Reading Fanatic Reviews
All Nonfiction ReviewsThe 6-Figure Ghostwriter by Matthew Thrush
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
The 6-Figure Ghostwriter*
One Long Advertisement
When I saw this book pop up at my favorite book reviews site, the blurb sounded too good to be true, but it caught my attention because I have toyed around with the idea of ghostwriting for some time. I have done a variety of writing both on the job and for the companies I have worked for, and I do enjoy writing. I was hoping this book might be the answer to my questions about how to exactly break into this business. Unfortunately, the book is more of an extended advertisement for the writer’s mentorship and course business that purports to teach you all that you need to know to become a six-figure ghostwriter. The first part of the book is his description of the early days of his ghostwriting business, which doesn’t actually sound too good as he had to put out an obscene amount of words to make his financial goals. Following this most extended description of his early ghostwriting career is a section of testimonials from people who have taken part in his courses or mentoring. The chapters following give a little bit of information, but even this is mixed with healthy doses of more of the author’s backstory and philosophy. There is little that is actionable here, aside from signing up with Upwork for ghostwriting jobs and signing up for the author’s courses. Really, this is just one gigantic advertisement for his “ghostwriting business” business, where he will supposedly help you on your path to your ghostwriting career. I know that lead magnets are often published on Amazon and other outlets, but usually they actually have something to offer the reader beyond the advertisement. Unfortunately, this book does not.
By the way, out of curiosity, I followed some of the links to his courses. The one he gives you a coupon (so you can get it for free) at the end of the book is a dead, 404 link. One of the links to one of his more expensive programs is live, but even the link about his other courses goes to a 404 page. Buyer certainly beware.
The Tidy Guide to Writing a Novel by Rachel Aukes
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Thalia, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Bol.de
The Tidy Guide to Writing a Novel*
Might Help a Real Beginner Get Started
This is a super short guide about how to write a novel. There are only four chapters. The second chapter gives tips for planning, whether you are a plotter or pantser (or somewhere in between, like most of us are); she does this in very broad strokes. In the third chapter, she goes over more precisely what she calls Little Ups as well as more specific information about the novel writing process. Little Ups, I think, is an odd phrase; they’re meant to motivate people to write in short stages, which could give a sense of accomplishment as you fulfill each milestone.
The book does give a thumbnail sketch of one writing process, which may or may not work for every writer. While there are some good tips and hints, it doesn’t feel like there is much substance to the book. You won’t really learn how to write a novel by reading this book, although you may be encouraged to do so. There is nothing really new here hasn’t been talked about in more detail in other books, magazines, and writers’ forums. But if you’re relatively new to writing (or are considering writing a novel), you might find this book is one that can help with your new author mindset and get to you heading in the right direction.
Love Food, Love You by Sally Plevin
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Love Food, Love You*
Book Lacks Needed Resources
The author states that if you follow her 6-week course of action as detailed in the book, you will come to a better place in your relationship with food. The author has a clear understanding of what motivates a too emotional connection to food. She states that her program will help break these emotional bonds and help you create a more normal approach to food. For each week, the chapter is divided into two sections, one section dealing with eating and the other with thoughts and emotions. Each chapter ends with an exercise that is supposed to help get more in touch with ourselves and our bodies. Supposedly, this book was taken from a 6-week course that the author has done live. I felt like most of the chapters were too short. For all the promises made in the first chapters, I didn’t really see how what she promised could be delivered by what was actually contained in the chapters. I haven’t had the time to actually work through all these chapters to actually say if they are efficacious or not. I do like that the author does try to impart that we need to be kind and forgive ourselves. We do tend to beat ourselves up in our relationship with food, only seeing our failings.
I did receive an ARC of this book. The link to the Table of Contents brings me to a blank page. I hope that has been remedied in the book offered for sale. I found another issue as well. The book does have links to her website for the meditations in the book; I am always glad when books with meditations do that. Unfortunately, I believe she recently had a server move or upgrade. I actually had to do a search on the first week’s meditation to find it as I was brought to a File Not Found 404 page when I tried to follow the link given in chapter one. Here’s the link to the currently available meditations for this book: https://www.theliferaft.org/lfly-resources-download. Unfortunately, not all of them are uploaded; except for the intro one, the text for the rest of meditations was not given within the book itself (so there is no way you can do them yourself without downloading them from the website). There’s a brief bring-to-body-awareness meditation mentioned in one of the earliest chapters before the 6-week adventure begins that is not at the website at all; the last three meditations are missing from the website, too. On the page that does contain the available meditations, she states that they are still in the process of moving things over so not everything is there. I run a website or five myself, and it would seem that it would take longer to type that excuse than to actually upload and link the meditations, but maybe that’s just me!
As four of the main seven meditations are actually missing at the website (and three of these four not actually given in the book), I feel like I can’t give this book a good review until these problems are remedied.
If the book had correct links so the meditations could actually be done (or even had all the meditation within the book itself), I would give this book 4 stars. As the book isn’t actually functional without the links, I have given it a one-star review.
Work Ethic: The Lost Credential by Michael R. Hogan
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, Smashwords, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Work Ethic*
Odd Combination of Topics
This book is a strange combination of what should probably be two separate books and one pamphlet. It is split into three sections: work ethic and related ideas, how to get a job, and what do after you have a job (surprise answer here).
The bold line in the blurb suggests that something is inherently wrong with today’s workforce that makes getting and keeping a job difficult. The answer, it would seem, is that we have lost our collective work ethic, and the author purports to address that issue in this book. This rankles me to some degree because I do not see the problems in contemporary business to rest solely on the back of the rank-and-file employee; if workers have abandoned the work ethic (which I do not believe they have), the argument can be made that businesses have abandoned the worker with slash-and-burn policies that are focused solely on the bottom line or covering the company’s posterior.
For a book that is supposedly all about the work ethic, that topic itself is a small fraction of it. Part one of the book does have a small section that is specifically labeled “work ethic” and then goes on to explore what might make that up, like attendance and accountability. I found this section to be rather generic and quite banal. The author made broad, sweeping statements, usually about how terrible workers are, but didn’t back it up with any sort of research or quantifiable facts. Part two gives details on the standard way of getting a job, like a cover letter, your resume, and the interview. Having participated in the job-getting process at various times over the last 30 years, I find his examples to be mired in the distant past. In this age of online job applications, even for higher-level positions, cover letters and resumes are a wholly different beast. Part three seems to come completely out of left field. After all the previous writing in the book had been about being an employee and getting a job, these few throwaway pages seem to be about becoming an entrepreneur.
While I don’t know much about the author beyond what he stated in his Amazon bio, I get the impression that he has been an entrepreneur for a long time, and while he might have worked with businesses, he has not truly been an employee in one for some years. So I don’t think he actually has any great authority to speak on this topic, and this is borne out by what is actually in the pages.
The Simple Life Guide to RV Living by Gary Collins
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
The Simple Life Guide to RV Living*
Beginner’s Guide to RVing
If you’ve ever considered giving up your home or apartment and living in an RV, this book has information about the different types of RVs as well as tips for RV living. The first third of the book or so isn’t so much about this but more about the author’s take on downsizing your life (perhaps a little repetitious if you’ve read his other books), the history of vehicles and RVs, and his own personal story about taking this path. I found some of this part of the book a little tedious, as I was just wanting to get to the information. The rest of the book, though, is chock-full of information and insights for those who are completely new to the idea of RVing permanently (or those considering doing so). You won’t learn everything you need to know about making this lifestyle leap, but it will give you much food for thought and practical guidelines.
Copy Cocktail by Kerrie Legend
Available at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Copy Cocktail*
Solid Information but Bad ToC and Annoying Theme
As I have several businesses myself, I am definitely interested in creating better copy, so I was drawn to this book. The author does have enthusiasm for writing compelling copy. In this book, she discusses good and bad copy with a lot of examples, both made up and real world. If you’re relatively new to marketing, you will find a lot of useful information that will help you on your path. She even goes into a little about which English rules you can (and should) break and effective use of language in copy. There are lots of numbered lists to give you ideas from topics about figuring out your optimal customer to how to best target them, whether in a headline or on a sales page.
The biggest drawback to this book has nothing to do about its information but its organization. For whatever reason, the author has built up this whole book idea around alcohol and cocktails. I think the metaphor is stretched far too thin and actually becomes a bit tiresome. But it created a bigger problem. To me, the best non-fiction books are very transparent at several points, like the blurb and table of contents. The clear blurb gets me to buy, but well done table of contents not only preframes me for what I’m about to read but can also be the signposts needed when I want to refer back to a particular book topic. It is part of the old “tell him what you’re going to tell him” that is crucial for a non-fiction reader. Unfortunately, the author instead chose to make a table of contents that was more cutesy than practical, with chapter headings that tell you nothing about the content like Mocktail Style Writing and Magic Cocktail Syrups.
That said, I think the book has solid information that can help you with marketing and better copywriting. Just be sure to bookmark the pages that you might want to refer back to because the table of contents will not help you at all in that regard.
Brilliant Burnout by Nisha Jackson
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Brilliant Burnout*
Ways to Work Through Burnout
In this book, a long-practicing nurse practitioner, who has an interest in optimizing health as women age, takes a look at female burnout. In the first part of the book, she details the history of her own burnout as well as her professional interests in helping women. The first chapter is about classic burnout, and it starts with a list of questions to see where you fall on the burnout scale. At the end of this first chapter, she gives a few simple ideas that you can implement right away, and she suggests that you start with the rest of the book by picking the topic that seems most relevant to you and your symptoms of burnout. After that, she suggests going through a chapter a week, allowing for those with busy schedules to slowly taking what she has to offer. Further chapters explore hormonal components of burnout and keys to successfully overcome burnout.
In general, I thought this book was full of good information about burnout and what to do about it. Given the way that she suggests the reader approach the book, the structure of the book seemed counterintuitive. She suggests we choose a chapter about what is most bothersome about the burnout we currently face, yet the chapters are not arranged that way, and you have to poke around to figure out what chapter would best suit your needs. She does have appendices of supplement suggestions, and she does own a supplement company. One of the things that she espouses throughout the text is a low-carb, low-glycemic, high-protein diet, which from my own studies I do not necessarily believe is the best diet and certainly not the best for everyone.
If you suffer from burnout, you might find the discussion and suggestions in this book helpful. Like all recommendations for diet and supplements, you should do further research and perhaps discuss it with your healthcare provider.
2 Dangerous Things in a Year by Terry Williams
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
2 Dangerous Things a Year*
Not Quite Cohesive Enough
The title of this book intrigued me. The subtitle suggests that the book is all about change and how to become better at rolling with the changes that work and life often bring. Unfortunately, I found this book to be somewhat scattered, and it did get off the target message more than once. While the author has done two dangerous things a year for some time, the book really isn’t about that. So, perhaps he should have had a title that had more to do with what the book was really about. A good part of the first section of the book describes people’s different reactions to change along with ideas that further explain or augment the concepts. That is an excellent start to a book on change. Following from that, the second part should have been about moving from being change resistant (no matter what your degree) to be more accepting and even a champion of change, but that was not how the second part unfolded. It felt too generic; it really wasn’t as much about change as it was about basic ideas like gathering resources and support or troubleshooting. The book seemed repetitious in parts. This seemed like a loosely cobbled together set of articles rather than a cohesive whole. I’ve enjoyed other works by this author, but this one fell short and did not deliver on its title or subtitle.
Augmented Mind by Alex Bates
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Augmented Mind*
Gets You Thinking about Artificial Intelligence… and Beyond
Like most of us in the modern world, I imagine, I am both intrigued and wary about the concept of artificial intelligence. So, when I found this book at a book review site that I use, I was curious, as the title seemed to suggest something more than straight-up artificial intelligence would be discussed. I am delighted to say that I was right. The book is written by an author who is a pioneer in artificial intelligence, and in this book, he offers a different and potentially heartening future of AI and IA. The book first details his own history with the concept, starting with finding an intriguing article on neural networks when he was a teenager to the sale of his AI firm and beyond. The first part of the book is a collection of his thoughts on why we need to see a broader role for both humans and machines in the future of AI, a future in which he sees as a hybrid of both that could allow for more than we can even envision today. The author decidedly does not want us to be wary of the future, and he thinks that intelligence augmentation is the path to that better future. He details the history of both artificial and human intelligence in a way that is both compelling and fascinating in what it could mean for the future both artificial and human intelligence. As one who is somewhat skeptical by Nature, I found myself drawn to his vision of the future. A cracking good read for anyone who is intrigued (or leery) about the future of AI… or who simply likes to future think.
Make Your Own Rainbow by Leonard Ryzman
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Make Your Own Rainbow*
Positivity Pop Psych
The subtitle of this book suggests the key to creating the life you want is to take charge of your emotions. But in reading this book, I found that the emphasis was more on thought than emotion, even though the author did write a full chapter looking into the dynamic use of emotions (though I don’t quite agree that that was really covered in the chapter). The author states at the beginning of the book that it will help you get past obstacles that stand between you and the life that you want to lead. The book is full of examples of people who have overcome sometimes rather difficult hurdles in life. I felt like the author took some broad concepts of this book from other people who have written books on self-help and positivity but added more (or different) anecdotes to support the ideas. I thought that the chapter on adding years to your life didn’t quite fit the overall theme of the book as the rest of the book is mentally, not physically, oriented. I will admit that chapter 4, when I saw its title in the table of contents, gave me pause for inclusion in such a book. I had to look at it right away, and it literally made me laugh out loud. You will find little new here, but different ways of looking at the same concepts impact people in different ways—so you may find that this book resonates with the way that you approach these ideas.
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