Saturday, December 20, 2014

Book Review: You Can, You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner

You Can, You Will Joel Osteen Book Review

This is a short and a really easy-to-read book from America's most popular Christian preacher, Joel Osteen.  This book is quite similar to his previous book in terms of context and preaching principles.  To those of us who already read Joel's previous books before and who watch his sermons often, this book may contain a lot of repetition.  For those who had never read Joel Osteen's books before and who had not watched his sermons, this book is an inspiring and uplifting guide to living a better life and the messages are easy to remember.  We love Joel and we listen to his sermons over and over again so this book presents no new material to us.  We would like to listen to this book on tape though. It's because listening to his preaching repetitively can help us reinforce the positive thinking that Joel has instilled on us. We highly recommend young people to read this book.  The earlier one starts reading, the longer one can lead a happier life. We just wish our parents could teach what this book taught us when we were teenagers.

Did you already write a review on this book on your own blog?  If so, please post your blog's Name and your blog's link to your book review in the following comment box:)  We would love to visit your blog or website:)  

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Book Review: Diary of a Mad Diva

book review Joan Rivers

This diary started with Joan's 2013 New Year vacation in Mexico and  ended on December 2013, with Joan watching the ball drop in NYC on the TV in her hotel room in Mexico. On Joan's last entry in her diary, she talked about how she would like to host New York's ball dropping event and new year countdown to 2015.  It's hard to believe that 2014 was her last new year countdown.  She was so funny throughout her book and she was always so full of life and energy.  While she made fun of  her  death  many times in her diary, I don't think she actually anticipated that she would not live to see 2015.  After reading the entire book and having a lot of good laugh, I'm now feeling a little sad for the loss of a really funny and entertaining comedian.  There was no one who cracked jokes like Joan Rivers and there won't be anyone like her.  She isn't afraid of offending anyone and therefore her jokes are so funny and are of no limit.  I find this book very hilarious and I truly enjoy her humor.  But for those who are politically correct and are sensitive, or those who are always serious about every topics,  this isn't a book for you.  This is a book about jokes and this is a book that makes fun of everything and everybody. So read it as is with a sense of humor and crack yourself up from the first diary entry to the last.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Book Review: The Wreath Recipe Book


This book is not just about making beautiful wreaths.  This book presents lots of how-to instructions of various floral decorations and arrangements for every season.  Each project is presented like the format of  a cookbook recipe, which is more action friendly for readers to work through.  The book is full of beautiful and inspiring photos.  The style of the arrangements is contemporary minimalist, which focuses on using simple techniques and simple materials with minimal handling.  Most of the plants and floral used in the book are easily available and they require minimal trimming.  The book is full of inspiring ideas on how to make the fullest and best use of the floral materials in season that would otherwise have gone into the waste basket, if the traditional elaborate arrangement techniques were used. The inspiring simple designs of the projects show how floral and plants can become absolutely stunning decorations when we focus on showcasing their most natural forms instead of relying on over elaborating and complicated techniques.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Book Review: Stepping on Roses Vol 4


In this volume, the melodrama had progressed to include a corporate power struggle, an infiltrator within a household, and the expansion of the love triangle into a love "square".  There is really no limit on imagination and story development in this Japanese Manga.  This book is quite entertaining and it takes my mind off my very stressful reality for one hour.  Yes, it takes this long to finish one book and this is the beauty of reading a Japanese Manga.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Book Review: Stepping on Roses, Vol. 3


The story is getting more melodramatic in Volume 3.  For some reason, it's also not as funny to me as the previous volumes.  It's entertaining enough however.  There are a lot of pretty drawings in Magna fashion. The plot in this volume further established the rivalry between the two handsome leading men in the love triangle.  It's a quick entertaining read during the subway or bus commute.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Book Review: Your Best Life Now


Whether we are religious or not, this book wastes no time in setting our mentality straight from Chapter one. Whether there is a God to bless our life,  it helps if we make ourselves vision the best of our life and future. After all, what good does it do us when we keep telling ourselves, "We can't do this, we can't have this or that..." Since it really takes the same energy and oxygen for us to vision the positive and the negative, why not vision the positive?  For those who have faith in God's blessing, they have all the reasons to not worry but to vision a great prospect, but for those who don't believe in God, they particularly have to see clearly the positive and should even try harder to see the positive because when a hunter can't see, he can never hunt the boar down.  May be for the God blessed hunter, he can close his eyes and a boar will run into the tree next to him and drop dead.  But for a hunter who isn't blessed, he has more reasons to keep his eyes open, to vision and see even more carefully.  This is a great book to set us off to a more positive mentality right from the beginning of reading.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Free Book Giveaway Your Money Or Your Life


We are giving away the above book to our blog's followers. As of today, we don't have anyone who participates in this giveaway, so we are going to extend this. On April 30, 2014,  a winner will be randomly picked and will be announced here on this blog. To have a chance to win this book, please do the following:
  1. Be a follower of this blog through Google +, Facebook, or Twitter.
  2. You can tweet this giveaway on Twitter to get an additional entry to win this book.
  3. Scroll down the side bar on the right and click "Like" on Facebook to get an additional entry.
  4. Scroll down this post and fill out the giveaway participation form.
Good Luck:) 

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Book Review: Sanctuary by Nora Roberts


This story is very similar to another fiction that I read years ago, the title of which is "Dead Sleep".  The latter book was extremely impressive to me when I was reading it because what the heroine saw was so terrifying and so mysterious that I thought it was a great eerie idea for a story to begin. Unlike Nora Roberts' book, "Dead Sleep" however doesn't have much romance in it and it is mainly a suspense mystery.  Now fast forward years later when I was reading Nora Robert's "Sanctuary", I was not as excited. It's not because the story was not interesting, it was mainly because the mystery had no shock value to me anymore after I had read something similar and more suspenseful.  I realize  that Nora Roberts' "Sanctuary" was published years before "Dead Sleep" was written.  I probably would have loved "Sanctuary" a lot more if only I hadn't read "Dead Sleep" before.  I'm not sure why, I was beginning to feel bored by Nora Roberts' same old sex scenes and love making pages.  I was so bored that it took me a few months to finish reading the book.  This had never happened to me before when I was reading other Nora Roberts' books.  Despite having the similar eerie idea of a mystery, I feel Nora Robert's version is a lot toned down in the suspense department.  May be because it's a story where romance is the main dish and suspense is only the side dish. I felt that there were too many pages dedicated to tedious girl chats, and the same sex dynamics that had been used many times already in Nora's other books. Yet there was not enough adrenaline draining adventures for the characters; in terms of their journey of falling in love and finding out the real murderer.  May be I'm just growing out of Nora Roberts' style of romance?  I'm sure I would have loved this book very much  if it were the first Nora Roberts book I read.  It's a decent read although it didn't amuse me as much as I was expecting to be amused.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Free Book Giveaway Born to Darkness by Suzanne Brockmann


We are giving away the above hardcover book (in new condition) to our blog's followers. As of now, we have no participant in this giveaway, we therefore extend this to April 1, 2014.  A winner will be randomly picked and will be announced here on this blog. To have a chance to win this book, please do the following:
  1. Be a follower of this blog through Google +, or Twitter or "Like us" on Facebook.
  2. You can tweet this giveaway on Twitter to get an additional entry to win this book.
  3. Share this blog post on your Facebook A/C to get an additional entry.
  4. Scroll down this post and fill out the giveaway participation form.
Good Luck:) 

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Books Behind The Fashion Ledgend


At the first glance it's not the woman, who happened to be the legendary Coco Chanel who caught my eye.  What mesmerized me was the impressive collection of books that is the backdrop of this photo. Somehow the books give the photo a lot more depth and a majestic aura around the fashion icon.  I really love the photo a lot. What books can do in this photo is something that our e-book can never do.  I still haven't been able to read a book on any of my Kindle Fire from start to finish.  I however had watched a lot of movies and TV dramas on it:)

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Book Review: Your Money Or Your Life


If you are expecting to read a book that provides advice on investment or money management, this isn't the book you should read.  But if you are looking for some good laughs, and some entertaining life lessons that you didn't get enough from your parents, then this is quite a fun book to read.

This book is a collection of some of the commentaries that Neil Cavuto gave on his TV Shows on Fox News Channel throughout the years.  Some of the commentaries provided accurate predictions about how the Federal government would run into financial trouble because they were spending based on optimistic estimates when the cashiers were ringing in surplus.  I have to admire Neil's foresight during those prosperous years when Clinton was in office.  I had not watched him back then but I assume he probably was one of the few who was singing the sour tone during those surplus years?

While I am impressed with his perspectives about the Federal Reserve, the government spending and some of his values on morals and patriotism, I disagree with him completely on the war on Iraq and his unfair rants on doctors, among other things.  Regardless of my disagreements with the book and the author, I overall find the book fun to read.  My goal in reading a book is not to have someone agree with me, but to see what others are thinking, particularly those who are supposedly educated and smart.  Reading this book makes me realize how serious mis-information can be.   If the smart and educated ones like Neil can't understand the logic behind his wait time at the doctors' office, then how do we expect the mass of voters who are less educated to have sufficient understanding on whom to vote for as their President?? This revelation is quite scary and makes me feel pessimistic about my future.

To the author:

By the way, Neil, I just want to tell you that, the reason you have to wait so long in your doctor's office was because the patients ahead of you either arrived late or over ran their 15 minutes' appointments with a long list of complaints, questions and special requests on diagnostic tests, prescriptions, or other demands like filling out state disability applications, insurance forms and other nonsense paper work which the insurance companies don't pay the doctors to do but they have to do!!!!  Each patient appointment has to be done in 15 minutes in order for the doctors to make a living.  Unlike you, the doctors have to share lots of overhead expenses and they are all ripped off by the insurance companies, the government and also the patients who try to get so much done with $10 dollar co-pay cheap insurance plan which pays the doctor $20 to $50 per appointment!!  The doctors' office scheduling system has to schedule 15 minutes appointments throughout the day, any patients arriving late and over running the appointment duration will push the patients behind them to later of the day. Also, all those phone calls to the doctors, insurance companies and medicare don't pay for them either! So any patients calling the doctors and asking questions on the phones, push your appointment back also.  Get it????  What I'm surprised is, for people who make so much money like yourself, you can easily afford to pay extra to go to a Concierge Doctor who charges more, but schedules less patients in a day, and who is more flexible in giving special appointment at the time specified by the patients.  I use Concierge Doctor even I don't make 6 figures salary like you.  It's because I think Doctor is well worth my money and I don't see why a doctor should work for free to see me.  I never had to wait to see my doctor.  I sometimes even go see a Doctor after work or even on weekends!!!!  You want service, you have to pay more.  Fox isn't going to let us watch your show for free, why are you expecting the doctors to work cheap?  I think Doctors are more valuable than you.  I will turn off the TV before I complain about how much I have to pay to see my doctor!!!!  Don't compare your work schedule with the doctors' who have no control over their time at all and they don't just sit in front of a camera and look pretty for a couple hours and make 6 figures.  Doctors have to work many hours and often have to work at home on stupid paper works that they didn't get paid for.  If you compare the pay by the actual hours they work, many of the doctors don't make much per hour, may be even less than a hair stylist. Yet the stress and legal risks are so much more, even more than your job, Mr. Cavuto!!

Why do people never complain about the price of a hair cut but their doctor's $10 appointment??  What's wrong with this country??? Stop whining about how much the doctors make, they make peanuts compare to guys like you and the executives in the so-called healthcare administration and insurance companies who don't do anything for my healthcare but add the overheads and therefore my insurance premium.  The patients like myself are ultimate victims and the doctors also suffer.  So get your enemies straight, Neil!! Go whine about all parasites who are eating the "Healthcare" pie,  not your doctors, who are just the hosts and their blood is being sucked too,  just like mine, get it????

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Happy 2014!!!

To start a rewarding New Year, we are extending our book giveaway to another month. Please feel free to claim your free fun read!!!