The Book Stacks

Because it’s the weekend and because I haven’t had such a good laugh in a long time.

Have a great weekend.

Hello and happy Thursday all!

I have probably mentioned this before, but I love Thursdays. One reason is because I get to answer the Booking Through Thursday question.

Here is the question for this week:

What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading�? — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.

(Two weeks late for Reading is Fundamental week, but, well…)

I’m probably rather boring when it comes to answering these questions. In my opinion, as long as it has words, it’s reading. I can read a novel, read my to-do list, read the list of ingredients and read a road sign. (Not all at the same time, mind you.) It’s all reading.

I prefer to think of things in terms of good reading, light reading, heavy reading, quick reading… A light and quick read is something I get through fast and doesn’t make me think too much. A heavy read can be short or long, but either way it makes me really think about things.

What do you think?

Remember to leave a comment with the link to your answer both her and on the BTT site.

It feels like it’s been a while again since I’ve done this. I think that’s okay, though. My reading list isn’t that exciting, is it?

I just sat down to update my reading list and two more books were dropped off at my doorstep. How funny is that? Well, I think it’s amusing anyway. I have a few more adds to put on the list…

Have you ever had a time when you start a bunch of books because you’re just not sure what you want to read? That’s the way I’ve been feeling lately. So please bear with me if my “I’m reading now�? list is getting a bit long.

Remember to play the Monday game for your chance to win an Aussie postcard from me.

If you would like to try your hand at reviewing, please feel free to contact me using the contact me button under the site description on the right. I’m more than happy to put up guest reviews. I’m also thinking of a best book review contest, but it’s just an idea floating around in my brain at this point.

Reading:
Savage Survival – Darrell Bain
Supernatural – Graham Hancock
In Bad Dreams – Horror Anthology – Edited by Mark Deniz and Sharyn Lilley
Xenocide - Orson Scott Card
Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Terrorist – Aram Schefrin

Going to Read:
Sabriel – Garth Nix
Neutron Star – Short story collection – Larry Niven
Firebirds – Fantasy/Sci-fi Anthology – Edited by Sharyn November
The Lab – Jack Heath
Remote Control – Jack Heath
The Foreshadowing – Marcus Sedgwick
The Jaguar Legacy – Maureen Fisher
Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hilary Clinton – Kathleen Willey
To Truckee’s Trail – Celia Hayes
The Redemption of Althalus – David and Leigh Eddings
The Serpent Bride – Sara Douglass
Loving the Goddess Within – Nan Hawthorne
Bad Girls Club – Judy Gregerson
Relationship Magic – Edythe Denkin
Stand – Debbie Williamson
The Well-Fed Self-Publisher – Peter Bowerman
Ashley’s Unforgettable Summer – Grace Reddick

Upcoming Reviews:

So what’s on your list?

By R. Leigh, author of The Winds of Asharra

For some, it’s the allure of futuristic cityscapes and complicated technological whatzits that cause their pulse to race. They have their eyes set ahead towards the future. Others, however, prefer to glance over their shoulders at the bygone eras which evoke nostalgia, simplicity and maybe a more familiar style of excitement, perhaps warmer, more familiar and devoid of so many gadgets and gizmos.

I’m apparently yet a different creature entirely. Instead of looking forward or backward, I gaze within and somehow, that enables me to look everywhere. For me, that’s the reason why I now write exclusively in the Fantasy genre.

Asharra, the land of the twin suns, under the purple sky, is a far cry from the day to day routine of American life. Devoid of modern technology, highly sensual in nature and utilizing unusual materials such as crystals and “zim�? for daily needs, the world described The Winds of Asharra, is where I spend most of my time. It’s my second home and where I spend most of my time.

The Winds of Asharra, my latest novel, coming in at over 600 pages, can easily be called a fantasy. While the setting doesn’t contain anything resembling a wizard, witch or orc, it has more than enough elements to qualify for that designation. The musical dragons and dreegins, the telepathic trees and the evolved felines make Asharra a fantasical place, the true essence of the fantasy definition.

The fact that I’ve also filled Asharra with great sensuality and a complex positive culture and philosophy also serves to add a sort of virtual tasty dessert to the overall dish that has been prepared for the readers to eagerly gobble up.

It takes the fantasy wishes of our childhood and updates them for an adult palette. While our taste buds might have evolved since childhood, however, our desire for delicious adventure has remained true. So, the Winds of Asharra, for me, appeals to my inner child as well as my more complicated (and sensual) adult nature.

Why Asharra, you ask? And why am I writing fantasy rather than science fiction or historical novels? Well, I actually did dabble in science fiction. writing a novel (now out of print) called 3 Passports to Paradise, ten years ago. It had all of the classic science fiction elements but even then, there was more than a dash of the mystical, the wonderful and the possible.

It was fun, but it wasn’t Asharra. It didn’t contain the unspoiled adventure or the pristine possibilities that can exist in the fantasy genre, when all of the scientific whatzits and gadgets are packed away by the logical side of my brain. Science fiction made me think but Asharra caused me to feel things and care about them.

The concepts of naturalness, balance and harmony are all interwoven into the complicated plot threads of fantasy, romance and adventure, so evident in the 600+ pages of The Winds of Asharra.

The book is not just a story of an epic adventure or a otherworldly romance. It is a journey of self discovery not only for the characters but for the author as well (and hopefull for the readers). That is why I write fantasy. It can be uplifting as well as entertaining, alluring as well as entertaining. Fantasy is the perfume on the air that makes you inhale deeply once you catch the scent, and teases you to track down the source.

The creation of Asharran culture, so rich and complete including language, rituals and worldview, enabled me to create this place that is my fantasy universe. This mystical world of the purple sky, under twin suns, is the backdrop for an exploration of what it means to change one’s way of looking at oneself and the universe.

As a fantasy, the reader can soar or even sing like the dreegins, suspending their disbelief at the details surrounding the creation and purpose of the Asharra-dobar, the strange mystical artifact that unexpectedly brings Victor and Zoe, two American teenagers to the strange world of Asharra.

The term “Asharra�? to the native Asharrans means “the home around us�? and applies to their planet and every living thing on it. They believe you don’t even have to be born there to be Asharran, so long as you are natural and “true�? (in their terms). Thus, when one native Asharran tells the two main characters (from Earth), “welcome home�?, it is because Asharra is simply the home they have never seen yet.

By writing The Winds of Asharra, I invite the readers to come along with Victor, Zoe, Ionera and all of the fantastical creatures and co-experience their adventure, their feelings and their world. Unlike science fiction, which allows us to imagine our tomorrows through logical assumptions, or historical fiction, which at its best, permits us to re-examine the memories of our past, the fantasy genre in general, and the Winds of Asharra, in particular (for me) does much more than that. It awakens our Inner Child.

Since the world of Asharra is such a natural and sensual place, it also allows of Inner Adult to still feel the same sense of wonder as we experience the fantasical adventures but now with the appreciation and sensuality that our grown-up experiences can add to the mix.

The land of the twin suns, located under the purple sky is ultimately both the destination of my fantasies and the reason for them.

Welcome to this week’s A Book By Any Other Name!

The game works like this: Each week I will choose a word and offer a few titles that I’ve come up with containing that word in the title. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles.) I would also like the author, but that is just so I can find the book if I want to read it.

The current challenge: I challenge you all to reach 32 titles containing the weekly word by midnight Friday, (with no more than 10 titles commented per person and not including *my* titles in the total.)

My forfeit? For this challenge I’d like to do a little something different that will hopefully have the both of us smiling. If you all work together and reach the goal, I will send each of you who participate a post card.

Whoo-hoo right? Right! For those of you who don’t know, I live in Australia so you will be getting a postcard featuring the lovely, lovely city of Melbourne. (If you’re willing to give me your postal address, which I promise to delete as soon as I write it on the postcard.)

So if you’d like a post card, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Monday where you’ll get another chance.

(If you’re feeling pouty about the ten titles per person limit, why not get a friend to come and comment as well? The more, the merrier.)

The word this week is:

Tiger

I Say: Tiger (The Five Ancestors, Book 1) by Jeff Stone

You Say…

Twenty-seven-year-old Kristi Bentz is lucky to be alive, Not many people her age have nearly died twice at the hands of a serial killer, and lived to tell about it. Her dad, New Orleans detective, Rick Bentz, wants Kristi to stay in New Orleans and out of danger. But if anything, Kristi’s experiences have made her even more fascinated by the mind of the serial killer. She hasn’t given up her dream of being a true-crime writer – of exploring the darkest recesses of evil – and now she just may get her chance.

I’ll be honest with you – I’m not usually a murder mystery kind of woman. Nor am I a New York Time Bestseller reader. I should probably pay attention to that, but I simply don’t. So when Lost Souls by NYT Bestselling author Lisa Jackson arrived on my doorstep, I wasn’t quite sure what I was in for.

With a touch of the paranormal from the very beginning, Jackson presents you with a book that is outside the cookie cutter murder mystery. Thankfully, Jackson doesn’t stop there. She carries through the paranormal undertones all the way to her likeable – even though she’s a bit prickly – main character Kristi Bentz.

Kristi is just one of a cast of many strong characters Jackson has brought out to play in this dark and slightly twisted book. While it certainly good have gone deeper into the disgusting rituals involved in the murders, I, for one, was thankful Jackson kept the same mixture of strong characters, intruiging mystery, and just a dash of romance and the paranormal.

While Lost Souls can certainly stand on its own, Jackson treads a thin line with tapping on events of past books. I found myself occasionally feeling like I was missing out, having not read the previous books. However, hopefully this will work to Jackson’s advantage in boosting the sales of her previous books as well.

The ending leaves an obvious opening for another book involving the Bentz family, and I can happily say I like this book enough to want to read the next one.

I recommend Lost Souls even if mysteries or a touch of the paranormal isn’t your usual thing. It certainly isn’t mine, but I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and would definitely like some more.

Once again I have decided to take a break from Thursday Thirteens to participate in Booking Through Thursday. After a particularly stressful week (thank goodness Friday is coming), I’d rather answer some questions than think of a thirteen list.

I think you can all understand, right? Right. That’s what I thought. So please let me know if you are also participating in Booking Through Thursday by leaving your links in the comments section of this post.

On to the question!

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

The bottom line for me with either a book or a movie is I want to be swept away. I want the medium to use all the weapons in its arsenal to take me to a different place.

The difference between a book and a movie is the way they do this.

A movie can give you the sights, sounds, colours, and characters right there up on the screen. While you might think this would make it easier, that’s not always the case. Because it’s all presented to me right away, the story needs to be strong enough to engage me or I’m not going to pay attention.

Books have a few more ways to engage me, either with some description or other imagination-inspiring devices. I become engaged simply through the act of imagining how it all looks and what’s happening.

This can’t save a poor story, of course, but it is a less complicated way to make me pay attention.

I don’t remember when my love affair with books began—I only know that I can’t remember a single moment of my life when I was not madly, passionately in love with the written word. I’ve spent some of the happiest hours of my life curled up on my bed, reading, my glasses being bent horribly out of shape from laying on the side of them, but I didn’t care. I was Anne of Green Gables, I was Elnora from “The Girl of the Limberlost,�? I was Jo March. I can recall the feelings I had when Mac and Rose finally recognized their love for each other (“Rose in Bloom�?) and how I thrilled when Esther walked into the king’s court (“Behold, Your Queen�?). That was my world as a child. It was all the world I needed.

Now that I’m supposedly an adult, you’d think I would have moved on. But no. Books call to me like a siren, luring me in with promises of love stories, adventure, drama. I feed on good plots. I breathe in good dialogue. A well-crafted phrase makes my heart beat. I can’t function if I’m not reading. It’s oxygen, it’s plasma.

I guess it’s only natural that with this fascination with books would come the desire to write them. I think I was about seven or eight when I wrote my first poem. And you remember that scene in “The Music Man,�? when the boys’ band finally gives a show and the mother in the audience stands up and yells, “Play for me, Linus!�? – well, that was the reaction my mother had. She took one look at that first poem and decreed that I was going to be a writer. I think the poor thing got a little jaded from that point—anything I wrote was good in her eyes, even the misguided poem I wrote about bread. Yeah, that’s right, bread. But the point is, she supported me, and I grew up feeling that I could someday become a writer.

Stories speak to me. I see a newspaper and read the headlines, and suddenly I’m crafting a whole world to go around those words. I was at Wendy’s last night and saw two girls eating with their mother, and found myself inventing their dialogue. When I wrote my first two books, it was history speaking to me, the desire to be known and understood, and I just wrote it down.

My latest and most personal release was much the same way. As I sat down to write “Season of Sacrifice,�? the words just flooded my mind. The experiences of the people who lived the story I was writing became a part of me and I was merely the conduit. It was a melding together of mind and heart and spirit, all coming together in the same place at the same time. I spent so much time writing that I got sick and didn’t care. All that mattered was the project, was giving honor to the words.

I’m not sure how all this started or if my desire to write will ever be quenched. I do know that I’d write even if no one ever read a single word. I’d write if all I had to write on was the back of a grocery receipt. And I don’t know if I ever will try to define it or understand it—there’s something fun about being mystical.

TristiPinkston.com

By Heidi Saxton, author of Behold Your Mother: Mary Stories and Reflections from a Catholic Convert

This week I’ve encountered two other books – one by a priest, the other by a popular Catholic apologist – that have either released or are about to come out. The same in YouTube: a half-dozen clips have titles very similar to the spectacular video my online publicist “Pump Up Your Books�? did for my book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zR0003wTzQ&feature=related

So … what’s an author to do when there’s so much competition? The first thing … Don’t panic! See this as a sign that there is a very real “felt need�? for the subject. People must be thinking about the subject you are writing about. The question is: How is your approach fresh, unique, worth considering over the other books, blogs, videos, and articles on the subject?

Going back to Behold Your Mother…

• The fact that I am an adoptive mother naturally gives me a leg up on books written by men on the same subject. My own motherhood gives me a more intimate perspective on what Mary might have thought, felt, and experienced as the mother of Jesus.

• The fact that I’m a convert to Catholicism who struggled to reconcile what I had been raised to believe about Mary and prayer, and what I had encountered in my new church home, puts me in a position to be able to help others who are going through the same struggle.

• The fact that I spent the first thirty years of my life in a variety of Evangelical denominations enables me to “speak their language�? and connect with them about a subject that is close to my heart: how the mother of Jesus never hogs the limelight, but always draws us closer to herself in order to lead us closer to Jesus.

That’s not to say that this is enough, in and of itself, to guarantee that my little book will hit the bestseller list. Marketing a book is in many respects even more difficult than writing it in the first place. But then, I figure if I do my part … I can trust God to do His. I figure the Creator of the universe won’t mind giving me a hand up, when I wrote the book in the first place to honor His mother!

Send your mother (or yourself) “Tea with Mary�? for her birthday or Mother’s Day! For details, go to http://beholdyourmotherbook.blogspot.com.

Welcome to this week’s A Book By Any Other Name!

The game works like this: Each week I will choose a word and offer a few titles that I’ve come up with containing that word in the title. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles.) I would also like the author, but that is just so I can find the book if I want to read it.

The current challenge: I challenge you all to reach 32 titles containing the weekly word by midnight Friday, (with no more than 10 titles commented per person and not including *my* titles in the total.)

My forfeit? For this challenge I’d like to do a little something different that will hopefully have the both of us smiling. If you all work together and reach the goal, I will send each of you who participate a post card.

Whoo-hoo right? Right! For those of you who don’t know, I live in Australia so you will be getting a postcard featuring the lovely, lovely city of Melbourne. (If you’re willing to give me your postal address, which I promise to delete as soon as I write it on the postcard.)

So if you’d like a post card, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Monday where you’ll get another chance.

(If you’re feeling pouty about the ten titles per person limit, why not get a friend to come and comment as well? The more, the merrier.)

The word this week is:

Silent

I Say: Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn

You Say…

Following up last week’s question about reading writing/grammar guides, this week, we’re expanding the question….

Anything at all?

If I don’t know how something works, I definitely read the manual. Only then, though. If I buy something new, I don’t go straight for the manual. The manual only comes in when I need a little help an guidance. But I figure it’s the fastest way to get something done/working, so why not use it?

I don’t by a lot of how-to or self help guides, though I do own a few. I guess the same sort of philosophy comes into play again – I don’t get it unless I need it. I’m not afraid to admit when I don’t know something.

I also thing quick guides, idiot’s guide, and complete idiot’s guide type books can be fun if you’re introducing yourself to a subject you’re not familiar with but interested in. I have a few ebooks that I got because of that. Things like massage, building a website, etc.

It’s like taking a 101 class without spending so much money! (And only one book to buy.)

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments at the Booking Through Thursday site—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

Courtesy of Booking Through Thursday

by Jean Hackensmith

I have been asked by a number of people why I strayed from my normal genre (time travel and historical romance) when I wrote “Checkmate.�? Frankly, I was getting burned out on the “same old, same old�?. It just wasn’t fun anymore. I also felt that I was limiting myself by being known strictly as a “romance author�?. I wanted to write something new. Something different. At least for me.

As it turned out, the romance writer in me refused to die. While working on the book, the “strong, sexy hero�? and the “vulnerable yet spunky heroine�? fought their way to the surface. Hence the reason the book was classified as a “romantic thriller�? by my publisher. It’s more thriller than romance, though. Readers won’t find even one love scene in the book. Those steamy liaisons have been replaced by suspense and terror. After all, when you’re being stalked by a homicidal maniac, who has time for sex?

A virtually new genre, the “Romantic Thriller�? takes Romantic Suspense up a notch and combines romance with an edge of your seat thriller. The “happy ending�? still applies, but the main couple must overcome seemingly insurmountable and dangerous odds to get there. In a strict romance, the main conflict is generally between the hero and heroine. In a Romantic Suspense, the things that could destroy them come from outside of their relationship.

The same holds true in a Romantic Thriller, but where a Romantic Suspense would receive a rating of “PG�?, a Romantic Thriller is definitely rated “R�?. The Romantic Thriller pulls out all the stops. Even good characters can use bad words and the villain is generally sadistic, sexually motivated, and downright mean.

Hence comes, Dan, the “stalker�? in “Checkmate.�? He almost beat his wife, Caryn, to death a dozen times. He tied her up, along with their children, locked them in the bathroom, and set the house on fire. They survived, he went to prison and, eighteen years later, he’s back and determined to finish the job. His twisted game consists of thirteen “moves�?, each more violent than the last. Now Caryn and her new boyfriend must beat the odds and survive until…Checkmate.

I’ve always been a bit smitten by the tropics. As far back as I can remember I wanted to write and be near the ocean. I should expand on that a bit: I wanted to be near, in, or beneath the ocean’s surface. By the time I was in my early thirties, I had a decade of working on dive boats, jumping around the Caribbean and writing for scuba and travel magazines under my belt.

Those years were priceless, not only in terms of the environments and cultures I was lucky enough to experience, but for the opportunity to write about them. My writing teeth were cut on sailboats, beaches, and port town taverns and for that I consider myself fortunate.

It goes without saying that when I decided to cross over into publishing fiction, the stories would take place someplace tropical. West Across the Board is set in one of my favorite locations: The Florida Keys. I fell in love with the island chain years ago, not only for its stunning scenery, collage of cultures, and pristine waters, but for its fascinating history.

Closer to Cuba than the U.S. mainland, Key West was more accessible by boat than car until the mid 1930s. It was during the 1930s that I chose to set my novel. This gave me a great opportunity to research an era in the southern keys that I’ve always been interested in and an excuse to spend more time on Key West.

I’ve been a professional archaeologist for most of my adult life. Consequently, conducting historical research is nothing new to me and with hindsight may have been why I chose to write a historical novel. Although writing non-fiction articles or papers and tackling a novel are two fundamentally different endeavors, I found the research aspect of writing historical fiction to be a safe, familiar place to start.

Ultimately, it is and will probably always be the tropics that I write about, regardless of the genre. I plan to continue freelance article writing and my next book (which is partially completed) while still fiction, is not a historical novel. This book too takes place in the tropics. One thing I do enjoy about historical fiction is the opportunity for readers to become engaged in a compelling piece of fiction while learning something about a particular historical era–whether they intended to or not.

Thanks for having me!

Welcome to this week’s A Book By Any Other Name!

Last week when we played I offered a special prize. Well, we didn’t get to 32 titles, but I want to give the book away anyway, so I’m happy to announce that Elisa has won the book No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Thank you to everyone who played!

This week we will be going back to the offer of postcards, so join in the fun if you would like a postcard from Australia.

The game works like this: Each week I will choose a word and offer a few titles that I’ve come up with containing that word in the title. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles.) I would also like the author, but that is just so I can find the book if I want to read it.

The current challenge: I challenge you all to reach 32 titles containing the weekly word by midnight Friday, (with no more than 10 titles commented per person and not including *my* titles in the total.)

My forfeit? For this challenge I’d like to do a little something different that will hopefully have the both of us smiling. If you all work together and reach the goal, I will send each of you who participate a post card.

Whoo-hoo right? Right! For those of you who don’t know, I live in Australia so you will be getting a postcard featuring the lovely, lovely city of Melbourne. (If you’re willing to give me your postal address, which I promise to delete as soon as I write it on the postcard.)

So if you’d like a postcard, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Monday where you’ll get another chance.

(If you’re feeling pouty about the ten titles per person limit, why not get a friend to come and comment as well? The more, the merrier.)

The word this week is:

Marriage

I Say: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver

You Say…

Review by Mr. JM

So, is The Art of Smart Thinking (TAST) worth the read? For someone with little knowledge of Biofeedback, it is informative as to what can be achieved, but it is unlikely anyone inexperienced in such things could make use of the book to start on their path. As such, it is a good promotional book for the Biocybernaut Institute but I found myself disappointed at a lack of detail.

As a person with some knowledge of the subject and quite a bit of experience at the lesser brainwave entrainment level, I was hoping for some hard information that I could use to begin a path to achieving what is on the cover of the book.

The cover implies that by reading the book the reader can make gains. It specifically doesn’t mention that the book is about a process that can only be done in California and that what is inside is simply describing that process and what might be gained if you go. It isn’t really telling whoppers, but it is misleading. Mostly when you see a book like this, dealing with self-improvement, inside there is at least an attempt to offer processes or methods by which you might achieve what is being promised.

TAST is not a self-help book, although it appears to be. TAST is a teaser or promotional book to let people know about a series of courses being run by a commercial organization in California.

About halfway through the book I went to www.biocybernaut.com to see what was available. What I saw soured me for a while about the book. A seven day program to learn to use Alpha level brain functions costs around $15,000 – that’s a lot of money in anyone’s terms. It may be worth it; if the claims made are lived up to, what price do you put on turning a life around for the better, dealing with problems that could take years of psychotherapy or gaining access to techniques leading to enlightenment?

But also in the book is Hardt’s ideas about how the world could be better with biofeedback. Unfortunately, like such programs as Scientology, what this apparently means is improving only those who are well off. Not that many people have a spare $15,000 laying around and if you take a good look at society, it’s the ones who don’t have that kind of spare cash who really need the improvements offered by biofeedback. They are the ones locked into lives that are unfulfilling, who dramatise the effects of traumatic childhoods without access to expensive treatment, and, importantly, who vastly outnumber those who are on their path to enlightenment.

If programs like The Secret & what we are told of the Law of Attraction are anything to go by, it is those vast numbers of unhappy and fearful people who are having the major effect on how our world is going. The few who manage to break out of the trap may influence their own lives but until someone addresses the needs of those in misery and fear, the ideal of improving the world will not be achieved.

So, while what the book promises is enough to make me really want to do some biofeedback training, and the content of the book is enough to overcome the need for a revision to improve the readability, overall what it has done is left me a bit depressed. My situation is such that it will be years before I can afford to do even the first seven day course (and I wouldn’t do it without my wife so double the amount) plus the travel and other expenses.

I’m left with the feeling someone has shown me the lolly shop then told me my allowance isn’t enough to get even a small one without saving up for years. I’d give my left one to be able to go and do the courses. I’d start with the basic Alpha training and as soon as possible, move into the Theta level training. But that is (if at all possible) many years and many thousands of dollars off into the future.