Actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, better known as Dana on the sitcom “According to Jim,” is on the circuit promoting her new children’s book, “Henry and the Hidden Veggie Garden.” Her tour included a stop on Martha Stewart’s TV show today.
Co-written with her father, Gurney Williams III, the book encourages kids to get outdoors, spend time in a vegetable garden and learn to love fresh vegetables. It’s supported by Love Your Veggies, a nationwide school lunch campaign.
All proceeds from the sale of the book ($5) will benefit Books From The Heart®, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping impoverished kids get a chance to succeed.

For more info, CLICK HERE

To buy the book, CLICK HERE

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has struck a deal with Vanguard Press to publish “Do the Hard Things First (And Other Bloomberg Rules for Business and Politics)” in September. In it, he promises to share management strategies and lessons in life that he used to build a multimillion-dollar business and run New York City.
“Over the course of both my private and public sector careers, I’ve learned a set of rules that I believe offer guidance that people of all professions will find useful,” Bloomberg said in a release. “In this book, I’ve summed up these rules and my experience in how to follow them: from how to build a first-rate team, to create the conditions for innovation, and to know when to say ‘yes’ to your customers and when to say ‘no.’”
Royalties from book sales will go to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

For more, CLICK HERE

SunLit Communications, which runs DelMio.com, announced several national contracts in conjunction with launching the new DelMio site.
SunLit provides professional content for multimedia outlets such as MSN.com, Random House Inc. and the Center for the Book, a Library of Congress institution — as well as content for DelMio.com.
The new DelMio site features more robust interactive function for users to communicate with one another and post their thoughts online.
Go to www.delmio.com then visit the various menus including Explorations, Sidetrips, blog, News, Forums, Events, etc.
Press release

So, yeah, we didn’t win everything, but who cares??

With your host, Dave Wilson
Do I love football!
Twentysome years ago I wrote a column for my college paper theLantern (it didn’t actually run cuz of an editorial mix-up) about my love of football, and the unrivaled rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan (Florida/Florida State/Miami? Please! Auburn-Alabama? Pffft! Pittsburgh-Cleveland? Get Cleveland competitive first!) No. It’s Ohio State-Michigan. With few exceptions, top-10 perennials over the decades, vying for Big Ten supremacy, lately almost always deciding the BCS representative for the Big Ten and often enough the national champeenship.
I am posting this on the Eve of the Big Game (Editor’s note: originally posted in November of ’07). This year’s match is a bit of a let-down because both teams lost last week — it was more fun last year when the No. 1 ranking was on the line.
But I digress.
I wasn’t a natural-born football star. Or even much of an athlete. Fact is, the first year I played I was afraid to hit. But by the time I hung up my cleats in my senior year of high school, there was nothing more fun, more satisfying, more exhilarating than plowing into an opposing player and knocking him flat on his backside.
At Ohio State in the mid-’90s they described the ultimate block by Orlando Pace as a Pancake. They even conjured refrigerator magnets for the Orlando Pace Pancake as part of a Heisman Trophy candidacy campaign. I can only remember a pancake or two of my own. In fact, curiously, I had a harder time against guys my own size, fellow mudders, than against the big hogs. Just get low and root out the tubbies, that was my approach. But when low-lying mudder hits low-lying mudder, it was, well, a mudfest. We’d grind it out, pounding the pus out of each other, not giving any ground. In the ideal offensive situation, pushing the offensive line blew defenders back a yard or two. That’s called offensive surge. I didn’t have that in those games.
What I had was quickness, the ability to get in the defenders’s legs and keep him from getting at our running back as he cut off my block.
Our back had near-blinding (4.4 in a 40?) speed and good cuts, so if he had a decent block he could go to the house in a heartbeat.
My favorite recollection of that is in our first state playoff game, Tim Brady (the speedy back I’d referred to earlier) had a breakaway play and an opposing player hanging on his ankle; he looked back and was about to lateral to me (he later said he really was about to, with my hands of stone!) when the tackler lost his grip and Tim just bolted for the end zone. Glorious.
Touchdown. Watterson Eagles win. All is well!
In the pregame warmups, I overheard one of the other team’s parents quip, “What, did they dress the freshmen?” Yeah, we were pretty small (our nose guard, best man at my wedding, weighed about 135 pounds, swear to God – at 155, and I’ve “grown” by about 30 pounds since, I wasn’t a whole lot bigger), but we had gotten used to thumping teams way bigger than us. I think that’s part of what made that season so satisfying. Working hard, exceeding expectations.
Too bad we lost the next week in a muddy mess. But that’s football in November.
Back to Playing for Pizza

First lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna are on the campaign trail, but it’s not politics that they’re promoting.
It’s Jenna’s second book, Laura’s first, called Read All About It! They’ve both taught children, and the goal of this book is to encourage boys to read. The book’s primary character, Tyrone, is a composite of boys they’ve taught over the years, boys who have a hard time sitting still long enough to enjoy reading.
“Tyrone is like so many boys,” Laura Bush said on the Today show. “He loves everything real. He rules the school. He just doesn’t like books, because he doesn’t think they’re real.”
The two are criss-crossing the electronic globe to promote the book. Read All About It!, ISBN 9780061560750, is on sale this week.

More …

To buy the book …

John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza does not take a flattering view of Cleveland, particularly its perennially down-in-the-dumps football team, the Browns. These are the same Browns who haven’t won a league championship since 1964, the Browns whose previous owner, Art Modell, may he burn in hell, skulked off in the night with the team in 1995, the Browns who have had one scant winning season since being reincarnated in 1999, who show signs of possibly winning half its games this year and that’s considered a good thing. Publishers Weekly describes Playing for Pizza “the author’s love letter to Italy.” He gave Cleveland the bird.
Football is the theme of this book, Grisham’s 230th (We exaggerate, but only slightly).  Grisham played baseball and football, and aspired to be a professional athlete, according to his bio – and when you play at that high school competitive level, but with little hope of making a career out of it or achieving fame and fortune, you play for the passion for the game. You play, and you play hard, because you love the game. In football, it’s pure competition, mano y mano times 11. Plus special teams and substitutions. But let’s not get distracted here.
Back to football and Cleveland. These two entities have a long and sometimes discordant history. Art Modell fired the mascot, for cryin’ out loud! OK, maybe the “Brownie” of the early ’60s, a very nonthreatening elfin figure, was not the most appropriate image for a bunch of tough guys, but he looks pretty cool on the retro NFL “official” jackets. Cleveland has a long and painful history of spectacular failures and close encounters with greatness. The Drive. The Shot. The Sweep. Elway, Elway, John freakin’ Elway. Michael dag-blasted Jordan. Manny (it’s just Manny being Manny) bleeping Ramirez.
Jim Brown, whom the team was not named for, was the greatest running back to ever play the game. Period. Stop your debate now. Barry Sanders was really, really good. So were Gale Sayers, “Sweetness” – aka Walter Payton – and probably a dozen other immortals worthy of mention. Adrian Peterson may one day be worthy. Emmit Smith had more yards (and probably a better offensive line) and the adoration of many fantasy football team owners. But he wasn’t Jim Brown. They didn’t have fantasy football when Jim Brown played. They had players who fantasized about being as good as Jim Brown. There are linebackers in the game now who still fear him, afraid he might come back and run over them. Yeah, he was that good.
The team was named for Paul Brown (or was it their hideous uniforms?), who was a pioneering NFL coach, who was unceremoniously dumped by the previously mentioned and much-loathed owner Art Modell, who (Brown, that is, not Modell) subsequently founded the Cincinnati Bengals, frequently referred to as “Bungles” for their many years of futility that rival only those of the Browns. Or maybe the St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals (that is, until the 2009 Super Bowl).
Consider that the Browns’ dominant colors are brown, white and, occasionally, orange. Nice. No wonder Steelers fans have an overdeveloped sense of superiority. That’s saying something for a team with bilious puke-yellow-and-black unis. Only thing uglier is the Michigan uniform (They call their bilious yellow “maize”).
Grisham’s central character in Playing for Pizza, Rick Dockery, begins the day as a backup quarterback, and not a very good one, for the Super Bowl-bound Browns. That’s right, Super Bowl-bound Browns. We’re not making this up, Grisham is. But I like the way it rolls off the tongue. So the first two QBs get smushed, and in comes our would-be hero. Well, let’s just say things don’t turn out so well: Our hero ends up with a concussion and a pink slip and a mob of angry, drunk fans who want to lynch him. No Super Bowl.
So off to Italy he goes. Yes, to play football Americano. To the rest of the world, football is what we call soccer. Most popular game in the world. Except in the United States.
There is an NFL Europe developmental league, generally intended for up-and-coming prospects for the NFL, not washed-up NFL has-beens (Tthat would be Rick).  Grisham notes at the end of the book that, while there are real elements to his story, he didn’t hesitate to make stuff up when it was convenient. It is fiction, after all! We call that artistic license.
Back to the unflattering view of Cleveland.
Our would-be hero bolts out of Cleveland, heading south on I-71 (lucky he didn’t get caught in the typical January blizzard/sleet/freezing-rain storm that always seems to hit right around Mansfield) and just kept heading south.
At this point his agent is eager to dump him.  A former star QB at Iowa (OK, that’s a stretch – star quarterbacks come from USC, Notre Dame, Miami and occasionally Michigan and Ohio State), he can’t even go back to Des Moines, or Ames or Iowa City, for fear of embarrassing  (or endangering) his parents. So when his agent calls with a chance to get the heck out of Dodge, he takes it. And so our education in Italiano begins.
Ciao!
The rest of the book is part travelogue, part foodie love story, part jockstrap soap opera. And, because this is a Grisham book, a little bit of legal intrigue.

WARM AND FUZZY MOMENT WARNING. SPOILER ALERT!

It’s also where Rick finds a bunch of guys who play football for the love of the game, the competition, the camaraderie. He rediscovers playing the game for the sake of playing the game, makes some great friends, discovers fabulous cuisine and actually commits to a monogamous relationship. It’s a fish-out-of-water story, and Rick grows lungs.

END WARM AND FUZZY MOMENT WARNING.  END SPOILER ALERT.

In the end, Playing for Pizza was a nice, breezy read – a little predictable, but that’s OK with me. Grisham’s a fine storyteller, and that’s what he does here.

Dave Wilson is editorial director at DelMio.com and writes Our Daily Red, which is rarely daily and only occasionally red. Editor’s note: This originally posted in November of 2007, and made the move to the new DelMio site a bit after the fact.

Rick Dockery has found himself in a tight spot. A backup quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, he ends up on the field when the two QBs in front of him get hurt. Spotted with a nice lead and a chance to propel the Browns to the Super Bowl, he manages to lose the game anyway and gets a concussion to boot. An angry and drunk mob of Browns fans tries to storm the hospital where Rick is being treated, and it becomes abundantly clear that Rick’s career in Cleveland, and probably the NFL, is over. Grisham takes a side trip from his famous legal thrillers in Playing for Pizza, a story that harnesses the author’s other passion: sports.

CLICK HERE

Read a blog posting from editor Dave Wilson.

Another posting from Dave.

The Da Vinci Code took the literary world by storm, though the movie, well, not so much so. It brought gnosticism to public awareness and suggested something unspreakably evil was going on. And how about Tom Hanks’ hair? It certainly had its fans, and it had a few detractors as well. See for yourself. CLICK HERE

The long-kept last manuscript by Vladimir Nabokov will be published, years after he instructed his son to burn the work. (He died in 1977)
Dmitri Nabokov wrestled with the dilemma: obey his father’s dying wish to burn “The Original of Laura” and deny the literary world one last book by one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, or let the book see the light of day.
He said he father came him in a vision “and said, with an ironic grin, ‘You’re stuck in a right old mess – just go ahead and publish!’”
The son, 73, waited more than 30 years to make the call.

An Akron police detective is in hot water over a book recently published, “Perfect Beauty: Her Looks Could Kill,” the tabloid-worthy case of Cynthia George, a well-off mother of seven, wife of a prominent restaurateur and lover of two other men — one dead from a mob-style gunshot wound, the other in prison convicted of that killing.
George made national headlines when she was arrested in connection with the daytime shooting of Jeff Zack, her former lover, while he was at a gas station in 2001. She was convicted of conspiring with another lover, John Zaffino, to kill Zack after a sensational trial punctuated with testimony of sordid love affairs, paternity tests, jealousy and murder. Her conviction was overturned on appeal for lack of evidence.
Detective Vince Felber was a lead investigator of the case. In “Perfect Beauty,” he recounts with co-author Keith Elliot Greenberg how the case tumultuously came together before it fell apart.
Now Felber’s tell-all has him under investigation by his police department.

To read the story, CLICK HERE

Miley Cyrus, the wildly successful “Hannah Montana” actress/singer and daughter of onetime country star Billy Ray Cyrus (remember Achy Breaky Heart?), has signed a deal to publish her autobiography with Hyperion Children’s. Publishers Marketplace called it a “major deal,” timed for a spring 2009 release to coincide with her movie.
Cyrus, 15, will describe growing up in Tennessee and then Los Angeles as a child star of a protective father star.
Quoted in gossip site Hollyscoop.com: “I hope to motivate mothers and daughters to build lifetimes of memories together, and inspire kids around the world to live their dreams.”

Sound familiar? Dishes pile up in the sink, dust gathers on every surface of the house, the rec room’s a wreck and the living room is unlivable. Author Cynthia Townley Ewer says she has the answer in Houseworks: Cut the Clutter, Speed Your Cleaning and Calm the Chaos (“Yeah,” you say, “She hasn’t seen MY house.”)
“Where there is hope, there is help,” she exhorts her fans at her Web site, http://cynthiaewer.com.
So before you plow into that pile of clutter, take a deep breath and read her book. Then get to work.
Houseworks, ISBN 9780756613617, is available at retailers and online. This book has been around for two years, about as long as those dust bunnies have been lurking under your bed.
CLICK HERE to buy the book

Novelist Cassie Edwards no longer has a book deal with Signet. A few too many passages in her books looked a little too familiar to readers and, eventually, Signet agreed.
“Cassie Edwards novels will no longer be published with Signet Books,” The publisher said in a statement. “All rights to Ms. Edwards’ previously published Signet books have reverted to the author.”

Read more

Columnist and author Carl Hiaasen, against his better judgment, is back on the golf course, menacing fellow duffers wherever he shows up.
And to justify the expense report, he wrote a book about it. After a 32-year vacation from golf, Hiaasen has written “The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport.”
The man who brought you “Strip Tease” (the funny book, not the awful movie based on it) and an expose of Walt Disney’s Co.’s “rape of Orlando” takes a personal look at his nemeses, a little dimpled ball and the clubs you’re supposed to hit it with.
The Miami Herald columnist is on tour promoting his book (he appears at the Akron-Summit County Public Library at 7 p.m. Wednesday). “The Downhill Lie,” ISBN 9780307266538, is available from Knopf Publishing Group on May 6.
More info …

In this charming tale of a pet pig, Sy Montgomery weaves the stories of the healing transformations – hers and others – Chris effects in his legion of fans. “This huge, adored pig,’’ she writes, “who had given so many people delight, was proof that no matter what nature or history hands you, with love, anything is possible.”

Click here for the Sidetrips Exploration       Our One Book, One Community page

The story of John Bul Dau’s childhood and early adulthood could be summarized by this prophesy: “This will be a black-haired time.” Which means: None of the people in Sudan will live long enough to have gray hair. Reading God Grew Tired of Us cuts through any desensitization and brings those feelings of sorrow and happiness, of pain and love, back into focus again.

Click here for the Sidetrips Exploration        Our One Book, One Community page

   Akron Beacon Journal columnist David Giffels bought a ramshackle house, a mansion, really, and began a 12-year odyssey of repair, restoration and renovation until it looks like it does today (Disclosure: the Beacon Journal is our former employer). He and his wife, Gina, pulled it off without building a mountain of debt.
     He wrote about it in the paper early on before finding other subjects. But he kept writing about his experience, and in May it comes out as All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House, published by HarperCollins.
   The house is featured in a New York Times Home & Garden article, complete with before-and-after photographs (Check out the aluminum baking pans lining the master bedroom floor to catch all the drips).
Giffels is alternately earnest and funny, and he wears his affection for hometown Akron on his sleeve. Expect to find that in his book.

New York Times article

The life and circumstances of the central character of A Far County, the second novel of Daniel Mason, are undoubtedly alien to most of its readers. Isabel is a teenager in a Third World country that has been traumatized by drought, civil unrest and poverty. She also has a preternatural ability to see “further” than others – a sixth sense that sometimes frightens and confuses her. But author Mason leads readers into Isabel’s external and internal lives with expert skill, allowing a quick embrace of her circumstances and spirit.

Click here for the Sidetrips Exploration      Our One Book, One Community page

Part Harry Potter and part Bart Simpson, our hero, Bernie Bridges, has another adventure in the twelfth book of the “Rotten School” series by author R.L. Stine, who created the popular “Goosebumps” series.

Click here for the Sidetrips Exploration Click here for our Ohio Center for the Book page