Pump Up Your Book

Give Me a Break! No Fuss Meditation by Whitney Stewart is a wonderful little book on meditation.  It is short, to the point, easy to follow, and  is a great tool  for anyone interested in learning how to meditate and what it’s benefits are to you.

My favorite thing about this book is that it is short – a mere 33 pages I believe.  The author has made meditation very doable for the average person. So many books I’ve looked at are long and seem to have so much extra stuff in them and that immediately turns me off.  With Give Me a Break!, Whitney Stewart takes you directly into why people meditate, to how it can help you and then into how to sit, warm up relaxation and then right into several different meditations all geared towards different things which I’ll elaborate on in a minute.

First though, why do people meditate?  Well the biggest reason is it calms a person down.  It makes you focus and takes your mind which is running around in all it’s busyness to a much more peaceful place.  This is what Whitney Stewart says on why we should mediate…

‘Mediation calms you down.  It helps you find your own wisdom.  It settles your nerves and fills your mind with space.’ (page 5, eBook)

She stresses as well that meditation is about accepting yourself as you are and I think that’s really important.  In our busy world I think we often find ourselves so stressed and torn in so many different directions that we lose focus on who we really are inside.  I really believe that meditation can help us rediscover that person. 

There are several reasons to meditate but a few important ones are:  to calm down, to think clearly, to avoid overreacting, to be more patient, and to know your mind and these are just a few.  Along with where to meditate and how to sit, Whitney talks about something really important and that’s how to breathe.  Have you ever noticed when you get angry how you don’t always breathe properly – if you can focus on your breathing you’ll calm down a whole lot sooner. 

Whitney then goes on to explain several different meditations you can try and I’ll just go through a couple of my favorites.  One is the Favorite Object Meditation which has you focusing on an favorite object – drawing it in your mind and seeing it, imagining how it feels.  For me that is Sam.  If I want to focus and calm myself I will focus on him in my mind and it’s surprising how quickly I can feel my heart rate calming and my breathing returning to normal.

Another favorite of mine is Special Place Meditation and I’ve been doing this one for a long time.  This meditation involves finding a place that makes you happy.  See it in your mind.  What do you see?  What does the air feel like?  Is it sunny or cloudy?  Make sure to focus on your breathing too.  For me this place has always been a big country field with the greenest grass you can imagine.  In the middle of it is a beautiful big tree and there I am sitting on my blanket against it just looking out onto the field and enjoying the smell of the grass and the beauty around me.  It always calms me down and makes me feel peaceful. 

There are so many other great meditations though.  I really enjoyed this book and will be giving many more of the meditations a try.  I think it’s really important to be able to find a way in this busy world of ours to focus ourselves and be able to feel at peace.  It’s important for our minds and our health.  If you’re at all interested in learning to meditate I would recommend this book for the reasons I’ve stated – it’s short and too the point.  It tells you what you need to know and how to do it; all in a easy to understand and easy to follow way. 

I had the opportunity to read Give Me a Break! by Whitney Stewart for her book tour with Pump Up Your Book.  Be sure to check out what others on the tour think of the book as well.  You can find Whitney on her website as well as Twitter and Facebook.  You can pick up your own copy of Give Me a Break! by Whitney Stewart in eBook format for your Kindle, Nook, or Kobo eReaders.

Source: Review copy provided by Pump Up Your Book and the Author. No compensation was received for this review.

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I have long been a fan of Emily Sue Harvey and her newest novel Space lived up to what I come to expect from her novels.  Her novels never fail to tug on my heart and always leave me feeling hopeful in life and faith.  From Song of Renewal (my review), Flavors (my review), Homefires (my review) and now with Space she has created worlds that depict life as it is in all it’s reality but with a strong emphasis on hope and faith in God.

In Space, Emily Sue Harvey tackles drug addiction and it’s very harsh effects on a family.  Deede and Dan start out life together with a fantastic marriage.  The only thing they really want is a baby and it’s the one thing they seem to be having the worst time succeeding at.  Deede goes through more tests and procedures than she can count and with each let down she feels as though it’ll never happen for them until finally the doctor tells them they won’t be able to conceive and they ultimately turn to adoption.  However God works in mysterious ways and once Deede and Dan let go of their obsession to have a baby, Deede becomes pregnant.  Months later Faith is born and Deede and Dan couldn’t be happier.

Yet not all is coming up roses.  Faith is the sweetest child but as she grows up trouble seems to be brewing in the air.  Things turn for the better for a while though when she marries and has a daughter.  It doesn’t last though and before they know it Dan and Deede learn that their daughter is a drug addict.  Faith starts on drugs innocently enough on painkillers after a surgical procedure but as these things go her drug use escalates to cocaine and further.  With this Faith’s life spirals out of control and her parent’s lives are never the same either.

Dan and Deede lose pretty much everything to Faith’s drug addiction especially after, at twenty-nine years old, she moves back in with them because she has absolutely no where else to go.  She has no job, no life, and has lost custody of her daughter – all to drugs.  The following years are a nightmare for her parents.  Faith is impossible to live with and there are many episodes in which Dan and Deedee don’t know where she is or if she is even alive.  They give up their retirement for her, their nest egg, and pretty much their whole lives just to try to save this daughter of theirs that they had once loved so much and that had given them such joy.

Space really makes us think because just what would you give up for your children if they were strung out on drugs and ultimately ruining your life along with theirs?  Would you sacrifice everything or would you resort to tough love and put your child out on the street?  For Deede the struggles are great.  She loves her daughter and wants to help her even though she knows to some extent she is enabling her.  Dan however simply pulls away after one too many stunts on Faith’s part and he just pushes her out of his life.  Deede feels pulled in both directions.  She turns to her faith to help pull her through and despite the hardships she keeps trying to believe in her daughter.

Space is a realistic look at what life could be like with a person who is addicted to drugs and out of control.  It shows the devastating effects that drug addiction has on families.  It also shows us the everlasting love of family and God.  Space is another good read from Emily Sue Harvey.  If you like novels that are emotional and Christian based then Space may just be one you’d enjoy.  I did!

I read Space by Emily Sue Harvey for her book tour with Pump Up Your Book.  Be sure to check out Emily’s website and you can purchase your own copy of Space here in the US and here in Canada.

My copy of Space by Emily Sue Harvey was received for review from Pump Up Your Book and the Publisher.

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The Manicurist is Phyllis Schieber’s newest novel and what a captivating tale she has created with this work.  This author isn’t new to me.  I read Willing Spirits a few years ago and loved it and this novel is no different.  Phyllis writes about women, about their relationships and she does it with finesse.  In The Manicurist she takes us into the sometimes volatile world of mental illness and the damage it can do to everyone involved.  This novel is at once as heart breaking as it  is touching.

Tessa is a manicurist but that isn’t her only talent; she also has the ability to see into people’s lives, an ability she has had from a young girl.  She has a family, her husband Walter and daughter Regina, and while they look like the perfect family on the outside they really aren’t underneath it all.  Her husband has always been extremely uncomfortable with her being able to see things, with her past, with her family, and mostly he would just like it to all go away so they can live in peace.  Yet life with Tessa has never really been peaceful because she has always had a huge piece missing – her mother left her when she was just a young girl.

Tessa’s mother Ursula was bi-polar consequently Tessa’s childhood was anything but normal.  She lived in fear; always wondering when her mother’s next downward spiral would occur.  For Tessa life revolved around living through the highs and lows of her mother’s moods.  Then comes the day when tragedy strikes and her mother disappears.  From them on life for Tessa is never the same. She always wonders why her mother left her, wasn’t she a good enough girl to keep her mother with her?  This plagues Tessa and worse yet is the feeling that never leaves Tessa – that her mother is still alive somewhere.

Then one day a woman named Fran walks into the salon Tessa works in and nothing is ever the same again. There are decisions to be made, decisions that leave Tessa questioning everything about herself as a woman and as a mother.  Tessa looks back on the past and relives various times in her childhood with her mother.  She has to find forgiveness in herself or her mother in order to move on and forward in her life.

I found the characters in this novel quite complex.  Then again, I find when stories deal with mental illness in any way that the characters seem more deep and developed to me.  I really liked the character of Tessa who was so broken from her childhood yet yearning to be able to love her mother again.  If you like novels that deal with mental illness and it’s effects along with a twist of some palm reading then The Manicurist is definitely a novel you should try!

I read The Manicurist by Phyllis Schieber for her book tour with Pump Up Your Book.  You can see the other tour stops here and be sure to visit Phyllis’s website as well as finding her on Goodreads, Shelfari, Facebook and Twitter.  Your own copy of The Manicurist can be purchased here in the US and here in Canada.

My copy of The Manicurist was received for review from Pump Up Your Book and the publisher.

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