All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque with translation by A.W. Wheen

It is my firm belief that any proponent of war and any person willing to declare war should first be put into the most dangerous engagement they would consign to someone else. All Quiet on the Western Front is as close as I've ever gotten to war and as close as I ever want to be to such a thing. While I have long been a pacifist, it is the men like Erich Remarque who have lived it and suffered from it who truly can demonstrate how horrible a thing it really is.   

All Quiet on the Western Front is not a book for the faint of heart. It follows a young soldier through the trenches of World War I, fighting on German side of the war. The book engages the reader from the start with vivid descriptions and a narration that brings the soldier's hopes and fears close to the reader. If you've never read All Quiet On the Western Front, I think you'll find it a hard but worthwhile read.

 I can't do the book justice with just a blog entry...here is an excerpt:  

The young recruits of course know none of these things. They get killed simply because they hardly can tell shrapnel from high-explosive, they are mown down because they are listening anxiously to the roar of the big coal-boxes falling in the rear, and miss the light, piping whistle of the low spreading daisy-cutters. They flock together like sheep instead of scattering, and even the wounded are shot down like hares by the airmen.  

Their pale turnip faces, their pitiful clenched hands, the fine courage of these poor devils, the desperate charges and attacks made by the poor brave wretches, who are so terrified that they dare not cry out, but with battered chests, with torn bellies, arms and legs only whimper softly for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them. 

Their sharp, downy dead faces have the awful expressionlessness of dead children. 

It brings a lump into the throat to see how they go over and run and fall. A man would like to spank them, they are so stupid and to take them by the arm and lead them away from here where they have no business to be.

Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson

As an author my strength is writing, so I picked up Guerrilla Marketing at the library with the hope of finding something that will set me on the right track of building a marketing campaign for novels.  Small business owners would do well to read it.  I found that some of the advice didn't apply but could see its usefulness to brick and mortar businesses.

In gleaning the information, this was the advice that seemed most appropriate to an artistic or creative business with regard to marketing.

1) Have a great product.

If you are going to pay for advertising, the author suggests having a great product. Otherwise, the marketing campaigns will only lead to a quicker downfall when people try it and realize they don't like it and spread the word. 

2) Stick with the plan.

When creating a marketing plan, the author suggests thinking the strategy through completely and then tying all advertising into that strategy without wavering. He said that many times when stores don't see immediate results, they pull the campaign and end up losing their investment.

3) Be consistent.

When trying to decide what kind of marketing to use, Levinson advised consistency. If your budget is $300, don't spend it on a one-shot ad. Instead, spread it across several smaller ads that are consistently reaching the audience. People are inundated by ads and rarely pay attention to the first, second, or even the third advertisement, but if a business continues a regular campaign, eventually it will sink in.

4) There are two types of advertising, the ads to draw new customers and the ones to remind current customers of new products or releases. Guerrilla Marketing recommends a tight focus on current customers. If you're sacrificing old customers for new, it's bad business. It takes 6 times the effort to entice a new customer than to keep a current one.

Those were the most applicable sections to me, but there were plenty more suggestions that would be more appropriate for a small store.

Shock by Robin Cook

In writing this blog, I've been encouraging people to step outside their comfort zones and try some genres that they may not typically read. In keeping with my own advice, I picked up a medical thriller. Now, honestly, I don't read in the thriller genre much. I've tried Tom Clancy and just didn't get into his books enough to take them home with me.

While looking for something outside my normal reading scope, I discovered Robin Cook. Shock is the story of two women who donate eggs in return for thousands of dollars. Although they signed a confidentiality contract, they become curious about the outcome of their eggs and whether any children had been born. With a decision to do some investigating, the women go undercover into the facility. What they find does indeed shock them and puts their lives in danger.

There were one or two moments in the story that stretched the imagination, but overall, the story was interesting enough that I was able to overlook them. Robin Cook's style is easy to read and his incorporation of medical knowledge made for a unique thriller.

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Winter of Magic’s Return by Pamela F. Service

This is a post-apocalyptic tale written before they were in style (published in 1985).  The book is about a trio of children living at a school, one is an orphan and has become a ward of the schoo

Five hundred years after a nuclear holocaust, the world is cold and cloudy year round. Strange animals mutated from the years of nuclear winter roam the Earth. The school is safe, but Wellington, Heather, and Earl take flight from the school when a couple comes to the school to claim Earl.

The couple claim to be his relatives but he knows they aren’t. Nightmares plague him and he’s lost his memory, but he knows not to trust them. 

Expect a few surprises if you’re never read the story or heard the spoilers.  It is unique enough to make for a very good read. 

Promise of Pleasure by Cheryl Holt

Cheryl Holt is one of my favorite regency romance writers.  Lately I've read a lot of regencies, so there will probably be a higher percentage of blogs on the subject than in a few years when my interests have changed. Promise of Pleasure is about a young woman who lives a less than perfect life with her step-mother and half-sisters. Her step-mother is interested in titled gentleman for her daughter Felicity and hopes to make a match with Jordan Winthrop, heir to the Earl of Sunderland.

In the meantime, Mary has taken an elixir from a peddler who promises that one drink in the presence of her true love and he will be hers. Everything goes wrong when Jordan blocks the man Mary has targeted just moments after she drinks the potion and she sees him instead.

What I love about Promise of Pleasure is the combination of humorous scenes with some heart-touching sorrowful moments when it seems that the story will end badly.  I truly love reading Cheryl Holt. If you enjoy romances and have somehow missed Cheryl Holt, I highly recommend her.

Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond

 This is a book on eating and detoxification. As expected, the gist of the book is that fruits and vegetables are good, while dairy and meat are more questionable, but the authors make a program that allows for everything healthy. (Colas and refined white sugar are definitely out).

The authors also make note of things that I haven’t heard elsewhere. For example, fruit should be eaten before meals, never with or after . The reasoning is that the fruit will have to wait while the heavier food digests and will rot as it passes through turning the whole meal toxic.

According to the book, for breakfast, have as much fruit and in any variety as you like. If you need something heavier to fill up before lunch, the authors suggest bananas. After lunch or dinner, wait three hours before eating fruit again.

Limit dairy products, refined sugars, flour, and heavy meats. 

All of it has been said before, but the authors make some good points that you might not hear in another healthy lifestyle book. Also, the back is filled with recipes and food combining suggestions.

For my part, I’ve cut junk food sugar nearly completely out, eating sweets only on holidays. Sugar is addictive. I know because it was an incredibly hard thing to do and I ended up bribing myself to get through the first two months.

It seems the book is now split between the two authors. The link to Amazon below is the book I have.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair

I had a few arguments with myself as to whether to post this book or not.  Frankly, I was disappointed because somehow I thought I was going to be reading a paranormal story.  But in the end, I do think it is a well-told story for the young adult market.

As with many YA novels, the story opens with a girl living in an orphanage whose life is harsh because she speaks her mind and is not considered pretty. She has been punished by being locked in the outhouse with the spiders and smells.  She bravely sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic to prove she's not afraid.

While she is singing, one of a trio of sisters looking for a girl to adopt hears her and decides that she is the one. From here we take a sharp turn because the sisters are hiding Maud and have plans to make her a part of a clandestine activity to fleece others. 

She then must decide whether a lie is worth the love she wants from the sisters.