I’m happy to share this unique collection of poetry with you all today. Read on for more info, and a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card!
Younger & Wiser: Peaceful Words for a Troubled World
Publication Date: September 1st 2020
Genre: Poetry Collection
A unique literarymasterpiece, richly seasoned with wisdom, humor and inspiration.
In Younger and Wiser, Gene S. Jones travels beyond traditional formats to explore the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences. Utilizing pithy vignettes anchored by clever backstories, Younger and Wiser relates the eclectic saga of the author’s fascinating personal odyssey. The result is a mind-expanding reading adventure that expresses heartfelt emotions and life lessons while demonstrating a deep appreciation for humanity’s ability to improve itself. Featuring intimate storytelling and witty humor interspersed with profound wisdom, Younger and Wiser delivers bite-sized nuggets of invaluable insights for readers of all ages.
Giveaway: A $25 Amazon gift card, open to everyone. The giveaway will run from today until September 12th. Click the here to enter!
About the Author
Nationally acclaimed game show host Gene Jones has spent his life inspiring others to achieve creative excellence. From teaching seminars on innovation, serving as Associate Editor of the Guinness Book of World Records, and thirty years of professional speech writing to entertaining audiences and producing major events nationwide, Jones has enjoyed a colorful career. His many achievements include success as a writer, entertainer, producer, director and business executive. His brilliant use of backstories in Younger and Wiser bridges the gap between literary memoir and eclectic verse to become the missing link between mainstream non-fiction and the poetry genre.
We tried out the Whisper Challenge using sentences from books off of our bookshelves! It was a lot of fun and we had some ridiculous results. Watch us attempt our way through this! Check out the video below:
Chris is back at it again with more reviews coming your way. He has also been working hard on his new blog This & That Books which you should go check out. This time, he read Sparrow in the Mirror by Kunal Narayan Uniyal.
Look at that composited artwork on the cover, a bird with birds within it, fading at a wingtip into dark vagueness, smaller version trailing along like an image echo. This is a cover of a book of poems. To me, the cover reflects the poems within this book.
Like the birds within the birds, there are definite themes that reoccur and are layered such as the ones on spirituality and religion. Hindu religion and the Veddas, Christianity and the Bible, mixing of both together. There are the themes on life, on pain, on suffering, on death, on redemption, on egos, of the release that lies beyond death, on love, on the transience of life and our works. At times the words are stark with only one meaning, other times they fade into the dark like the wingtip on the cover, leaving you to fill in meaning from your own experience, making the poems more personal to you.
From a technical standpoint, rhythm varies, is free-verse at times, mixed with a rhyming couplet that emphasizes points. Some lines stand almost in contrapuntal harmony with two melodies being played, but working together in the same song.The cadence of some of the poems reminded me of songs by Natalie Merchant, e.g., Merchant’s Ophelia with Uniyal’s Maya.
There’s an excellent use of repetition such as you see in poems by T.S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. It can be done throughout the poem such as in Uniyal’s poem Something Is Not Right, where the title is repeated at the end of each verse on separate occasions; or in one line such as this part in the Wheel of Time
Standing in that lonely hall with those words
Resounding hard and hard and hard
I’m alone, came so; will leave the world even so.
Google repetition and T.S. Eliot or repetition in poetry to see how this common poetry device is used to reach the reader.
So, how well did the use of structure, of phrasing, of poetry devices like repetition, of ambiguity, of hidden meanings that echo back upon themselves to produce harmony (like a Bach fugue—which is just a more complicated version of four groups singing Row Row Row Your Boat as a round) come together?
Quite well. Some poems I read several times, I memorized parts that spoke to me. The poem Mother made my eyes sting a bit (“I’m not crying, you’re crying!”).
The Wheel of Time,
I try creating my life, new structures of delight,
But alas! With my return, all are turned into rubbles
Worth not a single dime.
Who created it, which destroyed my vast stride,
My ego or the wheel of time?
reminded me of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley where the following words are carved into a base of a crumbled decaying giant statue that once would have been awe and fear-inspiring, but now turned into rubble.
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
We read this Bysshe poem in middle school and it almost precipitated an existential crisis in me as I realized even great works will erode away, and I, myself, will one day not exist. I had an echo of that feeling with Wheel of Time although in this case I’m fine with one day not existing (but not quite yet please because that TBR pile isn’t going to reduce itself).
Another poem Search of Life was thought-provoking with several meanings built one on top of the other that you’d only see upon subsequent readings.
Other poems, like House, are simple in their meanings, but convey a sorrow of things lost.
Now that the houses are big, hearts are small.
There are rooms everywhere, but hardly a place for all.
Doors are now locked tight, even God
Needs to try hard to squeeze in
Each confined to its own world,
Calling it house which was home before.
The appreciation of poetry is a subjective thing, perhaps far more so than other books. This makes them harder to rate as we each bring our own interpretations to the verses. As mentioned earlier, when we bring in our own interpretations, we bring in part of ourselves into the poetry so that we connect with it. That connection is an indication of poetry done well.
This book of poems connected with me. I think it was done well. I will be rereading many of these poems again. I hope other readers will also find a connection to these poems.
Book Rating: 5/5
In the mood for a fun western story? Check out Billy (The Kid) by Peter Meech and satisfy that craving!
Pueblo, Colorado,1932. Bootleggers thrive in a town where the sheriff is on the take and you can kill a man with impunity. In this thrilling narrative, a once-famous outlaw finds himself thrust into the middle of a bootleg war against his will. At stake is nothing less than the life of his best friend and his last chance at true love with the town beauty. But is the legendary gunman who he claims to be, or is he just a retired dentist with a vivid imagination? Peter Meech reimagines the figure of Billy the Kid in a remarkable story told with verve, humor, grit and grace.
About the author: Peter Meech is an author, screenwriter, director and producer. He also mugs for the camera on occasion. His website is www.petermeech.com.
Chris is hammering these books out of the park and spending his time in quarantine helping me out from a distance. This time he read The Frightful Verses: A Collection of Fearful Poems by Francisco a Ojeda.
Synopsis: A collection of one hundred poems meant to entice the curious and frighten them in many different ways. From the classical and gothic to modern and contemporary, these poems address different subjects seen from the poet’s unique perspective. Aspects of horror, terror, science, religion, politics, philosophy, and even humor fill these pages.
Earlier this year a rather one-sided Twitter debate started when an established author said new authors should read contemporary books if they want to write their own book. A small minority objected saying they could study all they needed from the old classics because those authors knew how to write.
Numerous others pointed out that reading contemporary books help you know which tropes and clichés you should avoid in your own writing. It doesn’t matter if you can write like an old master if you’re writing something that people have seen a hundred times before.
For example, I was reading a science fiction novel written by someone who probably hadn’t read any science fiction novel since the 1970s. It had all the datedness of Heinlein’s bad writing and sexist language without any of the high points of his writing. It didn’t matter that it was well-written. It read like a spoof of bad science fiction tropes from the 1970s.
So, potential authors should read modern books in the genre they wish to write.
That is the advice I would give to the author of The Frightful Verses. In fact, I would advise the author to also study the classics in addition to the modern verses. Nearly every one of the poems (I counted 101) in The Frightful Verses would get at best a C+ mark in a Grade 9 or 10 high school class.
There were 70 poems with four-line stanzas with a rhyming sequence of 2 and 4 (2nd sentence rhymes with the 4th sentence). There were over a dozen with rhymes 1 and 2, then 3 and 4. Sometimes they’re broken up into two-line stanzas and once into six-line stanzas, but they still use similar rhyming patterns and similar metronomy. You could jump from one poem to another and not notice you were now reading a different poem.
For example, see the poem below.
On those rainy gray days
From under the cover, I stay
To keep me warm
And protect me from harm
In a broken mansion
With all the cracks and creaks
You stepped through doors
Not opened in days and weeks
In the long past
A myth had grown
As memories seem to last
A chest was left alone
In a caverned home
Off stagnant Adam’s ale
With pillars shaded gray
And curtains of pale
Entering into the lab
And looking around to see
She was surely ready to stab
Whatever it could be
Neighbors outside their homes
And pointing to the skies
To watch a smoky trail
Behind the thing that flies
That’s actually not one poem. It is composed of the first stanza from six consecutive poems. I could have made it 20 stanzas long from 20 consecutive poems, but six stanzas provide enough example to show the similarity in patterns that is found in nearly every one of the poems. One poem in that style is interesting: seventy to eighty of the same style is tiring.
The other major failing of these poems is that they lack ambiguity in their meanings. Metaphors are mostly absent; the poems are fairly literal and don’t leave much room for altering interpretations. Compare that to T.S. Eliot’s The Wastelands, or The Second Coming (below), which are rife with enough symbolism to fill weeks worth of poetry class discussions.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Or The Hollow Men, also by Eliot.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Even many contemporary songs use ambiguity and symbolism to good effect: Hotel California (Eagles), Demons (Imagine Dragons), Ophelia (Natalie Merchant), Mad World (Gary Jules), Behind Blue Eyes (Limp Bizkit).
Good poets know how to tell a story just in meter and rhythm. They know when to stick to a pattern, they know when to suddenly change it; they know when to use the rules and know when to break the rules. While Francisco does sometimes change his rhyming pattern in mid-poem (as is good), he often forces a rhyme when it would be better to also break it. He used “clichés” to rhyme with “away”. And my favourite example,
It slithers over the sand
Grains stick to its skin
Hoping to gather a meal
Digests all by ptyalin
There are several dozen other rhyming “skin” words that could be used instead of “ptyalin”. However, kudos for getting the word “ptyalin” into a poem: I’ve never seen “ptyalin” used outside of my biology books. It’s an amylase enzyme found in saliva that digests starch. A loaf of bread is fair game for the slithering “it”, but proteins, keratin, lipids, and calcium (muscle, skin, fat, bone) or even cellulose (plants) will be safe—saliva-soggy perhaps, but safely undigested.
If you’re going to write poems you need to read poems. You need to google how to write poems. You should read a book on writing poems. You should really take a class in writing poems. This book of poems, unfortunately, seems to have been written by someone who has done none of the above—and that is a shame because there are some rough gems hidden within the poems. They just need a more knowledgeable, experienced, and craftier hand to make them shine.
Disclaimer: This book was sent to us in ebook format by the author to read and give an honest review.
Check out Lisa King’s brand new novel called The Vanishing Hour which is available now on Amazon! She is a Canadian author from London, Ontario and I am super excited to share the love on her new book! If you like post-apocalyptic books, then this one is for you!
Our external reviewer Chris is back with a review for us. He has been a little MIA traveling the world but alas we are all stuck at home now so he had some time to do some reading. This one was called The White: The Tensurrealist Playby Lepota L. Cosmo.
A short summary of The White:
‘Twas brillig, and the worpy twerbs did grye and gimble on the lage.
A longer summary:
In 1996, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted a paper to the academic journal Social Text, which published papers in postmodern cultural studies. Sokal’s paper, titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. His paper was accepted and published.
Three weeks later Sokal revealed that the article was a hoax. He had made a “word salad” by taking the most often used words in post-modernist writings and stringing them together to make full sentences. Everything he wrote was nonsense yet it had been published in a post-modernist journal because it sounded good to the editors, and flattered their ideological preconceptions. There is now a Sokal Hoax Generator that generates nonsense that sounds like it might mean something. See http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/.
A real poor version of the Sokal generator is the “Word Salad Generator”, which takes the poem lines “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold” and turns them into “WERE YALE ARRANGE WRINGS ANNE AH APE MIDNIGHT BUG BUG WE BED ZOO BAIL WORD BOND”. http://cadrpear.tx0.org/wordsalad/salad.html
The White reads like it was produced by the word salad generator that has English as a second language. Lest you think I exaggerate see the screen captures.
Some of the words aren’t recognizable as words although admittedly they’d make perfectly cromulent words that would embiggen your vocabulary at the next cocktail party as you casually say, “Please pass me some of the frapant fruit”. And there are some phrases that would make for some good band, blog, or book names: flowers of abomination, ornamental collectivism, blood of conteiner [sic], and dogs smashed mirrors.
Capitalization and punctuation are used or not used rather randomly. At times, parts almost seem to make sense (spelling errors in the original):
(Speakers emphise the words. Every word is energy,
gesture, phenomenon. extension of sense imposed by
previous speaker. Talk between words,
not between statements, the dialogue of notions. One word. One man. One concept. Which fits, in sense of others. There is cohesion, coherence of words. Words in divergent communion. Divergence.)
before lapsing into a column of seemingly unassociated words and phrases.
Other parts have a common theme although they still don’t make sense, and have strange spelling errors that may be intentional or accidental: “Theatre of inarticulated signs. Theatre of articlulation” (bold added). That last word could be a clever combination of “articulation” and “ululation” similarly to the words Lewis Carroll uses in his nonsense poem Jabberwocky that still convey meaning despite being made up. , “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;”
However, it is unclear whether bits of brilliance like this are intentional or were random accidents similar to the analogy of a room of monkeys banging on keyboards might accidentally produce a line of Shakespeare.
It could be that this work is far beyond what my brain can grasp without an altered consciousness experience. Maybe someone else would read it and find illumination, discover understanding, and go beyond the boundaries of their mind. Maybe if read in a beat poem rhythm listeners would gain enlightenment.
But, for most of us we wouldn’t find any value in reading it.
Disclaimer: This book was sent to us in ebook format by the author to read and give an honest review.
Check out this book called Dork by my author friend Will Winkle about a guy trying to get his crush’s attention while navigating his life as part of a fraternity house!
OMG Bookworms! I go to Ireland tomorrow. I am so freaking excited. I did a lot of reading this week to get my OWLS in for the Magical Readathon. So far I have completed Defense Against The Dark Arts and now having completed this book, I have completed Herbology. Speaking of this book, it is called Roses in December: Haunting and Macabre Tales by Matthew De Lacey Davidson.
Synopsis:Roses in December is a short story collection which defies categorization. Some of the stories are haunting – others are deeply troubling.
A man receives a religious vision in his ordinary back garden; a nuclear physicist in Australia experiences a great surprise where he least expects it; a duct-tape salesman unsettles his faithful customer; Voltaire does not put his best foot forward; someone makes a grim discovery upon waking up in a prison; a psychiatrist does his best to treat a political extremist; a nineteenth-century photographer goes about his usual (and highly unusual) business; and a wealthy neighborhood in Montreal becomes the scene of an immense and avoidable tragedy.
This book was too short. I loved it and wish there was more of it to consume my time. It has over 20 short stories in it and they are all so different yet exciting. Some of them are super eerie and when you are finished you are like “heck yes, I love when they leave it with such an ominous tone”.
The last one is very sweet and I believe the author wrote it about someone very special to him. It is about life and how it moves on but we always stay connected to those that are close to us, be it family or not.
You will not get bored reading this book as each story is only 4-5 pages each and the book itself is only around 115 pages. I find that I am a big fan of short story collections and will continue to find more of these to read. Especially dark, thrilling ones.
If you like short stories then I suggest picking this one up.
Disclaimer: This book was sent to us in physical format by the author to read and give our honest review.
Is anyone taking part in the Harry Potter Magical Readathon? Here is my video showing the books I chose to read for my OWLS! Let me know in the comments if you are participating.
Hey bookworms! Guess what?!?! Well, you probably already know from reading the title of this post but I am going to Ireland and Scotland! I am so excited about this trip and it is so hard to contain that excitement.
The planning stage has begun and I am looking into all the best things to do in both places. *Also trying to travel on a budget but I feel like that might be tough*. If you have been to either of these places and have suggestions on what to do then please leave them down in the comments!
I may be away from the blog during those two weeks as I will be exploring a new place and sipping beers (Guinness) and kissing stones (oh Blarney). So I just thought I would let you know. But this isn’t happening until mid-April so I will still be posting regularly until then.
We ended our giveaway that we were hosting from the author interview we had with Shelby. The winner will receive pdf versions of her poetry books. The winner of this prize is…
Aayushi!!
You can find her on Twitter and Youtube. We will be in touch to let you know you have won and will send you your prizes.
I also released my second video onto book tube yesterday so feel free to watch it here and make sure to like and subscribe if you like it!
What is new with my favorite bookworms? I was perusing Twitter, doing Twitter things when I came upon a post about another blogger that wanted to do guest posts and in general just connect with other bloggers. So I reached out to her and am glad I did because she is an amazing person and super nice. It is always great to make new blogging friends.
Shelby Eileen is a queer Canadian writer in a perpetual state of stress concerning her unmapped future. Eileen studied at Brock University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature. She uses the knowledge and skills gained from her degree throughout her daily life, even if others hardly notice that she does so. One of her many dreams is to live alone in a little apartment with a cat and good writing energy. Her published works include; soft in the middle, sunfish, Sunshine, Sadness, and other Floridian Effects, and Goddess of The Hunt. In her free time, you can find her listening to audiobooks, crocheting, or sending pictures of corgis and Jake Gyllenhaal to her friends. The next thing she hopes to tackle after another poetry collection or two: romance novellas! Connect with her on Twitter and Instagram. Her handle is @briseisbooks.
We conducted a Q&A with her as she is a budding author with her poetry collections and we wanted to learn more about her. Without further ado, here is our Q&A session!
Author Q&A
What is your top read of 2019 so far?
Definitely, without a doubt, The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty.
What is your favorite book friendship?
Ginger and Daniel from 2 of my favorite romance books by Roan Parrish- Small Changeand In The Middle of Somewhere.
Most anticipated book release of 2019?
Oof, there’s many, but The Fever Kingby Victoria Lee, I Wish You All The Best by Mason Deaver, and If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann.
How many books are in your TBR Pile?
TOO MANY (definitely 100+).
Who is your favorite author?
Madeline Miller. She writes my favorite Greek myth/historical fantasy books; The Song of Achilles and Circe.
How did you start writing?
I’ve always taken advantage of writing classes if they were offered at school – in high school and university. I recently did a creative writing workshop, which was amazing and helped me get in touch with how fun and therapeutic writing is. I think what got me into writing in a more serious way was the drive to depict the under-represented parts of me; my queerness, my religion, and my fatness.
Where is your favorite reading spot?
My bed.
How long have you been an author?
I’ve been a published author since December 2017.
What do you like about reading?
I love how much I learn through reading, the community that comes with it, and how sentimental and comforting certain books can be.
If you had to describe yourself in a book title, what would it be?
Let’s Talk About Love (by Claire Kann) … I think I just read so much romance it kind of permeates my brain lol. Also, as a writer and a human, it’s so important to me to distinguish different types of love (romantic, platonic, familial, etc), and lift them all up as being equal and significant.
Great answers Shelby! This interview was an amazing success. I am always joyed to connect with book lovers of all ages, sizes, and sexual orientations. This book blog is about honesty in reviews and having an open dialogue with other bloggers/authors. I strongly encourage you to go follow Shelby on social media to stay up to date with her books that she is writing!
Shelby was nice enough to send me copies of her poetry books for a giveaway! So if you would like to enter, just click on the image below. We will be announcing 2 winners in 1 week. Good luck!
Bookworms!! Guess what?! I have another review for you. But before I jump into that, I have some news to share with you. I have been reaching out to different Canadian Publishers to see if they wanted to do some collaborations and a couple have responded and wish to do so! You will be seeing some fantastic work from these publishers when I get to working on our collaborations but for right now, I am just super excited that they want to work with me 🙂
For the review, this one is called The Cosmic Hello: Lessons in Co-Dependency by C. Alexander.
Book Synopsis: “Couples therapy sessions slowly morphed into solitary therapy sessions. My therapist kept coming back to the question of my passions, and where I was headed. I knew it was writing. So I wrote. I wrote my pain of loss. I wrote my confusion about the existential questions that plagued me as someone who grew up in the bible belt, but had a hard time swallowing the bigotry I saw. I wrote my struggle through heartbreak and single life. I wrote my triumphs in self-confidence, and ultimately I wrote a new love story, with a new person. Ultimately, it’s not about meeting the right person; instead, it is about finding out that you are quite capable of loving yourself, and anyone else loving you is just a wonderful sprinkle on top.”
Ok, so this book was too short. I want more! It is another poetry collection but I loved the intensity with which this author talked about his past love life. It is simply beautiful and poetic and real. Oh so real.
“It’s in our nature to destroy in order to create.”
They connect with their reader in a way that sticks with you. The hopeless romantic in me is loving the progression of vulgar, bitter-sweet poems to remembrances of love and hope for a future with it in it. I resonate with the author’s feeling of never fully being ok after a breakup. Feeling like a part of yourself is broken and can’t be fixed. This comes with the territory of serious committed relationships. But eventually, we get to a point where the scars that the last person left are washed away like names written in sand and you can feel love and be loved again.
I will not settle for less than shared sunsets unaccountable, but always to few.
I want to type out one of the poems from the back of the book because I found it so enlightening and I couldn’t help but share it.
The Things We Make With Our Hands
I want to grow a tree out of my chest
gnarled roots as veins, ventricles.
I want to brew my coffee with soil,
French Press, not those drip machines.
I want to bear fruit
that children suck between their teeth
when they take a 5-minute break
from playing hide and see.
I want you to build a home in me
With leaves and twigs and broken things
I want you to feel secure
on clear starry nights
or when the storms threaten to topple me over,
“Case baby I won’t break,
Won’t be destroyed by happenstance”.
And when this is done,
you can chop me down,
count the rings and stories I made for
myself and for you.
Pour the sap in syrup bottles
so you have something sweet with your breakfast.
Build foundations with me
and let every knot that splinters your
front porch, every imperfection,
be understood in the way only you can.
You can knock on me to ward off bad luck
and I’ll always be your cool shade in summer.
Isn’t that just beautiful? I strongly recommend this book to poetry fans who like the brutal honesty of relationships and how to survive when one comes to an end.
Book Rating: 4.5/5 (Lost .5 because it was too short :P)
Disclaimer: This book was sent to us in physical format to read and give an honest review.
There is also another book on the block that you should check out if you haven’t heard of it yet. It is called Addicted To Hate by Lucia Mann and it is a great one! You can find it on Amazon or on her website: www.luciamann.com!
Another book review to scratch off the list. This one was called The Long Body That Connects Us All by Rich Marcello.
Book Synopsis:Provocative and profound, Rich Marcello’s poems are compact but expansive, filled with music as seductive as their ideas, and focused mostly on how to be a good man. This is a collection of deep passion and wisdom for fathers, husbands, and sons, but also for mothers, wives, and daughters, many who began with a longing for the things they were taught to desire by their forefathers, only to later discover a different path, one lit by loss and welcoming of the vulnerable, one made of the long body that connects us all.
As far as poetry goes, this one was pretty good. It had a lot of nature in it but also played on family, relationships, and hardships. As I was reading, I found that a lot of the passages had me reflecting on my interactions in the past with those I had loved and lost. It warmed my heart to read things like this and as I have probably said before, the beauty of poetry is that everyone can take a different meaning away from it. It works on a personal level and is interpreted in different context with every reader or performer (if you go to poetry readings).
Overall, I rather enjoyed this one and would suggest it. It is a very quick read at only about 60 pages so give it a shot.
Disclaimer: This book was sent to us in physical format to read and give an honest review.
I am hosting a giveaway for the next week! If you’re interested in winning some Star Wars Magnetic Bookmarks, an Iron Man coaster, and some fun stickers, then click the link below!
There is also another book on the block that you should check out if you haven’t heard of it yet. It is called Addicted To Hate by Lucia Mann and it is a great one! You can find it on Amazon or on her website: www.luciamann.com!
Hey Bookworms!! Guess what?!
The book reviews will be a little less often now as I accepted a part-time teaching position at Canadore College in North Bay. I am very excited to be teaching and will try and keep up with the book reviews to the best of my ability (I feel like I might be spending my free time lesson planning). For today, this book was called The Meandering Muse by Katherine Mayfield. It is a collection of short stories, essays, poetry, and musings of the author.
Synopsis:Step inside the mind of a writer obsessed with the workings of the Universe and crazed with the spirit of creativity.
This collection of delightful and thought-provoking essays, poems, CNF, and short fiction by award-winning author Katherine Mayfield will make readers laugh as they ponder the infinitely enigmatic workings of the Universe.
Ranging wildly from subjects such as multitasking, schizophrenia, shopaholism, money, and the government to the woes of a homeowner forced to use bananas and daffodils to humanely remove wasps from her living room, these unique and inventive Dave Barry-esque mini-symphonies of words will widen readers’ perspectives on life, nature, and human beings.
This book was very enjoyable. The author writes with such ease of mind, it’s wonderful. She talks about her overbearing mother and how that affected her as she grew up. She talks about Mother Nature and how we mistreat her and I applaud her for it. It’s nice to see an author emphasize her honesty and have it reflect in her “musings”.
The book is a very quick read at exactly 100 pages. You will find yourself laughing throughout and will overall feel relaxed reading this one. I would say this book is like having a conversation with your fun aunt who gives it to you how it is. She won’t ever pressure you to do anything and just wants you to be happy as you are 🙂
Book Rating: 4/5
You can find this book and add it to your shelf on Goodreads.
Disclaimer: This book was sent to us in physical format to read and give an honest review.
