Hooked (by Les Edgerton)

(Amazon UK link)

I don’t recall where I came across a review or recommendation of this book. I haven’t previously heard of Les Edgerton, although he’s quite a well-established writer. In any case, this went on my wish-list a while ago, and was given it for my birthday in 2015. I decided that I was going to read a book about writing every month this year, and began this one on June 1st…

I’ve finally finished ‘Hooked’, whose subtitle is a rather more lengthy: ‘Write fiction that grabs readers at page one and never lets them go’. This demonstrates that it’s not a book about either fishing or addictions. Indeed, it’s quite a clever title. It’s a good book, too, although it took me a while to get into it, and then I kept forgetting to pick it up.

The focus is on, unsurprisingly, the first paragraph, scene or chapter of a novel or short story, and how important it is to get it right. The author gives a bit of historical background, reminding us how short an attention span modern audiences have, and also how many submissions editors get each month. To grab the attention of an editor, or indeed a reader in a shop, the first page must hook their attention and make them want to keep turning pages.

It’s a book of over 200 pages which was interesting enough that I kept on turning them… but not so gripping that I couldn’t put it down and forget about it. The writing is clear and I could see the author’s point - many times - as he shows us both good and bad beginnings to works of fiction. He explains the importance of the ‘inciting incident’, too, and how there must be some kind of conflict to keep people’s interest.

He also establishes the difference between a ‘story-worthy’ problem and an opening problem. There are some interesting points about plot development, and the importance of solving an initial difficulty, only to find oneself in a new and perhaps more difficult one which also relates to the overall story.

None of what was in this book was new to me. But I liked the way the author expresses the different kinds of problem and the importance of seeing the big picture of theme or ‘story-worthy’ problem running alongside events or minor conflicts that make up the bulk of a book.

However, I found it a little frustrating that the books and stories cited as examples were mostly ones I’d never heard of, many of them in the thriller or men’s fiction genres. That’s not unreasonable when the writer is a man, of course; but the kind of books I enjoy writing, many of which seem to be reasonable sellers, very often don’t follow this kind of pattern at all.

Anyway, it made an interesting read. I finished the second half much more quickly than the first. It has made me see the tremendous importance not just of the first sentence of a story, but the first page, and indeed the whole of the first scene. I may well dip into it again, and would recommend it to anyone starting out on fiction writing.

My personal favourite books about writing (sadly not all in print) are:

 

- Writing on both sides of the brain by Henriette Anne Klauser

- Bird by bird by Anne Lamott

- One way to write your novel by Dick Perry

- Walking on water by Madeleine l'Engle

- The five-minute writer by Margret Geraghty

- Becoming a writer by Dorothea Brande

- Back to creative writing school by Bridget Whelan

- How to write and sell short stories by Della Galton

- Writing great short stories by Margaret Lucke

- Guide to fiction writing by Phyllis Whitney

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Everybody's normal till you get to know them (by John Ortberg)

(Amazon UK link)

I’ve very much enjoyed the boys I’ve read by John Ortberg. He’s an American Christian pastor who writes with honesty and some humour, including self-deprecating anecdotes and much that’s thought-provoking. So, as it was ten years since I last read this one, I thought it was time for a re-read.

‘Everybody’s normal till you get to know them’ is typical of the author’s lengthy but memorable book titles. The overall theme is that we’re all damaged in some way; none of us is in full health, and that ‘normality’ is in fact almost impossible to attain. There’s a linguistic problem there which mildly annoyed me at times: ‘normality’ means ‘what people are like in general’, so if nobody is ‘normal’ then normality is in fact what the author describes as abnormality.

That’s a paradox which was never addressed. I prefer the word ‘healthy’ as used by other authors, acknowledging that few people are in good health (physically, emotionally or spiritually); the majority are in a state of semi-health, perhaps appearing to do the right things, but potentially with many problems on the inside.

Language details aside, the book is excellent. Ortberg unpacks Scriptural passages where relevant, mentions events in his family life where he has made mistakes, and gently demonstrates how so many of us - and he’s writing to Christian believers - are prickly, difficult to get to know, stressed, unable to share problems with anybody.

The first section of the book unpacks what he means by ‘normal’, and how far from this we all are; the second section is about getting closer to other people. What we need most is community: people we can trust, and enjoy being with, and with whom we can take of masks of pretence. There are chapters about empathy and acceptance, something that many in today’s church find difficult to do; Ortberg looks in detail at some of the Gospel stories to see how Jesus handled relationships.

The final section is about building stronger relationships in general, including an excellent chapter on forgiveness. There are some very thought-provoking comments about what forgiving really means as opposed to understanding or ignoring other people’s actions and behaviour. Again, Gospel accounts are unpacked, using modern language and analogies at times to get the message over.

The tone is generally light and friendly, which means that the book is easy to read, while giving a great deal to ponder. It’s written for Christians, assuming a general understanding of the Bible, and I would recommend this strongly to anyone with that background, particularly those who are feeling bruised or ignored by other believers.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Ballet Shoes for Anna (by Noel Streatfeild)

(Amazon UK link)

I have loved Noel Streatfeild’s books for teenage girls since I was about nine or ten. She is best known for her classic ‘Ballet Shoes’, but also wrote quite a number of other novels which often featured talented ballet dancers. I’m re-reading my way, gradually, through my extensive Streatfeild collection and have just finished another.

‘Ballet Shoes for Anna’ is short book, rather different from others by this author, in that it starts with a devastating tragedy, set in Turkey. Three children, aged eight to ten, end up living with a rather unpleasant uncle, who believes in duty and efficiency beyond anything else. His mouse-like wife is a nice creation, if a little caricatured, but I never really believed in the awful Uncle Cecil.

Francesco, Gussie and Anna are thrown into a totally new way of life; they have travelled around in a caravan and are unused to being in a house, let alone a pristine one where noise is not tolerated. They have never been to school, but now they must. Worst of all, Anna, who is a very promising young ballet dancer, has to find a teacher. Uncle Cecil believes that dancing is sinful, so won’t help in any way, and the boys have to find a way of raising money to pay for lessons.

First published in 1972, not long after the UK adopted decimal currency, the book has several references to ‘new pence’, which is how people used to speak of currency in those days. Fifty ‘new’ pence for a lesson is seen as a vast sum; nowadays it seems like almost nothing. Still, that’s all that really dates the book, along with the lack of technology.

The children are likeable, Francesco weighed down by the responsibility of being the eldest in his family, and Gussie a classic mischief-loving middle child. Anna, at eight, seems rather young to be so dedicated to her dancing in a way that, at times, borders on selfishness, but her brothers don’t find anything strange about this. There are some other interesting characters too such as a market boy and his mother who befriend them.

It’s a good story about the difficulties of adapting to a new lifestyle; the children’s grief and culture shock is rather played down, but still leads to one or two rather moving sections that left me quite choked up. I wasn’t sure I quite believed in the atrocious grammar used by the children at first; their mother was Polish but their father was British, and they read a lot of books. But it made some good subplots, including the necessity of their unpleasant uncle to attempt to improve the children’s English.

There’s some high drama towards the end, in a scene that could, in real life, have been very nasty. But it works well in showing that some parts of UK life, even forty-plus years ago, were decidedly unpleasant and potentially dangerous. The ending itself is quite abrupt, as it somewhat typical with Noel Streatfeild’s books: the problems are solved, and the reader is left to imagine the tying-up of loose ends.

While I had remembered the basic storyline from my last re-reading of this book, in 2005, I had forgotten most of the subplots and very much enjoyed it.

Recommended for older children - boys or girls - and for those of us who remember this author's books with nostalgia from our own childhoods.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

The Final Boundary (by Adrian Plass)

(Amazon UK link)

In re-reading some of the books by Adrian Plass, one of my favourite Christian writers, I’ve just finished a collection of short stories which I first read back in 2000.

‘The Final Boundary’ is the title of one of the stories, a reflection on cricket and life with Jesus written from the perspective of someone terminally ill in hospital. It might sound like a rather morbid and strange setting for a story, but it works surprisingly well and is quite moving.

The introduction explains that these stories are all modern parables. They’re not necessarily easy to understand, and should not be picked to pieces, or taken as direct analogies of anything. Adrian Plass tells us that a parable is ‘a story that entertains at the front door while the truth slips in through a side window’. I thought that an excellent description, and it’s worth bearing in mind while reading the stories themselves.

Some of the early stories are decidedly strange, and they’re all very different from each other, although quite a few have somewhat depressing themes, at first glance. The first one is about a small boy who hasn’t really accepted that his beloved grandmother has died. The second, clearly satirical (and quite amusing in places), is a letter explaining a new way of being a Christian, involving mountain-climbing. As a parable, it works rather well.

The third story is perhaps the oddest of all. It’s the defendant in a murder case, providing documentary evidence, both video and written, that should excuse what he has done. To those of us with elements of misophonia, it’s rather a scary outline of something that might well inhabit our dreams, even though I profoundly hope I would never reach that stage. 

To those who do not find small noises and repetitive habits irritating, it probably seems like a morbid fantasy. I’m not entirely sure how it works as a parable, to either group of people, but perhaps the truth will come in at the window later on. It’s the only one I remembered clearly from my previous reading of the book all those years ago.

I read one or two stories per evening, over the past week, and found them all very readable and interesting, even if I didn’t necessarily get the point of them from the parable perspective. Adrian Plass’s writing is always thought-provoking, making me smile and think in turn.

The last story, ‘The Visit’ is a rather longer one; it’s the story of ‘The Founder’ making a visit to a small town in the form of a man, confounding expectations and showing people the way he wants them to live.

Overall I enjoyed re-reading this short story collection, and would recommend it in a low-key way. Not currently in print, but can sometimes be found inexpensively in charity shops or second-hand stores online.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Better than School (by Nancy Wallace)

(Amazon UK link)

Back in the early 1990s, when we lived for a couple of years in the United States, I borrowed a somewhat eclectic mixture of books from the local library. One of them had quite a profound influence on my understanding of education, and was my first real introduction to the idea of homeschooling. 

The author, Nancy Wallace, apparently died in 2008. But I have never forgotten her name, and was delighted when I found a copy of the book inexpensively in the Amazon Marketplace a few months ago.

‘Better than School’ was written in 1983 where, even in the United States, home education was still in its infancy. It wasn’t allowed in every State, and in some it was remarkably difficult to get permission. The Wallace family were living in an area where homeschooling was legal, but families had to get permission. The law in their State at the time only allowed it when children were suffering undue hardship by being in school. Testing took place every year. Very few people were aware that it was possible (and in some cases desirable) to educate one’s children at home.

Rather than being strictly chronological, the book opens with a ‘day in the life’, where we meet nine-year-old Ishmael and five-year-old Vita, having a leisurely breakfast before embarking on a busy day which includes reading, studying, music, preparing food together, and a great deal more. They’re an ordinary kind of family, where the siblings squabble at times, and the mother gets stressed when they are running late. Home education is clearly working for them, and from my perspective now it seems a normal, natural kind of day.

The book then returns to the time when Ishmael started school, a somewhat nervous, intelligent child who struggled with the rules and boundaries that are essential in classroom education. His natural curiosity was dulled, and he became depressed and anxious, prompting his parents to start looking into alternatives. There are sections about the legal battles they had to fight, interesting from the historical point of view, but not really relevant now, when home education is better understood in so many places.

Other chapters cover reading, maths, music, and more. Both the children showed early talent in music; both playing and composing, and part of the reason that Vita was home educated too was to allow enough time for the children to play their instruments, and spend time jamming and generally doing musical and dramatic things with friends and family. Vita learned violin by the Suzuki method, starting at six, and there are some very interesting observations about the pros and cons of this, alongside a detailed description of a week on a Suzuki residential course.

Reading it now, over twenty years after I first discovered it, I wasn’t as gripped or intrigued as I was the first time. My sons are adults; home education in their teenage years worked well, but our situation was very different from that of the Wallaces. Nonetheless I recognise many of the patterns of learning, in particular the tendencies of parents to become frustrated about some particular topic, while the child resists… and then, unexpectedly, is ready to learn and does so. Whether reading, or composing, or even understanding the way society works, children have their own schedule and, given the opportunities and encouragement, will do so when the time is right.

As an aside, Ishmael and Vita went on to be part of a singing duo, who have led workshops and performed internationally and have received several grants and awards.

Inevitably much of this book seems quite dated now; there were no home computers or tablets, and the Wallace family didn’t have a television. Still, as one of the earliest books by a home educating family, it’s an important milestone, and it’s written so well, with plenty of admissions of getting things wrong, that it could make interesting reading to anyone with an interest in learning or children’s education.

'Better than School' is not in print, and hasn't been for some time, but there are quite a number available second-hand, mostly in the United States.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Crooked House (by Agatha Christie)

(Amazon UK link)

We have quite a collection of Agatha Christie novels. Some of them belonged to one of my sons, but were left here to add to my own; I only started reading her classic crime fiction about fifteen years ago, and find they make good light reading, rather different from the family sagas, contemporary fiction or historical novels which I most often read.

‘Crooked House’ is one that I had not previously read. It’s narrated by a young man called Charles who wants to marry a girl called Sophia. They met abroad, and she hasn’t spoken much about her family; but on arriving back in the UK, after an assignment elsewhere, he discovers her caught up in a murder enquiry.

I found the family involved to be rather interesting, as they’re supposed to be a typical Greek origin family. The patriarch is Aristide Leonides, who had lost several children but keeps his two living ones in his rather oddly designed spacious manor house. Sophie is the oldest of his grandchildren; she has a younger brother and sister who are both also living at home, educated by a live-in tutor for various reasons.

Charles’ father is a police officer, so he finds himself interested in the case from both perspectives: as an outsider, and also as someone wanting to become part of the family, yet unable to do so until the crime is solved. He’s a friendly person and soon gets to know the different family members.

Inevitably there are caricatures: Sophia’s mother Magda is an actress who spends most of her life imagining herself in some dramatic role. Sophia’s uncle Roger is a likeable, but rather clueless person who tries hard to please everyone, and ends up annoying them all. There’s a maiden aunt who mostly raised the grandchildren, a large and benevolent ‘nannie’, a morose teenage boy, and a talkative girl who wants to be a detective…

As with most of Christie’s novels, there are many people who could have committed the crime, yet at first none of them appear to have any motive. Red herrings are gently strewn around, putting suspicion first on one person and then on another. I had my own suspicions from fairly early in the book, and although I started to wonder, part way through, if I could possibly be right, I was pleased to discover that I was.

It’s not usual for me to spot ‘whodunit’ in Agatha Christie’s books; she usually focuses more on plot than character, and I get lost with the twists and turns. However in this book character turns out to be very important, and from that point of view it wasn’t at all difficult.

I thought the ending rather morbid, albeit mostly off-stage (as are the crimes themselves, most of the time) but this was first published in 1949 when the UK still had the death penalty, so perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable.

Inevitably this is very dated, but conversation and story move at a reasonable pace, and it’s a well-told tale.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

How to Eliminate Negative Thoughts and Emotions (by Beau Norton)

I came across this short ebook when browsing the free Kindle books on Amazon. The title sounded interesting, and the reviews were mostly positive. I hadn’t heard of the author, Beau Norton, and realised that, as with so many free ebooks, it was most likely an advert for something else he had written. Nevertheless I downloaded it a few months ago, and finally got around to reading it.

‘How to Eliminate Negative Thoughts and Emotions with One Simple but Powerful Technique’ (to give the ebook its full title) turns out to be extremely short. It's only about fourteen pages in all. It begins by outlining all the problems that come with stress, anger, bitterness, anxiety and all the other many negative emotions that people carry around with them.

I could certainly take the point that it would be good to be able to get rid of them all, since negative emotions only really hurt the person feeling them, and can’t possibly do any good.

However, when I got to the author’s 'powerful technique’, there was nothing new or original about it at all. He essentially tells people to ask themselves if they can let go, and then to do so. Perhaps this is useful to some folk who are caught up in negativity, or who haven’t realised that this is what they’re doing, but for most people who are well aware of their emotions, and would love to eliminate them, it seemed unbelievably obvious.

Surely anyone who wanted to move forward would already have done what the author suggested?

Admittedly he proposes it as a kind of mantra, asking three questions and repeating them daily, and perhaps this might help people finally accept that they don’t have to hold onto negativity. But for most ordinary people, I don’t think there’s anything in this book that they would not already have thought of.

There’s nothing wrong with the book; it’s not badly written, and is quite interesting as a quick read. But there’s really nothing much in it at all. Not a problem since it was free, but I should think it would be rather annoying to anyone who had paid for it. I gather the author is quite prolific but that many of his books are equally short.

This book no longer seems to be available. 

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

The 7-day prayer warrior experience (by Stormie Omartian)

(Amazon UK link)

Looking through free books for the Kindle about three years ago, I came across this. It’s an excerpt from a longer book by Stormie Omartian, an American Christian whom I remember as a popular CCM singer in the 1980s. I had no idea she had become a writer, but in reading about her, I’ve discovered that she’s written several books about prayer which have become bestsellers in the American Christian community.

‘The 7-day prayer warrior experience’ isn’t a title I would naturally have picked up, as I’m not keen on the military reference, and have heard and read so many talks or articles about the ‘armour of Christ’ (Ephesians 6:10-17) over the years that I wasn’t sure there was anything new to discover. But I was intrigued nonetheless, and as it was free - and short - I downloaded it.

Each section of the book focuses on one part of the ‘armour’ described in the passage in Ephesians. The author gives a brief historical background explaining how physical armour worked in Roman times, and why soldiers would have worn breastplates, helmets, and so on. I thought these parts quite interesting.

The rest of each section explains why these pieces of armour are analogous to ways we need to ‘gird’ ourselves daily, to resist temptation and other attacks, and to be more confident in our Christian life, day to day. The language used is rather formal, and the content fairly standard; I read a section each day for a week, and there were some encouraging reminders, but nothing I hadn’t read or heard before.

The book wasn’t really about being a ‘prayer warrior’ at all, but about being a ‘warrior’ in everyday life, warning of spiritual battle and attacks, in a way that could have made me feel quite nervous had this been new to me. This isn’t a book for those who are not believers, or indeed those who are new to this kind of thing. Perhaps it would be better used as part of a group study. Each section had ‘go deeper’ questions and Scripture references at the end, but I didn’t go into those.

As a free ebook I’d recommend this for anyone interested. But having read it I’m not planning to get hold of anything longer by the author, as the style made it rather heavy-going.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

The Feud in the Chalet School (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

(Amazon UK link)

In slowly meandering my way through Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s long Chalet School series, over the past few years, I’ve reached the one originally numbered 48th, immediately following ‘A Future Chalet School Girl’ - although, oddly enough, the ‘future’ girl Melanie does not appear in this one.

Instead, ‘The Feud in the Chalet School’ introduces quite a number of new characters, in the form of a new English school called St Hilda’s that is about to start not far away from the Chalet School in Switzerland. Unfortunately, disaster ensues and St Hilda’s building is no longer usable, while their Head ends up in hospital. So, as the Chalet School has recently expanded its premises, they adopt the forty or so St Hilda’s girls and their three other staff, initially for a term.

It’s a tricky situation and rivalries inevitably begin, not helped at all by one of St Hilda’s staff who is rather self-important and resents being a mere junior mistress at the Chalet School. The story then follows school lessons and life, including some winter sports and - for a slight variation - a few incidents with cats.

The later books rather lose out without the strong and intuitive personalities of Jo Maynard and Mary-Lou. Jo does appear in this book, in passing, but doesn’t have much of a role, and her daughter Len - who is closest to following the same path - doesn’t feature heavily either. The focus is mainly on the younger girls and their feud, which makes for some interesting storylines, but none of the girls from either school stand out as any different from the others.

Each chapter is another incident, along typical Chalet School lines: prefects’ meetings, lessons, sports, boredom leading to mischief, and so on. There’s a sad loss of a former staff member which could have raised a tear or two, but it’s all off-stage and used mainly as a plot point for the ongoing feud.

I’m sure I must have read this book as a teenager, and probably at least once in the intervening years, but I have no memory of it at all. So while it wasn’t anything special, it made a pleasant enough light read for a few evenings.

Not currently in print, but fairly widely available in paperback second-hand. I have an early hardback edition, but it has a few errors (such as incorrect names) and over-much detail in places, which was most likely reduced in the Armada paperbacks.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

The Christian couple (by Larry and Nordis Christenson)

(Amazon UK link)

There are many books on our shelves that we seem to have had for decades, yet I have no idea where they came from. Having catalogued them, I’m trying to read some which I have no record of ever previously having read, and of which I have no memory at all. This one, by Larry and Nordis Christenson, is one of several books about marriage which we acquired - or were perhaps given - in the early years of our married life. So it’s possible that I did read it around thirty or more years ago.

Published in the US in 1977, ‘The Christian Couple’ is a solidly Christian approach to marriage and relationships. Yet, for its era, it's quite refreshing in some respects. It was written with the intent of challenging the growing statistics of marriage breakdown and divorce. It looks at the reasons for getting married and the importance of commitment and determination, rather than relying entirely on romantic feelings for keeping a relationship going.

Inevitably there’s much that’s rather dated. Many would find the authors’ chapters on submission to be quite offensive. Yet, reading them with an open mind, and remembering that the book is nearly forty years old, it’s quite enlightening. They discuss submission in general, including the important meaning of the word as relating to - for instance - submitting an essay to be marked, or an article to a magazine editor for consideration. They insist that there must be discussion both between parents and children, and between spouses, where each consider ideas that might not have occurred to them.

While they believe that the husband has, as it were, a casting vote in important decisions, they insist that he is responsible to Christ for this decision. They also stress that sometimes he will believe it right to put aside his own concerns and do what his wife or children prefer. The author gives examples in his own life where he saw his wife’s point of view and went along with it. Ideally, discussion would mean that a family or couple go forward in unity anyway. Headship certainly doesn’t mean authoritarianism, or always getting one’s own way.

I’m not sure there’s anything in this that I found particularly useful. There's much that isn’t relevant to my situation anyway. But it made an interesting quick read, and certainly gives a positive viewpoint of marriage, while remaining realistic. Intended for those who are believers, and, unusually, with more advice for men than for women.

Perhaps it's worth picking up if you see it in a charity shop. In its day it was probably helpful and gave a somewhat different perspective from the prevailing one. But in my view there are better books available now on the topic. I’d particularly recommend Gary Chapman’s ‘Four Seasons of Marriage’ for a more contemporary look at the subject.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Dance with me (by Victoria Clayton)

(Amazon UK link)

I had not heard of Victoria Clayton until a friend recommended her books to me, knowing my tastes in general. None of her books seem to be in print now, but I put some on my wishlist and received a couple of them which I read earlier in the year, and very much enjoyed. So I decided to order a few more myself, from the Amazon Marketplace, and have just finished reading her third novel.

‘Dance with Me’ is narrated by a young woman called Viola Otway. She feels herself to be undereducated after quite a privileged upbringing, but wants to earn her own living. She’s taken a job with a charitable group in London that renovates old houses, and lives in shared accommodation with some rather caricatured but interesting people. The novel is set in the 1960s, although that’s not immediately obvious.

Viola has been romantically involved with her boss Pierce, but as the story opens he’s instructed her to travel with his colleague Giles to a stately home called Inksip Plark, in Nottinghamshire. She and Giles don’t really get along; he considers her rather flighty and prone to accidents; she finds him a bit too serious. Things don’t improve when they break down on their way to Inksip, and arrive to discover that the family are eccentric, and the food appalling, due to a series of terrible cooks.

It’s really a character-based novel, with a large cast of intriguing people, mostly rather exaggerated, and not all memorable; I sometimes forgot who the minor characters were, although it didn’t matter too much, and the main ones were easy enough to distinguish. There’s some mild humour in the interactions, and in Viola’s accident prone nature, but there are also some serious issues that are touched upon: unexpected pregnancies, class consciousness, post-natal depression, unrequited love, and more. There’s even a survivor from Auschwitz.

It’s light reading on the whole, despite these darker themes. Victoria Clayton has a very readable style, peppered with literary (and, in this book, artistic) allusions, and while I didn’t quite believe in several of the characters, I found myself liking Viola very much. She’s willing to learn, and she has a warm heart.

The 1960s are remembered for their permissiveness; I was too young to be aware of that kind of thing at the time, but it’s certainly reflected in this book, where discussion of intimacies and affairs seems commonplace, both amongst the younger people and several of the older ones. I found parts of that a bit sordid, even shocking in places; some of the pairings seemed unnecessary to the story-line. While I enjoyed the book, there were elements that made it start to feel like a soap rather than a novel.

More than one reference is made, in this novel, to characters who appeared in ‘Past Mischief’, the author’s second book. Viola knows some of them, and while it’s not necessary to have read the previous book, it helps to understand some of the comments in context.

The ending, as with the author’s earlier books, is a bit abrupt, albeit not unexpected, and entirely satisfying.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Live like you mean it (by TJ Addington)

(Amazon UK link)

From time to time I browse the free books available for the Kindle. I download anything that looks interesting. Although I’ve occasionally picked up some terrible books, there are others which turn out to be well worth reading. This particular one had an interesting title, although I had never heard of TJ Addington, and I downloaded the book at no cost around five years ago.

It took me until a few months ago to start reading ‘Live like you mean it’, and I’ve dipped into it on and off since then, in odd moments. In the past week I read rather more, skimming a couple of chapters towards the end, and then finding myself very interested in the final chapter.

The book is subtitled, rather lengthily, ‘The 10 crucial questions that will help you clarify your purpose / Live intentionally / Make the most of the rest of your life’. It sounded like something that could be very useful to me. The foreword and introduction make it clear that this is a Christian book, and that’s fine, although chapters 8 and 9 - the ones I skimmed - are about making a commitment to God and living purposefully for him, concepts which are familiar to me already. More significantly, I didn’t feel that they were particularly helpful as ‘questions… to clarify purpose’.

Indeed, I felt that the hook of ‘ten questions’ is actually a bit misleading. There is no list of those questions other than the chapter headings in the contents. The first couple of chapters cover reasons why each of us is here, and finding what the author calls our ‘sweet spot’ - the things we are gifted in, and enjoy, and find fulfilling. The next few chapters essentially ask the same things in different ways: how do we best recharge? What really matters in life? What legacy do we hope to leave behind?

While there are some good points in each section, and the author shares some thought-provoking incidents, including some in his own life, I didn’t feel that there was anything that would actually help to answer the question the book claimed to solve.

After skimming the directly evangelistic chapters, I wasn’t expecting too much of the final chapter - ‘What shall I do next?’ - but was then extremely interested in the way the author describes the structure of his life, and the idea of planning at two levels. He plans in a top-down approach, looking first at the ‘big picture’ of his main aims or passions (such as family life, vocation, creativity, marriage, health etc), then choosing general goals for each, and then for each goal finding specific things to do for each month, week or day. However he then checks up on his aims in a more detailed, bottom-up way, with a time for reflection and self assessment each week.

While this might sound obvious, it’s something that’s staying with me as a far more constructive idea than ‘resolutions’ that can fail all too quickly and then be abandoned. With this structure, the overall aims are unlikely to change in the course of a year, but the goals and specifics can change with circumstances, and any failure becomes a learning experience.

Each chapter is clearly laid out, with discussion questions at the end, although I didn’t find any of them particularly useful. Still, overall, I think this is a helpful book with some useful ideas. There are a lot of Bible quotations and it’s unlikely to be of interest to anyone who is not a Christian believer, or at least willing to see God as part of their life and purpose. However the Kindle edition wasn’t particularly well-formatted, and no longer seems to be available in the UK, and I’m not sure I’d want to pay for it.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews

Emotional Intelligence (by Daniel Goleman)

(Amazon UK link)

This is a book we were given by a friend when we moved from the UK towards the end of 1997. We had not heard of the author, Daniel Coleman, and I doubt if this would ever have come across my radar, so I was very glad that this friend, selecting books he felt would be appropriate for our family, picked this one. He said that the title appealed…

‘Emotional Intelligence’ is not a phrase I had come across back in 1997. Before the widespread use of the Internet, and discussion forums, I had no reason to have heard of it, although nowadays the term is bandied about fairly often, along with ‘multiple intelligence’ theories, and the acknowledgement that there is a great deal more than IQ to make a popular, successful or well-rounded person.

I read the book with this title a few months after moving, and found it quite heavy-going in places. However I was very much taken with the principles explained: that the ability to relate to or empathise with others is just as important as linguistic or mathematical ability, and that when children are given good social skills (quite different from ‘socialisation’) either at home or at school, they are far less likely to turn to dangerous or illegal behaviour in their teens.

In February of this year I decided that I would re-read the book, and it’s taken me ten months to complete it. That’s partly because I have been reading so many other books, and partly because a lot of it is scientific or technical, looking at ways in which the brain processes emotions: neural pathways and other medical terms tend to go rather above my head. I don’t think it’s necessary to understand how emotions happen, but the book is all-encompassing, and no doubt that information would be of great interest to more scientifically minded readers.

I was much more interested in the sections about family life, the art of listening, and of suggestions for spotting when someone is in the grip of strong emotion, and adjusting one’s own tone of voice and conversation accordingly. I was also interested again in the section towards the end, looking at ways in which children from ‘at-risk’ homes or neighbourhoods can be taught techniques of conflict resolution and other useful skills that will probably be of far more benefit to them than the study of geography or history.

As I read this, I wondered why the author felt that teachers needed to be trained to work with children in these areas which, on the whole, seem to me to be common sense. But there are families caught up in a cycle of neglect or worse, where parents themselves may lack the ability to empathise or listen actively to their children, and in those cases, the cycle will most likely continue unless the children are taught to think and behave differently.

It’s not a book to read in one sitting; there’s a great deal to take in, and much to think about. Perhaps there’s some repetition and over-technical parts, but as a handbook for a layperson wanting to know more about emotions and emotional intelligence, I would recommend it.

Review copyright 2016 Sue's Book Reviews