Friday, July 22, 2011

Book Review - The Jackrabbit Factor by Leslie Householder

I've been down in the dumps of late.  Rather frustrated with a very uncertain future.  Sweetie and I went to the library yesterday and selected a few books.  As we approached the counter the clerk, after registering Sweetie's card, produced a book that was on hold for her.  It was The Jackrabbit Factor.

Sweetie had never heard of it and was quite certain that she had never requested it from the library.  We checked it out any way.  I had picked up a Dean Koontz novel I had not read yet and was very excited to read it.

Sometime during the day, on an impulse I picked up The Jackrabbit Factor and began to read.  I hated it.  I fought it.  I criticized it.  I complained about it.  And now, less than 24 hours later, I've finished it.

I hate self help books.  I mocked Stephen R. Covey's praise for the book as I read the back cover.  While praising Householder, Covey seemed to reveal his own vanity.  Inside the cover I feared I had found yet another purveyor of the gospel of greed.

I have a friend who often quotes his mission president,
 "He who worships at the altar of self-improvement, also worships a false God."
While I have no real beef with Covey's 7 Habits, I do have a good deal to say about the Korihor-esque approach to life management he has incorporated into the paper and computer systems he sells.  I have become certain that success comes, not from taking control of our lives, but from giving control to God.  That method has largely governed my life for the past six years and has been far more productive than the Covey method I used for so many years before that.  While planning is necessary, Richard Eyre's method as described in The Three Deceivers, is far more productive, much less time consuming and tons more fun.

The Three Deceivers was not a self help book, by my definition, but rather a fresh way of looking at life.  In the end, so was The Jackrabbit Factor.  While I am repulsed by greed, which revulsion probably tainted my view as I began the read; I am inspired by abundant thinking, which this book fostered in a bright new way.

I harbor queasy misgivings about the rah rah approach of Anthony Robbins, Smith/Covey Inc. and others who attract wealth by promising wealth to others who'll follow their "programs."  And the Householders seem to have pursued the same course.  It all seems too gimmicky to me.  But hey, if there is something I can glean from all the hoopla, why not.  It hasn't cost me anything but a bit of time, which I'd probably have wasted any way.

The part I liked was mostly stuff I have already experienced and had previously come to believe.  The fact that I've been down in the dumps is a clear indicator that I had not been living congruently with those beliefs, though.  Looking back I realize my life is replete with examples of how these methods of thinking really work.  I must credit the book with stimulating a more concentrated focus on the matter and thus a marked emergence from the doldrums.  The fundamental things are true, powerful and available to all.  But you don't need to buy the book, I'll gladly teach them to you for free.

Householder points out that the "things we want, want us."  In this case the book seems to have wanted me when I didn't necessarily want it.  I have to admit that it did turn up at a most opportune time.

Three Stars

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Book Review - Daily Riches - A Journal of Gratitude and Awareness by Bluestein, Lawrence and Sanchez

The reading of this book is the kindest gift I've given myself in a very very long time.  As it is also an ongoing tool, it is also a gift that will keep on giving.  Enough said.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Self-Inflicted Hair Cut

I haven't had a satisfactory hair cut since Loran quit cutting hair six or seven years ago.  He'd cut my hair for years.  He knew my style, short, simple and enduring.  I have better things to do than sit in a barber shop, so I expect a cut to last three months.  Loran understood this.  He was a traditional barber who stropped a straight razor on a belt, foamed me up around the ears and neckline with warm lather, and shaved a nice clean border on my pate.

Since Loran retired I've had to settle for having a far less than satisfactory hair cut inflicted upon me by hair stylists.  Stubborn lot, hair stylists.  It's their way, or the highway.  No shaving around the ears.  No smooth clean taper.  Every time I've had to come home and shave my own neck.  How is it stylish to have long hairs running down my neck and beneath my collar?  I've complained about this.  I've even been told that it had been done, only, upon inspection, to find it hadn't.  I guess women don't get those run-away hairs below the neckline.  And, lets face it; hair stylists are trained to cut women's hair, not men's.  I've shopped around.  The big salons never give you the same stylist twice.  The little one's don't seem to listen and seem to be as independent as welders.  I often say, "You can always tell a welder, you just can't tell him much."  So it is with stylists.  I've tried complaining, tipping, long lengthy descriptions of what I'm looking for, heck, I've even threatened a few times, and still I come home with unsatisfactory results.

Now, lest you think me picky, I don't have very lofty standards for a hair cut.  I don't expect to magically, be made handsome by a hair cut.  Nothing short of a face transplant could accomplish that.  I just want a smooth even cut that at least looks as good as my lawn when it's finished.  I don't want missed spots and I want it trimmed up around the edges.  Is that too much to ask?

After several years of forking out cash for hair cuts that I, or my wife, had to remodel each time I returned home; I decided to take matters into my own hands.  If I am going to look like this one way or the other I'd just as soon inflict the pain on myself as pay someone else to do it.  I bought a nice set of clippers and went at it.

I'm jealous of Howie Mandel.  If I had a nice round, presentable, head like his, I'd just shave it and call it good.  Instead, I have a head covered with knots, crevices, ridges and moles.  How much is my viewing public expected to take?  Then, again, even that is pretty high maintenance, and seems trumped by a periodic hair cut.  Speaking of trump, I must admit that I've never once sported a worse hair cut than The Donald.  But I digress....

Back to self-inflicted hair cuts...

I am uncoordinated, utterly helpless at making my mind reverse it self while using a mirror as a reference when working on the back, and I surely lack an artistic flair for such things; but, I can make a hair cut last three months, and that is all I ever wanted in the first place.

It has been said that the difference between a good and bad hair cut is just a couple of days.  I can buy that.  So if I cut my hair on Monday, I have plenty of time to look presentable for church.  If not I can always sit on the back row.  In my book, the difference between a good and bad hair cut is $20.00.  The good one is free!  No lines, appointments, angst, repairs, premature returns to the salon, unrealistic expectations, disappointments, frustrations, swear words or Amway sales pitches - just free.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Book Review - The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

I really enjoy Amy Tan's books.  They are fresh and interesting.  I enjoy the contrast in American and Chinese cultures she addresses so well.  This one was better in most respects that either The Joy Luck Club or The Bonesetter's Daughter, both of which, I also enjoyed.

This one is quite mystical and philosophical, perhaps more so than any of Tan's novels, which gave it the appeal I prefer.  I want to learn something about myself in a book, even if it's about China.  I felt I learned a lot this time.  Here's a quote about one great lesson for me:
"Anyway, yin people talk about life already gone, like banquet, many-many flavors, 'Oh,' they say, 'now I remember.  This part I enjoy, this I not enjoy enough.  This I eat up too fast.  Why I don't taste that one?  Why I let this piece of my life gone spoiled, complete wasted?'"
You'll surely note the pidgin English, in the statement.  This is so true of me.  I pursue this pleasure, obtain that instrument, acquire that tool or those friends, only to get distracted and neglect some, while consuming others, not necessarily by priority, but based on the expedience of the moment.  Who wants to wind up with a pile of regret at the end.

The story moves from San Francisco to a small village outside Guilin, China.  Tan is a master of description and I loved my visit to China through her words.  The tastes, smells, traffic, shops all come to life in the pages of the book.

Much of the story takes place in the turmoil of the nineteenth century where we learn of Christian missionaries and political waves of oppression and war.  The main story is modern.  In fact too modern for my taste.  A bit crass, drifting in the winds of an unanchored culture of academia, hedonism, and agnostic futility.

The story, philosophy, discovery all could have, should have taught great lessons to the protagonist upon whom it all seems to have no conclusion, no effect.  It looks like, Tan wants to be realistic in the end, for after taking her character through opportunity after opportunity to learn and grow; after making the reader aware that the woman can make astute observations about the meaning of her experience; she lets us see, that ultimately she is neither changed nor blessed by the struggle she experiences.  It's as if she is saying life, experience, education, discovery offer no real gifts to those who endure them.

I'd characterize the book as magnificently entertaining, and largely pointless.

Three Stars
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...