Category: Book Reviews

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I Moved Your Cheese

By Deepak Malhotra
ISBN-13 — 978-1-60671-399-0

Publication Year: 2013

Tags: Social Commentary, Business, Self-Determination

Rating: ★★★★☆

Mice who live in the maze are taught that, if someone moves your cheese, you go out into the maze to find more cheese. From an early age, Max asked questions: Who moved the cheese, and why, and what is the maze anyway, and why do we stay in it? Most of the other mice simply laughed and ignored him, until one day Max comes to find Zed, to tell him that he has found the answers. With the help of Big (himself thought strange because he only seeks cheese when it suits him and does without it when it doesn’t suit him to go looking), Max has discovered what the maze is, and who moved the cheese, and he has sought out Zed because it is said that Zed questions the mere existence of the maze itself, not to mention its value.

This book was written in answer to Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese, providing an answer “for those who refuse to live as mice in someone else’s maze.” Continue reading “I Moved Your Cheese”

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The Halloween Tree

By Ray Bradbury
ISBN 0-375-80301-7

Publication Year: 1972

Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Youth

Rating: ★★★★★

All the boys lament: How can there be Halloween without Pipkin? The light-footed lad may miss his tricks and treats this year, for he has been whisked away on a journey into the world of Halloween itself, and it could mean his life or death. His eight friends must follow him, guided by the mysterious Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud and the symbols upon the Halloween Tree, to fly through all of space and time to learn the terrifying history of Halloween, from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, through the Druids, medieval Notre Dame, and the Day of the Dead, with Pipkin always just ahead, waiting, calling, seeking the very roots of Halloween itself … Continue reading “The Halloween Tree”

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Geography Club

By Brent Hartinger
ISBN-13: 9780060012236

Publication Year: 2003

Tags: Gay, Gay Youth, Coming Out, Avoid-At-All-Cost

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

From the back cover of the book: Russel Middlebrook is convinced he’s the only gay kid at Goodkind High School. Then his online gay chat buddy turns out to be none other than Kevin, the popular but closeted star of the school’s baseball team. Soon Russel meets other gay students, too. There’s his best friend Min, who reveals that she is bisexual, and her soccer–playing girlfriend Terese. Then there’s Terese’s politically active friend, Ike. But how can kids this diverse get together without drawing attention to themselves? “We just choose a club that’s so boring, nobody in their right mind would ever in a million years join it. We could call it Geography Club!” Continue reading “Geography Club”

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Stand Up For Your Life

By Cheryl Richardson
ISBN 0-7432-2650-X

Publication Year: 2002

Tags: Self-Help

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Subtitled Develop the Courage, Confidence, and Character to Fulfill Your Greatest Potential, this book by “New York Times best-selling” life coach Cheryl Richardson is a workbook-style volume that builds upon her Take Time For Your Life and Life Makeovers books and workshops. Continue reading “Stand Up For Your Life”

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Hypnotizing Maria

By Richard Bach
ISBN 13: 978-1-61664-366-9

Publication Year: 2009

Tags: New Age, Philosophical, Metaphor

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Jamie Forbes, flying his own small plane, hears a cry for help over the private pilots’ com channel — a woman in another small plane whose pilot husband has collapsed. Jamie talks her down to a safe landing, where she tells reporters that he “hypnotized” her into believing that she could land the plane on her own. Considering this idea later, Jamie recalls a time when he was hypnotized by a stage performer, and he begins to discover that hypnotism is a form of believing that what is suggested to you as real… and that perhaps all of life is the same. Are we, he wonders, “hypnotized” into accepting this world as real… and is it, in fact, as real as we believe it to be? Continue reading “Hypnotizing Maria”

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The Lighthouse

By P. D. James
ISBN 0-7393-2558-2
(Large Print edition)

Publication Year: 2005

Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Procedural

Rating: ★★★★☆

This thirteenth in the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series find the poet-detective on Combe Island, an isolated and exclusive place of rest and respite limited to certain governmental VIPs and those whose island trust have deemed to have rights of residence (occasional or permanent) due to their ancestral relationship to the island. When the somewhat infamous writer Nathan Oliver tries to throw about his self-perceived weight with islanders and guests alike, he becomes quite soundly disliked by one and all. Then, when he is found hanging by the neck from the gallery railing of the island’s famous lighthouse, the age-old question rears its head: Suicide or murder? Continue reading “The Lighthouse”

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Leave Myself Behind

By Bart Yates
ISBN 0-758-203497

Publication Year: 2004

Tags: Gay, Coming-of-Age

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

From the Goodreads synopsis: Noah York is a closeted gay teenager with a foul mouth, a critical disposition, and plenty of material for his tirades. After his father dies, Noah’s mother, a temperamental poet, takes a teaching job in a small New Hampshire town, far from Chicago and the only world Noah has known. While Noah gets along reasonably with his mother, the crumbling house they try to renovate quickly reveals dark secrets, via dusty Mason jars they discover interred between walls. The jars contain scraps of letters, poems, and journal entries, and eventually reconstructs a history of pain and violence that drives a sudden wedge between Noah and his mother. Fortunately, Noah finds an unexpected ally in J.D., a teenager down the street who has family troubles of his own. Continue reading “Leave Myself Behind”

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Out of Position

By Kyell Gold
(Cover and interior art by Blotch)
ISBN not available

Publication Year: 2009

Tags: Furry, Gay, Love Story

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

From the Amazon page for this eBook: Dev is a football player at Forester University, a small liberal arts college where he and his teammates get to strut around and have their pick of the girls on Friday nights. That’s as good as it gets — until he meets Lee, a fox with a quick wit and an attractive body. Problem is, Lee’s not a girl. He’s a gay fox, an activist who never dreamed he’d fall for a football player. As their attraction deepens into romance, it’s hard enough for them to handle each other, let alone their inquisitive friends, family, and co-workers. And if school is bad, the hyper-masculine world of professional sports that awaits Dev after graduation will be a hundred times worse. Going it alone would make everything easier. If only they could stop fighting long enough to break up. Continue reading “Out of Position”

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Weight Loss for the Mind

By Stuart Wilde
ISBN: 1-56170-537-3

Tags: New Age, Philosophical, Stupid

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Self-described “Wilde Man” Stuart Wilde offers this slim volume of advice on how to put your mind on a lean diet of positive and self-building thinking. At its core, there’s little here that’s “new,” in any particular sense of the word. Wilde is an entertaining figure in the world of New Age philosophy, without meaning any sleight to the genre at large.  The trouble is that he is far more entertainer than philosopher, and to a certain degree, he’s hypocritical. Continue reading “Weight Loss for the Mind”

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The Taking

By Dean Koontz
ISBN-13 978-0553593501

Publication Year: 2004

Tags: Horror, Suspense

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

From the book cover: On the morning that marks the end of the world they have known, Molly and Neil Sloan awaken to the drumbeat of rain on their roof. A luminous silvery downpour is drenching their small California mountain town. It has haunted their sleep, invaded their dreams, and now, in the moody purple dawn, the young couple cannot shake the sense of something terribly wrong. As the hours pass, Molly and Neil listen to disturbing news of extreme weather phenomena across the globe. By nightfall, their little town loses all contact with the outside world. A thick fog transforms the once-friendly village into a ghostly labyrinth. And soon the Sloans and their neighbors will be forced to draw on reserves of courage and humanity they never knew they had. For within the misty gloom they will encounter something that reveals in a shattering instant what is happening to their world—something that is hunting them with ruthless efficiency. Continue reading “The Taking”