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It was a gloomy morning, my head was spinning when I woke up with a bad headache. My body ached terribly when I turned in bed. “Should I go to work today?” I asked myself, I hesitated for a while. Then, glimpses of the school children’s faces flashed through my eyes. “All the young adorable ones are awaiting me.” With that thought, I managed to gather my strength, out of a sudden my body felt stronger and I finally rolled out of bed, got dressed and went to work.

Sometimes, in our daily life, we are likely to find ourselves questioning our values and purposes in life. One may refer to this pondering notion as the ‘mid life crisis’, especially if your work lies within a mundane routine. A mundane routine; allow me to describe this further in a teacher’s perspective. Teaching the same subject matter - day in, day out, month in, month out, year in, year out. In such regularity, one may question the challenge, the excitement, the reward a teacher may gain from this absolute ‘dullness’ profession. If you do have that in mind, may I invite you to venture on the wonders in the teaching world with the book “Chicken Soup for the Teacher’s Soul“.

From this book, you’ll find stories that open the hearts, touch the souls and enlighten a dampen spirit. Written by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen; the #1 New York Times and USA Today Best Selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Even though this book spans up to 361 pages, please don’t get intimidated with its volume, as each story only takes up to an average of 6 - 8 pages. A good 40 odd stories to read, packed with funny illustration cartoon figures.

The stories are contributed by real, actual people. Every word, every situation you read from the book is real-life experience from people mainly in the United States. Having said that, I begin to wonder if all the selfless persons or teachers are located only in the States? The answer, of course not! Most probably the stories from Asia did not reach the writers of “Chicken Soup for the Soul Series”. If you have an interesting, heart enlightening story to share, the writers beckon for your kind contributions.

Besides inspiring stories from teachers, there are an abundance of stories contributed by students and parents sharing their appreciation of the teachers who touched their life. What I appreciate most from this book is the small phrases in the beginning of each story. It reminds me that life means so much more than your big house, your big pay check and your big car!

I left the book on my table one day, a friend dropped by and she finished 2 stories, while waiting for me to pack up. Her perspective on life changed after that 10 minutes. Need I say more?

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I stared blankly at my bookshelf. I was so amazed at the number of books stacked in the little shelf of mine. Then, I wondered, have I really ever finished reading all the books, good enough to give a sound review? I dug hard and long, I took out the books I actually finished reading. The stack was a handful. Good, I have something to write about. Now, the second part, which is the lucky one? After recently having written a review on Sex and the City TV Series, I was thinking, it’ll be nice if I write something about a guide on men, just to put the balance into place - an interesting review for guys and an insightful review for women. Men often trouble themselves with thoughts of women. “What does she want?” I heard that on countless occasions. As for women, “Why is he playing games with me?”

A book for women - to answer the above questions. Finally, the truth is revealed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you, my first review on book, “He’s Just Not That Into You” from the writer and consultant of “Sex and the City” - Greg Behrend and Liz Tuccillo. This book is not of a bias view as its opinion comes from the equal side of the gender. You have a He-Say and a She-Say. Here’s the caption on the dedication corner, on its first page.

This book is dedicated to all the lovely ladies out there whose stories inspired us to write this book. May we never need to write another one.

Inspired? That’s a very nice word to use. Honestly, I bet the writers must be thinking when they wrote the above line, “OMG, there are actually 1,001 excuses men make and women actually believe in them!” From the 1,001 excuses, the writers were very kind, they only listed 11 of them in the book. Probably the remaining 990 for the second, third, fourth edition. I can imagine the caption on the dedication corner again - we never finished the first edition.

I take the liberty to run the table of contents with you on the 11 excuses. Yes, ladies, it’s time to face the cold hard truth about the snoring bugger.

1. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Asking You Out
2. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Calling You
3. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Dating You
4. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Having Sex with You
5. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s He’s Having Sex with Someone Else
6. He’s Just Not That Into You If He Only Wants to See You When He’s Drunk
7. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Doesn’t Want to Marry You
8. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Breaking Up With You
9. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Disappeared on You
10. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Married (and Other Insane Variations of Being Unavailable)
11. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s a Selfish Jerk, a Bully, or a Really Big Freak

As a matter of fact, there is a lot of humor in this book, although some may get very defensive on its contents. There are actual letters from the “lovely ladies”. Again, I’m thinking it must be a typo error on the dedication corner, it should have been “lonely ladies”. Anyway, as you read the letters and the opinions from Greg and Liz, one cannot deny that every single word is indeed the truth. For instance, I like this best myself - Item 2. He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Calling You.

Most, OK, I rephrase, ALL my girlfriends complain after the first date, “Why Isn’t He Calling Me? We had a good time”. This drives women crazy, when men don’t call. Guess what, “MEN KNOW HOW TO USE THE PHONE!” Simple truth, isn’t it? It never hit me and I bet neither did you !

I won’t delve any further in the book, as it would spoil the fun and the humor of the entire book. Go get one yourself. Dare not face the truth? Fine by me, ladies, you can sit and pout and live in your own fantasy land but you can’t deny the fact that “He’s Just Not That Into You“.

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While not everybody would have heard of him, John Grisham has been credited as one of the best authors of our time. In fact, he holds the title for authoring a number one bestselling novel of the year for seven consecutive years, from 1994 to 2000. He is famous for various novels such as The Firm and The Rainmaker, both of which have been adapted into major motion picture films in 1993 and 1997 respectively. While The Last Juror isn’t exactly one of his more famous works, it is still worthy of being a John Grisham novel.

The story is set in the fictional town of Clanton and is told in first-person by one Willie Traynor. The 23 year old college-dropout reporter buys over the town newspaper for 50 thousand dollars after the previous owner almost causes it to go bankrupt. Not too long after, a widow is killed by a member of the notorious Padgitt family who has been committing all sorts of legal acts on their own island all along. When the murder occurs, society screams for justice. Danny Padgitt, the murderer, is indeed put on trial in front of a jury and is found guilty but is only sentenced to life imprisonment, but not without any fireworks. Danny threatens to “get everyone of you” if they found him guilty, however despite the threat on their lives, the jury still convicts him and justice is served. Soon, everyone forgets about the murder as life moves on.

However, just 9 years after the trial, Danny is released on parole……………

I won’t delve any further into the story, since going any deeper would reveal too much. The short summary there should get many people excited about the thriller. However, it’s not as good as it seems. The trial doesn’t occur till about halfway into the book, and he isn’t released till very late in the book. So what’s in between? Random stuff. Seriously, everything in between the trial and his release is almost completely irrelevant to the overall plot. However, that doesn’t make it uninteresting at all. It talks of a town going through many changes, racial dis-segregation and other paradigm shifts in society, all from the point of view of the editor of the town’s newspaper who is a really engaging narrator. Still, while the content is pretty enjoyable, I found it quite irritating to go through all these pages when they did not seem to have any link with the overall story at all. Regardless, I plowed through the entire book, hoping that everything would fall into place at the end. Alas I was disappointed when none of that turned out to be important.

I was gravely disappointed with the book prior to reading about his release. However, EVERYTHING changed when I reached the ending. I cannot stress how good the twist and the ending was. My jaw had literally dropped in awe when there was a dramatic twist as I had not expected it one bit. The ending of the book really saved the entire thing from being a complete disaster and I really wish I could reveal what the twist was here, but that would just spoil it for everyone else.

All in all, The Last Juror has a pretty decent introduction that will arouse some interest in the reader, but it gets really boring in the middle. Many people will definitely give up on the book halfway through as it would seem to be heading nowhere. However, once you reach the ending, I’m almost a hundred percent sure that everyone won’t regret reading the book. A really good thriller and one of Grisham’s best plots.

In short,
Pros: Great plot and storyline with an unexpected turn of events at the end
Cons: The middle portion of the book might be quite boring of some

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When Athol Fugard first wrote Tsotsi back in 1961, he abandoned it almost immediately, feeling that it was “not worth publishing”. However, in the late 1970s, this novel was rediscovered by research students who were going through South African playwright’s papers. After which, it was then edited and polished for publishing, thus allowing the whole world to discover this “lost novel”. However, in my opinion, the publisher should have stood by Fugard’s initial reluctance to publish this book, as this novel would have been better off if it had remained “lost”.

The first few chapters of Tsotsi are interesting enough. To start off, Tsotsi is a young gang leader in the middle of South Africa, he has no recollection of his past, does not even know his own age and is insistent on letting the past stay hidden from him. At the beginning of the book, Tsotsi and his gang immediately pull off a job in a train, killing a random commuter after stealing his wallet, and of course escaping safely. That opening chapter really had me hooked on to the book, since I was expecting even better things to come. They did when Tsotsi suddenly receives a baby after he tries to attack a woman who pushes the baby into his hands. He then brings the baby home and tries his best to look after him, however, this baby has a tremendous impact on his life, as he invokes feelings in Tsotsi like he never felt before, like actually “feeling” for another one of his victims who he eventually let escape.

However, from then on, the entire book just goes downhill. Page after page after page is filled with emotions that are invoked within Tsotsi, and it seems to go on forever and ever. Sure, there is some amount of development in the plot, but on the whole the book starts to get extremely repetitive and seems to be heading nowhere at all. Regardless, I continued to plow through all the minute details, hoping that all would make sense once I reached the ending. However, I was left with my mouth open by the time I finished reading the last paragraph of the book, as I had absolutely no idea where that ending suddenly came from. I won’t mention how it ends here, just in case you might still want to read this book, however I should warn you that the ending is relatively abrupt and there is practically no build up to it at all, and by the time you finish the book you’d be scratching your head wondering why you even bothered to plow through the entire book.

Still, the overall plot of this book is something pretty rare and not one which you would find in most books nowadays, thus making for a pretty interesting read at times. The twists in the plot and the eventual revelation about Tsotsi’s past will get you excited in the book for awhile as well. However, such highlights of the book are immediately succeeded by the usual pointless fillers in between which add almost zero value to the overall plot.

As a side note, this book was adapted into a major motion picture film of the same name which eventually won an Academy Award for “Best Foreign Language Film” in 2006. While the overall plot remained the same, a lot of details were tweaked to make it suitable for the big screen. Unfortunately I have not watched the film and am thus unable to comment about it.

All in all, I would advise almost everyone to stay away from this book. Despite it’s short length, it can become boring for many very quickly. However, for those of you who would like to step into the mind of a young gang leader in South Africa who is rediscovering his past and thus at the same time having emotions pent up inside himself, you might want to check out this book.

Pros: Interesting and unique overall plot
Cons: Gets extremely boring and repetitive midway through, most of the book seems to add little value to the plot, ending will have you scratching your head.

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I’ll admit it, when I first saw the title and thickness of The Five People You Meet In Heaven, I was skeptical of how good it’d be. Surely a book that’s about heaven and is this thin should be for kids? However, as it was recommended to me by a friend who kept singing praises about it, I decided to give it a go and I’m not regretting it. I’m almost thankful for it being relatively thin as compared to other novels, as it allowed me to finish reading as soon as possible, so that I didn’t have to keep myself in suspense. Once anyone picks up this book and starts reading it, it’ll be hard for one to put it down without finishing it.

The book starts off with a pretty unexpected title for the first chapter: “The End”. It starts off with Eddie, an 83 year old maintenance worker, dying in an accident at the theme park he works at. It’s unusual for a book to kill off the main character right at the beginning, but considering how this book focuses more on what happens after death, I’m glad the book doesn’t dwell on his life for very long. After his death, he meets five people in heaven (as expected after one sees the title), all of which teach him a valuable lesson about his life, or about life itself. I won’t spoil the book for anyone here, as I believe almost everyone should read this, but essentially the message that the book is trying to get across is this: every single life is intertwined, and the actions of one person will inevitably affect the life of another person. Therefore, no action is too insignificant as it could have major repercussions.

The book is unlike any other book I’ve ever read before, despite being about the afterlife, it does not overdo it by introducing overly fictitious characters that would threaten to ruin the entire story. There are no fairies or angels in this book, rather, all the characters are people whom have affected Eddie’s life in one way or another when he was still alive. This makes for extremely intriguing stories, flashbacks and lessons throughout the entire book as he progresses from meeting one person to another. Every person teaches Eddie, and thus the reader, a valuable lesson about life, one which he never understood when he was alive. The way the book does this is also really smooth, by using flashbacks and extremely appropriate dialogue to get the message across, so that it doesn’t seem like the book is completely preaching certain lessons, but rather adding them as a sidenote to a great storyline.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is an extremely thought provoking one that will definitely cause one to reread the book several times in order to fully understand its story and characters. The lessons in the book are also extremely valuable as they will apply to almost anyone in this world. All in all, a definite must read for everyone.

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