Cancer, for Anita Moorjani, was a devastating diagnosis. I know. I was recently told I have pancreatic cancer and can relate to her. As she explains in Dying to be Me, all possible emotions run amok and many are not easy to deal with, especially when family and friends react from their own place in life, attached agenda, and fear. The early chapters of Dying to be Me begin with the reader understanding Moorjani’s Indian culture and belief system. She also addresses arranged marriage and suppression of women while giving them a role of only being a submissive wife. This concept didn’t resonate with her, and although she submitted to an arranged marriage, she also called it off, much to the distaste of family and friends. In the end, Moorjani did meet her soulmate and married; he was accepted by her family and the marriage grew in strength....more

The Synthesis Effect: Your Direct Path To Personal Power and Transformation by Dr.John Mc Grail is a wonderful book which explains the mind from birth together with strategies to live life fully devoid of avoidable pain, suffering and the negations of stress. According to Dr.McGrail, the seven deadly memes of class consciousness are an obsession with lack or denial, the crave for control, personal and societal isolation, empiricism or the need to prove everything, the separation of the spiritual and physical realms, conditional love and falsely derived self esteem....more

The Angel's Game is a prequel to Carlos Ruiz Zafón's previous novel Shadow of the Wind. I’m very excited about Carlos Luis Zafón's new book The Prisoner of Heaven coming out this month, so I decided to revisit and post about his previous book, which I read about a year and half ago. David Martin, an orphan, finally achieves success writing the series “City of the Damned”. Martin’s work catches the eye of Andreas Corelli, a publisher from Paris, who offers Martin a large amount of money to use his literary skills to create a new religion....more

Based on extensive research both in American, as well as British archives, David McCullough tells of the powerful drama which took place when General George Washington marched towards freedom or certain death. Men of every shape, size, and occupation marched with Washington, from bookseller Henry Knox to boys who became soldiers. Standing against them were the professional and powerful British army led by Commander William Howe....more

The Messenger by Daniel Silva is the sixth book in the Gabriel Allon series. Allon is an Israeli agent who is more interested in restoring works of art than the world of espionage. When an al Qaeda operative is killed in London, some photographs are found on his computer and the Israeli intelligence suspects that the group is planning a big attack aimed directly at the Vatican. Israeli agent Gabriel Allon finds himself in a battle of wits against dangerous men which takes him on a hunt across Europe....more

I must confess, I knew very little about LeRoy Neiman before reading this autobiography. I first saw some of his lithographs at charity golf outings and I was impressed, but that was the extent of my knowledge of his life and work. Now, I know that the late LeRoy Neiman was an eccentric man who hob-knobbed with famous people and was well respected in the commercial art community. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t so respected in the fine art community....more

There may just be no writer alive who more accurately writes L.A. in all its ravaged beauty than Joseph Wambaugh. He vividly conveys the grit and biting observations of the denizens who populated Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and often with an extravagance that any Angelino could tell you isn’t extravagance at all. Los Angeles may just be the one place on earth where truth IS stranger that fiction. If his bad guys seem over the top to the reader, then the reader has never spent any significant time in L.A. because in L.A. over the top is a way of life....more

Though I’ve been a comic book lover for decades and have attended my share of midwest and east coast conventions, I’ve never been to the grandest con of them all, San Diego’s Comic-Con. All things financial considered, I don’t see myself attending it any time soon in the future either, but like many stay-at-home fans, I won’t stop reading the on-line reportage once the event kick-starts....more

Not Taco Bell Material, by comedian and TV and radio personality Adam Carolla, is a personal biography about a man who climbed the ladder of success working at jobs, such as carpenter and later progressing to radio, televison, comedy and acting. Carolla grew up in a house that was termed "The Barn" by the neighborhood. During his teen years, the family had little money and he had low self esteem. For a long time, Carolla and his family moved laterally and not vertically up the ladder of success....more

He is also a long-time sufferer from clinical depression and the addictions that helped him deal with that depression in a very destructive way: alcoholism, food issues, shopping and shoplifting, and sex. It took him a lifetime to learn that he had a real problem (he thought all Italians felt the way he did) and to realize that the "dis-ease" as he prefers to refer to it had also affected his mother and other relatives in his family. Asylum tells the story of this disorder and his recovery from despair and addiction, as well as being a fascinating acting memoir....more