Review Tuesday: The Unicorn in You Book Review

 

As someone who has consumed numerous self-help books in my nearly six decades on this planet and found little in the way of help from any of them, I was interested in reviewing this book. If you are a doer, like me, you may think that a book containing the phrase "being rather than doing" is really not a book for you. I certainly have trouble just being. 

Before becoming disabled, I was a workaholic. I needed to justify my existence by constantly doing. It took a couple of years to break free of the thought that since I could no longer work I was now worthless, a drain on society, a useless machine that should be relegated to the scrap heap.

The fact is, I'm still very much a doer. I don't feel right if I'm not working on something. That being said, readers may guess that I am going to tell them that this is the wrong book for someone like me. However, I'm not going to say that.

This is the wrong book for finding exercises to help me self-analyze, to understand why I am the way I am and why I think the way I do. However, it is the right book to help me break away from ideas such as "if I'm not constantly working on a project, I'm worthless," "if I'm not making vast quantities of money, I'm worthless," or "if I'm not working at a regular job, I'm worthless." It is a peaceful book reminding readers to approach the world with compassion. 

Since we are part of the world, this includes ourselves. I find it very difficult to be compassionate with myself. This book may not contain the breakthrough answer that suddenly helps me relate to myself in a more benevolent fashion or understand exactly why things are the way they are, but it reminds me to at least try. That's all that anyone can do. 

I rate The Unicorn in You five out of five stars and suggest that you give it a read, even if you are a Dedicated Doer Diligently Doing Deeds, as I am.

Check out The Unicorn in You on Amazon.

https://amzn.to/3tkJgav

I originally wrote this review for the author's book tour with Silver Dagger Tours and posted it on Readers Roost on 1 March 2022. 

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Readers Roost: The Benevolence of New Ideas Review and Giveaway

Readers Roost: The Benevolence of New Ideas Review and Giveaway:   The Benevolence of New Ideas One Woman's Journey From Sicily to America Book 3 by Carmela Cattuti Genre: Historical Women's Fic...

Ornery Owl and Hangry really hate it when supermassive levels of fat-shaming ruin a story that they had really been enjoying up to that point. This Fat Friday, check out the Ornery Review of a historical fiction trio that devolved into a derisive body-shaming fest. 

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Wordy Thursday: Ornery Book Reviews: The Lovely Bones

Genre:
Mystery

Rating:
Five out of Five Stars for Goodreads

Disclosure

If readers purchase a copy of the book using the above link, I will receive a small commission from Amazon. The following is a duplicate of my review for Goodreads.

I really enjoyed this touching and powerful book. I appreciated the author's ability to connect the reader with Susie, the victim of a horrific crime committed by a very evil man. I enjoyed experiencing Susie's thoughts from her vantage point in the afterlife. I also appreciated the fact that the author discussed the ways in such a devastating incident disrupts the family of the victim. I simply can't think of much to say without giving away things that the reader should discover for themselves, so I'll keep it brief. Read this book (or listen, as I did.) It is an amazing experience.

The following questions are from the Insecure Writers Support Group Book Club discussion of this book.

1. The main character, Suzie Salmon, is killed in the first chapter. The author, Alice Sebold, has very little time to build Suzie as a character and get readers to connect to her.

QUESTION: Did you feel a connection to Suzie in Chapter One? What helped to create that connection?

I liked Susie from the beginning. She was an ordinary girl. Personally, that's one of my favorite protagonists: simply an ordinary girl trying to get through life.

2. Have you ever written a story in the point-of-view of a ghost/spirit?

If yes, what technique did you use? (How did you handle not being able to use certain senses such as touch and smell, and was your character able to interact with other characters?)

I primarily write paranormal/science fiction hybrids, so I write about ghosts quite a bit. My ghosts can see, touch, and smell things but have trouble interacting with the living unless they encounter someone who is sensitive to their presence.

3. The story jumps from character to character a lot and includes a lot of flashbacks. Did this detract from or increase your enjoyment of the overall story?

I thought the author did a great job of this and it added richness to the story.

4. What did you think of the description of Suzie’s Heaven?

I liked the realism of it, although I think it would suck to be there. I request a different heaven!

5. Overall, people love this book or they hate it. Where do you stand?

I liked this book very much and recommend it highly. It gets the Ornery Seal of Approval!

Ornery Owl

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Wordy Thursday: Opaque

Genre: 
Young Adult/Paranormal Romance/Sci-Fi

Rating: 
Three out of Four stars for Online Book Club, 
Three out of Five stars for Amazon

Disclosure:
If readers purchase a copy of this book through the above link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.
This review is a duplicate of my Amazon review for this book.
I received an advance copy of this book for review purposes.

Read my exclusive Online Book Club review for this book here.

This story has a fascinating premise and compelling characters. Adam is a young man who is unaware that he has superhuman abilities until Carly comes to his school and teaches him the truth about himself. Adam initially presents as potentially being a sociopath and certain of his actions and their consequences (or lack thereof) are the reasons why I question whether this book should be categorized as a young adult novel although the protagonists are teenagers.

Adam experiences romantic attraction to his mother. Although the author avoids graphic detail, incestuous fantasies are a rather taboo subject, perhaps best left in adult fiction. At one point, Adam's disturbing behavior leads to the death of a young woman and he suffers no real consequences for his actions. I found this plot device unsettling.

The book suffers to a degree from The Twilight Problem. "You can redeem the bad boy" is a terrible message to be imparting to young girls. Carly, Adam's love interest, is so concerned with saving Adam that she ignores his abusive and violent actions. For a female character to be completely wrapped up in saving a significant other who presents a danger to her sends a dangerous and frankly sexist message. I am frustrated by stories which present female characters only as foils and helpmates to badly behaved males.

Further, I was appalled by the frequent references to Carly's apparently ample yet shapely buttocks and to the scene describing her stripping down to her underclothes. I found it unsettling to be reading a voyeuristic description of a teenage girl undressing.

I nearly stopped reading this book when the author made the unfortunate decision to use a psychological condition as an adjective to describe certain of Adam's behaviors that Carly found irritating.

"She sighs at his bipolar actions.”

The author is using the term "bipolar" to mean mercurial or changeable, and this is an utterly offensive thing to do. Individuals who live with bipolar disorder are as varied in their behaviors as those who do not have this condition. I am 55 years old and have type 2 bipolar disorder. I do not tend to present as mercurial or changeable and, in fact, I tend to present as staid and sedate. What people do not see below the surface is the fact that I am constantly fighting against low self-esteem and suicide ideation. The battles of me and others with this serious psychiatric condition should not be reduced to an adjective describing undesirable behavior on the part of a character in a novel. To do so is extremely dismissive and insulting. I would hope that no-one would ever say something like "she sighs at his cancer actions" to describe the behaviors of a person who is weak and tired. Why in the world would anyone think it's okay to do this sort of thing regarding psychiatric conditions?

Although I found the characters compelling, to a degree I also found them two-dimensional. Adam's father was the only character who wasn't Hollywood-pretty.

If the reader can overlook these faults, they will likely be drawn into the story. It is probably okay for older teens to read this book, but I would advise against giving it to anyone under sixteen.

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Wordy Thursday: New Mindest, New Results

Genre:

Business

Rating:

Four out of Four Stars for Online Book Club

Disclosure:

I received an advance copy of this book for review purposes.

This post contains affiliate links. If readers purchase a copy of the book through the above link, I will receive a small commission from Amazon.

Please read my exclusive Online Book Club review of this book here.

This is a brief, encouraging book geared towards small business owners who have employees. It can also be utilized by solo entrepreneurs and by managers in a larger business or corporate setting. The author writes in a friendly, personable tone. He addresses issues such as communicating with one's staff in an encouraging and forthright manner as well as personal perseverance. 

When employees feel as though they are a valued part of a business, they will be engaged and involved in its growth. I wish that some of my past employers had a book like this at their disposal. They might have enjoyed increased staff retention and performance if they had treated their employees as assets rather than disposable components.

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Wordy Thursday: On Writing by Stephen King

Genre:
Nonfiction, Autobiography, Instructional, Writing

Rating:
Five out of Five Stars

The following is a duplicate of my review on Goodreads for this book.

If readers purchase the book through the above preview link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.

I have been a fan of Stephen King for many years. I read this book when it first came out and enjoyed reading it again. Of course, I am very glad that he survived his terrible accident and is now doing better.

I would not thrive writing the way Mr. King recommends: by shutting myself in a room for two hours with everything tuned out. I would start to feel as if I was in a dungeon fairly quickly. I am based in my living room where I can look out the window. I don't know if he would like my writing. I enjoy some of the elements that he recommends eliminating. However, I did learn two things from him a long time ago: mind the adverbs, and watch out for overly long and descriptive sentences.

I am glad to have this book in my library again.

Questions from the Insecure Writers' Support Group Book Club:

1. Stephen King says, “You can read anywhere, almost, but when it comes to writing, library carrels, park benches, and rented flats should be courts of last resort."
I reckon you've gotta write where you've gotta write. However, I doubt I'd get much writing done on a park bench. Probably nothing more than a bit of note-taking would transpire there.

QUESTIONS: Where do you like to write? Have you written in the places King says should be last resorts and found them to work better for you?
I usually write in the living room with my butt parked on the dilapidated couch that doubles as my bed. I don't write much of anywhere else at this juncture.

2. QUESTION: King states that story comes first, never theme. I disagree. Do you think a theme only develops after the story has come together or can a good story be developed from a theme?

I usually don't think much about the theme beyond it planting a seed in my disheveled brain. I probably have a theme in mind when I start.

3. QUESTIONS: What "tools" do you find most indispensable when you write? Are there any you would add to King's toolbox (which includes grammar, vocabulary, elements of style and form, character development, descriptions, dialogue, tools for revision help)?
Coffee.

4. QUESTIONS: King believes that stories are "found things, like fossils in the ground." Let’s discuss King's extended metaphor of "writing as excavation." Do you agree with this theory? How would you describe writing if different from his point-of-view?
Sometimes my story ideas come sailing through the air and smack me on the head.

5. QUESTIONS: Was this your first time reading a book by Stephen King or were you a fan before? Either way, what did you think of his book On Writing?

I've been a big fan since I was about fourteen years old. Stephen King is one of those people that I'd love to meet except for the fact that he'd probably think I was the biggest loser to ever be plopped down on this lousy planet, so I imagine I'd slink off into the shadows if the opportunity to meet him ever arose.

I think that On Writing has many excellent suggestions. Not all of them work for me.

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Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry

This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili

between the beans and the spice

digestive horror

beneath the cover of night

noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.

Fat and Ornery

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Sly's WTF Wednesday + Ornery Reviews: Don't Be Like a Girl and Play Through the Pain

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of the book through the preview link, I will receive a small commission from Amazon.

Man Mission is actually a very enjoyable book, and I recommend it. The following comes from a discussion of the Pink Bracelet Rule: he who whines loudest wears the pink bracelet. 

This rule is amusing in the context of the book and is in keeping with the book's characters. However, I had a few thoughts.

I've always found the "don't be like a girl" thing to be both sexist and untrue. Girls have plenty of strength and ability. What are we telling boys about girls when being "like a girl" is an insult?

The pink bracelet bit was fitting for the dudebro camaraderie in the story. However, in real life, "playing through the pain" tends to lead to lasting problems, and it isn't only guys who do it. I ignored numbness and tingling in the fingers of my left hand and kept working a job with a lot of heavy lifting for months until one day I woke up with my left arm in excruciating pain. I didn't have insurance and had to quit my job and wait a month until I could get Medicaid and get physical therapy. The pain was so bad that I considered committing suicide. It took a long time for the arm to become anywhere close to normal again. It still isn't entirely normal, and I still have to be careful with it so I don't exacerbate the injury that I allowed to become as bad as it did by "trying not to whine" and "playing through the pain."

Last time I checked, I was a woman. This bad idea isn't reserved for men, although for some inane reason society pats them on the back for it.

What the fuck, you guys?

~Sly Has Spoken~

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Tackle It Tuesday + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 3: Staying on Track

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of the book through the preview link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.

In Chapter 3 of her autobiography, Lauren reveals how her tendency to jump into situations both feet first without thinking led to a detrimental lifestyle of nonstop partying and drugs. One day she woke up and realized that if she kept on the same path, she was going to die. She successfully went through a rehabilitation program and has been sober ever since.

I am often surprised that I didn't end up either an addict or dead. I have an addictive personality and a self-destructive streak six miles wide. Which, to hear some people talk, is approximately the same width as my ass. These people are incorrect. My ass is, in fact, seven miles wide.

Butt-related jokes aside, I am an adrenaline junkie at heart, but my body won't allow me to indulge my addiction. I also have very low self-esteem. The ravenous hunger for acceptance combined with an addiction to excitement led me into some bad situations in my youth.

When I was younger I was infamous for trying any substance that didn't need to be snorted or injected. It's a good thing that I have a strong aversion to things in my nose. As I discovered when I was in the hospital 25 years ago after having an emergency Cesarean section, I really, really, really like opiates. Not the kind you swallow, those make me nauseous as all fuck. Codeine makes me projectile vomit. But morphine coming through an I.V.? That's the shit! I knew I would be addicted quick if I had a steady supply of that, and I was pretty sure that I would have been addicted to cocaine with the first sniff if I had ever tried it. 

Cocaine has similar effects to drugs like morphine. Fortunately, crack wasn't a thing in the area where I lived back in the day, and the crowd I ran with was too plebian to have access to coke. Also, there was the aversion to putting things in my nose. Much though I liked alcohol (and I liked it a lot), I never became addicted although I was a very heavy drinker and hard partier well into my thirties. I stopped drinking when I got pregnant but picked it back up once I was done nursing.

And now you know that part of my story.

Here are today's Inner Champion Workbook questions:

Wrong direction/action:

Equating excitement with happiness and lust with love. I partied hard and allowed guys who didn't care about me to take a piece of my heart in the hopes that if I was good to them they'd fall in love with me. It doesn't work that way.

How it didn’t match my values or goals:

I was destroying my body and going against my belief that a person should have to earn my trust in order to obtain intimacy, especially that degree of intimacy. I was disrespecting myself and it was destroying not only my body but my will to live.

How I got myself back on track:

It didn't happen until I was finally diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder at nearly 40 years old. I was at last able to see a pattern in my behaviors. I learned about hypomania and hypersexuality. I was able to start treating the physical component of my condition and understanding some of my psychological motivations. 

It took me a while to heal the most important relationship in my life, the relationship with my son. I am forever sorry about the chaos my untreated illness and my lack of self-respect introduced into his life until he was 14 years old. It took a while for him to forgive me. When I think back on how broken our relationship was, it fills me with sadness.

Wrong direction/action:

I equate my value as a person with money or lack thereof.

How it doesn’t match my values or goals:

I know that money doesn't make the person. Case in point: the rich but rank shitgibbon who holds the title President of the United States. Or, in my case, Mr. Not My President. However, my family always equated wealth with personal worth, and that is something that has stuck with me on a very deep level. 

I do not personally believe that a person's wealth has anything to do with their personal worth. If they don't do anything worthwhile with their wealth, if they squander and flaunt it, they're nothing but a giant walking rhinestone-encrusted asshole. Yet although I don't believe that wealth reveals anything about a person's true value, I believe on a deeply ingrained level that my lack of it defines mine.

How I’m going to get myself back on track:

I don't really know. I'm going to keep striving both to improve my position in life and my own self-respect. That's really all I can do.

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Ornery Reviews: Ripcord Recovery

Genre: Nonfiction/Medicine/Alternative Medicine

Rating:
Four out of Four Stars for Online Book Club
Five out of Five Stars for Amazon

Disclosure:
I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.
The following is a duplicate of my review on Amazon.
If readers purchase a copy of the book through the preview link, I receive a small commission from Amazon.

Please read my exclusive Online Book Club review for this book here.

While some will dismiss this book as too controversial because it discusses the use of marijuana, the fact is that the track record for current methods of lowering the risk of relapse in cases of addiction to alcohol and opiates is shaky at best. Marijuana has been shown to have a myriad of medical benefits. While the author's method may not resonate with everyone, I believe that it is worth it to read about and consider it.

I have personally seen marijuana used effectively to lower the number and intensity of seizures in a patient that I took care of when I worked as a home care nurse. The patient was on numerous powerful pharmacological medications to control his frequent seizures. These medications made him extremely drowsy and he slept most of the time. When marijuana oil was introduced, he was able to wean off of all but two of these medications, was much more alert, and his seizures were well controlled.

I relate this anecdote because the author discusses the ways in which the brain is altered by the use of alcohol and opiates. Marijuana, when used as the author outlines, can help balance out these alterations in the brain and give the addict a fighting chance at staying clean. The book is short and gets directly to the point. I recommend it to anyone who is fighting addiction themselves or who wishes to help a loved one fighting addiction. 

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

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Ornery Reviews: Happy Healing and a Testimony

Genre:

Nonfiction/Health/Alternative Medicine

Rating:

Four out of Four Stars for Online Book Club

Disclosure:

I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.

If readers purchase a copy of the book through the above preview link, I earn a small commission from Amazon.

Click here to read my exclusive review for Online Book Club.

As I explain in my Online Book Club review, this book does not fall into the category of mysticism or metaphysics. Although the author occasionally suggests what might be interpreted as prayer, the techniques outlined in Happy Healing are self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is not a new treatment, but the approaches offered in the book are novel.

In my review, I offer a story of how the techniques in Happy Healing helped me come to peace with the injury which led to my being unable to continue working at my job delivering groceries and alcoholic beverages.

Two years ago, I worked for a company called GoPuff, which is a subsidiary of GrubHub. I advise that no-one work for any subsidiary of GrubHub because they do not care one iota about the well-being of either their employees or their contractors. They never had enough drivers on the schedule on weekend nights. They would have four managers in the warehouse. Three of the managers would switch over to driving, leaving one manager running around like a chicken with her head cut off. I have nothing bad to say about any of the onsite managers. They worked very hard. GrubHub, however, gets no love from me.

I started feeling tingling in my left hand, which I ignored. I was carrying very heavy loads, sometimes over distances of several blocks because the deliveries were often in the middle of downtown Denver and there was no place to park, sometimes up several flights of stairs in buildings where there were no elevators. One time I almost fell through a porch that had rotting wood. Many times, the stoners who would order from us wouldn't answer the door. After pounding on the door for several minutes, I would call the warehouse and the manager would call the customer. There were times when the manager couldn't reach the customer either. I liked those customers better than the ones who would cuss me out because the delivery was made several hours after they ordered it and GrubHub customer service couldn't be bothered to call and tell them it was going to be late.

There was no interim "this is getting worse" with my arm. It went from numbness and tingling in my hand to unbearable pain from shoulder to fingertips. At that point, I had no insurance. I had to quit working so I could get Medicaid back. I couldn't sit up for more than about 45 minutes before the pain in the arm became unbearable and I had to lie down on it to numb it. I have lived most of my life with chronic widespread low-grade to mid-grade pain due to fibromyalgia. Chronic severe pain is a different animal entirely. There were times when I very seriously considered suicide because the pain was so intense. I forced myself to wait until I had Medicaid so I could get physical therapy.

Although I was already sympathetic, I came to a personal realization of exactly how people in chronic pain become addicted to painkillers. When you are in chronic intense pain, the thing you want most is for the pain to stop, and you will do anything to achieve that. If you have never endured intense pain, imagine that someone was whacking your arm repeatedly with a hammer--hard. That's what chronic intense pain is like. Sufferers of chronic intense pain just want relief. How anyone can fail to understand that very simple idea is beyond me. Sanctimoniousness never helped anyone.

Back to my story. The physical therapy helped greatly. My arm went from being in constant severe pain to constant mid-grade pain with flares of severe pain to constant low-grade pain with flares of mid-grade pain to feeling like a lump of clay with flares of low-grade to mid-grade pain. Unfortunately, Medicaid only pays for twelve sessions of physical therapy per injury, so that was where things leveled out, and I was very grateful. Over time, the arm regained enough sensation that it no longer feels like a lump of clay. It is always slightly numb and I do not have a full range of motion in the shoulder area, but it is a vast improvement over being in constant intense pain which makes me consider suicide.

One of the exercises presented in Happy Healing involves giving the body part in pain a name and "talking" to that part. I named my arm Amelia. As I talked to Amelia, I realized that I was still angry with her for betraying me and making it so that I couldn't work physically demanding jobs such as delivering packages anymore. I also realized that Amelia had been trying to warn me that something was going wrong, and I ignored her to my detriment. I apologized to Amelia for blaming her for what happened and promised to listen to her (and the rest of my body) in the future.

As a result of reading and engaging in the exercises outlined in Happy Healing, I have a truce with my body and am no longer as prone to pushing myself to the point of collapse or injury. I appreciate this book and think that it was useful and helpful. The author's approach may seem a bit "goofy" to the more skeptical sorts, but I recommend trying the exercises. I didn't really think I'd get much from them when I started reading the book, but they turned out to be surprisingly beneficial.

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

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Real Cie Reviews + Hearth and Soul Link Party + Inspire Me Monday #246 + Promote Yourself Monday: Burn Zones

Genre:

Autobiography

(Subtopics: entrepreneurship)

Rating: 

Four out of Four stars at Online Book Club

Five out of Five stars on Amazon

Disclosure:

I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.

If you purchase a copy of the book through the above link, I will earn a small commission.

You can read my exclusive review for Burn Zones at Online Book Club here.

As a book reviewer, it makes me very happy when I can enthusiastically recommend a book.

Jorge Newberry's Burn Zones makes me very happy. 

Not only is this fascinating autobiography extremely well-written, through its pages I discovered a kind soul who truly cares about others. 

Jorge is the sort of person that this world needs more of. 

He takes it upon himself to understand the mindset of the people he encounters and to show compassion to those that society at large tends to judge harshly.

Like most power players, Jorge has an intense personality. But he understands that not everyone is wired the way he is. He is also uncompromising in his approach to himself, describing not only his strengths but his potential shortcomings.

Jorge Newberry has a humble, honest, personable style. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Burn Zones and recommend it without reservation. If you enjoy real-life stories and appreciate those who think of others before themselves, I believe that Burn Zones is a great choice for your next read.

~Cie~