Cure For the Common Life book review

Cure For the Common Life

Max Lucado

c. 2005

Thomas Nelson

ISBN 9780849900082

Filled with encouragement, Lucado’s book gives Christians a boost to discover our uniqueness to showcase the glory of God. Not ourselves, not even to contribute to society, but to praise and glorify our Creator. What an intriguing and refreshing way to think of ourselves in God’s eyes.

The spirit has given each of us special gifts to make a big deal of God.

How do we find them? This book is divided into two parts: the first is an exploration of our uniqueness; the second, a workbook showing us how to find it.

Lucado gives pages of statistics from surveys that show Americans claim to be unhappy going to work. Since God wants us to work, what do we do? How do we break out of the “epidemic of commonness?” Lucado counsels us to find our true talents by studying ourselves and learning who we are so we can match our abilities with suitable work. “Re-relish your moments of success and satisfaction. For in the merger of the two, you find your uniqueness.”

We’re also encouraged to understand the concept of “enough”; or not to let gathering stuff compound our ability to honor God. The author encourages us to know God and to be fully known by accepting the price he paid for us, keeping our focus and worship on him. And in that vein, think of our work at worship. After all, it belongs to him. Make everything count-even the smallest of deeds

Filled with stories of people from Biblical through modern times who listened to God and themselves to discover their innermost gifts, Cure For the Common Life will cheer the reader who is also searching for purpose. The second part of the book, the workbook, guides us through the S.T.O.R.Y. process: finding our sweetspot (reflecting on enjoyable things done well); the recurring themes in our lives; optimal conditions (what kick-starts and keeps our interest); the relationships in our lives; and the Yes! component-what I can do to improve and affect others. There are also notes and a chapter by chapter study guide.

I received a copy of this eBook from BookSneeze for review.

Review of A Wedding Invitation by Alice J Wisler

A Wedding Invitation

Alice J Wisler
c. 2011
Bethany House
ISBN: 9780764207334
$14.99
Contemporary Fiction

Past and present collide after Samantha attends what she thinks is her former roommate’s wedding. While visiting her esoteric aunt at a butterfly launch during a memorial service, a former student from the refugee camp where she worked several years ago invites her to a meal and destiny.

Wisler’s story of a quiet young woman with a broken heart and living in a rut is a sweet tale of misunderstanding, mistaken identity, judgment and forgiveness. Set in the early nineteen-nineties, with flashbacks to the mid-eighties, the tale is woven between Samantha’s experiences teaching American customs to Vietnamese refugees in the Philippines, awaiting placement after the end of the conflict. Samantha gives her heart to a fellow teacher, Carson, who’d promised his college sweetheart he’d remain faithful. When Sam realizes Carson means to keep his promise, she forgets about a future filled with plans to become a teacher, goes home and works for her emotionally reticent widowed mother.

After the chance encounter with her former student who is delighted to let her know that Carson lives nearby and would like to see her again, she eventually and reluctantly meets him. Their stories gradually come out and the misunderstandings are laid to rest. Even the wrongly accused student doesn’t hold Sam’s accusations of theft all those years ago against her, and asks for help finding the mother who gave her up for adoption.

Told in first person, A Wedding Invitation is an upbeat message that happiness and love involves risk, faith, and trust, and that helping others can revive even the dampest of spirits. Readers who enjoy the music and sounds of life at the end of the twentieth century, the news, the songs, the food and fun of the era, will enjoy this tale of a quirky aunt, mom, and shy young lady ready to come out of her shell.

The Measure of Katie Calloway

The Measure of Katie Calloway

By Serena Miller

c. October 2011

Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group

ISBN: 9780800719982

14.99

Historical Fiction

Miller’s story about an antebellum abused wife fleeing north to Michigan timber country and winds up as a cook in a rough and tumble lumber camp is a satisfying step back in time.

Katie Calloway, young and naïve Pennsylvania minister’s daughter, marries her brother’s West Point friend and moves south to become mistress of a slave-run plantation. Not only does she enter the strange and confusing world of ownership of other humans, the War Between the States becomes a reality and she is left alone when her husband goes to fight. The story begins a couple of years after the conclusion of the war, when all that’s left to Katie and her young orphaned brother is her pride. Realizing that her husband does more than just despise her, she takes Ned and runs.

Blessed with jumping into the right place at the right time, Katie meets Robert Foster, owner of a lumber camp, who is in need of a cook. At the camp filled with rough lumbermen for a winter of work, Katie is thrust into an experience that will either make her stronger or break her spirit for good. Getting along with the wounded camp cook who is supposed to help her is only the first bump in the road. Falling in love with the wounded widower, Robert, and his children, and keeping her secret, is compounded when a former slave of her husband’s shows up to work at the camp. And when her brutal husband eventually tracks her down, will anyone come to her rescue?

Miller’s use of shanty song refrains to open each chapter is a delight, and adds just the right nuance to each section. I could hear the singing and fiddle playing, smell the pine trees and the flapjacks during her wonderfully smooth narrative. Characters that capture your heart, from the surly trickster Jigger, to the gentle carver Cletus, to Moon Song and her baby, to Skypilot, the once-upon-a-time preacher, readers of historical romantic inspirational fiction will escape to the years immediately following the Civil War in the boom time of Michigan with this lovely read. Reminiscent of other great reads, like Naomi Musch’s Empire in Pine series.

Serena Miller is the author of Love Finds You in Sugarcreek, Ohio, as well as numerous articles for periodicals such as Woman's World, Guideposts, Reader's Digest, Focus on the Family, Christian Woman, and more. She lives on a farm in southern Ohio.

Available October 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group

New Edition of Multi Award-Winning Book Released

Thousands Expected to Dig for Nuggets

Novelist, poet, and book marketer Carolyn Howard-Johnson releases the second edition of the first book in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter.

Among those supporting Howard-Johnson’s book are self publishing gurus Dan Poynter and Shelley Hitz, book marketers Dana Lynn Smith, Patricia Fry, D’vorah Lansky, and Aggie Villaneuva and even some fun stuff like a full book of poetry from Magdalena Ball and advice on feng shui from Anna Maria Prezio, Ph.D. Leading the charge is Amazon and book launch expert Denise Cassino.

$9.95 for The Frugal Book Promoter in its Kindle iteration (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkProKindle) or $12.82 (discounted from $17.95) for the paperback on Amazon (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo).

Howard-Johnson, an instructor for nearly a decade at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, chose to have the new edition published in both e-book format and paperback in order to give her struggling students and clients affordable and convenient choices.

Whichever format a reader chooses, The Frugal Book Promoter assures an author’s book the best possible start in life. Full of nitty-gritty how-tos for getting nearly free publicity, the author shares her professional experience as well as practical tips gleaned from the successes of her own book campaigns. A former journalist and publicist (she wrote media releases for fashion designers like Christian Dior), she tells authors how to do what their publishers can’t or won’t and why authors can often do their own promotion better than a PR professional.

Howard-Johnson even assigned a new subtitle to this edition of her book to reflect its appeal to a broader array of authors. It is now The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher. She says, "With the advances in Internet marketing and the role social media plays in communicating, it was high time even writers who had the first edition had access to my frugal (frugal of both time and money!) ideas for new networking opportunities." The big, fat book (416 pages) also has money-saving ads in the back and an amazing new cover—the epitome of “frugalness”—by Chaz DeSimone, www.chazdesimone.com.

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of 14 women of “San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen.” She has worked for Good Housekeeping Magazine and as a journalist for several newspapers and has been a popular presenter at writers’ conferences nationwide like the one at San Diego State University and the Sinclair Lewis Writers’ Conference. She is also a novelist and poet, which informs the advice she gives to authors of those genres.

Learn more about Howard-Johnson at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com and http://carolynhoward-johnson.com.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Instructor for the renowned UCLA Extension Writers' Program

Author of the multi award-winning series of HowToDoItFrugally books:

The Frugal Book Promoter

The Frugal Editor

The Great First Impression Book Proposal

Great Little Last-Minute Edits

E-mail: HoJoNews@aol.com
Web site: http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com