The Art of Pickleball--Techniques and Strategies for Everyone by Gale H. Leach is a comprehensive book about how to play Pickleball. The material includes the rules, how to execute and when best to use different types of shots, etiquette, grips, footwork, doubles and singles, some drills and the mental game and strategies. The author interviewed tournament players and presents different views on technique and strategy. I believe anyone who would like to improve their game would find this book helpful. One thing that made a lot of sense and really stood out to me that I came across in this book is that when playing outdoors, if one side of the court is at a disadvantage due to the sun or if playing on a very windy day, when you reach 6 points (halfway through a game) teams switch sides! Having played outdoors on very windy days myself, this seems to be a very fair rule, one I had not heard before.
(Karen's review, 5 stars)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. To find books on a specific topic, scroll to the bottom and click on the topic you want. Happy Reading!
I was thrilled to find PICKLEBALL Fundamentals by USA Pickleball Association with Mary Littlewood because we are adding this sport to our church FOCUS sports camp for the first time this summer and I will be the director for it. I was looking for a complete book that included tips, instructions and drills. This book has it all! It covers all the different shots and gives an explanation of when they should be used in a game. Everything that is addressed is also shown with pictures or diagrams to help the reader understand. It even has checklists as to what adjustments to make when you find yourself making the same error repeatedly. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about learning to play Pickleball well or anyone who is in a position to teach others how to play.
(Karen's review, 5 stars)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. To find books on a specific topic, scroll to the bottom and click on the topic you want. Happy Reading!
Since I've been considering doing some redecorating and painting in our house, I got The Color Scheme Bible by Anna Starmer to get some ideas of what color combinations I would like to use. This book was perfect for that! It has very little text, just some suggestions as to how best to use the different recommended colors. It gives different color schemes for any color you can think of. Practically each page shows a sample recommended color scheme. Here is a picture of how it is set up:
If you want to know what colors go well together or just want some color ideas, this book will give it to you.
(Karen's review)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!
I thought maybe some of your were wondering why it is taking me so long to read such a short book of only 63 pages--The Great Juggling Kit--All you need to know to develop amazing juggling skills by Stuart Ashman. It is because I am actually trying to learn to juggle and it's hard. I don't practice much and haven't really even practiced regularly so that is why this book has been showing in our blog header here for over a month now. Hope you enjoy peeking in on me to watch my progress starting with this first video. I know I haven't quite perfected the arch consistently, but do you think I'm ready to move on?
Fortunately, this is a book I own. If it were a library book, I'd be renewing it over and over!
(I should have made one when I first started using a ping pong ball which was harder because it was so light.) I got a set of juggling balls from our Focus Sports Camp at church a couple weeks ago, and they are much easier to use.
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? Did you actually learn to juggle using it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!
Need some encouragement? Ever wished there was an instructional manual
for living? Want to know what the future holds? The Books of First and
Second Peter deals with all these issues and more!
I enjoyed reading I and II Peter very much. Peter was one of Jesus' inner circle of friends who was an eye witness to things Jesus did when He lived on earth. The book of Acts records many things Peter did after Jesus returned to heaven.
It is an encouraging book about hope that addresses how to respond to suffering, how to live a life pleasing to God including advice for husbands and wives, and a little about the end times and how this world one day will be destroyed by fire. There are many interesting topics in these two short books and lots of practical advice.
I got a lot out of it and encourage you to read the Sunday Sharing posts where I share some scripture highlights from it. This is a quick read: Just 5 chapters in I Peter and 3 in II Peter. I highly recommend it!
(Karen's review, 5 stars)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!
Walk a Hound, Lose a Pound by Phil Zeltzman and Rebecca Johnson gives you the do's and dont's of dog walking. It's pretty basic stuff but I liked reading how other people enjoy walking their dogs. I so look forward to retiring from work so I can do more dog walking. The bottom line is that you and your dog both benefit from walking, so just do it!
(Gerard's review)
Walking at the Park
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!
We are donating 50 cents for each legitimate comment we receive on all our blogs during March to the American Cancer Society.
I liked Strength Training For Seniors by Michael Fekete because it gave some really good information about exercising in general, about how the muscles, tendons and ligaments all work in addition to some good exercises and instructions for developing a personal exercise program. Blank worksheets are included to help the reader set specific goals, manage stress, and record progress in workouts. This is a short book but packed with helpful and interesting information on strength training specifically for people over 50. It also includes several different scenarios from real clients he worked with who had different problems so the reader can see how to tailor a personal workout program.
To answer the excuse of having no time, Michael Fekete says on pg. 122:
Put your priorities in order. Eliminate the useless, the unproductive, and the nonsensical. You will be surprised at the amount of time freed up for training. The time you allot to exercise is your best investment. If you think that you cannot make time for exercise now, then be sure to make plenty of time for illnesses and hospitals later.
I highly recommend Strength Training For Seniors by Michael Fekete!
(Karen's review)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? You can help Canine Lifeline (a dog rescue organization that saved our dog, Abby) by leaving a comment on any of our blogs in March. We will donate 50 cents per comment at the end of the month.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along, so I thought I would play for fun! Just do the following
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!(make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser.
I'm back in the gym again!
Karen's Two:
I have found that strength training brings about the widest range of immediate, maintainable, and long-lasting physical and mental/emotional benefits. Recent research proves that even with the very elderly and the very weak, effective strength training increases independent function skills and produces significant improvements in stair climbing, getting up from the floor, rising from the chair, and walking speed.
From p. 7 of Strength Training For Seniors--How to Rewind Your Biological Clock by Michael Fekete, CSCS, ACE (See "It Feels Great To See Progress" on our other blog about my gym experience.
Here's another I'm reading:
She looked up at John, his eyes patient, waiting for an answer. How could she tell him she had Alzheimer's disease? He loved her mind.
You can help Canine Lifeline (a dog rescue organization that saved our dog, Abby) by leaving a comment on any of our blogs in March. We will donate 50 cents per comment at the end of the month.
I’m Out numbered!: One Mom’s Lessons in the Lively Art of Raising Boys by Laura Lee Groves is a good little handbook for moms (and dads) of boys. I got this because I teach 5th grade boys in Sunday School and thought it may be helpful. She kept the chapters short because she knows moms are very busy so it is a quick read. She addresses many issues including expectations, laying a foundation for reading, sibling rivalry, teaching respect, organizing, media, teaching responsibility, and communication. Also included is a special chapter for dads, for single moms, and one from the boys themselves! Laura Groves also includes an extensive list of recommended books that deal with related topics that she wrote about in this book.
I think this book would be helpful to any parent of boys especially. It is sprinkled with some humor and scripture which makes it a very enjoyable and interesting read. I liked it and am not even a parent but this book makes parenting sound like lots of fun! As I was reading, I kept thinking of different mothers I know who may benefit from reading this. Some general advice from I’m outnumbered! is to let boys be creative, don’t let them hurt each other, don’t play favorites, give them all a chance to be leaders and promote teamwork, treat them as individuals, love them no matter what they do or don’t do, teach them manners by challenging them to be honorable like knights.
I’m Outnumbered! would make a great gift for parents of boys. I highly recommend this book and can’t say enough good about it. Thanks to The 160 Acre Woods: A Mom's Manual For Boysfor posting about it. If this book appeals to you, please check out these great blog posts that give advice on raising boys by Italian Mama Gone Crazy: What Would Mama Do? (Part Uno) and What Would Mama Do? (Part Due for mothers of little boys). Many of the things Laura Groves wrote about in this book reminded me of the advice I read in these blog posts.
Congratulations to Judy, Hayley, Stephanie and Sharon, our winners of You Already Know How To Be Great and Jennifer, the winner of the set of The Planet Of The Dogs children's books.
Here is a list of the books we will give away: (1) a non-fiction practical "how-to" book and (2) a series of children's fiction books about dogs. Click on the titles to read our reviews and learn more about these books. Just tell us which book(s) you would like and leave us your email in the comments so we can contact you if you are a winner of the giveaway. For an additional two entries, add this blog to your blogroll and let us know you did in your comment.
You Already Know How To Be Great by Alan Fine
We are able to offer FIVE autographed copies that will be sent from the author. You Already Know How To Be Great by Alan Fine is a very practical book with models for bringing out your best performance and helping others do the same. Any leader could gain helpful insight from this book. The principles of reducing interference to increase performance, using G.R.O.W. to make quicker decisions, and increasing your faith, fire and focus can be applied to business, sports, parenting and coaching.
You Already Know How To Be Great by Alan Fine is a model for performing at your full capacity and helping others do the same. The author, Alan Fine, has served as a performance coach to corporate executives, top athletes and musicians. He shares his very practical method for improving performance by increasing one's faith that they can do something, one's fire (desire) and one's focus by decreasing the interference (obstacle) that is hurting the performance. Sometimes we know what we want to do and even how to do it but we are lacking in at least one of those areas; thus, not performing to our full capacity. You Already Know How To Be Great has questions at the end of each chapter to help you apply the principles plus even a cute picture of an on-line community reminder.
I really liked the examples he gave to illustrate how his model can be used in parenting, teaching, sports. Alan Fine gives the reader dialogue of specific training sessions. I felt like a little mouse getting to listen in. In this book you can learn the G.R.O.W. method to use in reaching decisions quickly and making meetings meaningful.
I recommend You Already Know How to Be Great as a reference book to anyone who wants to improve their performance in any area of their life or who is in a leadership position and seeks to help others improve performance.
Want to find out more? Here is a video of Alan Fine talking about You Already Know How To Be Great which includes some illustrations from the book:
To enter our giveaway for an autographed copy by Alan Fine of You Already Know How To Be Great, just leave us a comment stating you would like to win along with anemail address so we can contact you if you are a winner. We will choose a total of FIVE winners on November 25, Thanksgiving Day! Winners will be notified by email and will have until Nov. 28 to give us their mailing address or someone else will be chosen. (This giveaway will also be promoted on Blog Jog day coming Sunday, November 21 so you could enter then too.)
(We received a free copy of this book for review.)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it?
Facebook Me! by Dave Awl is a good reference book for learning to use Facebook to its full capacity. I've been on Facebook for a couple years now I think so most of the things in this book I already knew by just exploring on my own. Had I read this book first, it would have saved me some time. It does explain how to set up a fan page which is something I didn't know how to do. Another helpful thing was that it pointed out how I can blog app requests like silly gifts and games that I am not interested in. It's actually very simple, there's a "block this app" option in tiny letters under the app request that all I had to do was click on.
I recommend this to anyone considering opening a Facebook account or who just is kind of lost when they go into it and would like to have a better understanding of it.
The Five Love Languages is a practical book for improving one's marriage. It points out that different things are more meaningful than others when it comes to expressing love. Loving acts can fall into the following five basic categories: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gifts, physical touch. Once you determine what your mate's primary love language is, you can work at keeping them feeling loved more effectively. It's also good to determine your own primary love language and let your mate know. Several things I plan to implement after reading this book are:
(1) Focus on encouraging, complimenting and using kinds words every day when speaking to my husband.
(2) Have a sharing time each day where we each share three things that happened to us that day and how we feel about them.
(3) Make a list of things we want to do together and do at least two per month.
(4) Plan a new event with strong memory potential and do it this year.
(5) Play "fill your tank" game. Ask spouse three times a week how full his love tank is on range of 0-10 and ask what I can do to fill it up today.
(Karen's review 3/9/10)
Are You Ready To Be Your Own Boss by Carol Denbow is a great little handbook for anyone considering starting up a business and being self-employed. It gives warnings about things people should be aware of before taking the plunge, making it very clear that it takes long hours and lots of work to be successful in running a profitable business. The author shares her personal success story about running a horse-boarding ranch. It lists further resources including books and web sites in the back which would be helpful to any entrepreneur. I finished this in two days.
You can purchase this on Amazon or from her website at Author's Box.
The Listener--What If You Could Hear What God Hears? by Terri Blackstock is a short Christian fiction book that gets across the urgency to share about Jesus with people we come in contact with on a daily basis. It’s about Sam, a Christian who hasn’t led anyone to Jesus in years and really never thought about it until God gives him a supernatural ability to actually hear the thoughts of people around him like God hears. At first when he starts hearing voices, he thinks he’s going nuts, but then he sees how many people have spiritual needs and need to hear about Jesus that he tries to get more people from his church to go with him to witness. The whole theme of this book is that people need the Lord and Christians need to introduce them to Him.
I enjoyed this book because it showed the urgency of reaching people with the gospel of Christ in such a fun way. I recommend it to any Christian
Have you read this one? What did you think of it?
Blogging For Dummies by Susannah Gardner, Shane Birley is a very helpful book for anyone who is beginning to blog and even for a person like me who has started to blog for about eight months but is still learning along the way. The authors give many websites where the reader can go to see exactly what the text is referring to. I finally learned the HTML code for doing lists in posts from this book. It also covers suggestions for getting traffic to your blog and how to get and handle comments. I highly recommend it for any blogger, especially beginners.
When I saw this title, it peeked my curiosity because I have been making more of an effort to be more like Mary than a Martha. It is a reference to a short story about two sisters in the Bible. Martha is the busy frazzled one preparing the meal for the company and Mary is the one who visits with Jesus instead of helping Martha. Jesus said Mary chose the better part. I think Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World Joanna Weaver would make an excellent Bible study. It is loaded with scripture and practical suggestions on how to have peace in the midst of our busy lives. I loved the hula hoop and teetertotter analogies she included.Peace is the result of spending quiet time with God each day in prayer and reading His Word, being teachable and obedient by abiding in Christ.
Throughout Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna draws from resources that she has found helpful, including Navigators 2:7 material. I thought it was interesting that both the author and I were impacted by the same quote from the Navigators 2:7 material which was that “Christ is waiting for me to come spend time with Him.”
The main point of Having a Mary Heart in Martha Worldis to have a balance between our worship and service. We should be a combination of both Mary and Martha! Much of this book was already familiar to me but served as a good reminder to keep abiding in Christ and guarding my quiet time with Him. Something that jumped out at me was about hospitality and being willing to help the less fortunate because I pass by beggars all the time going to or from work. Joanna said, "As Christians, as a church, we are called to be hospitable, the very root of hospitality. Our lives should be a refuge for the hurting, not a country club for the comfortable." That really spoke to my heart.
This is not a book that goes fast. There is a lot of “meat” in it and things to think through and apply to your life. It gives you a lot to “chew” on.In the back of Having a Mary Heart in a Martha Worldwere discussion questions for each chapter with more scripture, a list of suggested devotional books, recommended books related to ministry, sample forms for journaling and more. I highly recommend Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World to anyone who is feeling overwhelmed with all they have to do or who is looking for a Bible Study that is practical and will make a difference in your life.
NOTE: I got this in paperback from the library. I noticed on Amazon that apparently (according to one of the customer reviews) the hardback copy they sell does not include the discussion questions in the back. Just a warning to be careful if you order this for a Bible Study.
Love Dare is a handbook that I think would benefit any marriage. After seeing the movie, "Fireproof" I was curious to check out the book that was used in the movie.
It gives a scriptural basis for 40 practical things to do to strengthen your marriage. The idea is to do one of the challenges each day and then of course continue to integrate them into your life. Some I found to be hard, others easy and most we already do.
I especially liked the 20 questions listed in the back to help me get to know my spouse better and assist me in discovering his needs. I recommend this to any husband or wife. I think anyone could improve their marriage if they followed the suggestions in this book. Related Posts: Fireproof and the Love Dare Movie "Fireproof" and Dinner
How To Speak Cat by Sarah Whitehead is a colorful, easy-to-read book with lots of good information on how to get along with cats including some games to play with them and some things you can teach them with simple step-by-step instructions. Great for kids to learn how to treat and understand cats. (Karen's review 11/10/09)
