Valerie Bonham Moon

Cozy Anglican story

Revisado: 01-19-25

The book, to me, is a safe, but not simple story. Most of the interactions are socially complex (a less chatty Austen?) with the only violence associated with the murder. I did enjoy the ecclesiastical aspects and settings, and the dogs.

I would have liked more tags on the characters to differentiate them.

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What stood out most for me, was that the stories were flip-flopped.

Revisado: 01-03-25

I usually like “the cat who“ stories. I read all of them in hardback before audiobooks as a major form of reading were popular.

The difficulty with this production is that the second book should have come before the first one.

Miss Braun’s stories are just as cozy as ever, but the production mistake took away from some of the charm.

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Lack of story, cohesiveness, and any sort of goal for the main character.

Revisado: 01-20-24

Quatsch. I still haven’t a clue what the story was about. Having lived through the cold war, I expected to find something in the story relevant to my experience there was nothing.

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Stop with the guilt-tripping, already

Revisado: 04-22-23

So far I’m on Chapter 8 of 13 chapters. A comment in Chapter 8 stopped me dead. Earlier, I skipped the lengthy acknowledgments. That’s back-matter if the reader/listener wants to further investigate the writer’s methods and sources.

In the chapters after all the thank-you mentions came the bad-dog-no-no lectures about health. Apparently, procrastination is another habit that will cause cancer, heart disease, and diabetes because of stress. I understand that the effects of habits can mount and result in the person having less-than-optimal health, but each book on bettering myself that I read/hear lately has to trot out the same poor consequences of the habit I’ve already acknowledged I need help with by buying the darned book.

Authors, we get it. We really do. We can’t help but know about our bad habits, so get on with the helpful stuff so we readers don’t curl up and frizzle away in the harsh glare of those habits.

In Chapter 8, I paused the reading because of a direct bad-dog-no-no comment: “Honestly, if you’re not ready to make this first step to just get started on this day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, then you should stop listening now.”

Mmkay, Jack, you got it. I stopped listening. I didn’t pay good money to have an author make remarks about my intentions. You ought to re-read the memo to writers about how readers have hundreds of other things to do other than read/hear your book. You already received the money, but you only get our time — and recommendations — via our good graces. Either trot out your useful information, or lose a reader.

Fwiw, this wasn’t the first backhanded comment in the text, but it may be the last one I hear from this book. I’ve only ever written one other unflattering review, a book set somewhere that I’d lived and loved, but where the writer had obviously never set foot or about which had even done any research. Having a writer straight up tell me (as a reader) to either pinky-swear to do what he says or else close his book and never darken his author page again did not sit well.

The subsequent information offered in this book may be useful and I may go back to listening (way to go with the procrastination-incitement incident), but, for the moment, I’m outta here. I’ve got bills to mail, groceries to buy, and cat litter to lug into the house.

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Worth a listen all over again

Revisado: 02-08-23

This complex topic will take more listening to sink in. Luckily, the lecturer’s style and presentation make the topics easy to listen to. The research studies presented in the lectures are interesting as well. (the things researchers get up to in their Rolling Stones t-shirts)

This course will be a future repeat for me.

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Solid information

Revisado: 02-04-23

The advice presented jibes with other helpful books I’ve read/listened to. I like the incremental steps, the author read well, and the examples were useful.

My one quibble was the repeated trawling for email addresses via the offered templates and “bonus” material. Offering extra material in exchange for a contact address is fine — just not multiple times throughout the entire book all the way to the end.

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Listen to the end. It’s worth it.

Revisado: 03-28-22

If I’m remembering correctly, the book started off a bit slowly. Of course, I was walking the dog at the time and he kept finding interesting things to do so my attention was split.

Still, as they say, I persisted. I was rewarded by the payoff at the end.

Keep going. It’s worth it.

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Learning the science behind the advice

Revisado: 03-24-21

A useful feature of this book is the laying out of the research behind the conclusions. So often, we are given advice but without organized objective background information. Perhaps this is because of a lack of time during discussions, or because in a discussion the information would be overwhelming.

In any case, the book’s ending chapter on the tools we can use, and the short examples of ‘how to,’ reflect much advice that is often passed around without references: “Do this ...” “Avoid that ...” The book’s specific suggestions carry much more weight coming at the end of the research sections. That they’re presented as a list cuts out distracting chatter of the underpinnings.

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It must be good; I reached the end

Revisado: 07-18-20

My reason for the review title is because I listen to these courses at home. I don’t commute, even before The ‘Rona made me into a homebody. My attention must be effectively captured to progress through 48 lectures with no visuals. Professor Wysession does this.

I’ll probably listen to the series again.

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Laugh out loud seriousness

Revisado: 05-08-20

Enlightening science.

Captivating wordplay.

And eleven more words so the algorithm will accept the review.

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