Ball Books

This is a great and practical gardening "how to" book, especially as regards raised beds. Jeff Ball has some ingenious ideas. Get it if you can find it; it is out of print now. I feel lucky to have found it on Amazon. Keep a lookout for all his books, and if you are really lucky, your newspaper will carry his weekly column. We have gardened for over 35 years, and still learn new things from him all the time.

Make your entertaining easy, fun and exciting!

Share your faith through hosting barbeques, sporting events, coffees, youth and children's gatherings, holiday parties, and other events in your home - and have fun at the same time. Learn how to:
* Plan, set up, and host a coffee, bruch, dessert, or dinner in your home.
* Give non-threatening, clear presentation of the gospel
* Easily present your personal testimony

This practical, easy-to-use book, also includes a hostess checklist, planning schedule, follow-up helps, menu suggestions and simple invitations.
--- from book's back cover

The subtitle explains everything: 'Make sports fun again!'

All sports started out as fun. Then they got organised. And during their transformation into sports with rules, competitions, prizes and professionals, much of the fun disappeared.

For those familiar with the 'Cooperative Sports' or 'New Games' movements this is not a new message. What is new is the idea of getting participants to design new games that they can then enjoy playing and adapting as they go. The idea of adapting popular sports provides a handy short cut - and appeals to the subversive in us all.

Because Junkyard Sports encourages players' own creativity, the process described in the opening pages could lead to hundreds of new games. Just in case they don't, you will find that most of the book is dedicated to describing ready-made and ready-to-play games - 77 games in all. These are called 'demonstration' games. This active initiation into Junkyard Sports inspires participants to create and try out their own games.

The game titles give you the flavour: Ad Hoc Golf Soccer, Everybody Has a Ball Hockey, Goodminton, Hide-and-Seek Hockey, Musical Basketless Basketball, Spoon Football, Wheelchair Doubles Basketball.

The games can be played for pure fun. The author also sees plenty of scope for achieving many worthy goals through Junkyard Sports and provides many tips on how games can be made more inclusive - by the participants, and by a few cunning rule changes. For example, games normally played between two sides can be played by three sides or one side. Or you can add extra balls, or add a goal, or add a rule, or take a rule away or borrow a rule from another game.

The book has a youth and community work feel to it, but with a tweak here and there the concept and the tips for game design will be of interest to people who are looking for new ideas for team development exercises - especially if you also want to develop creativity and break the mould.

Whether you buy the book for fun or for work, you will find that you can use it for both. One thing that is guaranteed is that whatever people end up playing, they won't have played it before.

The author captured the essence of game-playing in his book 'The Well-Played Game'. That spirit and wisdom lives on in 'Junkyard Sports'. 'The Well-Played Game' is wonderfully thought-provoking, whereas 'Junkyard Sports' is more 'game-provoking' - with the introductory words of wisdom squeezed into a 30 page prelude to the 130 pages of demonstration games.

My only criticisms are that 'The Well-Played Game' was a bit short on practical ideas and 'Junkyard Sports' is a bit thin on explaining the thinking that has inspired these games. Read them both and you have perfect partners.

You can learn more at the book's web site:
http://www.junkyardsports.com/thebook.html

JUST BEFORE DAWN Donna Ball Signet, Apr 1997, $5.99 Two years ago, Florida teenager Kelly Dennison disappeared on her way to a Tallahassee concert. The family was already torn apart when Kelly left a depressing note. Additionally, just before leaving for the concert Kelly and her mother, real estate agent Carol Dennison, had a major brawl. With all that to go on, the police assumed this was just another runaway. Even after all this time, Carol still remains reeling from her daughter's disappearance. To make matters worse, Carol soon gets another nasty blow when she receives a phone call from someone claiming to be Kelly pleading for help. Her former spouse, reporter Guy Dennison is also the victim of a cruel call when someone taunts him about his missing child. As before Carol and Guy do not see eye to eye on the strange calls. However, everything changes when a teenage corpse is found with ties to Kelly. This brings Carol and Guy together working as a team for the first time since their divorce with the goal of finding out what happened to Kelly and, if she is still alive, saving their daughter's life. Any parent with a teenage child, who reads this heart-tearing thriller, will suffer ulcer-level stress every time their son or daughter leaves the house, even to go to school. JUST BEFORE DAWN is a frightening chiller as Donna Ball writes one of the top horror novels of the year because this could easily happen to anyone, even you. Harriet Klausner

Edgar Ray Killen! Philadelphia, Mississippi! The names strike fear into those who remember the brutal slaying of three civil rights workers on June 21, 1964. Author Howard Ball follows up his previous book entitled Murder in Mississippi with a retrial of "Preacher" Edgar Ray Killen who was one vote from conviction by a jury in 1967. A woman, who has since regretted her vote, said she couldn't bring herself to convict a preacher. The author provides us with the virulent atmosphere that prevailed in the deep south in the 1960's and the attitudes of those who resented anyone poking their collective noses into their way of life. Many of those who were convicted in the 1967 trial received light sentences and resumed their way of life upon release from prison. For 41 years Mr. Killen was able to enjoy the life of a quasi-celebrity in his home town while others feared to even mention the terrible deed that hung over the town of Philadelphia's reputation. Upon Killen's conviction in 2005 racist Richard Barrett requested a "Killen Appreciation Day" on the lawn of the Neshoba County Courthouse so people could come around and shake this terrorist's hand. Such actions make one wonder just how far we still have to go to bring individuals kicking and screaming out of their sordid past. This is a book that will absolutely disgust you while still providing you with some sense of justice in this country however belatedly it may have occurred.

Another sale item for under $10, and what a book! I read it from cover to cover in one night and then wished I had savoured it chapter by chapter and made it last longer but I couldn't help myself, I had to be greedy and read it all in one go.

This is a book about popular 19th and early 20th century racism, muck raking journalism of the time, hypocritical Victorian/Edwardian values, and the systematic cruelty of the British Empire towards it minority ethnic charges.

It is also a love story be it a doomed love story between a pretty white girl Kitty Jewell, the daughter of a well to do Cornish Mining Engineer and a Black African Prince Peter Lobengula who was part of a popular show called "Savage South Africa" touring England in 1899 onwards, who for a brief moment in time dared to defy convention but paid a bitter price.

There is no happy ending to "Kitty and the Prince," and though Peter stayed in England after the break up of his relationship with Kitty who disappeared into obscurity he was destined to in die poverty stricken in Salford, a victim of TB, an illness that would kill his Irish wife and all but one of his children.

He was ignored by the British establishment, and ultimately denied his birthright (there were a lot of people who said he was not the Prince he claimed to be) as well as a pension that would let him die with dignity and give his family a chance of survival in the mean streets of Salford.

You can't read this book and not feel for Peter, however foolish some of his antics might have been, and even Kitty who in the end allowed herself to be influenced by society's disapproval of her relationship with Peter; you feel a pang of regret for a young man and woman who were never given the chance to live a normal, happy, loving life as a married couple.

A love story, a historical memoir, a biography of two lives, call it what you will, "Kitty and the Prince" is a book well worth adding to your bookshelf if you get the chance.

Written by Lynda Anne Ball and illustrated by Larry Johnson, Kwanzaa Teddy The Curious Bear is part of "The Adventures of KT" series created by Felicia Nelson and Ken Watts for young readers. Using a simply story of a family of teddy bears, this is an welcome and highly recommended introduction for children to the traditions and symbols that are a part of the Kwanzaa holiday celebration and include the "Seven Principles" of Kwanzaa: Unity (Umoja); Self-Determination (Kujichagulia); Collective Work and Responsibility (Ujima); Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa); Purpose (Nia); Creativity (Kuumba); and Faith (Imani).

My son really enjoys the illusrations and the story. It's a fun book, but also has a great moral lesson for children to gain. We enjoy all the Values to Grow by books.

Tintin and Captain Haddock go to a psychic show. There an Indian fakir puts his assistant into a trance. She forsees a mysterious illness striking a photographer on a recent expedition to recover Incan artifacts. One by one the researchers on the expedition fall into mysterious comas. Near each lies a shattered crystal ball...

For some comic relief here Captain Haddock tries hard to be oh so proper (he has recently aquired his ancestral estate and title). He is fixated on wearing a monocle at all times. This is an involved mystery with many clever bits of detective work and technology used by the characters. This particular book is definitely the first of two parts and doesn't stand alone. At the end of this one Tintin and the Captain are off in pursuit of a potential villain. But we still don't know what was in the crystal balls or how it connects to the Incan curse, and a major character has been kidnapped and not reunited with the heros. So you will have to read Prisoners of the Sun to not be left hanging after this one.

If you are reading this to help learn Spanish, Tintin comics are good for reading at a Spanish 2 level. There are a lot of words that aren't basic vocabulary but it is still easy to follow the story because the writing and pictures tend to reinforce each other. However this is a two part mystery and you are going to be reading two books, so if this is overload then try another Tintin comic instead.

Tintin and Captain Haddock go to a psychic show. There an Indian fakir puts his assistant into a trance. She forsees a mysterious illness striking a photographer on a recent expedition to recover Incan artifacts. One by one the researchers on the expedition fall into mysterious comas. Near each lies a shattered crystal ball...

For some comic relief here Captain Haddock tries hard to be oh so proper (he has recently aquired his ancestral estate and title). He is fixated on wearing a monocle at all times. This is an involved mystery with many clever bits of detective work and technology used by the characters. This particular book is definitely the first of two parts and doesn't stand alone. At the end of this one Tintin and the Captain are off in pursuit of a potential villain. But we still don't know what was in the crystal balls or how it connects to the Incan curse, and a major character has been kidnapped and not reunited with the heros. So you will have to read Prisoners of the Sun to not be left hanging after this one.

If you are reading this to help learn Spanish, Tintin comics are good for reading at a Spanish 2 level. There are a lot of words that aren't basic vocabulary but it is still easy to follow the story because the writing and pictures tend to reinforce each other. However this is a two part mystery and you are going to be reading two books, so if this is overload then try another Tintin comic instead.