This is a great list for the weekend. Stay in and cook, learn how to quell your anxieties, get into a great little book of scary short stories, dip into a culturally important graphic novel or flip through photos of Hollywood Dads. It’s the perfect way to spend a quiet afternoon or evening while the wind blows harshly on the other side of the windows, don’t you think?

Enjoy!

Publisher & Editor – the knack
Stephanie Dickison

Day-by-Day Gourmet Cookbook
Graham Kerr

Remember Graham from “The Galloping Gourmet”? He’s back and this time, he’s got a whole new philosophy – Eat Better. Live Smarter. Help Others.

Part-self help book, part cookbook, Graham shows you that you can be healthy and still eat delicious food. He wants us all to have 9 fruits and vegetables a day, but actually suggests ways of accomplishing it.

There’s Spinach Salad with Pineapple and Avocado, Pasta with Mushrooms and Peas and Pacific Paella.

There are notes for before cooking and helpful instructions of cooking methods.

This is a great cookbook for someone wanting to change to a healthier lifestyle or reduce sodium, fat, etc. in their diet.

The Stop Anxiety Now Kit
Eve A. Wood, M.D.

This little box holds not only a guidebook, journal, affirmation cards, “stop signs” and a CD, but hope.

While I don’t suffer from anxiety, I have a number of friends that are immobilized much of the time by it.

Having worked in a psychiatry offices for over a decade, I can honestly say that every little bit helps people to not only manage it, but actually get over it.

And hopefully this kit will help someone too.

The Nature of Monsters: A Novel
Clare Clark

Here’s the thing: I am scared of most horror and this book is just this side of too dark for me. However, here’s a synopsis from Harcourt that should give you a good idea of the book’s content.

“1666: The Great Fire of London sweeps through the streets and a heavily pregnant woman flees the flames. A few months later she gives birth to a child disfigured by a red birthmark—and no wonder, since everyone knows that mothers who do not protect themselves from shocking sights could turn their unborn children into monsters.

1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary’s maid, a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child—a wealthy merchant’s son—from scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is she never allowed to look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues his experiments? And why is she having vivid dreams of ferocious dogs?

On one of her visits to the friendly Huguenot bookseller who keeps the apothecary supplied with scientific tomes, she finally realizes the nature of her master’s obsession. And when she learns that Mary, too, is pregnant, she knows she has to act to save not just the child but Mary and herself.”

Ferocious dogs? Disfigurement? Monsters?

Ack.

But that’s just me. I know that there’s lot of you that will just devour the book.

Hollywood Dads
Photographs by Joyce Ostin
Introduction by Paul Reiser

A great book for Father’s Day or someone that’s about to become a Dad.

It’s a great range of Dads – David Duchovny playfully kidding around with his son and daughter, a sexy photo of Laird Hamilton and his daughter, and a surprisingly sweet one of not just Bruce Willis with his three girls, but Ashton Kutcher’s there too!

Michael J. Fox’s kids are gorgeous, Eric McCormack’s son is the cutest l’il Darth Vader around and Mekhi Phifer’s son, Omikaye is going to be a heartbreaker just like his Daddy!

And the one of Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zoe? So beautiful. Same with Sugar Ray Leonard and his 2 kids and Sidney Poitier with his stunning brood.

But you’ll have to check out the book for the rest. I don’t want to give it all away.

Aya
Marguerite Abouet & Clement Oubrerie

This is a colourful graphic novel about a group of teenage girls on the Ivory Coast who are looking for boyfriends. It’s not as trite as that though. Aya wants to be a doctor and her father wants her to marry well.

I love the richness and depth of the African landscape and also of a girl’s upbringing and the conflicts that causes her in the more modern world.

It is also an interesting study of the culture and place before the unrest and what we have seen happen to that area in later years.