands of dollars to have us come and facilitate. And when we were done, the energy in the room was palpable. A number of those that were involved were astounded and said they’d never been involved in such productive sessions. They’d accomplished more in the hours we were there than in months of other meetings. They were happy and grateful we’d come.

    Think of that—happy and grateful for a meeting that went on for hours!

    When meetings are done right, the collaboration and synergy can be amazing. Now, you may think that some secret handshake is required to learn how to do this. Or that it’s only for those with some special knack. Or that it’s only for high-powered jobs. If you do, you’d be wrong.

    And that’s because you can learn the principles all for a few bucks. They’re laid out in perfect clarity in How to Make Meetings Work by Michael Doyle and David Straus. This is the book that was the source of our training sessions all those years ago. And I reread it every few years to brush up. The principles work in everything from a family council to a board meeting to class settings. I know because I’ve used the ideas in all of them. And when I fail to take just a few minutes to prepare, that’s when the meeting becomes, well, just another (yawn) meeting.

    If you hold meetings of any kind and want to improve them, give this book a try. I think you’ll be happy you did.

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  • Bartimaeus & The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England

    ByJohn Brown

    Pure Delight

    One of the most delightful literary characters to appear in the last decade is the cheeky Bartimaeus–a five-thousand-year-old djinni (“genie”) who plays the lead role in Jonathan Stroud’s trilogy The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem’s Eye, and Ptolemy’s Gate.

    In Stroud’s world, magicians have no magic in themselves, but they do have the lore to summon and enslave demons, who can work magic. There are demons of various levels and powers. The lowest regularly summoned and enslaved are Imps, who can be crude and like to tell outright whoppers, but are good for standing watch and carrying messages. Next come Foliots, which Bartimaeus describes as “cut price djinn.” In the middle of the great chain of beings are the Djinn themselves, whose clever intelligence Bartimaeus extols, followed by Afrits, and finally Marids, who are rarely summoned because they are too strong for any but the most powerful magicians to control. Of Marids, Bartimaeus insightfully reveals that they are “dreadfully full of themselves.”

    In the trilogy, Bartimaeus is summoned and enslaved to do the bidding of a sometimes jerkish young magician who learns to be a better person, despite himself. Of course, along the way the magician sends Bartimaeus in great peril, which he eludes with cunning, sardonic wit, and many good one-liners. I read the first book, loved it, then listened to all three read by Simon Jones, who makes these stories even better. The sad news is that I finished them. I simply wasn’t ready to let Bartimaeus go.

    Which is why I was so happy to find that Stroud recently released a fourth book: The Ring of Solomon, which is a stand-alone prequel to the trilogy. The family and I just finished listening to it, and it is every bit as good, if not better, than the first three.

    This story is set in biblical times where King Solomon has risen to uncontested power because of his possession of an all-powerful ring which allows him to summon hordes of powerful demons in a blink. Bartimaeus is enslaved to one of Solomon’s magicians.  A mean man, who Bartimaeus catches in a mistake and escapes, principally by devouring him. But Solomon doesn’t take kindly to that, and orders Khaba, a sinister and cruel magician, to summon him back to make an example for the other demons.

    Meanwhile, the Queen of Sheba, having denied Solomon’s marriage proposal three times, is sent an extortion threat.  Angry and frightened, she sends Asmira, a young woman and loyal captain of the guard, to Jerusalem to assassinate Solomon.

    Bartimaeus and Asmira hook up and find themselves in quite a pickle as they attempt to solve their problems. The story provides lots of humor, adventure, peril for both Bartimaeus and Asmira, and a number of surprising turnarounds. It also, in its own way, makes a comment on leadership, loyalty, and zealotry.

    You’ll find it in the middle-grade section of your bookstore, but don’t let the placement fool you into thinking it’s not for adults. Like the best stories, it offers something for everyone. It’s a perfect blend of insight and entertainment and had my whole family, oldest to youngest, spellbound for the duration as we listened to it riding in the car. This is one of my favorite books this year. And if you want to really indulge yourself, listen to the audio book read by Simon Jones.

    Travel to Medieval England

    I love learning new things about places and peoples, even if it’s a place I’ve “been” to before, which is why Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England intrigued me. The first page convinced me to buy to book. And I’m so happy I did.

    I’ve read my fair share of interesting and well-written texts on this subject, including, among others, Life in a Medieval City and Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies, Standards of Living in the later Middle Ages by Christopher Dyer, The Medieval Castle by Philip Warner, Daily Life in the Middle Ages by Paul B. Newman, and Power and Profit: The Merchant In Medieval Europe by Peter Spufford. All engrossing reads. What sets Mortimer’s book apart is that he not only approaches the topic as a travel guide that leads to you interesting sights and shares fascinating tidbits about the place, but he also helps you imagine how it would be, as a 21st century person, to actually travel there.

    For example, where would you go if you got sick? What happens if you’re robbed, where do you report the crime, and should you? Where might you get food and would it be something you’d find palatable? How will you get from place to place? Why kind of entertainment can you expect? And what can you wear without offending your hosts?

    Mortimer focuses on the fourteenth century England, since this period comes closest to the popular idea of the medieval times. He tackles the topics of the landscape, people, the Medieval character, basic essentials, what to wear, traveling, where to stay, what to eat and drink, health and hygiene, the law, and what to do. And he does it all in a chatty, clear, and informative manner, with a bit of humor thrown in for spice.

    Each page was a delight, and I found myself feeling like I was there. Furthermore, I learned a number of things that I hadn’t picked up in my previous readings. I’m tempted to quote all sorts of interesting tidbits he shares about the age, but I’ll refrain. If you are at all interested in the Middle Ages, I think you’ll love this book.

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