Books 26 & 27 of 52

26/52: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, 3/5 Stars
The book really grew on me after I read it. I continued to think about the way that it was written and the things that happened and I became a greater fan than when I first read it. Admittedly, I struggled to get through it for a great while and it took me much longer than a week to read. However, I'd recommend it if you have the time to stick with it.

27/52: The Fifth Mountain by Paulo Coelho, 1.5/5 Stars
Uninspiring. Really. I really enjoy following Coelho on the social networks; his quips are always inspiring and thought-provoking. But, ever since The Alchemist, very few of his longer works captivate me.


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Book #25 = Where the River Ends by Charles Martin, 4/5 Stars
Book #24 = Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin, 1.5/5 Stars
Book #23 = The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst, 3/5 Stars
Book #22 = When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin, 4/5 Stars
Book #21 = The Holy Man by Susan Trott, 4/5 Stars
Book #20 = Shopgirl by Steve Martin, 2/5 Stars
Book #19 = Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, 1/5 Stars
Book #18 = On the Beach by Nevil Shute, 2.5/5 Stars
Book #17 = Sanibel Flats by Randy Wayne White, 3/5 Stars
Book #16 = The Wednesday Letters by Jason Wright, 4/5 Stars
Book #15 = The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #14 = Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss,
Book #13 = Captivate! by Adam Nisenson, 2/5 Stars
Book #12 = Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 3/5 Stars
Book #11 = Maggie by Charles Martin, 4/5 Stars
Book #10 = The Dead Don't Dance by Charles Martin, 3/5 Stars
Book #09 = Duma Key by Stephen King, 2.5.5 Stars
Book #08 = Every Woman Has a Story by Daryl Ott Underhill, 2/5 Stars
Book #07 = Wrapped in Rain by Charles Martin, 3/5 Stars
Book #06 = Maybe (Maybe Not) by Robert Fulghum, 4/5 Stars
Book #05 = The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt, 1/5 Stars
Book #04 = The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, 2/5 Stars
Book #03 = Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour, 3/5 Stars
Book #02 = The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson, 3/5 Stars
Book #01 = Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, 3/5 Stars

Follow us at the Twitter hashtag #52bks52wks!

See last year's list of 53 books...

5 Qualities of a Pencil

From Paulo Coelho's blog...

Image by postbear via Flickr

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point he asked, "Are you writing a story about what we've done? Is it a story about me?"

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson, "I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up."

Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special. "But it's just like any other pencil I've ever seen!"

"That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world."

"First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will."

"Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he's much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person."

"Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice."

"Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you."

"Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action."

Our Mother, who art for Good.

From the most recent edition of Paulo Coelho's "Warrior of the Light" newsletter...

Image via Wikipedia

"Every year the festival at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer attracts more and more people who have nothing to do with the gypsy community. Why is that? The reason is because God the Father is always associated with the rigor and discipline of religion. On the contrary, the Mother Goddess shows the importance of love above all the prohibitions and taboos that we know so well.

The phenomenon is no novelty; whenever religion makes its rules tougher, a significant group of people tends to seek for more freedom in spiritual contact.

In pagan traditions, the cult of nature is more important than reverence for the holy books; the Goddess is in everything, and everything is part of the Goddess. The world is just an expression of her goodness. There exists many philosophical systems, such as Taoism and Buddhism, that do away with the distinction between creator and creature. People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life, but rather, take part in it."

--

ME? I've never felt it necessary to answer questions about the afterlife. I know that I'd spend a lifetime trying and still have no definitive answers. Life, to me, is as simple as:

• Doing good; making decisions for the good
• Being able to forgive
• Hoping for forgiveness from others

If there is something to answer for after all of this, I'll hope that I've done the best that I could while I was here. You "holier than thou" types, attempting to force your life beset with unbreakable rules onto everyone else, well, enforcing your will on the world will never do anything to impress me. However, if you can bring yourself down to a level of courteous conversation, then I'll invite you in for tea.

Life Notes

Adapting to a new life in a new place, which is something that I've done a few times before. Today we're expecting a winter storm to salute us with an inch of ice and then several inches of snow. Currently, however, it's sunny as can be... and how true that is, isn't it?

I started reading (for the second time) The Warrior of the Light by Paulo Coelho, and want to share a quote that I wrote in the book from the last time that I read it.

"Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, tolerant of the weak, and forgiving of the wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these." - Lloyd Shearer

On the backside of my first week of work at Rockfish, and therefore, the second page of the aforementioned book does a great job of describing who I am (since I started here one workday after I'd interviewed).

"All the world's roads lead to the Warrior; he plunges unhesitatingly into the river of passions always flowing through his life."

Here's to the treasure of life the sun is giving us this morning... and here's to the wintry playground that we'll receive later this same day. Life changes so quickly, especially when we want it to.

Books 46-49! Almost there!

Three books left to meet my one and only resolution for the year--read 52 books; one for each week! From my most recent adventure, Old School, I'd like to share one quote:

"Without stories one would hardly know what world one was living in. It has to do with self-consciousness. Though I’m no believer, I find it interesting that self-consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves a thing apart, and bound to die. Exile. We speak of self-consciousness as a burden or a problem, and so it is—the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves out of exile. Whereas our tendency is to love ourselves in the distance, wouldn’t you say? Lost in the distance. It’s a wonder we’re not all barking. And of course we would be if we hadn’t any way to use self-consciousness against itself, or rather against its worst inclinations—morbidity, narcissism, paranoia, grandiosity, that lot. We have somehow to turn a profit on it. Which is, I must say, exactly what that story of yours does. “Summer Dance.” A marvelous story! Pure magic. No—no—not magic. Alchemy. The dross of self-consciousness transformed into the gold of self-knowledge.”
- Mr. Ramsey, Old School, Tobias Wolff

Book #49 = "Old School" by Tobias Wolff, 4/5 Stars
Book #48 = "Firmin" by Sam Savage, 3/5 Stars
Book #47 = "The Devil and Miss Prym" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #46 = "The Shack" by William P. Young, 3/5 Stars

GOAL: 52 books in 52 weeks!

Book #45 = "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #44 = "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli, 1/5 Stars
Book #43 = "Highlighted in Yellow" by H. Jackson Brown, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #42 = "Warrior of the Light: A Manual" by Paulo Coelho, 5/5 Stars
Book #41 = "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, 1/5 Stars
Book #40 = "It's Not About the Bike" by Lance Armstrong, 2/5 Stars
Book #39 = "Dragonfly" by K.R. Dwyer (Dean Koontz), 3/5 Stars
Book #38 = "Teaching a Stone to Talk" by Annie Dillard, 1/5 Stars
Book #37 = "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury, 5/5 Stars
Book #36 = "The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury, 2/5 Stars
Book #35 = "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway, 3/5 Stars
Book #34 = "Now & Forever" by Ray Bradbury, 4/5 Stars
Book #33 = "Coincidence" by David Ambrose, 2/5 Stars
Book #32 = "The Discreet Charm of Charlie Monk" by David Ambrose, 2/5 Stars
Book #31 = "Fish" by Lundin, Paul, Christensen, & Blanchard, 4/5 Stars
Book #30 = "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin, 3/5 Stars
Book #29 = "The System's Bitch" by John Wright, 3/5 Stars
Book #28 = "Twitter Power" by Joel Comm, 3/5 Stars
Book #27 = "The Cluetrain Manifesto" by LLSW, 3/5 Stars
Book #26 = "What Kind of World Do You Want?" by Jim Lord, 5/5 Stars
Book #25 = "The New Rules of Marketing & PR" by David Meerman Scott, 4/5 Stars
Book #24 = "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, 3/5 Stars
Book #23 = "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King, 1/5 Stars
Book #22 = "My Favorite Place on Earth" by Jerry Camarillo Dunn, 4/5 Stars
Book #21 = "Wisdom 2.0" by Soren Gordhamer, 4/5 Stars
Book #20 = "Oath Of Gold" by Elizabeth Moon, 5/5 Stars
Book #19 = "The Age Of Engage" by Denise Shiffman, 3/5 Stars
Book #18 = "What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20" by Tina Seelig, 4/5 Stars
Book #17 = "Animal Farm" by George Orwell, 4/5 Stars
Book #16 = "Divided Allegiance" by Elizabeth Moon, 3/5 Stars
Book #15 = "The Curious Incident of the Dog..." by Mark Haddon, 2/5 Stars
Book #14 = "The Sheepfarmer's Daughter" by Elizabeth Moon, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #13 = "Love Is The Killer App" by Tim Sanders, 4/5 Stars
Book #12 = "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk, 4.5/5 Stars
Book #11 = "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, 5/5 Stars
Book #10 = "The Finder" by Colin Harrison, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #9 = "Veronika Decides To Die" by Paulo Coelho, 1/5 Stars
Book #8 = "By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept" by Paulo Coelho, 3/5 Stars
Book #7 = "Stiff" by Mary Roach, 2/5 Stars
Book #6 = "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1/5 Stars
Book #5 = "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, 3/5 Stars
Book #4 = "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho, 2/5 Stars
Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars

41-43, The Journey to 52 Continues!

I want to quickly share a poem that I found in Book #43...

So fall asleep, love,
loved by me.
For I know love,
Loved by thee.

- Robert Browning

Book #43= "Highlighted in Yellow" by H. Jackson Brown, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #42 = "Warrior of the Light: A Manual" by Paulo Coelho, 5/5 Stars
Book #41 = "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, 1/5 Stars

GOAL: 52 books in 52 weeks!

Book #40 = "It's Not About the Bike" by Lance Armstrong, 2/5 Stars
Book #39 = "Dragonfly" by K.R. Dwyer (Dean Koontz), 3/5 Stars
Book #38 = "Teaching a Stone to Talk" by Annie Dillard, 1/5 Stars
Book #37 = "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury, 5/5 Stars
Book #36 = "The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury, 2/5 Stars
Book #35 = "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway, 3/5 Stars
Book #34 = "Now & Forever" by Ray Bradbury, 4/5 Stars
Book #33 = "Coincidence" by David Ambrose, 2/5 Stars
Book #32 = "The Discreet Charm of Charlie Monk" by David Ambrose, 2/5 Stars
Book #31 = "Fish" by Lundin, Paul, Christensen, & Blanchard, 4/5 Stars
Book #30 = "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin, 3/5 Stars
Book #29 = "The System's Bitch" by John Wright, 3/5 Stars
Book #28 = "Twitter Power" by Joel Comm, 3/5 Stars
Book #27 = "The Cluetrain Manifesto" by LLSW, 3/5 Stars
Book #26 = "What Kind of World Do You Want?" by Jim Lord, 5/5 Stars
Book #25 = "The New Rules of Marketing & PR" by David Meerman Scott, 4/5 Stars
Book #24 = "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, 3/5 Stars
Book #23 = "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King, 1/5 Stars
Book #22 = "My Favorite Place on Earth" by Jerry Camarillo Dunn, 4/5 Stars
Book #21 = "Wisdom 2.0" by Soren Gordhamer, 4/5 Stars
Book #20 = "Oath Of Gold" by Elizabeth Moon, 5/5 Stars
Book #19 = "The Age Of Engage" by Denise Shiffman, 3/5 Stars
Book #18 = "What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20" by Tina Seelig, 4/5 Stars
Book #17 = "Animal Farm" by George Orwell, 4/5 Stars
Book #16 = "Divided Allegiance" by Elizabeth Moon, 3/5 Stars
Book #15 = "The Curious Incident of the Dog..." by Mark Haddon, 2/5 Stars
Book #14 = "The Sheepfarmer's Daughter" by Elizabeth Moon, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #13 = "Love Is The Killer App" by Tim Sanders, 4/5 Stars
Book #12 = "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk, 4.5/5 Stars
Book #11 = "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, 5/5 Stars
Book #10 = "The Finder" by Colin Harrison, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #9 = "Veronika Decides To Die" by Paulo Coelho, 1/5 Stars
Book #8 = "By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept" by Paulo Coelho, 3/5 Stars
Book #7 = "Stiff" by Mary Roach, 2/5 Stars
Book #6 = "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1/5 Stars
Book #5 = "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, 3/5 Stars
Book #4 = "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho, 2/5 Stars
Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars

I am not... but, I am!

I AM NOT...

Image via Wikipedia

• A ride at an amusement park.
• The monopoly money that's been cast from a window to live in the wild.
• Pan-fried chicken. Soft-shelled crab.
• The one with the scruff, but I might be the one under the one with the scruff.
• Little in the middle with much back.
• Staring out at the new morning and the blue sky.
  

I AM...

• The cloud that blows along with the wind, though in control of my own shape.
• Putting one step in front of the other... on days when not skipping.
• Controlling "shuffle-play" on Pandora & my iPod w/ my mind.
• A fire with a switch. Tick. Tick. Tick. Poof.
• A Warrior of the Light.
• Staring out at the new morning and the blue sky.

When last we left our protagonist, he had caught what could he could only believe to be a GREAT FISH, but without an ability to reel it in, he's idly biding his time in the boat, letting the current carry him where it may, until the fish decides to hop into the boat or tires from play.

[Thoughts on a random morning...wait...random thoughts on a morning]

How much is that doggy in the window?

"Did I fight the good fight?" If the answer is "yes," he can rest. If the answer is "no," he takes up his sword and begins training all over again. -Manual: Warrior of the Light, Coelho

"Face to face with the man who sold the world." -Nirvana

This concludes today's show, boys and girls, please go out and enjoy your day, your weekend, and your life. May you find your True Path and fight with your heart to tread upon it as often as possible: day, night, storm, or fright.

[Insert Porky Pig]

Dear Dad...

Dear Dad,

Image via Wikipedia

I'm glad that we've found my book to bond over. It's a combination of my life and the crazy that I inherited from you. I've always said that you're the most creative person that I've ever known and always wanted to find a way to help you apply it. As you might recall, I sent you something that I wrote years ago as an invitation to toss it back and forth over the fence; a cumulative creation from two. Yet, I never got anything back.

Did you know that you weren't supposed to respond back then?

What I've written over the past 17 months actually has its genesis in what I sent you many years ago. I think you knew that something greater was coming. And now, we have this... 150,000 words about a man's journey to find true love... a merging of the real and the metaphysical, the drama and the dream, a puzzle with purpose... Soupy and his Promise.

True love.

Paulo Coelho has written a manual for my life, Warrior of the Light. And, with all due respect to his great belief in religion and love, he almost got it right. A bold statement, I know. But as time continues, so will I continue to walk down my Path, sometimes being bounced back into play like a pinball and other times taking direct steps toward my true calling. My book is only the beginning of the world that I'm discovering. Yes discovering, not creating.

Since we last had an editing session, so much has changed. That was a completely different draft, a different story, more like a journal than what we have now--a world that the characters live in that has history and rules and dark and light... and future.

I do not know if the world around us will accept what I've written. I didn't start with the intent that they needed to. I wrote for myself, but what I've written is getting praise. I want my story to be read and told and I hope that it generates conversation, two sides of a coin, a deluge of opinion about what I meant and all of the layers that haven't been written, but are there to be discovered because they exist underneath the surface of one night's simple conversation with one man's true love.

Thank you.

Your son,
B

Musing the Happiness Question

It's been many months ago, maybe even a year ago, while sitting in one of my favorite Capitol Hill restaurants, a friend asked, "What do you want to do?" I'd just begun my journey as a writer and was still trying to be a marketer, so I was stumped. I offered her off-the-cuff answers that were more deflections than anything else, but she wouldn't have it. "What do you want to do?" she continued to ask.

I realized that I was afraid to say what I really wanted to do. Maybe it was because I felt so far away from it or maybe it was because I really didn't quite know how to accomplish it. So, I began with the macrocosm in my thoughts--the big things that I wanted--and hoped that it would eventually allow me to dial in to the microscope of specifics on how to get there.

Macrocosm:

• Contribute to the world's greater good.
• A circle of friends I can trust, know what matters (and what doesn't) and will wax on it until the wee hours of morning (preferably with wine).
• Have influence, not through power, but through connection. I want to connect as many people as I can to their a-ha moments.
• Enjoy life with my eyes open, in all the frustration and happiness that entails.
  

I was reminded of this conversation last week when my goals were knocked off track by two friends, one foolish and one hypercritical, that set me back a few days. What's a few days in one lifetime, you might ask? Well, maybe not much, but if I'm going to dwell in them, then I better make sure I learn something from them, so I went back and reread my "Warrior of the Light" emails from favored author Paulo Coelho:

• Life is not about the collection of bright, shiny things that make you inferior/superior to your peers.
• When you dream of having everything, is that dream material, emotional, ideal?
• What is your life purpose? What do you do when you have a set back from it?
• "Negative desires can cause no harm if you don’t let yourself be seduced by them.”
• "If everything went the way we wanted, soon we would no longer have anything to write about." [Don't I know that's the damn truth!]
• Relax... and pay attention.

"The true warrior of light believes. Just like children believe. Because they believe in miracles, the miracles begin to happen. Because they are certain that their thoughts can change their lives, their lives begin to change. Because they are certain they will find love, this love appears. Sometimes they are disappointed. Sometimes they feel hurt. Then they hear the comments, 'You are so naïve!' But the warrior knows it is worth the price. To each defeat, there are two conquests in his favor."

I came back to the light... well, that isn't exactly true... someone I'd never before met walked into my darkness, grabbed my hand, smiled, provided me with a Happiness Opportunity and then beckoned me to come with her back toward the light. With my own smile, we walked side-by-side out of the darkness and found an oak tree as old as the world and sat under it for awhile to take in the view and talk about life.

I'm still trying to fully commit to a belief that I'm actually doing what I want to do. With each person that reviews my book, I know that I'm closer to being what I want to be; doing what I want to do. It's miraculous to think that I might be making steps more toward my purpose, but that's the way that it's supposed to feel, I'm sure of it.

So, I'm going to let the breeze running up the grassy hill blow through my hair, feel in-tune with the elements and learn about the angel that found me in the dark... and didn't pull me from it, but had the courage to enter it and ask me if I'd like to join her in the light.

The Happiness Opportunity

Brilliant author Paulo Coelho's most recent newsletter, Warrior of the Light, writes:

"We have to take risks. We can only truly understand the miracle of life when we let the unexpected manifest itself. Every day – together with the sun – God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day we try to pretend that we don’t realize that moment, that it doesn’t exist, that today is just the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if you pay attention, you can discover the magic instant. It may be hiding at the moment when we put the key in the door in the morning, in the silence right after dinner, in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. This moment exists – a moment when all the strength of the stars passes through us and lets us work miracles."

I've no strong belief in what most of the world calls "God," though I do believe that there is something larger than what we can comprehend--some order to the universe that connects all things. And, I believe that over our life (or lives) part of our mission is to learn more about this order, to understand it and live a richer life because of this knowledge. I definitely believe that there are moments each day that can turn everything around, for good and bad. The smile of a child that's sitting in the shopping cart at the grocery store forces a smile upon you even though you're shopping for a condolence card. It is as simple as that. The challenge is to recognize the things that can make you happy and resist the things that could bring anger or sorrow.

How? To each their own, but I've tried my entire life to avoid using words like "hate" and "annoy" and "idiot" and "stupid" and any number of negative words that you can surmise. The reason why I've done this is because I believe that these words are like the trash in my house. The less you focus on reduce, reuse, recycle, the more it piles up. Before you know it, these words outweigh the positive words that you use and your balance has tipped to negativity. You become focused on drama. You feed on drama for energy and entertainment. When you ignore your soul long enough, then it ceases to grow; you're not moving toward a greater understanding of the order when you're focused on those that have no understanding--and no desire to understand--of what can make us all better people.

At the end of Coelho's newsletter, he added a wonderful paragraph about love:

"There is always someone in the world waiting for someone else, whether in the middle of the desert or in the heart of some big city. And when these two people’s paths cross and their eyes meet, the whole of the past and the whole of the future lose all importance, and there only exists that moment and that incredible certainty that everything under the Sun was written by the very same Hand. The Hand that awakens Love and creates a sister soul for everyone who works, rests and seeks treasures under the Sun. Were it not for this, the dreams of the human race would make no sense."

I'm not one to believe that there is only one person out there and we spend our lives trying to find him/her, but I damn sure believe that ideals such as love make sense of our dreams. What we have to understand is that perfection may not be in the unattainable ideal; perfection is in reality.

Temperament of the Warrior of Light

From Paulo Coelho's latest newsletter:

"The Warrior of Light can afford to live each day different from the next. He is not afraid of crying over old regrets or feeling happy at new discoveries. When he feels that the hour has come, he casts everything aside and departs for the adventure he has dreamed so long about. When he understands that he is at the limit of his endurance, he leaves the fight, without feeling apologetic for having done one or two crazy and quite unexpected things."

Now, if I would only just listen and cast everything aside...

8&9/52: A Double-header With Coelho

Book #9 = "Veronika Decides To Die" by Paulo Coelho, 1/5 Stars
Coelho milktoast. I saw the "experiment" coming about 1/4 of the way into the book. Bleh. Yawn. This book was all over the place... I grew weary of the divergent plots that seemed to jump into and back out of the middle half of the book.

Book #8 = "By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept" by Paulo Coelho, 3/5 Stars
There were a couple of sections in the book that really captivated me, in typical Coelho fashion. In those sections, I couldn't put the book down and my eyes flew across the pages. For instance...

"I clutched at his hair, too, and squeezed him with all my strength, biting his lips and feeling his tongue move in my mouth. This was the kiss I had waited for so long—a kiss born by the rivers of our childhood, when we didn’t know what love meant. A kiss that had been suspended in the air as we grew, that had traveled the world in the souvenir medal, and that had remained hidden behind piles of books. A kiss that had been lost so many times and now was found. In the moment of that kiss were years of searching, disillusionment, and impossible dreams."

However, aside from those few scenes, the book was only mildly entertaining. My armchair writer would have altered the ending and had the "power of miracles" transferred to the woman after the man had given them up for her. Why? So that she could understand his plight and then they could be peers.

GOAL: 52 books in 52 weeks!
Book #7 = "Stiff" by Mary Roach, 2/5 Stars
Book #6 = "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1/5 Stars
Book #5 = "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, 3/5 Stars
Book #4 = "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho, 2/5 Stars
Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars

READ!

4/52: 2009 Book Resolution

Book #4 = "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho, 2/5 Stars
Errrrr, Coelho? I think I'll have to chalk this one up to the ability, as a world success, to write about whatever you want.


Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz
Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars

3/52: Book Resolution

Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz, 3/5 Stars
I blow through Koontz books, so they serve as good catch-up books for me. This was the first time that I read one, since I've been writing my own book, that I paid attention to the template that he uses.

• Good vs. Evil, of course.
• A calling, a life mission, a pull, "something coming."
• A 3rd party that assists the protagonist and through assistance gets roped into the climax.
• Loss to achieve gain.
  

Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars