Book

“Book Strategists”, please stop spamming me

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Humour, Literature, Technology, Uncategorized , , ,

I am getting so many of these spam emails at the moment. They go like this, an individual presents me with the opportunity to become a best selling author. The catch? Only the email’s sender has the ability to secure me this success and I have to pay them to get it.

Screen shot from one of the many unsolicited emails I’ve started getting

Oh and by the way, I don’t even have a book to promote.

I’m guessing that some ugly crawler bot has been over my website, seen the words / posts that feature my book reviews for self-help guides on Reedsy Discovery, and from that decided I must be a struggling author.

  1. Rude
  2. Not in any way the case!

Honestly, there’s throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks and then there’s throwing the pots and pans.

To all these people who are using bots to spam me, just stop. I know exactly where you’re based and you’re wasting your time. Everyone else, please don’t be fooled by these emails, these people are awful scammers that don’t deserve a minute of your time. You’re worth more, so much more.

**

Could you spare a dollar to support me? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Book Review: “Hallelujah” by Niko Janarek

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Book Review, Humour, Review , , ,

Rating: 2 stars

Headline: A twisted coming of age tale, packed with poetic language but lacking structural execution

Review:

*This review contains spoilers*

Hallelujah by Niko Janarek is a short story of a small disfunctional family; brothers Josh and Georgie, their mother and grandfather Bob. Tensions are present from start, particularly between Josh, a rebellious teenager who is artistically-minded and Bob, an alcoholic who would rather see his grandson peruse a career in the army. A heated spat ensues between the two generational alphas, resulting in the off-scene death of Bob, after he stumbles back to his bedroom.

Acts two and three follow closely Josh and the young Georgie, who rapidly try to conceal the body of their deceased grandfather. Appearances of the mother figure become fleeting; her sudden change in personality (including instances of extreme paranoia and denial), suggest a character undergoing severe mental trauma. Her knowledgement of her feather’s death occurs towards the end of act three, when she walks in on Josh attempting to set Bob’s body on fire. Believe it or not, things escalate further from there.

As a reviewer it hurts me to score this book two stars out of five. The writing and poetic language is deployed nicely for some of the early scene setting and during dramatic events, this could have, and shoud have, been a better book. Hallelujah‘s main problem lies in the storytelling itself. Some events happen at too slow a pace while other important areas are seemingly skipped over altogether. Given the lack of transparency around Bob’s cause of death, there is a massive plot hole in Josh’s thought process as to why his instant reaction is to conceal the body.

Other minor details include not establishing Georgie’s age (his mannerisms are that of a very young child, yet he appears capable of manoeuvring a heavy body into a shallow grave) and the heavy use of expletive language in too short space of time. Josh’s frustrations could be shown better through internal monologues and his interactions with the outside world.

Hallelujah, a twisted coming of age tale of one boy’s transition into manhood, has all the creative skill to make it a good read, if only the structural foundations were not as sandy.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Hallelujah”

Purchase Link: “Hallelujah” by Niko Janarek (Amazon)

**

Could you spare a dollar? Pay it forward and donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Writing motivation

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Humour, Writing , , , , ,

This one goes out for anyone needing writing inspiration, as something I stumbled across when procrastinating on YouTube.

And, for what it’s worth, the first clip felt relatable in the most hilarious way. (I certainly have had my head turned once or twice for a good muffin.)

**

Could you spare a dollar to support me? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

Book Review: “Level Up! A Game Plan for Entrepreneurs” by Frank Suyker

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Humour , , ,

Rating: 1 star

Headline: It is sadly game over for this short business management guide to branding

Review:

To use its full title, Level Up! A game plan for entrepreneurs to take their brand to the next level and stand out in a sea of sameness (hereafter Level Up!), is a business management self-help guide by Dutch author Frank Suyker.

Level Up! is broken down into three parts: “Brand and Core”, “Assets” and “Experience”, with exercises introduced in each area to help stimulate creativity, such as brand comparison tasks and word association. Utilising his personal experiences in establishing a brand and of those gleaned through attending various conferences, Suker’s book could be best targeted toward new starters in business, those looking to develop a new brand identity from scratch. At c. 100 pages (with plenty of spacing), it is a quick read.

Despite Suyker’s attempts to make this guide easy and accessible, this is not something I would be in a position to readily recommend to others. The content feels very light on the ground, with factual assertions not backed up with any supporting evidence. For example, “estimates are that there are 30,000,000 businesses in the USA”. In this case, is Suyker referring to a business housing one employee or 1000? Readers placing their trust in self-help guides need to have confidence in the data, including the where, when and what behind the assertion.

This links me to another general comment on this book, grammar and presentation. For a book that devotes time to the importance of colour and imagery, the colours contrast is at points incredibly jarring. Capital letter statements absorbing whole pages in oversized fonts, a list of 50 words which the reader is asked to circle, a task made impossible because said words are set against a black background, a bright orange page with the caption “what does the colour orange trigger for you?” There is a strong reading disconnect with some of the design choices, as a reader you stop reading the content and focus only on the presentation. Level Up! would have benefitted so much more for having had the input of a professional editor and designer.

Deep within the pages of Level Up! there contains some small nuggets of insight. Would it make good content for a website or a magazine column? Yes. Does it make for an engaging book entry into the business management genre? On this occasion, sadly no.

AEB Reviews

Links

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Level Up! A Game Plan for Entrepreneurs”

Purchase Link: “Level Up! A Game Plan for Entrepreneurs” (Amazon)

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Book Review: “Another World” by Maximillian Matthews

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Book Review, Humour , , ,

Rating: 3 Stars

Headline: A good read for anyone wanting to better understand a minority subsection of American society

Review:

Another World is the autobiographical memoir by Maximillian Matthews, covering his life growing up in North Carolina and forging a professional career during the late noughties. Self-identifying as black queer, Matthews’ memoir aims to provide readers from the same community with the type of material that does not readily exist on accessible bookshelves.

From growing up in North Carolina, to living and working in Boston and Washington DC, Matthews draws on various colourful experiences to convey the highs and lows of integrating himself into both the LGBTQ+ community and broadly within American society. The way Matthews recounts the key drivers behind his actions makes for some touching moments in the book, particularly in scenes where he acknowledges some of the harmful actions and behaviours self-inflicted in the pursuit of acceptance and love.

Good for bringing out some of the general themes around systematic racism and homophobia in America, Another World does tend to lose focus, in places pulling on quotes from external sources to draw in entirely separate debates. In one instance the dramatic retelling of a traumatic break-up is punctured by a tangent on the politics of attraction. Such tangents are all of insightful importance, but their placement sometimes does Matthews’ life experiences a disservice.

The flow of Another World also comes across as a bit hap-hazard. Having been brought on a chronological journey in the first third of the book, readers are suddenly dropped into Matthews’ strained efforts to work hard at his educational studies in High School whilst concealing his true identity. It was about ten or so pages on, when Matthews refers to his mother’s presence while growing up that I wondered if the book would have benefitted from a structural rejig.

Another World is a starting point for anyone wanting to better understand a minority subsection of American society. As someone who self-identifies as a white woman living in the United Kingdom, it has given me plenty to think about. That alone should be treated as a success.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Another World”

Purchase Link: “Another World” by Maximillian Matthews (Amazon)

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Book Review: “Diagnosis: BURNOUT” by Ariyana S. Nishe

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Book Review, Humour, Uncategorized , , ,

Rating: 1 star

Headline: Questionable facts, confusing anecdotes that lead nowhere and uncomfortable levels of over familiarity. Diagnosis? Checkout

Review:

Burnout is, to pardon the pun, a hot topic at the moment. I only need to pop down to my local community centre, shop or healthcare provider and within seconds there will be someone venting about their personal frustrations of working in an increasingly pressurised environment. From this inevitably comes the term ‘burnout’, a mental health condition that can be triggered by chronic workplace stress.

From this the writer Ariyana S. Nishe has decided to invest her passions into producing a 45-page self-help guide, Diagnosis BURNOUT.

With the subline, “Reclaim your time, health, energy and relationships” I was expecting something that could provide clear and concise guidance for those on the brink (or wanting to take proactive steps to avoid) a mental health crises. However the cover imagery is very divisive and features an eclectic mix of imagery that is distracting.

Nishe states in her introduction that burnout has been added to the list of medical diagnoses by the World Health Organisation (WHO), yet when visited the WHO website the only definition of burnout I could find was that the condition is “an occupational phenomenon. It is not classified as a medical condition.”

My confusion over the author’s interpretation of burnout left me doubting many other elements of this book. I’m not an expert on mental health conditions, let alone burnout syndrome; that is why I turn to publications like these. Yet suddenly my eye is drawn to other elements; the formatting could be tightened, use of imagery could have been reduced and improved and the tone of voice would have significantly benefitted from editorial input.

It’s clear that the author is passionate about this field of study, and I appreciate her detailed reference section to acknowledge her source materials, but it’s not enough to pull at quotes from obscure places, couple them with images pasted from search engines and label it as self-help. This is a publication that is both confused and lacking direction.

While Nishe’s attempts are valiant, sadly they don’t hold enough water to make Diagnosis: BURNOUT marketable to the audience it’s intended for. This should be seen as a product of the author’s aspiration to be published, not something for mass-market consumption. Less book material, more blog.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “Diagnosis Burnout”

(Since publication of this review the author has decided to remove the book from sale)

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Book Review: “The Customer Affinity Manifesto: How AI can Help Businesses Connect with Customer Emotions”

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Book Review, Humour, Uncategorized , ,

Rating: 5 stars

Headline: For those who want to stay ahead of the increasingly steep and bloody curve of customer satisfaction, this book is a must

Review:

Once upon a time, loyalty was decided by large armies and costly landgrabs. A knight (or similar) would swear their loyalty and in turn all the sprawling hordes of peasants (or similar) underneath would also find themselves also pledged to that cause. But we are no longer in that period. In Westernised countries, gone are the knights, swept away the uneducated masses and in its place born is the freely accessible internet.

Joss Gillet’s guide to business, The Customer Affinity Manifesto: How AI can Help Businesses Connect with Customer Emotions, brings into conversation the need to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into brand building. Before all else, Gillet details two home truths, 1) AI is not going anywhere and 2) your business is not going anywhere without it. (The phrase “suck it up and move on” springs to mind.)

That said, Gillet is equally keen to not let AI become seen as a digital enemy, if anything in many cases throughout recent history he cites many examples of where AI systems have benefited improvements in marketing and how, before then, psychology experimentation was mimicking a lot of what we see today, be it on a much more labour-intensive scale. From telephone response times to the words and colours on a digital app, a better understanding of customer frustrations can lead to better targeted improvements. Happy customers equals happy economic growth.

Using his previous experience in the Telecommuncations sector to build a case study, Gillet identifies sixteen specific pain points (or ‘topics’) where customers feel particular disillusionment with their provider’s service. Gillet then presents the case that anyone can use deep learning to build a simple AI model to utilise freely accessible data on social media platforms, such as Twitter, to produce highly effective data charts and sentiment scores. Later on, there contains more detail about how business can implement effective AI, without needing to rely on the brand popularity of 10,000+ Tweet mentions a day.

Gillet’s book is well researched, well put together and visually is very engaging (the use of clearly explained graphs being welcomed sight). Granted, this would perhaps not be the best birthday present for someone selling the occasional bead necklace on Etsy, but for the truly aspirational, those who want to grow their business and stay ahead of the increasingly steep and bloody curve of customer satisfaction, this book is a must.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “The Customer Affinity Manifesto”

Purchase Link: “The Customer Affinity Manifesto” by Joss Gillet (Amazon)

Author Website: https://jossgillet.com/

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Book Review: “The Ultimate Workbook to Train Your Brain, Body and Spirit” by Steven Clinch

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Book Review, Humour, Uncategorized , , , ,

Rating: 3 Stars

Headline: The only place where you can complete sudokus and hug trees: a little book of fun

Review:

The Ultimate Workbook to Train Your Brain, Body and Spirit by Steven Clinch is a neat little publication, at 129 pages there is by far more visual content in here than words (for context, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is around 77 thousand words in length, The Ultimate Workbook nears a modest 1000). It is a welcome relief from a lot of the denser material that exists in the market.

This publication provides the reader with 150 different exercises to conduct at their own pace. Activities include colouring in, wordsearches and short exercise routines, all of which are intended to trigger feelings of relaxation or deep thought as the reader is given the opportunity to pick (and subsequently tick off) the activities they’ve completed. For those needing a bit more guidance, answers to the puzzle activities are provided towards the back.

Be it sudoku or crosswords or even wordsearches, for a indecisive person like me I like the variation in activity and puzzle. I could pick and choose an activity based on how much time I had or how I was feeling on a particular day. I tended to reserve the ethical dilemma questions for when I had the most time and use the brain teasers as a bit of fun when spending time with friends and family. In this sense the book is perfect across a broad range of age groups.

The cover’s intense and dark imagery is easy to misconstrue, I had to take a second glance before recognising this as being aimed toward mental stimulation rather than physical. The solutions on the final pages have not taken into consideration accessibility – my eyesight is perfectly fine but I still found myself struggling to read some of the answers and I am not convinced the author should be making bold statements. Claiming the completion of the activities will create more brain neurons and therefore result in to a longer and happier life? The colouring lead to a happier half hour, let’s start there.

AEB Reviews

Links

Original Reedsy Discovery review: AEB Reviws – “The Ultimate Workbook”

Purchase link: “The Ultimate Workbook” (Amazon)

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Book Review: “Picturing Freedom: African Americans & Their Cars, A Photographic History”

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) America, Book, Book Review, Review, Uncategorized , , , ,

Having read some of my fabulous book reviews on MHAM, the good editorial team at Reedsy Discovery approached me to start writing reviews for them.

Here’s my first one…

“Picturing Freedom: African Americans & Their Cars, A Photographic History”

Rating: 5 Stars

Headline: The pictorial history of American civil rights you never knew you needed

Review:

I’m not always a fan of photographic books, most often the content seems to take a back seat to a random consortium of imagery, thrown together by the author to fill out pages. They don’t provide the level of substance I look for when I want to fully immerse myself in a period of History. Not this book, however.

Picturing Freedom is a fascinating collection of imagery of African Americans with their motorcars from across the twentieth century. Shedding light on an overlooked element of American culture, Burns highlights the significance of car ownership for what was most often the most impoverished segment of society. It offered freedom from segregation, class and gender structure and from the bindings of Jim Crow laws.

Opening with an introduction, extensive historical context, and several case studies of influential African Americans, the book showcases hundreds, if not thousands, of images from the Burns archive. Moving chronologically from the turn of the 1900s, where expensive cars limited most to posing in studios with set props, through to the roaring twenties, thirties and forties and beyond, the clothes and models may change must the sense of owner pride remains the same.

As I moved through this book I found myself completely transfixed by the characters and the stories I desperately wanted to learn more about. The young solider headed to war, the women with the blunt stare down the lens, elbow proudly rested on the bonnet. These are truly the untold stories of ordinary people during a turbulent period of American civil rights. And yet for the most part, these individuals are nameless, limited to the occasional half-written note on the back of a photo. It leaves the reader guessing, who are these people? What were their thoughts, ambitions and dreams in life? And did they achieve them? Forget people watching, this is photo watching at its very best.

The time and effort Burns has invested into compiling, researching and editing this book is nothing short of admirable. If you’re looking for something to spark a deep and meaningful conversation, or simply a new addition to your coffee table, then look no further.

AEB Reviews

Links

Reedsy Discovery Review: Picturing Freedom (AEB Reviews)

Purchase Link: Picturing Freedom: African Americans and Their Cars

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**

Come Again?

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Book Review, Humour, Poem, Uncategorized, Writing , , ,

Doing a bit of industry research one evening I come across this book of poetry, “Dung Beatles Navigate by Starlight”.

I know I can give as good as it gets on the waffle game (and I’m not talking about sweet treats) but this is next level:

The book’s description reads:

“These poems explore the boundary between science and poetry, and juxtapose the lexicon of organic chemistry, in particular, with a botanical discourse which is more conventional in poetry, but which the scientific treatment defamiliarises. Far from being abstruse and heavy, the treatment here lightens the subject with an imaginative playfulness, as in ‘The First Green Human: The Observer Interviews Clorinda’, where Marvell’s pastoral character is turned, through a journalistic register, into a personification of current ecological concerns.“

My reaction?

I’m done. No way can I compete with that level of blurb-ery (#ShouldBeAWord) talent (and I’m not entirely kidding).

In other news, Mumma B says she’s reassured in knowing that her daughter isn’t the only one who can spout waffle. Whoop.

(Link: https://cinnamonpress.com/store/dung-beetles-navigate-by-starlight/)

**

Could you spare a dollar or two? Donate here!

Alice’s Funding Page

**