This book looks at what a new home owner needs to do to preserve and maintain their home's functionality and market value. If you're unfamiliar with basic home maintenance, or need some good reference checklists, this book is worth the time to read. ( )

I had been hunting for a book like this for the last several months, so I was excited to get my hands on this one. It's the first book I've found that really does a good job at laying out all the things a brand new homeowner needs to know to keep on top of things. Unlike some other books I've found, it doesn't assume that I know lots about home maintenance already, but it also gives me a idea of what tasks I could realistically learn to do myself instead of paying someone else. It covers a broad range of topics beyond just general maintenance, including remodels, "greening" your home, etc.

My one complaint is that -- being a "USA Today" branded book, almost every page has a cartoon, graph, or other call out box from USA Today -- and a large chunk of the time, they are completely irrelevant and sometimes outright irritating. During the section of the book on rodent problems, they had a graph for "What are women most afraid of?", none of which were rodents (the top answer was "heights", by the way). While a small handful of these would have added some "fun" to the book, having them constantly throughout -- and being irrelevant so often -- was distracting and also made the book seem hastily put together. ( )