Reviewing The Canonical Order by T.R. Kurtz

I've been reading books, although, not at the rate I was in past years. Life is extremely busy for me, and I've been devoting my morning coffee time to writing rather than reading. I haven't been posting much about the books I've read, including the books that I've gotten from Booktasters or any of the ARCs I've gotten from publishers. I haven't even been blogging about books that I truly loved that we read in my book club. It's time to catch up! I'll start with the book I most recently received from Booktasters in exchange for an honest review: The Canonical Order by T.R. Kurtz.

For me, this book took a while to get through - the pacing just felt off and bogged down and/or the main character would annoy me and I would put the book down and go read something else for a while. The overall plot of the book is good. It's the writing style that killed me. See my full review below.


The Canonical Order by T.R. Kurtz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In this novel, a group of radical Islamic terrorists are determined to fulfill an ancient prophecy to draw the West into an apocalyptic holy war. In the process, the Pope becomes a target, and after a bullet leaves him incapacitated, Chad Stryker, sets out on a solo counteroffensive to stop the terrorists and preserve the Catholic Church.

The overall plot of the book was good, but the pacing-particularly the inudation of details-bogged the story line down. The twists and turns were predictable which didn't make for a very thrilling read. I also had an issue with the main character, Chad Stryker.

Chad Stryker is an ex-CIA agent that joined The Canonical Order. He is supposed to be a likeable character, but he is a flat character who is all too appealing to the ladies. I think the author tried too hard to make him suave like Bond in a way that came across as rather irritating. I didn't notice any real development of the character arc either. He is a rather flat protaganist.

The idea is there, but the writing misses the mark for me.

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Reviewing Two JTK Belle Children’s Books

I have 4 kids. Two of them like reading. I guess that means I got it half-right? Anyway, my youngest and I sit down and read books together all the time. Over the course of two nights we sat and read two books I won through a goodreads giveaway. This is the first time we ever read electronic copies of books together. The format worked just fine. See my detailed review of J.T.K. Belle’s books Breakfast in the Barnyard and I Dont’t Like to Eat Ants below.

Breakfast in the Barnyard by J.T.K. Belle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cute Story

My 2nd header and I just read this book. It was fun to read. The alliteration, rhythm, pacing and vibrant illustrations were great.

I Don't Like to Eat Ants by J.T.K. Belle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good Book for Reluctant Eaters

My second grader and I sat down and read this book. It was cute, but my son didn’t like the the anteaters didn’t have names. I felt calling the anteaters Anteater One and Anteater Two slowed the pace of the book a little. Overall, the story was cute. The story is about an anteater that decides he doesn’t like ants and tries to convince his friend to eat other foods with him. The reluctant anteater eventually tries peanut butter and jelly and realizes he too likes other foods. This is a good book for the reluctant eater.

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Review of Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

My book club (the virtual one I run) reads a variety of books. Someone had suggested Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald because they had heard about it via Oprah's Book Club. I was extremely excited to read this book, because I love books with diverse backgrounds. The book did not disappoint. I'm so happy we read it. I'm even happier I got to discuss the book with friends. I would have given this book 5 stars if it weren't for the heavy plot. This is a brilliant novel. It's extremely well written. See my full review below:

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fall on Your Knees is a heavy drama that explores friendship, racial tension, varying religious views, isolation, domestic abuse, and forbidden love in a brilliantly crafted complex plot that includes incest, death and murder.

The plot follows the Piper family; a father, James Piper, and four children, Kathleen, Frances, Lily and Mercedes, from before World War I, through the roaring 20s, and the great depression. The four sisters gradually grow from children into fully developed characters with different personalities and their own individual stories. Each sister's story is filled with intrigue and dark secrets which are gradually revealed. Their stories all weave together in an extremely unsettling way. Ann-Marie MacDonald combines rapid mixing of tenses and points-of-view using combinations of journal, memory, dialogue and narrative. This can sometimes lead to confusion, but it ultimately allows the offer to tell the story from multiple vantage points, gradually revealing more clues as the same scene takes place from a subsequent view-point. The depth of the characters draws you into their lives and the cleverly written and sublime metaphorical words put you straight in their heads.

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Reviewing Looking for Will by Jane Collins-Phillippe

I love a good thriller. I love simple and even complicated plots. I especially love well-developed characters. Sometimes though, plots can be overly complicated and understanding everything about a character and their family can be too much. I recently read Looking for Will by Jane Collins-Philippe and felt that it was a book with a great, albeit overly complicated, plot and overly developed (words I never thought I would say) characters. To me, this left me feeling like this book just missed the mark. It's a story with great potential, but to me it's a book that needs to be edited and polished before it will be something great. See my full review below.

Looking for Will by Jane Collins-Philippe
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is a thriller set in and around Ontario about a family on their way home from vacation in Calgary when their little boy goes missing from the back seat of the vehicle. The plot, all too real, centers around the boy, Will, that was supposed to be asleep in the car and the two parents fighting so much that they didn't notice the little boy was missing until they were to their motel.

The plot, writing and pacing is great through and especially including Chapter 2. After that...

The book is told from a lot of different perspectives. Too many if you ask me. There is Davide and Jan Dewhurst, the parents of a boy who goes missing from the car, Sergeant Patricia Hayes, an old couple Gracie and Gabe Fortune living in the middle of nowhere and the weird guy with a dark secret, Matthew Pepperal. All of the voices/perspectives made for a really complex plot but at the cost of sometimes being confusing and losing the readers overall interest.

When it came to learning all about the Fortune family, which is significant to the overall plot, there was too much talking about the characters and not enough showing us about the characters. I'm not entirely sure I needed to know the back stories into each of the kids.

It is clear that the book, characters and plot are very well developed. I just don't feel the book itself is well polished and there were lots of areas where it could have been improved to make me, or any reader, like it more.

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**Disclaimer - I was provided a free copy of this book by Booktasters in exchange for an honest review.**

Reviewing "Happiness is All We Want" by Ashutosh Mishra

A few years ago I attended a seminar that constantly referenced a book The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt (a great read by the way). Haidt's book tried to get to the root of what makes people happy and touches on philosophy, psychology, economics, evolution, and cognitive science. What Haidt does is explain what makes people happy, but it's not a self-help book. It's a book that says that what we want and need is happiness. Since then I've read several self-help books about happiness. One of which, thanks to Booktasters Nonfiction, was Happiness is All We Want by Ashutosh Mishra. Find out what I thought about this book below.


Happiness Is All We Want by Ashutosh Mishra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Happiness Is All We Want" is a practical approach to seeking happiness and improving your life. The book is written in a conversational tone and is divided into three sections: mind, body and soul. Each section discusses every day type problems/obstacles a person may face and how to overcome them to achieve happiness.

I found the book to be engaging, well articulated and not pedantic like some self-help books can be. I highly recommend this book.

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Review of "The Nutcracker Mice" by Kristin Kladstrup

I think I've mentioned this before, but my fabulous local bookstore, Covered Treasures, has a shelf of ARC's (Advanced Reader Copies). One of my son's loves the Nutcracker and this past fall when we were visiting the bookstore, The Nutcracker Mice by Kristin Kladstrup caught his eye. We picked up the book and brought it home to read together. It was an adorable book. See my full review below.

The Nutcracker Mice by Kristin Kladstrup
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The Nutcracker Mice" was an adorable retelling of the Nutcracker from the perspective of the young rising ballet dancing mouse, Esmerelda. Esmerelda and the other mice that live under Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg in 1892 not only get to watch the humans perform the Nutcracker but they put on their own version of the ballet every year. This year the mice and ballet are in danger, which is the meat of this tale. The main plots includes lots of history, and in typical YA/MG fashion an unlikely friendship/partnership. Esmerelda meets Irina, a human nine-year-old child, and the two, albeit unlikely friends, especially since the mice were viewed as vermin, must work together to save the lives of the mice and their ballet.

My only real critique of this book is the difficult language. I have a BA in English and consider myself well read and had to look up a word or two myself. Also, the Russian names could be considered complicated for a YA/MG novel such as Lyudmila and Balalaika for example. Other than that this is a cute read that I would suggest to YA/MG readers, especially around Christmas/Nutcracker time.

My Interview with Tassilo Weber and Review of his book “Life Extension Design”

Life Extension Design: Redesign your life for optimal health, performance, and longevity in order to become part of the first generation to choose whether to age and die ... or not. by Tassilo Weber

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Tassilo Weber escaped death and decided to make it his mission to discover the secrets of life. After studying philosophy for 7 years he said he eventually found the concept of transhumanism and singularity as an answer to the purpose of life. After more life, business and coaching experience, he says:

"There is one question that guides my life: What is the potential? When I apply this question to my life in general, the answer is: life extension. When it comes to death, I’ve become an ironist in the sense of Richard Rorty: I have made my peace with death and accepted my own mortality. Still, I do anything I can to fight it and make aging and death optional in the future."

That's the basis for his book Life Extension Design.

Life Extension Design challenges readers to reconfigure their life to live longer. Weber presents a plan which is completely customizable and built off of what does and doesn't work for each individual as well as accommodating changes in the individual as well as within the field of modern science and medicine as time progresses. The book breaks down the reconfiguration process into bite-size chunks:

• An introductions to life extension and design thinking 
• The basic major categories for life extension including nutrition, exercise and metal health followed by suggestions and best practices.  
•  The next step involves experimentation to see what does and doesn't work for you as an individual.
• The next step includes orchestrating your life to manage an maintain the changes that worked in the experimentation phase as well. 
• The last section of the design is mastering the practice using a strategic approach for optimum long-term results. 

I had to opportunity to interview Weber and below are the results of the interview:

1. When do you think the Extension Revolution will become a widespread/mainstream/everyone is doing it Revolution? You note in the book that the Revolution is in its beginning stages. How long before you believe there is before it expands?

Well, aging is currently defined through 9 different factors (see "Hallmarks of Aging"), and there are various approaches tackling each of those factors at a time, and each successful therapy will approximately add 5-10 years to an average human lifespan. It will be a gradual process over many decades until many of these therapies will be secure and available to wider masses. A very promising first candidate are senolytics with Unity Biotechnology as the pioneering company, currently in human clinical trials. With a bit of luck, it will only be a matter of months or few years until the first therapy is successful. Give it another 5 years for broader availability. However, it's not just technology, it's also biology which has a way bigger factor of uncertainty in the form of unforeseen side effects. As a wider picture, some trustworthy, but overly optimistic forecasters like Ray Kurzweil predict the revolution to kick in around 2030. I would rather add 10 years to that, but also mention that there will be a lot of incremental changes to the average human lifespan from drugs like metformin or rapamycin before that.

2.  What does your value pyramid look like and do you think it differs from the average persons?

My values (in order) are: health, meaning/purpose, family/friends, adventure. I don't think this differs too much from the average person.

3. What do your nutrition and exercise routines look like? Are the examples in the book yours?  

Yes, they are the examples in the book, even though I'm constantly experimenting with new things; latest was that I kept track of my blood sugar for two weeks and adjusted my diet accordingly.

4. You touch on the significance of mental health. You mention the use of Zen meditation. Do you recommend anything in particular? 

I'm very practical about Zen, so I recommend Katsuki Sekida's book. 

5. How long do you think it will take the average person to master life extension skills?  

Mastery of life extension is a life-long learning and self-improvement process, always reacting to changes in oneself and science. Getting the basics in place depends on the level of self-discipline and determination, but most transformations take place within 3-12 months.

6. What do you think uniquely qualifies you to write the book on this subject matter? 

The main thing is that I really live this and that I am a professional coach; so I think I can teach this way of transformation that I've been through myself in an empathetic way. I also have a scientific expertise and I am well up-to-date with regard to the developments in the field.

If you are looking for a way to extend your life in a practical and methodical way that is fluid, I suggest picking up this book. I found it, at the least, an interesting read that will make you examine your life and routines, if nothing else, if you perform the exercises in the book.