Book

Book Review: “Marketing Launchpad: The Ultimate, No-Fluff Marketing Book for Women in Business” by Racquel Collard

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Rating: 4 stars

Headline: The essential marketing guide for anyone striving to become an earth-shaker in business

Review:

Marketing Launchpad: The Ultimate, No-Fluff Marketing Book for Women in Business (hereafter Marketing Launchpad) by Racquel Collard is billed as its title suggests, a direct and essential guide for women who want to take their marketing strategy (and thereby their business) to the next level. Split into three parts; “focus”, “clarity” and “bringing it all together”, Collard’s writing approach is to simplify the needless complexities of the business world and empower women to not only fight for their fair share of the market but also realise their full potential by removing imposter syndrome out of the equation.

The writing structure in this book is balanced and varied to optimise engagement, providing a number of hypothetical and real world examples (although the latter tends to be more focused on the well trodden, big name players such as branding heavyweight Apple). The book also includes colourful and attention-grabbing imagery, exercises and worksheets, as defined by the heading “time to take action”. These worksheets appear at the end of chapters and compliment the preceding content in a way that makes the tasks easy to complete and not cumbersome for readers.

Central to this book is what Collard refers to as “the marketing funnel”, an essential awareness behind every successful entrepreneur of the customer journey, from a potential client to a loyal and repeat customer. Later on in this book this simple model is applied to other aspects of marketing business, including types and purpose of a product and how these elements align with customer interest and sentiment.

Marketing Launchpad makes for a good read as something that would suit pretty much anyone going into business (despite its title, I would argue there is nothing contained here to particularly excludes a male readership). That said, using positive imagery to promote women is certainly no bad thing and in a market dominated by generic business guides with vague titles Collard has set herself from the pack by singling out a female market. It is a book that gives two fingers to the term imposter syndrome and for that alone it is a book to be likened.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Marketing Launchpad…” by Racquel Collard

Purchase Link: “Marketing Launchpad…” by Racquel Collard (Amazon)

Author Website: https://www.marketinglaunchpad.com.au/

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Performing at Swindon Festival of Literature

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Ticking something off the Swindon bucket list, I can now say I’ve experienced the delight of reading/performing my fiction to a live audience at the Swindon Festival of Literature.

A piece of self-penned fiction, my story had the added “challenge” of needing to be performed in three minutes and in a way that kept the audience begging for more. I loved every second of it.

No performer is worth half of their talent without their trusty roadies. Ben did a brilliant job at suggesting revisions to my piece during the drafting stage, watching my performance in living room rehearsals and, most importantly, pumping me full of sugar and positivity on the night itself. (He’s also a dab hand at a camera.)

Thank you to the organisers of this event for helping to promote fresh voices and giving authors the platform to engage with new audiences.

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Poetry Review: “This Is Wisdom: By Understanding My Poetry” by Ronnell Beaty

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Rating: 2 stars

Headline: “This is Wisdom”: a poetry collection driven by passion but executed in a way that feels somewhat lacking

Review:

This is Wisdom: By Understanding My Poetry, is a collection of poems penned by author Ronnell Beaty.

Spanning 244 pages, the poetry collection itself covers around 200 pages. Topics of Beaty’s writing includes the spiritual and physical, as the reader transverses the inner workings of the poet’s deepest thoughts.
Most of the poems in Beaty’s collection are constructed as one line stanzas, with key words or phrases formatted in a bold typeface for added emphasis. This often results in a tone of voice that is either very punchy, or symbolic of the monotony of mundane human thoughts, witnessed strongly in the poem “I Be The First To Listen – And The Last To Speak!”. In this poem, Beaty transports readers into the head space of someone stripped of their voice. The deployment of repetition in this poem strikes out acutely across the stanzas, including the lines, “I don’t, // Even speak. // I just: // Listen… // I just: // Listen…” Used in this way Beaty’s words showcase an individual reduced to boredom, or even submission itself.

While there are some respectable elements of this collection, Beaty’s overuse of the same poetic style is repetitive and dry. There is a lack of variety to demonstrate the artistic merit of the author and, by keeping the tone of voice monotonous, it does tend to inspire feelings of boredom within the readership Beaty strives to inspire.


In additional to this, and despite the book presenting itself as quick read, the number of poems in this monosyllabic style becomes hard to overlook. It is what prevents This is Wisdom from inspiring much beyond a stifled yawn. There is talent in Beaty, so potentially the collection would have benefitted from being split into two distinctive books, done so to include more variety of poetic deployments.

A poetry collection driven by passion, This Is Wisdom is executed in a way that sadly feels somewhat lacking.


AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “This Is Wisdom: By Understanding My Poetry” by Ronnell Beaty

Purchase Link: “This Is Wisdom: By Understanding My Poetry” by Ronnell Beaty (Amazon)

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Book Review: “Lost in Beirut: A True Story of Love, Loss and War” by Ashe and Magdalena Stevens

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Rating: 4 stars

Headline: This darkly beautiful memoir yanks you in by the collar and refuses to let go

Review:

‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’” were the words of L.P. Hartley, a quote strikingly applicable to the Middle East experiences of Ashe Stevens during 2006, while working in the Lebanese capital city of Beirut.

Jointly written with Magdalena, Ashe Stevens’ memoir Lost in Beirut starts as two business partners trying to orchestrate a concert for the rapper 50 Cent. A first time traveller to the region, Ashe is thrown headfirst into a strikingly different culture to his American roots. A place where economies halt five times a day for prayers and family reputation is everything. Ashe quickly discovers the latter for himself when he starts dating Aleyna, a woman who hails from a high-profile family in the Hezbollah district of Beirut.

Unknown to the city’s bustling residents, while the stage is being prepared for a career-defining concert, a bigger threat is brewing across the boarder in nearby Israel. In the days that follow, society is flipped from prosperity and glamour into a landscape where money means nothing and an American accent is enough to have you killed on sight. With the airport bombed and all roads out the country destroyed, Ashe must fight a new battle of his own and find an escape from within the rubble of Beirut.

Lost in Beirut is a highly likeable book, packed with beautiful imagery of a thriving city both before and after the months of bombing attacks. Written in first person present, it does take a few chapters to adapt to the tone of voice and tense (memoirs generally being written in past tense which makes for a more reflective style, whereas this feels more reactive). Once you get past this though the story yanks you in by the collar and refuses to let go, really coming into its own in the final third of the book where you get a sense of society falling apart. The world-building is more apocalyptic in this section, you can feel the raw panic of the mega rich on discovering their money is worthless, their expansive villas levelled flat in minutes. You would believe it to be a work of pure fiction, if it were not for the sadness that these events are true and actually happened. People died in this conflict.

A touching and, at points, quite graphic memoir, I come back to Hartley’s quote. With well over a decade having transpired between the 2006 Lebanese war and now, can we still claim the past to be a wholly foreign country? Or maybe we have to move on, embracing acceptance with the scars that are left.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Lost in Beirut…” by Ashe and Magdalena Stevens

Purchase Link: “Lost in Beirut: A True Story of Love, Loss and War” by Ashe and Magdalena Stevens (Amazon)

Author Website: https://lostinbeirut.com/

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Book Review: “Matleisure: Maternity Leave Survival Guide & The Art of Enjoying It” by Emily Malloy

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Rating: 5 stars

Headline: When it comes to navigating the world of maternity leave, this book does it all

Review:

As authors of self help guides go, Emily Malloy has pretty much everything you need to make a good book, great. A Canadian advertising professional with fifteen years of experience, bachelor in economics under her belt and a mother of two. Malloy uses her experience in the latter category to pen her recent publication, Matleisure: Maternity Leave Survival Guide & The Art of Enjoying It (hereafter Matleisure).

Matleisure covers a wide range of topics for expectant mothers, from monetary finances to the importance of building a community and nutrition nourishment. The book’s tone of voice is informal in approach yet informative, with Malloy providing plenty of hints and tips throughout from her own personal experiences of going through maternity leave. There are even some handy recommendations in a bonus section at the end, including several recipes that are both healthy and easy to make (recipes you do not need to be pregnant to enjoy!) The formatting of the book is also complimentary, with chapters kept to a reasonable length and the font adjusted to an appropriate size for easy reading.

Even if the arrival of a child is the bringer of ultimate highs and bottomless lows, Malloy’s guidance helps steer parents through the fog and out the other side. Matleisure demystifies many of the false expectations and ideals of parental life, encouraging parents to embrace and enjoy this time in their lives. For some topics where an intermediary may be required, Malloy helpfully provides contact information of third party charities and services (some of these are tailored toward American and Canadian audiences, however for the most part Matleisure has universal appeal).

Matleisure is a very easy-going read and one that is highly commendable. When it comes to navigating the world of maternity leave, this book does it all.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Matleisure: Maternity Leave Survival Guide & The Art of Enjoying It” by Emily Malloy

Purchase Link: “Matleisure: Maternity Leave Survival Guide & The Art of Enjoying It” by Emily Malloy (Amazon)

Author’s Website: EMILY MALLOY

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Poetry Review: “Let’s meet through the four rhyming lines” by Aazmao Arn

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Rating: 3 stars

Headline: Aazmao Arn’s poetry style of four-line rhyming stanzas is homely but just a little bit repetitive

Review:

Aazmao Arn’s poetry release, Let’s meet through the four rhyming lines, speaks to some of the core elements of what it means to be human. Born and raised in the Middle Eastern country of Qatar, Arn’s collection of poems and personal reflections were inspired by her personal drive to give readers a deeper meaning to their feelings and thoughts. Within this humble collection of thirteen poems there is a range of events and worldly interactions, from those that dive down a microscopic lens, considering the ripple effect of perception and appearance, to poems that draw inspiration from nature and how it interacts with humanity. Preceding each poem is a motivational or thought-provoking statement (for example, “Patience”, which reads, “Once you conquer patience, life can get easier.”)

There are some likeable aspects of this collection. By being written consistently in a four line stanza format with rhyming couplets, there comes a methodical and reassuring beat to each page while reading through this short book. It makes for a somewhat comforting and homely style that perfectly matches the book’s title. By constructing her poetry in this manner, Arn’s has made her poetry anything but a drag.

That said, writing in this manner does result in the poetry feeling somewhat repetitive and lacking in imagination. There are occasions where the rhymes feel a bit forced and the stanzas drawn out or abruptly cut off to make them fit into the same cookie-cutter format as all the poems that come before and after. The one sentence statements that fill every other page is also something that, personally, I feel adds little and probably would have been better used to showcase more of Arn’s poetry.

What I would love to see more of in Arn’s creative talents is a broadened use of different poetic styles and types; more variation on the poetic structure and maybe some experimentation beyond the traditional confines of a four line stanza.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Let’s meet through the four rhyming lines” by Aazmao Arn

Purchase Link: “Let’s meet through the four rhyming lines” by Aazmao Arn (Amazon)

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Book Review: “An Extraordinarily Enchanted Birthday” by Professor Stork

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Rating: 3 stars

Headline: A beautifully illustrated children’s book featuring a magical journey and educational farm animal facts

Review:

An Extraordinary Enchanted Birthday by the anonymous author “Professor Stork” (illustrated by Patricia Wilson and Len Peralta) is a children’s picture book. It follows the story of Evy Loe, a young child who wakes up on her birthday filled with the excitement of an upcoming visit to an art gallery with her father. On arriving at the gallery, Evy discovers a pair of magical glasses which will takes her on a magical journey to learn all about life on the farm and all the colourful characters that inhabit it.

This is a nice children’s book, carried massively by the quality of some of its illustrations. The general structure of the book follows a repeated pattern of Evy meeting a farmyard animal and then a full page portrait of the animal with a captioned fun fact for younger minds. The portraits are beautifully executed and carry all the marks of having been completed by a professional artist. The other imagery around it, particularly of the human characters, comes across as slightly more cartoonish. Both types of artwork support the other favourably.

There are place in the book where an overuse of copy might make the content a harder sell to younger children with limited attention spans. Some of the fun facts for each animal are also a little questionable, such as for the cow, with the quote, “cows are job creation machines. The milk they produce creates thousands of jobs in the milk and cheese industries”. While objectively this might be correct in America, where the book has been initially published, for an international audience facts like these might not always be true. In this instance, it also reads a little bit like the line is sponsored by a third party, although this could be a purely personal take on a throwaway line of copy.

An Extraordinary Enchanted Birthday is a fun book for younger readers and their parents, serving as good introduction to some of the colourful animal characters found within farmyard and agricultural settings.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “An Extraordinarily Enchanted Birthday” by Professor Stork

Purchase Link: “An Extraordinarily Enchanted Birthday” by Professor Stork (Amazon)

Author Website: Professor Stork

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Book Review: “Back Focus: My Life Behind the Reality Lens” by DJ Cash Bar

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Rating: 5 stars

Headline: An eye-opening memoir, unveiling the hidden backstories behind reality TV production in the 2000s

Review:

I have to admit, I am a bit of a reality television fiend. I used to be worse, but having sat through an entire series of Love Island in 2018 and realised my whole summer of nightly viewing could be condensed down to a eight minute “best of” reel, that was when I knew something had to change. Of course, nothing would really change until 2022, after my friend and I went on binge viewing of Netflix’s The Ultimatum. At 4am I was pumped full of iced tea and questions, mostly about myself.

It is because of my historic relationship with it that I have always remained fascinated by the history of reality television. Using their set nickname, “DJ Cash Bar” pens this no holds barred memoir, Back Focus: My Life Behind the Reality Lens. The camera operator, turned author, began their career in the early-mid noughties, during the often dubbed “Wild West” period of reality TV. Think There’s Something About Miriam and Kid Nation, but before I Wanna Marry “Harry“. It was around the dawn of reality television, where producers were still grappling with the genre and constantly pushing the boundaries (and budgets) to see what sticked with a growing viewership. Rules and safety were scarce and participant welfare was, in cases, non-existent.

Reading this memoir is both a fascinating and disturbing read, showcasing some of the challenging conditions placed on those working behind the scenes to churn out instant hits. The thirty hour working days and the ingrained abuse of drug and alcohol is to only but scratch the surface of the culture. As a memoir, it is well written and gives a lot of detail to the various productions the author-camera operator worked on. No colleagues or production titles are named directly, however the book contains enough crumbs to easily establish the full facts (alongside the production’s associated on-screen controversies).

While a lot of exposure has been given in recent years to the experience of participants and “cast” on reality television, it feels only fair that those behind the lens get their turn too. Within Back Focus: My Life Behind the Reality Lens, there is no glitz or glamour, replaced instead with cold, sober truths and, somewhat ironically, the harsh reality of television production during the noughties.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Back Focus: My Life Behind the Reality Lens” by DJ Cashbar

Purchase Link: “Back Focus: My Life Behind the Reality Lens” by DJ Cashbar (Amazon)

Author Website: Back Focus by DJ Cash Bar (backfocusbook.com)

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This book cover: discuss

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One of the many “quirks” of sitting in a number of bookish related chats are the covers that authors bound around for feedback. Of all of them, this one seemed to raise more questions. I’ll let you decide why.

Bearing in mind little to no context was issued by the author, at the time he just wanted design feedback. Standard things, like, “does it grab your attention?”, “is the font legible?”, “is the design overall a good fit?”

From doing a quick search on Amazon, it would appear the book has yet to be published. So keep an eye out, because you never know with these things!

(Oh, and in case there was any doubt, I was very much in the “not a fan” club.)

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Book Review: “Ballad of Burnout” by Kerry Makin-Byrd

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Rating: 2 stars

Headline: Writing about such a challenging topic was never going to be easy and, for me, this book missed the mark

Review:

Ballard of Burnout by Kerry Makin-Byrd is both poetic in nature whilst also leaning towards prose. It details the narrator’s personal experiences (presumably Makin-Byrd’s) in a stressful work environment, causing symptoms many of us would recognise and identify as the mental health condition, burnout.

The book covers the events before, during and after with an optimistic look to the future of what life holds following the traumatic experiences detailed over twelve chapters/verses that run as one continuation. It is for this reason the use of the term “ballad” is used in the book’s title, a monologue of one person’s experiences. In this overarching ballad Makin-Byrd utilises a range of poetic devices, from traditional stanzas, to chunks of prose and ad-hoc use of centred text. On several occasions we also see bullet points of meaty text, possibly a humorous jab at working environments where bullet points are overly used to excess. This latter point could be my own reasoning though.

And this is where I struggle with Ballard of Burnout. Writing about such a challenging topic was never going to be easy, but here the writing style feels particularly detached, almost upsettingly so. I want so badly to resonate with the author’s words, to see something within the text and pull at a strand of relatability. After all, stress in the workplace hardly an uncommon sight. But that moment, it just never seems to come. There is no insight into the type of workplace and very limited attempts at worldbuilding; the location, the employment sector, even a flavour of the personal relationships held by the narrator, these are elements that felt lacking. Coupled with the sporadic layouts of text, it makes the content feel a little flat and disjointed.

The writing quality on a micro, line-by-line basis, is good but by incorporating a broader view of the narrator’s environment it can only make for a more colourful reading experience all ways round. Food for thought for the next publication Makin-Byrd puts her hand to.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Ballad of Burnout” by Kerry Makin-Byrd

Purchase Link: https://www.balladofburnout.com

Author Website: https://drkerrymakinbyrd.com

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