People Tools that Apply to Real Life (Book Review)

The book, People Tools by Alan C. Fox, was very well written and I liked the format of the numbered Tools. Each begins with a vignette of personal experience broken down to its teachable moment components. Here’s how it went, here’s the result, here’s how it could go better using the appropriate people tool.

These are truly people tools that actually apply to real life.

Example: I particularly liked People Tool 15 – Sunk Cost. This resonated with me, as I meet so many people that hang on to the past in relationships, jobs, hurts, etc., because they’ve invested so much money or years of their lives, that they can’t let go and invest in a better future.

“Sunk Cost The dilemma is a company with a new machine that cost $1M and the salesman wants to sell them a better machine for another $1M.  Sunk Cost Theory says, The cost of the old machine is entirely irrelevant. It’s a sunk cost. The money is spent. It’s gone… You only have to consider the future” 

Good advice, if you’re stuck in a job you hate, a relationship going nowhere, in a money pit – you get the gist.

“If your past investment isn’t working for you, find a better alternative for the future. In business, the salesperson may call on you. In your life you have to be the salesman for yourself. (Buy a Ticket.)”

Good Advice for many stuck in a rut.

As for me. I’m applying the following to my day-to-day writing and painting - People Tool 16 Get Past Perfect.

Fun Southern Read: Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge

In Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, Ramey Channell doesn’t narrate as Lily Claire, she is Lily Claire.

For those of you who've had no children, and/or have forgotten what it's like to be one, buckle up. This is not a slow walk of a book. Lily Claire's breathless detailed telling of just about everything that happens in her small world is told as if it was the most important thing in all the world, and you should know it.

Channell steps into Lily Claire's very person and stays there throughout the entire book. You, the reader, are her confidant as she learns of ordinary heroes and ponders the serendipity of life. You are privy to the secret world of a childhood whose freedom few have known and many today would envy.

Around the mysterious map to an imagined treasure she and Willie T find in and unlikely place, she weaves her history and that of all the diverse and sometimes eccentric folks and topics that inform her world. All are treated with that light childish and non-judgmental matter-of-factness that is so refreshing and true to the nature of the very young.

There is no heavy hand here about the "Ku Kluxes'" quick-to-lynch mentality or the superstitious nature of rural peoples that make the white lies Willie T and Lily Clare tell necessary. It's just plain necessary to protect the slow one and the black one in their midst, who are the most likely scapegoats for a crime that was no crime at all.

Channell has the sure cadence of a storyteller that is not only simple, sincere, and to the point, but it's part of the music. Is there music on Moonlight Ridge? Yes, but it is not just played, sung, or spoken aloud. It exists in the steady pace of the story, the people, the laughter, the polysyllabic names, and the language.

Having lived in the South off and on for many years, I didn't need the handy glossary at the back of the book to tell me that "boocoos" means "lots." Just goes to show, that being raised in the South is useful. This book was not just boocoos of fun to read, it is a gentle reminder of my own idyllic summers when every day held the promise of adventure, just like Lily Claire's.

Reviewed by Perle Champion & Published in First Draft Reviews Online, Alabama Writers' Forum, November 2010

Other good reads I've reviewed:

Noah’s Wife by TK Thorne 

Coming Together by Joyce Norman

Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg

Between the Covers: Mind Candy

Some people call it reading trash. I call it mind candy. I read enough self-help, and health and my fair share of serious books.  But I cannot long survive the likes of McCarthy's "The Road", ... without a little respite.

I don't eat dessert every day, but when I want it, I want it.  Being laid off over a year ago,  probably adds to the reason I like to dive into the fun mysteries and adventures of unlikely protagonists.  


I'm just finishing the sixth book in Ellen Byerrum's Crimes of Fashion series, 'Armed and Glamorous', and I'm loathe for it to end as there is no seventh book.  They are totally 'chick lit cozies' if there is such a category - as fun to read as Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. There are the obligatory hunky guys, and of course a crime that no one but our heroine can solve.

If you're looking for a little entertainment, I recommend these.  Now if Evanovich's 'Sizzlin' Sixteen' would just arrive on the library hold shelf with my name on it, I'll be set for another 2 nights of mind candy but it's not due til mid June. 


Oh well, I can wait - I just got an e-mail that I have 4 books on that library hold shelf: 'Write It Down, Make it Happen', 'Dance of the Dissident Daughter', 'Mennonite in a little Black Dress, a memoir...' and for dessert 'The Mapping of Love & Death, a Maisie Dobbs Novel.

The Check's in the Mail

Amid the bills, rejected manuscript and the detritus called junk mail, was the check. I am always slightly amazed that people pay me for doing something I love.

As a writer, there is no better assignment than that of book review. First, I get a book to read and keep; second, I give my written opinion of that book for publication; and third, I get paid.

Usually, I have a list of several books from which to choose including novels, memoirs, histories, or biographies. Once, a desperate editor asked and I said yes to reviewing a small poetry chapbook. Such a small book, barely 27 pages of poems; how hard can that be and the pay was the same as for a full-length novel. I draw the line at reviewing romance; I may redraw that line to include poetry chapbooks. Although few pages in length, it is by far the toughest review I do.

Don’t get me wrong. I write poetry; I love to read some poetry – the operative word here is ‘some’. There’s more to poetry than rhyme and meter and often, quoting the exact lines is the only way to get across the atmosphere of a piece to my reader.

Reviewing a novel is somewhat subjective, but a novel has a plot, protagonist, antagonist and a story that is either entertaining or not. Poetry, on the other hand, is totally subjective. Here we have the interior dialogue of a poet with words distilled to mere essence and imagery. I read and reread and reread, the few pages to steep myself in the poet’s idea of themselves and their world before making the first note. Page length becomes irrelevant.

I earned this check and then some.

© Perle Champion