Rachel Maddow - A Biograhpy by Lisa Rogak →

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Rachel Maddow earned a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994. At graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She also received a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford.

The book shows a consistency of focus and principle. It shows life experiences where she wanted to listen to those who disagreed with her and appreciated it when the opportunity came.

She has said of herself that she is an explainer. The book demonstrated the validity of that claim. The world is a better place with Rachel Maddow here.

Holly, by Stephen King →

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This is a five-star book, but with around 2500 reviews in on Amazon, it has a 4.4 star rating. This is lower than normal and Amazon says the book is one of King’s most political yet. That seems odd but then it is set where the plot works out with maskers and antimaskers involved in the dialog. . . So maybe a few reviews were lower where Trumpers were offended, probably because some people wore masks.

Holly Gibney is either one of King’s most compelling characters or she is not, but she is resourceful and solves what others hadn’t even tried to solve. We got to know her, and it was clear that Stephen King, a master writer, treated her like a natural person he thinks a lot about.

The characters were so well-developed and vital. Holly didn’t overshadow the others, but they fit together perfectly.

King’s comment on the back cover was undoubtedly relevant.

“I could never let Holly Gibney go. She was supposed to be a walk-on character in Mr. Mercedes, and she just stole the book and stole my heart. Holly is all her.” Stephen King

Stephen King Reads from His New Book, HOLLY

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz →

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Psycho-Cybernetics is an approach and a term developed by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. His book with this title was published in January 1960 and has sold over 30 million copies. Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon and author. He combined his psychology and concluded that our self-image is the cornerstone of our mental state and, therefore, all the successes and failures in our life.

It is still interesting to read his works and see that a plastic surgeon learned more about people in 1960 than psychiatrists had known!

He explained how the self-image has complete control over an individual’s ability to achieve or fail to reach their goals. He developed techniques for improving and managing self-image.

Psycho-Cybernetics teachings are still considered valuable and based on solid science with measurable results.

Taylor Swift Biography Little Golden Book

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This book was released on May 2, 2023, and as of June 19th it is ranked on Amazon. as noted below:

Best Sellers Rank: #27 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

• #1 in Children's Musical Biographies (Books)

• #1 in Children's Coloring Books

• #1 in Children's Women Biographies (Books)

The book is 24 pages long and has 1359 reviews so far. The simple story tells of 8-year-old Taylor wanting to sing where ever anyone would listen—begging her parents to go to Nashville at about 11 and handing out a disc of her songs and her first contract at 13. She had a brother and great-parents who lived on a Christmas Tree farm until they later moved when she got her record contract. A nice story about a nice family and a young lady.

Amazon Book Description

This Little Golden Book about Taylor Swift--the singer and songwriter whose distinctive talent for storytelling has made her one of the biggest superstars in both country and pop music--is an inspiring read-aloud for young children as well as their Swiftie pare

Picasso by Gertrude Stein →

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Gertrude Stein, an American, was among the first to embrace the 20th-century modernist movement in European art when she arrived in Paris in 1903 with her brother Leo. She quickly immersed herself in the avant-garde community of the Left Bank, residing at 27 rue de Fleurus in the bohemian sixth arrondissement. It was a hub for artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, whom Stein supported and whose early patronage was crucial to his later success.

This memoir explores the remarkable friendship between these two cultural figures, offering insights into the life and art of the 20th century's greatest painter. Stein's close relationship with Picasso provides a unique perspective in this book, providing a fascinating portrait of him as a founder of Cubism.

Through her writing, we gain insights into the importance of Picasso's Spanish heritage in shaping his artistic approach and his struggle to remain faithful to his vision. This book is a must-read for admirers of Picasso and Stein and is essential to understanding modern art.

“Why Life Stories Change, Are We a Result of Choice or Circumstance?”

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“Why Life Stories Change, Are We a Result of Choice or Circumstance?” was partly inspired by the anonymous poem, “REASON, a SEASON, or a LIFETIME.”

      This book is a brief philosophical text to argue against a strictly deterministic, and hence limited, view of the universe. It is primarily presented as a reflective memoir. The idea that stories change depending on the teller is a familiar one. Still, the implications are significant when you realize that our identity and existence are built on a self-constructed narrative and that we change over time. The book raises some interesting and valid philosophical points about how these narratives shift over time, drawing on a text that is mainly autobiographical but still uses other sources.

Why Professionals Use LinkedIn for Networking and More →

Optimizing, Focusing, and Keeping Your Profile Current

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This book can help guide you through setting up your LinkedIn profile, but most people who read this book may already have a LinkedIn profile, so this overview also points to rechecking, updating, and making the profile the best it can be.

LinkedIn expects the profiles to be updated and updated on their platform to make status updates available to be picked up by search engines like Google. The profile must represent a current overview of who you are today, especially since it is your first contact point for many contacts. 

I have worked one-on-one with over 800 career-focused candidates.

It took me five years to accomplish this and each candidate seemed different. A lot was learned through this experience, and that was the motivation for this book

These candidates were already on LinkedIn but wanted to improve their profile and, in every case, found helpful ideas to improve what they had in place. The insight presented isn't just boilerplate professor-based ideas but real experience gathered with those needing help.

One of several important reasons this is needed is that people are estimated to change jobs 12 times over a career. Hence, the reality is that people will come back each time and ask what they can do to update and improve the way their profile resonates.

The Graveyard Book: It just gets more and more interesting →

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If such a thing as a “Young Adult Novel” masterpiece exists, then this is for everyone. This book is also considered a “Modern Classic.”

This book had the tone of the 2nd half of Stephen King’s book Fairy Tales because it is such a different world from Bod, Nobody Owens’s point of view was developed from inside the graveyard. His youth was unique of course, but the feeling of his dead parents and friends were natural to him and offered some important life lessons.

We learn about the importance of community and feel our life experience with children who grow up and go into the world to fail and get up and try again.

Bod learns from Silas, the ghost Silas that being alive means “infinite potential.” “You can do anything, make anything, dream anything,” Silas tells him. “If you can change the world, the world will change.

Silas obviously believes in free will as well as fate.This may seem to be a conflicting conclusion but free will relates to our exercise of will through choices in the present, whereas fate is the sum total of the effect of past choices that influenced our present life.

Exercise of free will in the past becomes our fate in the present.

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The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci →

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This confrontation threatens to dredge secrets from Devine’s past in the army unless he participates in an undercover investigation into his firm.

This role will take him from the impossibly glittering lives he once saw only through a train window and even the expected routine of the financial world he is now part of to the darkest corners of the country’s economic halls of power.

As he commutes to work on the 6:20 train and looks out the window, he knows the killer may live there. He is now part of a high-stakes conspiracy, and Devine has a target on his back.

Work Matters: It Takes Technology, Insight And Strategies For Job Seekers In This Evolving World →

By Brent M. Jones

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One review said about this book:

"This book is so timely to the world today."

Another reviewer said:

‘You may not be looking for a new job currently, but odds are you will at some point in your career. This book is a great place to start to help you navigate the new world of job searching. It is probably one of the most valuable and helpful books I’ve read. Every young person just leaving college or high school and preparing to enter the workforce should read this book.”

This book follows Work Matters: Insights & Strategies for Job Seekers in a Rapidly Changing Economy, published on August 25, 2020. The Pandemic was the elephant in the room when that book came out, but the new book, over 1/3 longer, focuses on how the task of changing a career, finding a dream job, or even finding the right employee has changed. Of course, it will continue to change, but the new reality and the headline for the article about this is:

"Technology is the significant change for Job Hunters.”

American Gods by Neil Gaiman →

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American Gods is a fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman. The book blends the connections between American culture, fantasy, and ancient and modern mythology. It is a commentary on society that urges readers to look into their hearts and wonder if they have chosen their gods wisely.

American Gods begin with Shadow, a big man who has spent three years in prison for armed robbery and gets out in two days. He learned in prison to do his own time, and even with his enormous size and strength, he is introverted.

Shadow is let out of prison. He begins the travels that will take him on a journey that digs up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them to this land and the ones already here.

Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details of the book -the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution.

"This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.

Shadow begins his journey when he gets out of prison two days early, and coincidentally his wife is killed at the same time in an automobile wreck with her lover. He doesn’t believe that she is dead, and he immediately sets out to go where his wife lives. On his way, he meets a man who seems to know a lot about him and says to call him Wednesday. The man claims to have many names, and we learn that one of those names is Odin, an old Norse God, and Wednesday is a name that can be traced as coming from this God.  Wednesday tells Shadow in this first meeting he wants to hire him.

Gaiman wants to show in this book a nation made up of a variety of the people of the world, all of who once at least were subject to particular Gods.

When Shadow arrives at his former home, he seems oblivious about how his wife died and waits to attend her funeral. That night in his hotel room, his conversations and encounters with his wife after she is dead are one of the most exciting parts of the book.

Wednesday sees that no one in America believes in the Old Gods; without belief, they don’t have much power. He succeeded in hiring Shadow as a gopher, and with him, he seems to be on a mission to move the new American Gods out of the way.  They, of course, do not want to comply.  Wednesday and Shadow travel across America and have a planning conference with many other older Gods. Sometimes it isn’t clear if they are even in this world or dimension.

The stories are exciting, and understanding the connections to the old Gods takes some work. The book is considered one of Gaiman’s best, but it took me two readings and doing some research to start appreciating it.

Boo Hoo little Coraline be brave, by Neil Gaiman →

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As I re-read this, I asked myself, "If this was considered one of the most frighting books by the New York Times, then why?"

This is Neil Gaiman’s first fantasy book for children, but adults quickly.” absorbed the plot. The New York Times Book Review said it was “One of the most frightening books ever written.” Considering the body of scary books available, this seems like a pretty bold statement, but it is a testimony to Gaiman’s writing skills with this plot.

Coraline Jones and her family’s new home is an old house divided into flats. The space above and below has unusual tenants. The two lady tenants give them to give her a cup of tea and a unique piece of wood with a hole that you look through the special hole in it. The man above them, Mr. Bobo, has some trained outstanding warn Coraline never to go through the door. She sets out to explore and finds that the door returns to be just a door alone, and she opens it again, only to find a dark hall which walls behind it. The divided house is a terrifying house that evolves.

Evenmatter-of-fact,s back to the door alone and opens it again to find a dark hall, which she walks right into. What quickly looks like a terrifying situation is met with a matter-of-fact unquestioning approach, but Coraline tells us how she needs to act “to be brave.”

The long hallway leads to a parallel world where she becomes trapped,d. Gaiman excels in his descriptive writing of this other world, complete with “other parents” with large button eyes, and learns that her real parents have been stolen and hidden, and she finds what is left of three young children who were trapped there and had their souls stolen and hidden.

Her cat somehow makes it to this place, but it can talk in this world and is a help. Alive in a dark closet with the three soulless children, she decides to free her parents and then lost souls by challenging her not-mother to a contest,

The contest is another mother's struggle, but she finally gets back and saves her parents and the lost children, who can live alone. Even safe in the real world, she learns that her other mother has sent a severed hand to get the door key from her. She eventually overcomes that threat. Her parents seem to pay more attention to her after all this has happened, but they don’t remember what happened to them.

It seems less likely that the book's plot is designed to solve the children's problems of being ignored than it is to be scary. It works.

Fairy Tale a Novel by Stephen King →

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This is a different book for Stephen King, but it doesn’t surprise his fans that he did such a great job with it—a good starting place for those afraid of his books.

The Fairy Tale is a dark fantasy published on September 6, 2022. The novel follows Charlie Reade, a 17-year-old high school kid who lives with his father, George, who inherits keys to a hidden fantasy realm and finds himself leading the battle between forces of good and evil.

When Charlie was seven years old, his mother was struck and killed by a van, and the resulting grief led his father to alcoholism, from which he eventually recovered.

One day, Charlie discovers his elderly neighbor Mr. Howard Bowditch injured in his yard and calls an ambulance. Charlie agrees to watch Mr. Bowditch's German Shepherd, Radar, while Mr. Bowditch stays in the hospital and cares for him when he returns home. Mr. Bowditch shares with Charlie his .45 caliber handgun and a stash of gold pellets that he uses to pay the hospital bills. Several months later, Radar's health has significantly declined, and Mr. Bowditch suffers a heart attack and dies. He leaves Charlie a recorded message, revealing that he is 120 years old and that the locked shed in his backyard contains a portal to another world. In this world exists a magical sundial that was the secret to his longevity. He also reveals the world as the source of his gold. Determined to prolong Radar's life, Charlie seeks out the sundial and revitalizes the dog.

The fantasy world adventure is the last half of the book, and it lives up to the title. It is a skillfully crafted fairy tale.

No Time Left by David Baldacci →

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A short story and a little unusal from Baldacci. This short story is about an assassin who at first seems kind of interesting. Usually you expect a short story by a big author will have a deep message or a real twist of irony.

This killer is somewhat stoic about his job. That leads us to thinking again that the story will be a real surprise. I have seen other reviews where the reviewer in the name of bordom reveal the plot. Pretty easy to do that because it has a short plot. I won’t be doing that. I won’t tell you that it is a little surprise who is kill target winds up being and where the target is.

The story could have been a useful part of a bigger novel and Baldacci is very capable of having done that. So why didn’t he? Maybe he just wanted to sell a cheap ebook? Even if he does he won’t make much at the cheap price and he will not gain new readers just make some of his old ones made.

I probably need to apoligize if you already know. Too bad. The story isn’t bad, after all Baldacci is a good writer. Even so I am giving it 3 stars. I am a generous reviewer. .

Literature of Belief Sacred Scripture and Relitious Experience edited by Neal E. Lambert →

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The Literature of Belief focuses on sacred literature, some considered holy scripture, and concludes the nature of religious experience by looking at the sacred texts of several of the world's significant religions. This, along with studying the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, opens the book's writings for comparison and often some reasons for the differences.

William James' definition of religion, "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand about whatever they may consider the divine," the very center of his definition of religion," is presented at the beginning of the book and was a practical reference point of looking at the various literature gave.

At the foundation of great religions lie holy books. Not all religious texts have the sacredness of scripture, but few religions survive and thrive without creating a literature of belief.

This book contained overviews of the writings of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Latter-Day Saint Scripture. The respect shown for each religion is clearly of the most importance to this book.