Teaching What Every Employer Wants
Teaching What Every Employer Wants argues, with plainness and conviction, that technical proficiency is only half the story, and often not even the half that determines whether a young person will last, grow, or be trusted at work. Author Dr. Ben Clinton’s focus is not on abstract “soft skills” but on the visible habits that make skills usable: showing up prepared, taking feedback without folding in on yourself, working well with others, managing time, solving problems before they metastasize, and learning how to recover after missteps. What gives the book its shape is the way it moves from diagnosis to practice, from the blunt employer refrain of “we can teach the technical work, we struggle to teach how to show up,” into frameworks, classroom routines, and stories drawn from CTE spaces, industry voices, and student growth. It’s a practical book, yes, but it’s also a quietly moral one, in the best sense. It insists that behavior is not peripheral to education. It’s part of what education is for.
What I liked most was the book’s refusal to hide behind buzzwords. Clinton is especially strong when he translates mushy, overused language into something sharper and more humane. His distinction between labeling a student as “lazy” and instead naming the missing follow-through is one of several moments where the book becomes more than a workplace manual and starts to feel like an argument for dignity through clarity. I also found the stories persuasive because they’re not inflated into inspirational parables. The technically gifted intern who flames out because he can’t function on a team, the welding student who finally hears the hard truth that his attitude, not his certification, will get him fired, the quieter student who earns trust by taking notes, asking questions, and cleaning up without being asked, all of that lands because it feels observed rather than manufactured. The prose itself is direct, firm, and often good at the sentence level. It doesn’t strain for lyricism, but it has rhythm, and every so often it arrives at a line with real force, like “Hope is not a strategy” or “Culture is the curriculum,” which could have felt like slogans if the book hadn’t already earned them.
The book is at its strongest when it treats employability as teachable, contextual, and rooted in relationships, especially in its insistence that students need coaching rather than mere correction, and that professionalism should not be reduced to compliance theater. There were moments when I found myself curious about how the book’s ideas might stretch even further, especially around the ways class, adolescence, uneven home lives, or institutional rigidity can shape a student’s ability to “show up” well. Clinton does nod to these realities, particularly in his reflections on trust, self-awareness, and the need for structure over shame, and I appreciated that humane undercurrent throughout. The book’s steady faith in clarity and consistency gives it a sense of confidence and purpose. That steadiness is part of what makes the book feel so grounded. The later sections, especially the reflections on supporting struggling students and the closing appeal to teachers who are still trying, give the book a humane undertow. It never sneers at students, and it never lets teachers off the hook either. That combination of sympathy and standards is harder to pull off than it looks.
I found Teaching What Every Employer Wants to be an earnest, useful, and more emotionally grounded book than its title first suggests. What it offers instead is clarity, repetition, and conviction, all in service of a simple but consequential idea: that the habits students practice daily become the lives they are later able to build. I finished it feeling that Clinton has written not just a guide for employability, but a defense of deliberate teaching itself, of the patient work of making expectations visible and growth imaginable. I’d recommend it most strongly to CTE teachers, instructional leaders, and anyone working with adolescents on the threshold of adult life, but I think plenty of general educators would recognize their own classrooms in it too. It’s a grounded, thoughtful book for people who believe that how we teach is never separate from who students become.
Pages: 141 | ASIN : B0GQJXT34X
Scars and All
Scars and All is a hybrid of memoir, self-help, and conversational reflection, built around one deceptively simple idea: the wounds we carry can either keep us trapped in old pain or become a way of recognizing and easing pain in others. Lara Portelli opens with a stranger dropping milk in a Sydney supermarket, then follows that moment into a chain of encounters, most memorably with Helen at the Hydro Majestic, where a spilled carton becomes the trigger for a buried schoolyard humiliation, and later with Mia, whose mirror-bound self-loathing exposes how easily beauty standards colonize a woman’s inner life. From there, the book widens into chapters on self-harm, invisibility, dress size, cutting remarks, and visible scarring, always circling back to the same invitation: look at your scars honestly, then decide whether they’ll remain reminders or become a map forward.
Portelli writes like someone leaning across the table, saying, listen, this matters. At its best, that makes the book feel intimate in a way many books in this lane never do. Helen’s story, especially the awful convergence of guilt, self-harm, and the old humiliation of chocolate milk in her hair, has genuine force. So does the quieter ache of Mia asking whether she can “compete” with the women she sees in magazines, only to be told, beautifully and bluntly, “You don’t.” I also found the chapter on clothing size unexpectedly effective. The changing-room scene with the ruby-red dress is funny, a little chaotic, and painfully recognizable, which is exactly why it lands. The book is strongest when Portelli lets scenes breathe like that, when the ideas rise out of lived moments instead of arriving as instruction.
The writing has warmth, rhythm, and an unguarded sincerity I appreciated, even when it wanders into reflective detours. There are moments when the narrative shifts from personal storytelling into broader reflections, motivational language, and ideas around NLP, past life regression, and inherited trauma. Those sections didn’t resonate with me quite as strongly as the more intimate, lived scenes, though they still felt consistent with the book’s searching and deeply personal spirit. I trusted Portelli most when she was describing a room, a look, a humiliation, a sudden kindness, the soft light of Holly Difford’s photo shoot, or the raw fact of Turia Pitt refusing to let “5 seconds of pain and agony” define the rest of her life. I never doubted the sincerity underneath everything. The book’s moral imagination is generous. It wants people to be gentler with themselves and more alert to the hurt in others, and that conviction gives it a pulse.
Scars and All is heartfelt and genuinely affecting. I think it succeeds because Portelli is willing to be raw, personal, and earnest in service of a deeply human belief: that pain can enlarge us instead of reducing us. By the time she returns to the image of walking someone “to the safety of that dry space,” the book had earned its tenderness. I’d recommend it most to readers who like personal-development books with memoir blood in them, especially women navigating reinvention, self-worth, body image, or the long afterlife of emotional injury.
Pages: 96 | ASIN : B0FYNQG85V
Impossible to Resist
Reading Willing: A Shakespearean Romp follows William Shakespeare after surviving the Globe Theatre fire, who time-travels and awakens in a small Canadian town centuries later. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
All my adult life, I have been looking for opportunities to immerse myself in Shakespeare’s plays: participating as an actor in many, as a director in a few, and, twice, I even wrote period plays in which Shakespeare was a major character.
It is a virus for some of us—this need to digest and recreate the words and wisdom of this great and mysterious man. When it occurred to me that I might have even a more intimate experience by bringing William to my hometown in my home time, well, that scenario was impossible to resist. I knew from the start that the tone of the work would be “playful”, and I was very eager to get to work.
I set the story in 1999, quite intentionally, as a relatively peaceful time in our modern era before the dragon of social media began to upset human norms.
What was the biggest challenge in making Shakespeare feel human rather than iconic?
While I do regard Shakespeare as the greatest writer who ever lived, I have never regarded him as anything other than human. I think Shakespeare would laugh at the notion of him being “iconic”. It is his humanity that really defines him. Even his protagonists are plagued by inconsistencies and weaknesses as, indeed, are we all.
Shakespeare’s understanding of human nature and its frailties (and occasionally glories—”What a piece of work is man!”) is profound, and his curiosity boundless. A sweet, but quiet compassion underlies all his work, and, not infrequently, his words evoke sidesplitting laughter.
I hope the Shakespeare I have created in Willing comes off as someone who is profoundly curious and a man ready both to hug and be hugged.
What does the book say about legacy?
I think my book speaks to the power of connection we find in Shakespeare’s words and worldview. His words resonate today. They will resonate tomorrow. In small town Nelson, in London, in Los Angeles, everywhere. Both his words and his personality. As his friend and rival Ben Jonson said of him, William Shakespeare is “not of an age, but for all time.” He forever reminds us that we are all human, and all of us brothers and sisters.
If Shakespeare could read this book, what would you hope he’d say?
William would probably have very little to say about my novel, as such. After all, my book makes only the tiniest dent in the pantheon of English literature. However, I would not be surprised to see a twinkle in William’s eye, and even a pat on the back. “Join me for a beer,” he might say, and, in the midst of a noisy tavern ambience, he might ask, “The librarian in your book, Bonnie Telleman—could you arrange an introduction?”
Author Links: Facebook | Website | Youtube
Connie’s White World
Connie’s White World is a debut short story collection by Sam Newsome, saxophonist, educator, and what you might call a jazz anthropologist of the human condition. The book gathers ten interlocking stories set in the world of jazz: a white pianist rattled by a racially charged review, a beautiful but undisciplined busker haunted by ambition he never quite answers, a classically trained soprano who sheds her mother’s legacy for a sequined alter ego at a Chinatown dive bar, an aging educator whose memory dissolves even as the music remains, a saxophonist who stops playing after an accident that kills a girl. These characters live at the margins of recognition, talented, conflicted, sometimes sabotaged by their own psychologies, and Newsome traces the grain of their private lives with the attentiveness of someone who has spent decades listening. As he explains in his liner notes, he rewrote these stories as jazz: short clauses, Baldwin-style em dashes, rhythmic disruptions. The prose swings because it was designed to.
What I liked most was Newsome’s refusal to adjudicate. He gives every voice its weight, even the uncomfortable ones. The opening story, “Connie’s White World,” places us inside a white jazz pianist grappling with a career-defining accusation that her music has “strained out Black culture,” and Newsome neither exonerates her nor condemns her. She is by turns defensive, self-aware, and achingly honest about her own limitations, and the story’s power comes precisely from that honesty. “Letter to the Editor” operates as a bracketed epistolary duel between a Black saxophonist and a white critic, and Newsome lets both men reveal themselves through escalating salvos until neither is fully right and neither is fully clean. The book is most alive when it refuses easy resolution. “The Legacy of Mr. Mosley” is perhaps its finest achievement, a portrait of a jazz educator undone by dementia, cared for by a son-in-law who can’t bring himself to call him “Dad,” still tapping two and four in wingtips on a nursing home deck while Chet Baker drifts from the speakers.
Some stories, particularly “Tone-Hole Love,” narrated from a saxophone’s perspective, feel more like impressionistic experiments, and a few of the romantic subplots arrive and depart quickly. The prose occasionally tips from rhythmic restraint into something closer to purple heat, especially in scenes of physical intimacy.
Readers drawn to literary fiction, jazz fiction, and character-driven short story collections will find much to admire here, particularly those who have appreciated James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store for its portrait of music and community, or Colson Whitehead’s early work for its cool, socially observant prose. Newsome writes from inside the jazz world in a way most fiction doesn’t; his characters argue about voicings and sidemen with the specificity of people for whom these things are genuinely at stake. Connie’s White World is an unmistakably alive debut, proof that when a musician decides to write, the silence between the notes can carry as much meaning as the notes themselves.
Pages: 136 | ASIN : B0GJN1117N
The 6th Heaven
The 6th Heaven by Monica Broussard follows Dr. Derek Hollinger, a plastic surgeon whose life is derailed when intricate tattoos suddenly appear all over his body. Struggling with depression and a past full of trauma, he leaves his wife, Kendal, and their Los Angeles home to trek into the Amazon jungle. He travels with a priest named Father Mike to find a shaman’s granddaughter who might hold the key to his curse. The journey is brutal. Derek faces venomous spiders and near-death experiences while Father Mike battles a jaguar. Eventually, through a mix of tribal rituals and a spiritual encounter with God, Derek undergoes a deep internal transformation that forces him to face his past and find true emotional freedom.
The writing feels deliberate and vivid. I like how the author uses the jungle as a mirror for Derek’s own mind. The descriptions of the rainforest are dense and humid. You can almost feel the dampness and the sting of the mosquitoes on every page. One of the author’s boldest choices is shifting the perspective between Derek’s physical struggle in the mud and Kendal’s emotional isolation back in California. It creates a tension that keeps you moving. I found myself curious about the tattoos and what they really meant. The way the ink is treated as both a physical burden and a spiritual map is a fascinating concept. The pacing is patient. It takes its time to let the characters sit with their thoughts, which makes the action scenes, like the jaguar attack, feel sudden and earned.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the ideas of identity and healing in this story. Derek is a man who builds physical beauty for a living, yet he feels hideous because of something he can’t control. The book explores the gap between how the world sees us and how we see ourselves. I liked the candid look at trauma. It doesn’t offer easy fixes. Even after the spiritual revelations, the characters still carry physical and emotional scars. The intersection of Christian faith and Indigenous shamanic traditions is an interesting choice. It makes for a unique spiritual landscape. It made me wonder about the nature of mercy and whether we can ever truly outrun our past. The idea that our life story is written on our skin is a heavy one, but it feels grounded here.
This is a stirring Christian fiction novel that uses magical realism elements in an interesting way, along with some supernatural elements. It’s a reflective story about redemption and the hard work of coming home to yourself. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys stories about spiritual journeys or readers who like fiction that wrestles with deep psychological themes. It’s a solid choice for someone looking for a grounded adventure that is not afraid to get a little bit dark before finding the light.
Pages: 265 | ASIN : B0FHBZWMRS
Three Silent Cries
Three Silent Cries is a genre-blending work of spiritual fiction and family drama that moves through three linked stories about grief, vulnerability, and the people society too easily overlooks. The first and longest section follows Samantha, a clairvoyant girl marked by loss, her quiet bond with Sam, and the painful ripple effects that shape a child named Eliot. The later sections widen the book’s focus to inherited trauma, cultural pressure, disability, silence, and forms of love that do not always fit neat expectations. The book wants to make the unseen visible and ask readers to look again at people they might otherwise pass by.
Author Marlene Zaedyan writes earnestly. This is not a cool or ironic book. It reaches straight for emotion, and it does so without much self-protection. I felt that on nearly every page. The prose leans lyrical, often circling silence, light, breath, music, and memory, and at times it reads almost like a spoken testimony. That approach worked for me when the book slowed down and trusted an image or a feeling to land on its own. The transistor radio, for example, becomes more than an object. It turns into comfort, identity, and connection. I also appreciated how clearly the author cares about children, parents, and people living at the edge of social understanding. That care gives the book its pulse.
I found myself reacting to the book less as a tightly built novel and more as a heartfelt vessel for belief, pain, and witness. The author makes bold choices: clairvoyance, reincarnation, spiritual recognition, symbolic objects, and a very open emotional register. Some readers will find that moving. I admired the sincerity and the moral center, especially when the book spoke about grief, difference, and love without words. But I also felt the writing sometimes tells me exactly what to feel instead of letting the moment do the work. Even so, there is something deeply human in that refusal to be detached. The book feels written by someone who has lived through rupture and wants, with all her strength, to turn suffering into tenderness.
I read Three Silent Cries as a compassionate piece of spiritual fiction for readers who like emotionally direct stories about trauma, healing, destiny, and misunderstood lives. I would especially recommend it to readers who are open to metaphysical ideas, reflective family stories, and books that wear their heart fully on the page. If you want a sincere, wounded, hopeful novel that tries to give voice to silence, this one will speak to you.
Pages: 249 | ISBN: 1326006835
Prince in the Wilderness: An Easter Story
Prince in the Wilderness is a work of Christian historical fiction, and it reads like an Easter story told around a fire, with Scripture, family memory, and frontier life all braided together. Set in 1846 Indiana, it follows Laurent Fontaine, a young man standing between boyhood and adulthood, as he moves through the demands of family, faith, wilderness, and first love. Around him, the novel builds a full household world: his mother and father, his younger sisters, the rhythms of trapping and homesteading, and a deep sense that the natural world is not just background but part of the book’s spiritual language.
I enjoyed the book’s warmth. It’s earnest in a way that can feel rare now. The family scenes are where it really comes alive. The joking between Laurent and his sisters, the meals, the storytelling, the small household rituals, all of that gives the novel its pulse. I also liked how much the authors trust the domestic details. Food, chores, baths, tools, prayer, reading aloud, all of it matters. That gives the story weight. The prose is very rich. Still, I never doubted the sincerity behind it. The book knows exactly the kind of world it wants to build, and it commits.
I found the authorial choices interesting too, especially the way faith is not tucked into the corners but placed right at the center. This isn’t a novel that nods vaguely toward belief. It’s openly shaped by Christian conviction, and the wilderness becomes both a physical place and a spiritual testing ground. That worked for me more often than not because the book is at its best when it lets those ideas arise through character and scene rather than explanation. Laurent’s sense of responsibility, his tenderness toward his sisters, and the family’s conversations about protection, obedience, gender, and calling give the story something to wrestle with. I didn’t agree with every idea, but I respected that the book is honest about what it believes and lets those beliefs shape the stakes.
The book reminded me a little of Janette Oke’s work, especially Love Comes Softly, because it shares that same gentle Christian historical fiction tone, where faith, family, and everyday frontier life matter as much as plot. There is also a touch of Laura Ingalls Wilder in the attention to household rhythms and the feel of the natural world, though Prince in the Wilderness is more openly devotional.
I came away feeling that this book will mean the most to readers who enjoy faith-forward historical fiction with a strong family core, a coming-of-age thread, and a frontier setting that feels lived in rather than decorative. People who like their fiction reflective, morally serious, and rooted in Christian themes will probably find a lot to appreciate here. For those who want an intimate, heartfelt Christian historical story with frontier texture and a sincere spiritual center, Prince in the Wilderness has a steady, generous pull.
Pages: 298 | ASIN : B0GNT8V9X9
MERIDIAN: Total Optimization
Total Optimization is a near-future speculative novel, with strong dystopian and literary fiction instincts, about what happens when optimization stops being a tool and starts becoming a worldview. Author Jude Sterling follows several people pulled into Meridian’s orbit: a writer who lets an AI overwrite her work, a teacher watching software creep into the classroom, a doctor forced to reckon with a system that can out-diagnose her, and an ethics officer inside the machine who sees exactly what it is doing and keeps helping it anyway. What hooked me was that the book does not frame this as a sudden apocalypse. It frames it as a series of sensible improvements, each one defensible on paper, until whole lives are being translated into metrics, risk scores, and managed transitions.
I admired the writing itself. Sterling has a sharp eye for physical detail, and that detail does a lot of moral work. A stuck key on a laptop, a red pen running dry, a coffee ritual the system wants to “improve,” a child drawing a diagnostic machine into a family picture. None of that feels decorative. It’s the novel’s way of arguing that texture matters, that friction matters, that the human world is partly made of little imperfections that should not be optimized away. I also liked how the book resists easy heroes. Elena, especially, stayed with me because she is not innocent, not clean, and not allowed the comfort of pretending she is outside the problem. That makes her sections feel painfully alive.
What landed hardest for me was the book’s refusal to go for a cheap anti-tech rant. Sterling is too smart for that. Meridian really does improve some things. It catches cancers. It helps students. It makes trains run on time. That is exactly why the novel has bite. The fear here is not that the system is stupid. The fear is that it is often effective, and that people will hand over more and more of life because the gains are real, measurable, and convenient. I found that both compelling and unsettling. The book can feel almost essayistic in how clearly it wants to map the social logic of AI systems, and some readers may find that a little deliberate. The novel keeps bringing the argument back down to the body, the household, the classroom, the clinic, and I felt like that groundedness gives it weight.
Total Optimization is less a warning siren than a slow tightening wire. It asks what we lose when every human act has to justify itself in the language of efficiency, and it does so with more feeling than I expected. I would recommend it most strongly to readers who like literary speculative fiction, thoughtful dystopian fiction, and character-driven novels that wrestle with technology without turning into lectures. People who liked fiction that sits in the uneasy space between systems and souls will probably find a lot here. I certainly did.
Pages: 304 | ASIN: B0GRBVSF8H
