Category: E-Books

No Place Like Nome

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Engelhard, Michael. No Place Like Nome: the Bering Strait Seen Through Its Most Storied City. Corax Books, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I occasionally read interesting books. This one was fantastic!

Engelhard spent a “three year stint” in Nome, Alaska and took the time to write about his experiences. Confessional: I enjoy books that are well organized. No Place Like Nome is separated into four logical parts: first, geography of the place, then the characters and personalities within the place, the business and art of Nome, and finally, journeys around the region.
Engelhard is informative without resorting to didactic explanations. Linguistics (the use of the word Eskimo for example), anthropology, short biographies (Sally Carrighar, Edward Sherriff Curtis, James Kivitauraq Moses, Father Bernhard Rosecrans Hubbard, Roald Amundsen, and Lynn Cox), the importance of whales to the Nome culture (confessional: I did not know their bones were used as construction material), the history of jade, the advent of bicycles. The photography was amazing. My favorite was the one of Serum-Run racer Leonard Seppala.
What seem barbaric and strange in our culture is commonplace in the far reaches of civilizations like Greenland, Siberia and Alaska like hunting practices and diet.
Because I read this an an ebook, it would have been great to have footnotes that jumped to the corresponding image or text.

As an aside – was it a typo when Hrdlicka was later called “Hard Liquor”?

Personal complaint – here is a description that bugged me, “nude mermaid on a floe’s edge with her feet dangling in the water.” Hello? Does anyone remember Ariel? Mermaids have tails, not feet.

Author fact: Michael Engelhard won the National Outdoor Book Award for Arctic Traverse. The photo Engelhard used for Nome shows him drinking what looks like to be a beer. I’m dying to know what kind it is.

Book trivia: No Place Like Nome will be published in September 2025.

Setlist: Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” “Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Paganini, “Float Coat” (to encourage water safety), and Madonna.

To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone

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Andersen, Christine. To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone. Cloeofpleirn Press, 2025.

Reason read: this was an Early Review for LibraryThing.

I have this habit of trying to solve mysteries while I read. I needed to know if Maggie was a real person and if she was, who was she to Andersen? Like a detective searching for clues I looked for answers within the words. Andersen’s daughter? No. Stepdaughter? Maybe. As I read on I stopped caring if it was real or fiction. Andersen words flow as a clear stream of meaning and you cannot help but be caught up in the flow. The reader has a vivid picture of Maggie as a child, a rebellious teenager, a lost young adult forever adrift. The imagery of angst and inner turmoil is crystal clear. So is the author’s inability to save Maggie. The feeling of helplessness and the hopelessness of trying to save a drowning soul is palpable. I read this over and over and over. While the words were painful the language was so beautiful. Beauty among the thorns. “To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed” as Natalie Merchant would say.

Confessional: They say that once someone is deemed truly suicidal, meaning they have tried to die more than once, they won’t stop trying until they succeed. If that is the case, really and truly, then I am really and truly fukced.

I Thought I Had You Forever

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Gary’s Mum. I Thought I Had You Forever. Publish Nation, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I often read books that grab my heart and do not let go. This is one such book.

Gary’s mum lost her son when he was just thirty years old. While on vacation in Portugal Gary went to sleep one night and never woke up. For the first fifty pages of I Thought I Had You Forever Gary’s mum does a great deal of soul searching. There is a brief and didactic interlude (about ten pages) about various religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Spiritualism, and Atheist.
I have always compared grief to fire. You cannot control grief just as you cannot control a fire that has burned out of control. Both are unpredictable and ever-changing. Just when you think you have grief (or fire) licked, something will trigger a flare up and the fight starts all over again. Grief can be a rollercoaster of up and down emotions. Grief can leave you drifting without purpose. Grief is the rudder, always determining your course of healing. Grief is searching. Where did you go? Where are you now?
Confessional: I am not a mother. I do not know the pain of losing a child in any capacity, yet I Thought I Had You Forever kept me up at night. We all grieve differently. Gary’s mum lost her ability to enjoy music for nearly five years while I clung to every note and melody and lyric to keep my missing alive. Gary’s mum didn’t listen to music for four years while I couldn’t play mine loud enough.

The lesson learned is grief is grief is grief is grief. It does not matter what the relationship. Losing someone is hard.

Author fact: Gary’s mum wrote I Thought I Had You Forever “from one mother to another.”

Music: “Buffalo Soldier,” John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and David Bowie.

Carrying the Tiger

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Stewart, Tony. Carrying the Tiger: a Memoir: Living with Cancer, Dying with Grace, Finding Joy While Grieving. West End Books, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I occasionally hit upon poignant books that stay with me long after I have read the last word. This is one such book.

Just by the title of the book, you know the subject matter is going to be hard to read. The subtitle “Dying with Grace” pretty much tells you that someone does not survive cancer. And so, almost begrudgingly, you steel yourself for a tough time of it. Tough time, it most certainly was. At times I found myself asking why I was so affected. I don’t know Tony or Lynn at all. Except, the more I read, I felt like I did. Tony’s words were so intimate and honest. Even beyond the unfathomable sadness, quite unexpectedly I ended up laughing, getting angry, and caring. Chapter by chapter, page by page – laughing, getting angry, crying, and caring. Over and over again. Full confessional: I had to read this in fits and starts. Sitting with Stewart’s words for long periods of time was difficult for me to do. I’m still not 100% finished.
Carrying A Tiger starts on a Sunday in September in 2014. Lynn had been feeling ill on and off for two months and on this particular Sunday she learned why. This was the first time the couple learned something was terribly and terminally wrong. For the next six years Stewart (and his wife) bravely shared every part of the couple’s journey through cancer. The intimacy through words is astounding.

As an aside, the title of the book comes from Tai Chi. There is a gesture of scooping low as if to collect a tiger to put him as far away as possible. The further away, the more he is perceived to be small and of little consequence. I have to wonder if Tai Chi is a common prescription for cancer patients. My OM had a bunch of videos found in her collection after her death from a brain tumor and my coworker mentioned Tai Chi while she was going through chemo.
As another aside, I had an ah-ha moment while reading Carrying the Tiger. Tony wrote about “…downplaying painful details” so that friends would not abandon them. Maybe that is what happened with J. Maybe when I shared the awful month when OM died it was TMI and so they ghosted me. I said too much.
As a third aside, Tony’s description of “Covid-19 times” brought back memories. When he described people banging on pots and pans to honor the healthcare workers I remembered my drummer friend who religiously drummed every night at 7pm from his Brooklyn window.

Author fact: Tony Stewart is not a writer by trade. He began his foray into a relationship with words when he kept a journal on CaringBridge.org. The words did not stop just because Lynn was no longer with him. The words became this book.

Book trivia: I was surprised to see color photographs. How lovely.

As an aside, I am a fan of anyone who quotes e.e. cummings.

Confessional: I need to know if Stewart has seen “After Life” written by and starring Ricky Gervais?

Housekeeper’s Secret

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Schnakenburg, Sandra. The Housekeeper’s Secret: a Memoir. She Writes Press, 2024.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I often get to read interesting books. This was one book I inhaled.

Sandra Schnakenburg has always been good with numbers so it seemed like a natural fit for her to become an accountant, but an author? That seems a little farfetched until you learn that her childhood housekeeper of thirty years had a dying wish for Schnakenburg to tell her life story. Then when you read the stories Schnakenburg has to tell about her housekeeper and friend, Lee Metoyer, it all makes sense. This is an important story that needs to be told for many reasons. Lee’s life was as incredible as it was tragic. However, Schnakenburg’s own upbringing is just as compelling. Hers is a story worth telling, too. She grew up in an affluent neighborhood in an extravagant house with five siblings. This was a household where someone had to feed the koi that lived in the pond under the grand staircase. Someone had to iron the bedroom linen. Someone had to line up seven different breakfast juices so that the man of the house could take his pick. The list goes on. Hidden behind the curtain of Schnakenburg’s perfect childhood hides abuse, corruption, and fear. The Housekeeper’s Secret is a story of survival and triumph on multiple levels.
Confessional: sometimes I noticed little inconsistencies. In Housekeeper’s Secret Schnakenburg’s timeline becomes a little skewed. She was six years old when her father took the family to Disneyland, but in the previous chapter she is seven. [Schnakenburg also gets Disneyland confused with Disneyworld. I do, too.] In another scene Metoyer’s cup is empty but she takes a sip of coffee.

Quote of a quote to quote: “There is always that one summer that changes you” -Beth Merlin. Amen to that. I was 23. I experienced the first summer romance of my life and then my father died.

Music: Elvis, “Happy Birthday”, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, Glenn Miller’s “When That Man is Dead and Gone”, “We Are Family”, and “Paper Doll” by the Mills Brothers.

Cracking Up

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Lownds, Gordon. Cracking Up: From Rising Star to Junkie Despair in 1,000 Days: an Unlikely Addicts Memoir. Life to Paper, 2025.

Gordon Lownds begins his story in October of 1998 in rehab. He calls himself an unlikely addict, but how easily a stripper crackhead turned his life upside down (all for the sake of hot sex) indicates otherwise. Annabelle got him to pay for acting classes, an apartment, clothes, jewelry, headshots, twenty-eight days of rehab (which did not work), a vehicle, and so much more. She was a blackmailing siren who took Lownds entire life and dashed it upon the rocks.
As an aside, I seriously could see Lownds’s story ending up in a movie. His over the top personal life of joining a carnival when he was seventeen, being a male go-go dancer for a short time, and being a bass player in a band seemed Hollywood enough; never mind the fact he is a divorced father; there is plenty of graphic sex, violence, wealth, drug dealers, cops, and drama in his adult life. Let’s not forget Annabelle, the gorgeous troublemaker who started this whole adventure. His story is too outrageous to be true. Reading Cracking Up was a very wild ride.

Confessional: I lost a friend to addiction. If it wasn’t outright suicide, it was an accidental overdose. I have to wonder what really made Lownds, at forty-eight years of age, decide to try crack cocaine for the first time? Was a woman really to blame?

Second confessional: my link to Cracking Up expired and somehow the book was not save to Funnel. I did not finish the book.

Setlist: Enigma, Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime”, “Suicide Blonde” by INXS, “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne, “Private Dancer” by Tina Turner, “Purple Rain” by Prince, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”, Nine Inch Nails, “Life in the Fast Lane” by the Eagles, and Tower of Power’s Back to Oakland.

Goodbye to a River

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Graves, John. Goodbye to a River: a Narrative. Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.

Reason read: June is National River Cleanup month. What better way to honor the event than by reading a book about a little known river called the Brazos?

The premise behind Goodbye to a River sounds like something I would do. When John Graves found out the state of Texas was going to dam parts of the Brazos River he decided to take a three week journey on the river of his childhood to say goodbye. Portions of the Brazos clearly reflected Graves’s childhood memories. Other times he reflects on the history, myths and legends of the region. At times he becomes philosophical, thinking of “Saint” Henry David Thoreau and “Prince” Ernest Hemingway, but more often he recounts tales of violence and racism: scalpings, hangings, raps, and murders indicative of the Comanche history of the region. He mentions Charles Goodnight from time to time. Occasionally, he interacts with locals he meets along the way, but most of the time he is alone with a dog he calls the passenger. My favorite parts was when Graves remembered the exact same trees he used to climb and the same beaches he used to build campfires on.
Did you know that October is the best month for traveling the Brazos for the weather is at its most pleasant?

As an aside, I would like to hear a canyon wren singing in harmony with her desert landscape.

Lines I loved, “You are not in a hurry there; you learned long since not to be” (p 3), “The silent air of ruin is fragile” (p 44), “Heights have that kind of humor” (p 126), and “One can get pretty literary on islands” (p 168).

Confessional: when I said Goodbye to a River reminded me of myself, here is what I meant. I was supposed to be paid off from the job I had had for over twenty years. Knowing the end was near, I spent four weeks saying goodbye to every corner that meant something to me.
As another aside, I am watching Only Murders in the Building (yes, I know it has been out for a while). Brazos makes me think of Steve Martin’s character.
As yet another aside, the mention of Alma-Tadema paintings reminded of Natalie’s interpretation of his daughter’s poem, “If No One Ever Married Me.”

Author fact: Graves taught “off and on” at Columbia and spent time wandering and writing (according to his biography).

Book trivia: the children’s version of Goodbye to a River was illustrated by Russell Waterhouse.

Playlist: “Annie Laurie”, Frank Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, “The Good Old Rebel”, “Beulah Land”, “Drink to Me Only”, “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton”, and “Rambling Wreck”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A River of Words” (p 201).

Safest Family on the Block

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Brick, Jason. The Safest Family on the Block: 101 Tips, Tricks, Hacks, and Habits to Protect Your Family. YMAA Publication Center, 2025.

The first thing that struck me about Safest is the number of introductions in addition to the preface and foreword. There is an introduction for every chapter (all ten of them) as well as an introduction to the book by Larry Hagner, a foreword by Andy Murphy
Jason Brick has consulted a plethora of people for how to keep his family safe: a parenting coach, author, registered nurse, Federal Air Marshall, several CEOs and presidents of companies, a safety influencer, fire safety captain, army sniper, mental health clinician, babywearing expert; even a SWAT team crisis negotiator and a US Secret Service agent. There are twenty experts testifying to the validity of Brick’s information.
It all started when he became a dad for the first time and the advent of COVID.
Each chapter of Safest is barely longer than two pages so despite it being jampacked with information, it is surprisingly short. Brick will teach you how to stay safe in a myriad of different situations: fire and accident, automobiles, school, online, sex, relationships, communication, travel and crime. He debunks popular myths like stranger danger and has a special chapter on school bullying and your child’s online life.
Favorite portion of the book: the Golden Rules Action Plan, a checklist of things to do for a safe environment at the end of every chapter.

Favorite quote, “Even if your action isn’t optimal, it will still be better than doing nothing.” Amen to that.

Author fact: you could call Jason Brick a jack of all trades. He is a writer (obviously), a safety expert (duh), but he also is a traveler and a martial artist.

Book trivia: Safest was born out of a “show” with one hundred episodes.

Two Years Before the Mast

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Dana, Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: a Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Fearon Publishers, 1971.

Reason read: June is Celebrate Oceans Month. Maybe that is a made up reason to read about the ocean, but I’m going with it because it is a good time to sail.

Two Years Before the Mast is the true story of Richard Henry Dana’s two years spent at sea first, on the brig “Pilgrim,” bound for California via coastal South America. Using his journal to write Two Years Before the Mast, one has to remember this is August 14th, 1834. Time before canals and motorized vessels. California was not part of the United States. In 1934, California was part of Mexico. As a Harvard student, bound for a career in law, Dana had to take a hiatus from his studies when an illness affected his eyesight. Doctors recommended some time away from the books to allow his eyes to rest. The brig “Pilgrim” is in the business of transporting animal hides and furs. Once on the “Pilgrim,” Dana quickly learned about life on the ocean on the fly: getting over seasickness, learning to push through fatigue, finding his sea legs. Once settled into a life at sea, Dana then had to desensitize himself to a tyrannical captain who flogged sailors ruthlessly and without provocation, long days of continuous work, and making the most of shore leave.
This is a great account of life at sea as well as in ports. As an aside, I had to laugh when Dana’s vessel could not get over a sandbar at low tide due to the unusually heavy load they were carrying. They had to wait until low tide in order to be released from the channel.

Lines I liked: said of San Francisco – “If California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the centre of its prosperity” (p 194).

Confessional: I have spent most of my life on the ocean so when Dana described dolphins swimming just a few feet below the surface of the water I could picture every color.

Author fact: Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Book trivia: Two Years Before the Mast was illustrated by Dennis Dierks and my copy provided a biographical sketch by Dana’s grandson, H.W.L. Dana.

Playlist: “O Pescator”, “Onda”, “All in the Downs”, “Poor Tom Bowline”, “The Bay of Biscay”, “List, Ye Landsmen”, “Heave, to the Girls”, “Nancy O!”, “Jack Crosstree”, “Cheerily Men”, “All in the Downs”, “Poor Tom Bowline”, “The Bay of Biscay”, and “List, Ye Landsmen”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “See the Sea” (p 201).

Civil to Strangers

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Pym, Barbara. Civil to Strangers: and Other Writings. Edited by Hazel Holt. E.P. Dutton, 1987.

Reason read: Pym was born in the month of June. Read in her honor.

We owe the publication of Civil to Strangers to the loving family and friends of Barbara Pym. As literary executor Pym’s sister made sure Pym’s words lived on. It is a good thing because Pym was a master at showcasing the true sense of small community. The silent dislikes and quiet jealousies; a society full of disappointed and disappointing people. No one wants to be taken for granted and yet they are, repeatedly. These are the stories of a microcosm of flawed people. In the main story, Civil to Strangers, Cassandra March-Gibbon wants her husband of five years to pay more attention to her. As a writer, Adam is terribly preoccupied. Cassandra thinks by pretending to have feelings a new stranger from Budapest she will force Adam to be more demonstrative of his love for her. The plan backfires when Adam encourages the relationship with Stefan Tilos. The situation goes from bad to worse when Tilos develops feelings for Cassandra (as one is apt to do when someone is lavishing unprovoked attention on them). Tilos in turn needs to make Cassandra jealous when she does not show any sign of wanting to commit to a relationship. Cassandra is not making Adam jealous. Tilos is not winning over the girl. Nobody is getting exactly what they want. By taking separate holidays, Adam and Cassandra allow themselves to take stock of their marital situation.

Other writings in Civil to Strangers include:

Gervase and Flora
“Home Front Novel”
So Very Sweet
“So, Some Tempestuous Morn”
“The Christmas Visit”
“Goodbye Balkan Captain”
Across a Crowded Room
“Finding a Voice” – a radio transcript.

Quotes to quote, “…but now, since her marriage, she had felt less tempted to break out” (p 17).

Author fact: Pym was twenty-three when she wrote Civil to Strangers. It was her second novel.

Book trivia: Civil to Strangers was unpublished at the time of Pym’s death. It and several other writings were publishing posthumously. The working title was Adam and Cassandra. Seems simple enough.

Music: Haydn’s Creation. That’s it.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Pym’s Cup Runneth Over” (p 195).

Note to Self

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Nova, EV and Freya Sharp. Note to Self. Harbor Lane Books, 2025.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program I get to read interesting books from LibraryThing. This is one such book.

Think of Note to Self as a collection of tiny pep talks geared mostly towards women. Yes, you can read the entire book in one sitting, if you want. There are only fifty affirmations. I would caution against inhaling the whole book at once because every chapter becomes more repetitive as time goes on. The five clearest messages are 1) you are not alone, 2) every ending is a new beginning, 3) you are capable, worthy, and loveable, 4) it is okay to say no, especially if saying yes means sacrificing selfcare, and 5) breaking down only means building up or said another way, every ending is a new beginning. E.V. Nova and Freya Sharp take turns doling out the sage advice.
In short, this is a cool little book to pick up anytime you need a little pick me up. Tell your friends!
Author fact: Freya Sharp’s bio is a must read!

After Life

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Ellis, Rhian. After Life. Amazon Encore, 2000.

Reason read: After Life takes place in New York, a city rich in culture. The Puerto Rican Day Parade also takes place in New York in the month of June.

I am the type of person who tries to look at a situation from every angle before making a judgment about it, good or bad. I want to walk around it, peer under it, climb over it and look down from above; I want to make sure I haven’t missed a single detail. So when Naomi Ash says “First I had to get his body into the boat” in the very first line of After Life I did not immediately assume she intentionally murdered her boyfriend, Peter Morton. Nowhere does she say as much on page one. Maybe Peter Morton had an accident, like falling off the roof or a fatal health episode, like a heart attack. And maybe, just maybe, since Naomi Ash lives in such a remote area she needed to illegally dispose of his body. Thinking a little darker – maybe Peter and Naomi fought and things went horribly sideways. Or maybe his death was a suicide, but he made it look like murder because he wanted to frame her. In the first two hundred pages of After Life the reader cannot be sure of anything at all. For two hundred pages Naomi slowly navigates the story of her childhood, her teenage years, how she became a medium, and her current life in the community of Train Line. She carefully parses out the details of everything but Peter Morton’s death. The mystery of what happened to her boyfriend stays tightly under wraps for a good portion of the book.
But the story is worth the wait. In the meantime Ellis writes with an other-worldly aura that keeps the reader entertained. She moves through language with languid grace, like slow moving water. Take for example, the way Ellis describes a voice falling flat in a deep snow-covered landscape. She is correct. If you have ever stood in a winter white landscape you know if the snow is deep enough it has a way of making sound plummet into an eerie depth of alien silence.
The plot of Ellis’s short book is simple. Naomi Ash, following in her mother’s footsteps, is a medium. She lives and practices her craft in a community called Train Line in the fictional town of Wallamee, in upstate New York. She has let readers know that she continues to carry the secret of disposing of the body of her boyfriend, Peter Morton. The secret has laid buried, just like Peter, for a decade. Like all skeletons, in the closet or otherwise, they eventually resurface and when Peter’s bones are discovered, the whole town buzzes with the mystery. Meanwhile, coincidentally, Naomi’s mother’s trade is growing stale and people are tiring of her. Her radio show is about to be canceled. What better way to jump start a failing career than to solve the mystery of the bones?

Confessional: as the hostilities towards Naomi grow I found myself becoming more and more anxious for her. First the child she babysits in the afternoons starts to turn on her, then Officer Peterson takes a curious dislike to her.

As an aside, when I first saw the title I immediately thought of Ricky Gervais and his show of the same name. They are not the same.
As another aside, the harvesting of grapes made me think of my wedding. All of the wine came from the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.

Lines I immediately identified with, “My mother’s good moods could be more bewildering than her bad ones” (p 64), and “You could life up one of her lies and find a truth beneath it, and then find beneath that truth another lie, and spend your whole life pulling away layers and never get to the bottom of it” (p 122), and one more, “Mothers and daughters are put on Earth to tear each others hearts out” (p 249). Enough about mothers. Here is another good quote completely unrelated to mothers, “…but opening my mouth on that subject would gain me no friends” (p 96).

Author fact: After Life is Rhian Ellis’s first and only novel.

Book trivia: the version of After Life that I picked up was a Nancy Pearl Presents a Book Lust Rediscovery. She wrote the introduction to this edition. Confession: I had never heard of Book Lust Rediscovery and wonder how many other books are republished as such.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “First Lines to Remember” (p 86).

Black Orchids

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Stout, Rex. Black Orchids. Books on Tape, 2007.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November. We’ll be here awhile.

We all know Nero Wolfe is loath to leave his New York City brownstone. The few exceptions readers have seen so far are when Wolfe thought Archie’s life was in danger or when orchids were involved. This time, it is the allure of three rare hybrid black orchids at a flower show. Wolfe cannot resist their siren song. Lewis Hewitt is the wealthy business man who has three variations of a black orchid showcased at the exhibition, and Wolfe wants them all for himself. During this exhibition, additional entertainment includes a strange exhibit of a couple miming a picnic. Day in and day out, the couple pretends to enjoy a garden lunch. When the male companion, Harry Gould, is murdered, Wolfe sees an opportunity to gamble with Hewitt for the orchids. Hewitt is facing murder charges when it is discovered his walking stick was used in the commission of the murder. All evidence points to Hewitt as the guilty party.

Author fact: Rex Stout enlisted in the Navy.

Book trivia: Black Orchids was published as a novella along with a second story, Cordially Invited to Meet Death.

Book Audio trivia: Michael Pritchard narrates the audio book I listened to in the car. Someone digitized the cassette tapes so every once in awhile Michael will say, “this book is continued on cassette number three, side A” or “this audio is continued on side B. Please turn the tape over.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226). Here is the weird thing about this addition – Black Orchids is a novella and since Cordially Invited to Meet Death is not on my Challenge list, I am not reading it.

Simplest Ways to Develop Consistency and Healthy Habits That Last

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Yung-Abu, Samson. The Simplest Ways to Develop Consistency and Healthy Habits That Last: Healthy Growth is Achieved Through Consistent Flow. Publish Nation, 2025.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing, I get to review interesting books.

Simplest Ways to Develop Consistency and Healthy Habits That Last is, by phone, a 425 page book divided into two parts. Part one is an examination of what it means to be consistent. Part two delves into cultivating healthy habits or breaking unhealthy habits while focusing primarily on exercise. The entire book is jam packed with good advice and common sense (be smart about your goals) as well as some oddball tips: sleep in your gym clothes, keep your dumbbells in the kitchen). It is also an autobiography of Yung-Abu’s fitness routines and goals.
I found the narrative to be verbose. Each element is described in several different ways. Take the subject of making exercise fun, for example. Yung-Abu states that fun is a key ingredient; fun is essential; you need to incorporate a touch of fun; fun transforms everything; you need to incorporate fun into the process; provide fun; make exercise fun-focused. The word fun was mentioned a few more time in the section, but you get the point.
Once I became comfortable with the wordiness of Simplest Ways to Develop Consistency…I started to appreciate the nuggets of knowledge. I found the connection between consistency and respect to be interesting. I also loved the idea of figuring out a workout sequence – which exercises flowed easily with others.
A fair amount of Yung-Abi’s information could be seen as common sense. Healthy habits are widely known to impact overall health and cognitive brain function. Not ever exercise book will give you an anatomical breakdown of the brain, though.

Head scratcher moment – Yung-Abu said microwaves are “fundamental to keeping us in the flow of not starving.” Weird way to put it, but what concerned me more was that Simplest Ways to Develop Consistency is supposed to be a book about healthy habits. In my opinion, cooking by microwave is not healthy, never mind fundamental. Some of the sentence structures and phrasings seemed off. It indicated that English is not Yung-Abi’s dominant language or that there was some AI assistance.

My personal connection to consistency is through Tommy Rivs. He is constantly talking about making small deposits in the bank of health. If you practice consistency you will see results.

Author fact: Yung-Abu has a law background.

Imagine If…

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Vale, Lucien. Imagine If…Tupac Did Not Go To Vegas. Shattered Mythos Press, 2025.

Reason read: I am a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing. I occasionally get to review interesting books and this was one of them.

The one thing to keep in mind when reading Lucien Vale’s Imagine If series is that it is pure fiction. You are imagining an alternate ending to a well-known story. Everyone knows Tupac was murdered in Las Vegas. Vale is simply flipping the script and imagining a scenario where Pac would decide against that fateful trip. Vale cleverly finds a real life story and imagines an alternate ending. I don’t really care if the events in New York City mirror fact or not. The whole idea is to ask what if? and to be entertained. The action of Imagine If is tightly wound and fast paced. It reads like a movie with exaggerated dialogue full of gangster lingo and drama. If entertainment was Vale’s goal, he succeeded.

Confessional: one of my favorite movies is Sliding Doors starring Gwyneth Paltrow. It is the story of Helen’s two very different lives: the life she would lead if she had caught the train going home and the alternate where she misses it.

Author fact: Lucien Vale has also written an “Imagine” book about Bruce Lee.

Book trivia: Imagine If… is a very short 77 pages long.