Beth Kobliner

Jacob’s Eye Patch is about a real boy named Jacob who has an eye patch and is constantly asked questions about it, much to his dismay. He really wanted a toy but people would constantly stop him and his family to ask about the eyepatch. He keeps lying to get away, which is something I know I would want to do as a child as well. The message of the story is that sometimes people don’t want to talk about what makes them different, sometimes they do. Everybody has “something that makes people curious.” It’s just important to ask at the right time. The art was drawn in a messy style that made it interesting to look at. There were also messages at the end from Jacob and his mother that explain further what is going on with his eye and the effect it has on other people.… (meer)

*Free e-book ARC provided by the publisher through Edelweiss/Above the Treeline in exchange for an honest review. No money or other goods were exchanged, and all views are my own.*

Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties gets an all-new update for a new generation, with updated links and information on all sorts of financial information, from types of debt to investing to buying a home.

This comprehensive guide is short and easy to read, but I would recommend jumping to the chapters that are relevant rather than reading it from cover to cover. I enjoy personal finance stuff; this one is pretty dry. It's also ridiculously detailed in some ways, including a whole chapter on services available to military (great to have as a reference, but not for everyone) and a table showing you your tax percentage calculation (I've done my own taxes for years and couldn't tell you exactly what percent of my income I pay).

Most of the advice is solid and matches up with what I've read in other financial articles and books: get out of debt, save and invest, get insurance, live within your means. Author Kobliner, a personal finance journalist and author, gives some good details that I didn't know, for example, that you might be able to save on car insurance by taking a defensive driving class. The advice is math-laden with examples and tables that went a bit beyond what I could follow, but I know those kinds of details would be fascinating to other readers. And then there are a couple of head-scratchers, like her insistence that you should only invest in index funds and not have a financial professional at all. That one I disagree with but could overlook because I could kind of see her rationale. Her mortgage discussion, however, confused me greatly. She assumes a 30-year mortgage, which is standard, but spends a fair amount of space discussing adjustable rate mortgages where, though she cautions you to be careful, she suggests that you may be able to use one to your advantage to have a low rate if you're only planning on staying in a house for a couple of years. While that may be true mathematically, I know enough of human nature to wonder how many people get into an ARM thinking they'll only stay a couple of years and then get surprised when the interest rate skyrockets - much like that "free month" required a credit card to sign up and, oops, I forgot to cancel before the 30 days ran out. And I guess I wouldn't have been so surprised by the long discussion of ARM and using points to reduce your interest rate if it weren't for the fact that she barely mentions the possibility of a 15-year mortgage. Rather than discussing the huge decrease in interest over the payment of the loan, she says they're harder to qualify for (true) and says you may be better off investing the difference. Even if it weren't her personal favorite, wouldn't it make sense to give it equal time with ARMs and discuss the potential difference in interest with the same depth rather than writing it off? Or is it really that hard to qualify for in your 20s and 30s? Finally, as any type of finance book, the exact numbers are out of date as soon as it's printed and in this case, the U.S. federal tax standard deduction (and it's definitely U.S.-centric across the board) has changed since it's printing. As a starting point and guide to reference, this book definitely has some good advice, but my caveat would be to read a few others and make some decisions about your financial behavior, rather than purely the math.… (meer)