Timothy Ferriss has written a great book called the 4 Hour Work Week. In this book he explores the traps that traditional thinking leaves us with. He examines typical workplace environments and the many assumptions we make when entering the workforce.

In his more recent book, 4 hour body, he turned his attention to and took a similar approach to the topic of weight loss and body sculpting. The topic of food, the food pyramid, calorie consumption statistics and turns them on their head. One of the examples is the work out on a stairmaster, which burns about 107 calories per hour. But sitting in front of TV watching a funny show will burn about 100. Given that when you’re done working you may be a little bit hungry, you may take a bit of celery (which is about 6 calories) and you’ve now burned an extra 1 calorie by working out for one hour. Amazing. I’d rather watch TV. But check out the other ideas that he has that will actually help you lose weight. Amazing book – even helpful ideas on getting better sleep so you are more rested, even if you you don’t get as many hours of sleep each night as you’d like.

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. Secrets of The 4-Hour Workweek – A Companion Audio Interview With Tim Ferriss On His Book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Genius Network Interview of Tim Ferriss)

“To Build a Fire” is a short story by Jack London (author of Call of the Wild and White Fang) about a man who goes out into the Alaskan wild in the middle of winter. Not prepared and with no companion but his husky, the man is in incredible danger of losing fingers and toes to frost, if not his life. It is clear that the antagonist in this story is the severe weather. Throughout the story the elements are constantly against him, and he struggles to stay alive. He must keep moving in order to stay warm, but, even with constant movement and careful observation; he is no match for the heartless cold.

Cold weather and dangerous terrain oppose the man at every side. The only way for him to conquer the cold is to keep a pace of four miles per hour. What starts out as dangerous soon becomes deadly when “At a place where there were no signs,” (717) he falls through thin ice. London writes that he soaks his legs “halfway to the knees before he floundered out to the firm crust.”(717)

Though the man was keeping a careful eye out the treacherous landscape got the better of him. Now, with wet feet he realizes that he can not keep up a pace of four miles per hour without first drying his feet. He quickly tries to get a fire going, but again his surroundings oppose him as his first attempt is smothered by a tree dropping a load of snow that “descended without warning upon the man and the fire,” (718) After his first fire is snuffed by the snow he quickly tries again, but the cold is too overwhelming. His frozen hands can not hold the matches necessary to light another fire. The man tries to run to restore his circulation, but the frost is too quick, and soon he can feel neither his legs nor his arms. Without the ability to restore his circulation, the man is helpless against the elements. In the end the man loses his battle with the frost, and slowly freezes to death.

There is no doubt that the elements are the cause of the man’s demise. The cold and dangerous wilderness overcomes the man with no difficulty. First by soaking him, then by smothering his attempt to stay alive, the antagonistic elements cause the man to slowly die of cold. Though he fights with all his might against the cold and the fickle terrain, all of his labor is in vain. Alone and unable to move, he is no match for the unpredictable temperament of the Alaskan weather.

The Call of the Wild

To Build a Fire and Other Stories

The Bible as Improv: Seeing and Living the Script in New Ways

Zondervan released Ron Martoia’s book The Bible as Improv in early 2010. Dr. Martoia is the leader of a community called Vortex that experiments with many of the principles that he outlines in the end of the book. Dr. Ron Martoia has written several other books that have explored need for changes within the church and Christianity.   This book can be purchased from Christian Book Distributors CBD.

Book Review – The Bible as Improv – Ron Martoia

Dr. Martoia begins the book with great anecdotes about his teen and child years and his first experiences with the Bible and how that impacted the next decades because of the lenses he was given which he used to approach all of his study and reading of the word of God. His lenses were very diverse because his mom was Presbyterian, his dad was Catholic, he lead a inter-denominational Bible Study Group and their family also was involved with a Charismatic Prayer Group. Although all of these groups had different interpretations of the scriptures, they all had some similarities on how they formed their own set of lenses with which to interpret the Bible.

The second part of the Bible as improv is a combination of sharing his experiences in his theological training. The years of college and seminary helped prepare him for ministry. However, it was more of the same and reinforcement of the same way of viewing the Bible. A book of answers that can be sorted through for pithy answers to all of life problems or a doctrinal treatise that can be studied intensely for a foundation.

The third section is where he teaches Seeing and Living the Script in new ways. The Bible as Improv gives a complete new way to read and study the Word of God.   As I read the book I was a little apprehensive about where it was leading, but I was pleasantly shocked.

SPOILER ALERT

In The Bible as Improv Ron Martoia suggests the following illustration to guide us to a new approach to the Bible.

Imagine Shakespeare had a 5 act play that had never been seen and then someone found it but only 4 acts were found and the 5th was missing.  In order to present the play, the producer asked the actors to immerse themselves in the first four acts and then improv the fifth act without repeating or copying any of the text from the first four acts.

So imagine that the Bible is the first four acts of God’s interaction with us and we are not supposed to copy someone else’s life or just memorize the text, but we are to use it to figure out how to live out the fifth act.

The Bible as Improv

Both enflaming and empowering, this book was one that I couldn’t put down (I actually read the whole thing in under 24 hours). The paperback is a moderate sized book, but chock full of stories that will anger, sadden, enlighten, and embolden the reader to take action against a very “size-ist” culture (a word that I chose to describe it, not the author). Not only is there plenty of anecdotal encouragement, the author gives the readers plenty of other tools to encourage young women everywhere to be happy, be themselves, be confident and self-assured, and be successful as they are right now, not three years or thirty pounds from now.

Dr. Silverman’s book is written primarily to parents or author adults in the lives of teens and young women. Each chapter is designed to address one particular area in a young woman’s life that can either help her or hurt her on her journey to feeling like the beautiful, bright young person that she is. One chapter deals with her own self-talk, one deals with mothers, one with fathers, one with family, one with teachers, one with friends and classmates and boyfriends, and the last few chapters are simply encouragement and advice to become the kind of strong, secure, satisfied young woman we all wish for our daughters, sisters, and friends to be.

While this book acknowledges that sometimes weight is a genuine health risk for some young women, it also seeks to encourage that often the way we as a culture handle weight can be just as detrimental to the emotional and psychological health of a young woman, which can in turn lead to its own health risks like those of eating disorders, drug abuse, and other dangerous behaviors. Unfortunately many young adults and parents alike only see the risk in being “fat” but do not appreciate the risk in not loving your own body and self as you are.

I found this book to be very motivating to me on a number of levels. It encouraged me to love myself regardless of appearances. It encouraged me to be supportive of the bodies of my family, friends, and every single woman in this world. It encouraged me to find ways to get involved to show love and support to girls that might not otherwise get the kind of learned confidence that they need to survive in this world. Overall a great read for anyone who will ever be involved in the lives of young women, because this kind of mental and emotional disease does not just attack the people we consider “morbidly obese” but even thin young women who feel that it only takes a few more pounds before they are just as despised as the “fat” people they pick on. It’s time to free all of us from this body-bashing culture!

I recently read this book as part of my ongoing self-education, and found it fascinating, thought-provoking, enlightening, challenging, and informative, while maintaining the qualities of an easy-to-read, engaging text. I really enjoyed this book for the questions it asked, the answers it disputed, and the humility of the author in admitting many times that we simply do not know. Reading this book has caused me to look at our culture in a different way (and I only finished it yesterday!).

The author divided the text up into two sections; the first dealt more with the science of “virginity” and with the history of our attempts to medically and scientifically define and deal with virginity. Much of this section asked questions that many have purported to answer of the years, only to say that their answers were wrong but we don’t actually have any. While this many be frustrating to many, I found it refreshing to find someone in this day and age who is willing to say that even with all of our technology and advancements there are still many principles fundamental to our society that we don’t really understand. It is a kind of honest humility that seems very rare, especially when one is speaking about science and medicine. But in my opinion, the very best and brightest are the ones who realize the mighty truth that we don’t know the whole truth.

The second section walked the reader through a history of how our culture has thought about, valued, and treated virginity (and a losing of it). The author stated early on that this book was dealing primarily with the western Judeo-Christian perspective, which, while limiting, allowed her a greater scope of exploration into our history. And to be honest, that focus makes her words much more relevant to those of us who live still in a western Judeo-Christian culture (which would be all of us in American; even if we do not consider ourselves Judeo-Christian, it would be foolish to deny the impact those religions have had on our history). While much in this section of the book did not surprise me, I found a deeper understanding of why things were as they were, especially in the last several centuries. And there was still plenty of history to surprise me. The evolution of the concept of virginity in our culture is a vast and complex thing, and Ms. Blank has captured the essence of it in an intriguing, engaging book well worth reading.

Harvard University Press – Brainstorm by Rebecca Jordan-Young

A new book offered by book clubs including doubleday is Brainstorm which is a critique of decades of research about the differences between men and women. The science goes back almost a century and so there is a lot to cover. The differences in cultures between countries and generations means that even the vocabulary that may sound the same doesn’t always have the same reference point. This is a very academic book, but as someone who has never read a book on the topic or studied any of these sciences I found her writing style and progression approachable.

The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences

Jordan-Young begins in Brainstorm to set up a consistent vocabulary and establishes the criteria by which she organized the variety of research and researchers whose methods and modes varied greatly. A primary part of her vocabulary was to establish the difference between 1. sex – male physiology vs. female physiology 2. sexuality male vs. female approach to sex 3. gender masculine vs. feminine approach to everything not sexual. These three distinctions are absolutely essential to sorting through everything but it makes it difficult if you don’t have notes to remind yourself as your read through each chapter. The author of Brainstorm does not really offer a complete solution, but raises concerns about the biases of every researcher. Everyone that she interviewed and researched assumed that there are substantial differences between each area of masculine and feminine in dna or genetics. They said it was common sense, but that substantially skews the results that they documented. The bottom line from reading Brainstorm is that we need to re-evaluate all of our assumptions and presuppositions about what it means to be man or woman, what the distinctions are and where they come from. BrainStorm

I began my serious studying of Japanese or “Nihongo” just last fall, and the beginning of this year I began working with the book Barron’s Learn Japanese Nihongo The Fast and Fun Way. While it is by no means a comprehensive course, and even as a beginning course it leaves some things lacking, it is still very handy for those who want a quick introduction before a trip or those who are only interested in a speaking-fluency or an introductory-level knowledge. And this book lives up to it’s promise of being fast and fun, if you are willing to put in the “minutes a day” recommended on the cover.

I like this book for several reasons. For one thing, it explained verbs and verb tense usage far better than the materials I had been using previously. While its definitions and explanations were not exhaustive, after several weeks of study just a bit at a time I found that it started to get “under my skin” and into my brain and it started to just make sense to me (an awesome breakthrough for me that made me super-excited about my Japanese study all over again). I also found that the exercises, games, and quizzes, while not particularly challenging, made it more fun and gave me a way to challenge myself. I also used pencil so that I could erase my answers and do them over again to challenge myself repeatedly.

On the downside, the book doesn’t really deal with any Japanese writing, except for a short afterword at the end of the book, so I learned the kana and am working on the Kanji separately. Also, since the book doesn’t come with any audio, you can’t really hear the proper pronunciation (though they give pretty clear phonetic pronunciation guide at the beginning and with each new word introduced in the text). If you have already had some exposure to Japanese (as I have) or if you are good at following very specific instructions (as they give in the text) then you can get by on the text alone. You are better off with either some additional audio or someone with which to practice your conversation and pronunciation skills.

This book is a good value for a quick, easy, and fun course in Japanese. It was for me (of course, I bought mine on sale). Whatever book or course you choose, happy learning!

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<b>Black Expressions Best Seller</b>
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<b>Black Expressions Book Club</b>
Are you an African American and proud of your heritage and a deep interest in the expression of that heritage in literary format, than black expressions book club is for you. black expressions book club is like many of the other book clubs that ships books directly to your home either randomly or based on your choice, the difference is that black expressions book club features books whose authors are african american themselves. Some of the books that black expressions book club offers are books from the New York Times best seller list. These books include books like, <i>Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man</i>, and the book edited by Tavis Smiley <i>Covenant with Black America</i>.
Black expressions book club also focuses on well known black authors who have become well known within the African American community. The list of authors includes, Nikki Giovanni, Eric Jerome Dickey, Lisa Nichols, Teri Woods, T.D. Jakes, Mary B. Morrison, Maya Angelou, Beverly Jenkins, Steve Harvey, Justine Simmons, E. Lynn Harris, Karrine Steffans, Carl Weber, Omar Tyree, Walter Mosley and others…
The black expressions book club includes a diversity of genre. They have self help books, fiction, autobiography, cook books and Christian books. black expressions book club may contain some books that don’t appeal to your reading choiice, but the number of books they have listed will give you options that meet your reading preferences.

<b>Black Expressions Book Club Offers</b>
black expressions book club has an offer for readers who are new to their club that is similar to other book clubs in the US. The initial offer is you choose four books for two dollars. In the next time black expressions book club asks you to purchases a small number of additional books. black expressions book club gives you plenty of time to complete your required additional purchases so that it doesn’t drain your budget of overload your book shelf.
If you are an african american who loves to read or wants to encourage others to read the black expressions book club is the perfect club for you to join. If you have a different heritage but appreciate african american culture and want a taste of literature from black authors this is a great club for you too.

I recently read Dr. Leman’s book, Sheet Music, as part of what I am terming a “home pre-marital counseling” course. That basically means that my fiancé and I are reading books and working through questions with each other, and to some degree our parents as well (though this has been tricky with relations between our families being what they are, but that’s another conversation). This book had a good basic principle—that sex is an important part of a good, healthy marriage relationship—but I disagreed with some of his other major implied or unstated assumptions. I feel that this book still has much to offer to many conservative Christian couples, but for those whose theology and lifestyle is much less conservative, especially those of the younger generations, this book may leave some to be desired.

What I most appreciated about Dr. Leman’s book and his approach therein was his utter frankness on his topic and his basic principle that sex is very important to a marriage. It was great that he was so open on the subject! If you try to write a book about something like sex without any frank or even occasional explicit comments, you are going to spend most of the book skirting around your main topic, which is just absurd. I also liked that he encouraged couples—especially conservative Christian couples, since they are his main audience—to talk more, explore more, and not get stuck in a negative cycle that is unsatisfying to either or both partners. Essentially, the best thing about his book is that he is one of the few very respected conservative Christian writers who will encourage not just having sex but making it satisfying and enjoyable for both parties.

There were, however, several major assumptions and implications in many of Dr. Leman’s statements, arguments, and beliefs that I strongly disagreed with, even though I understand why he approached his topic from that particular stance. For instance, he said that men should “help out” around the house to keep their wives from being too tired for sex; but especially when he acknowledges that many couples are both employed why is it her job that he is just helping out with? I feel that house work should be dual responsibility. Even in a traditional household where he goes off to work in the morning, by the time he gets home from work she’s probably put in about as many hours of work as he has so why shouldn’t the responsibility when they are both home belong to both of them?

Also he expressed, mostly through implications, a fairly repressed or at least antiquated view of female sexuality. For one thing, he discussed several times the need that sex is for many men, but he never once acknowledged that sex is a need for many women as well. Granted, if your audience is primarily conservative Christians than the sexual urge has probably been repressed to death (or hibernation at least) in most of those women. Also he acknowledged male masturbation fairly on in his book, even encouraged it for engaged men as a way of practicing holding off orgasm longer; but for women, he only discussed it as a sort of last resort if she can’t orgasm during partnered sex. He even tried to say that it wasn’t the same as masturbation because she won’t be doing it for her own pleasure, but to be better in bed for her husband!

So, while this book has much to offer many conservative Christian couples, for those like my fiancé and me while there were some very good principles emphasized in the book, I feel I have learned those principles just as much from watching my parents’ amazing, beautiful, strong relationship over the last twenty-five years.

Gregory MacDonald The Evangelical Universalist

Gregory MacDonald is a pen name and the author assures readers on his website that sometime in the near future he will reveal his true identity. His stated reasons for hiding his identity have to do with protecting other people who serve in the same ministry he does and to prevent people from discarding his other books because of his position as a universalist. I read this book because of the recent stir caused by Rob Bell releasing Love Wins. I have also recently completed several books by Philip Gulley who is a committed universalist.

Book Review of The Evangelical Universalist

Most evangelicals think that the title is an oxymoron. An evangelical by nature is someone who believes that followers of Jesus are mandated to proselytize the unsaved by sharing the good news of Jesus death and resurrection in order to save people from hell. So a universalist seems to take away the need for any evangelism. The Evangelical Universalist doesn’t get to the point about being evangelical until the last chapter and then only cursory paragraphs. I thought is was a poor argument and is based on the fact that he is a modified universalist. MacDonald believes in a literal hell and that people will go there but as they suffer in hell they will repent of their sins and God will forgive them and welcome them into heaven. Therefore the mission of evangelicals is to rescue people from a short stay in hell. The book is written in mostly an academic and theological manner, but I found it not very persuasive. I have been reading other books on the topic and found most of them had much better developed arguments than did MacDonald in the Evangelical Universalist. If you are fully opposed to the idea of an evangelical universalist this book will be easy fodder to prove your position. If you are a committed universalist this book will be a disappointment in its middle of the road position that seems to get lost in its arguments. If you are inquiring into universalism, the Evangelical Universalist may give you some interesting lines of thinking, but for me I am convinced it is an oxymoron.

Evangelical Universalism Rob Bell