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The Philosophical Future: Man’s Psychic Journey: End or Beginning?
“There is no cure for birth or death, save to enjoy the interval”
This is easier said than done. How does one enjoy said interval? How is the enjoyment made possible in times of back breaking responsibility? The search for answers to the how-question has led to tedious inquiries into life’s meaning. It has led all individuals to try harder than they should to understand the age into which they are born. Whether it is an unconscious effort or intentional, seeking freedom and fulfillment is a human condition. Without proper knowledge of the field, the search will be futile and frustrating. Learn first; earn the tools to navigate through life efficiently.
This book is about expanding and maturing the view of the future, it is about understanding the role of the past in the future, it is about understanding the extent of social and psychological challenges that deter wholesome living in this century, it is about introducing the novices to a picture of how civilized thoughts and ideas develop, to introduce people to the quintessence of human thinking. To help people contend with the role of religion despite rampant secularism.
Charles Reid has come up with a roadmap unlike nothing that has even been suggested before. He is not just telling the reader to live fully. He is handing us the necessary tools to do exactly that. He is giving a guide to take advantage of every minute. He is ensuring that birth and death do not become regrettable events. His ideas are simple enough but intricate the more you think about them it. He goes further to break down his ideas of a philosophical future into little tidbits. The breakdown is effective as it allows a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
Enthusiasm and passion are paramount to the successful conveyance of a message. This book has those in loads. The author has great passion in the subject matter as is evident in his eloquent portrayal of a philosophical definition of happiness, freedom, and fulfillment. He does not rush over any knots. Everything is exhaustively explained and explored. The Philosophical Future is very well written. It is a suggestion rather than a lecture. It is an invitation to comprehend the true meaning of things. The author does not force his deas aggressively but rather places a bowl at the table to share. This is an important trait especially in a matter that is so subject to individual opinion.
This book is highly recommended to young people. They still have the time to entertain new ideas, to introduce new angles into their search for happiness, to develop a new dimension for their view of the future. The age-advanced should not be left behind either. It is never too late to tweak your thinking. You might use or you might pass it on. This book is well suited to either demographic.
Pages: 276 | ASIN: B079LH9GMH
My Own Growth and Inner Conflicts
Glenville Ashby Author Interview
In your book In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology you provide insight into death, the afterlife and the purpose of life itself using your knowledge. Why was this an important book for you to put together?
For close to a decade my column on religion, philosophy and culture has enjoyed tremendous success. Over the years my views have changed, a refection I believe, of my own growth and inner conflicts pertaining to life, God and spirituality. The book conveys this conflict and what I refer to as, the evolution of spirit. I selected some insightful articles that are sure to evoke strong reactions in support of, and against my beliefs. Scores of articles have been left out but I do feel that this work, despite its paradoxical tenor is systemized and thematic.
Given the growing spirit of individualism in the face of excesses by the so called religious, I think the book is very timely and in many ways, a product of the cultural zeitgeist.
This book was about faith, but wasn’t directed at any one faith, and I appreciated that. Was this intentional or is this where your understanding leads?
Spirituality, religion, faith in something bigger than self, or faith in one’s own strengths, are part of our constitution. It is important for us to recognize and respect the divers opinions out there. Uniformity of thought in any discipline or pursuit, is counterproductive and an enslavement of the human spirit. More than ever, with the revolution in communication, we have a unique opportunity to learn from each other.
This is a collection of selected writings. What was the process like in selecting and putting this book together?
Great question. I could have looked at readers’ response to articles when they were first published and selected those that were most popular. I guess the result would have been an anthology or compilation of best articles based on ostensible appeal. However, I featured the most thought-provoking writings, those that buck the trend and allow for critical thinking and introspection. This is where I am at in my evolution, and I wanted to share my inner turmoil as I wrestled with life’s mysteries. At the same time, I was able to convey moments of self-assurance and the joy of self-discovery.
What do you hope readers take away from this book?
The book raises soul searching questions on so many subjects that we have grappled with since the dawn of time. What is truth? Is there an afterlife? Is suicide ever justified? Is reincarnation possible? Are there limits to human potential? I also delved into transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies…and of course, eastern spirituality. This is an eclectic offering that will definitely stir debate.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
![In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology: Selected Writings 2013 - 2018 by [Ashby, Glenville]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WquiNY7OL.jpg)
In Search of Truth: A Course in Spiritual Psychology by Glenville Ashby is an anthology of the author’s work. Ashby is a scholar in Philosophy and New Age Thought who first became involved in finding answers to the mysteries of spiritual life when his mother passed away in 1980. The culmination of his search resulted in a collection of writings with the latest, In Search of Truth, being something of a magnum opus that spans from 2003 – 2018. Ashby offers insight into a host of common questions from enlightenment and reincarnation to suicide and the hour of death, covering a plethora of topics in between, from the evil eye, to the third eye, to keeping an eye on the spiritual world (including a section on Ouija boards).
This is a fascinating collection offering something different than your usual books on spiritual psychology. It is fully accessible for those who may want to refer to it time and time again for spiritual guidance. If you are looking for an intellectual and stimulating read, with an openness to many different outcomes, look no further than In Search of Truth.
The Ghost Years
![The Ghost Years by [Katsonga, Mutch]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/414brfs5dgL.jpg)
The very personal story of The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga will give you a first class seat straight to the heart of hell. And you will thank Katsonga for it. This first-person narrative follows the life of a young man caught up in the life of drugs in detail that is rarely found in literature. Katsonga is pulling no punches in showing us the mind of a junkie in this satisfying novel. While sometimes getting very close to it, The Ghost Years is careful not to put its characters into situations just to prove a point. What it does is allow them, and the reader, to grow as people in this hard-hitting and memorable study of the seedy underbelly of society. Several action scenes and a couple of twists and turns keep the story going to its well-earned conclusion.
I felt that many events that the main character had to endure do often seemed to be laid out just to have him fail. The character of Buzz, for example, with his never-ending optimism and somewhat expected twist revelation does come off as a narrative tool more than a real person. But still, somehow it works, and the story is better for having him in it.
Katsonga’s style of writing could be best described as “tell, don’t show”. I felt that exposition was overused to get us into the mind of the main character. Lines and lines of text are expended on questions about life, death and society. Because of this, I felt like the narrative and the view of the world appeared to be spoon-fed to me.
However, the advantage of this style quickly gets the reader up to speed. We are left with a great understanding of the motivation that drives the story line. The logic that his character follows is consistent and that was Katsonga’s goal all along. Some may not approve of the drug use in the story, just as in life, but we can give his character that one thing he was craving his whole life – understanding.
Previously moot and tired questions about the meaning of life get a whole new context when asked with an empty stomach and the craving for a new “hit”. The Ghost Years will have you asking about the reasons that make you get up in the morning – are you doing it because you are told to do so or because you choose to? How far do you have to drift aimlessly before you decide to take a direction for your life?
The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga gives us several clear and memorable lessons about the value of choice, life, drugs and society in this crude but honest and hard-hitting book.
Pages: 179 | ASIN: B079KSFGSS
Blowout Summer
![Blow Out Summer by [Stock, Denise Ann]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51JyDJI88BL.jpg)
Dee Dee is a surfer, an aspiring tennis player, and a girl who is always up for a good party. One summer in particular stands out in her memory as she reflects upon her life. With her close band of friends around her, Dee Dee sets out to thoroughly enjoy her summer off and does not hesitate as she goes about seeking the company of friends new and old. Her “blow out summer,” as she calls it, teaches her some valuable lessons and gives her time to reflect on her own choices as she learns who is worthy of her affection and trust and who falls short.
Set in Huntington Beach, California, Blow Out Summer, by Denise Ann Stock, reads less like a novel and much more like a memoir. The conversational tone of the book makes it a quick and easy read. Dee Dee’s reflections on her experiences with the drug trade and her laid back approach to her participation in drug trafficking read shockingly smoothly. For as deeply involved as Dee Dee seems to be in buying and selling illegal substances, she seems much less concerned than she should be. I attributed her naivety and lack of real concern to the time period, the mid 70’s.
I found myself waiting for that one point in the story that would point to a gripping climax. Everything in Dee Dee’s eventful summer points to an action-packed high point. However, with all her close calls, second guesses regarding her associates, and her relationship woes, there never came that one moment where the entire book seemed to pull together. Reading much more like a diary of the summer, I was a little disappointed not to see a resolution to many of the dilemmas created by the main character and her friends. I believe I was more determined to find answers than Dee Dee herself.
The one scene providing the most harrowing visual comes when Dee Dee’s friend, Jaycee, makes a frantic call about a possible overdose. I felt, as a reader looking for answers, this was an ideal opportunity for the plot to tie neatly together with some life-changing decisions being made on the part of both Dee Dee and her friends. As in real life, however, secrets prevail, and not much changed for those most deeply entangled in drug use and trafficking.
As pleasant as Dee Dee seems throughout the story and as much as her remembrances of her eventful summer kept me interested, I felt the overall story was missing something. The memoir style of writing Stock uses is appealing and will suit readers seeking a fairly light read without highly stressful rising action.
Pages: 360 | ASIN: B01C58JXJI
The Real Me
Tammy Campbell Brooks Author Interview
The Ghetto Blues is an autobiography of your life in the projects of San Antonio and how you overcame numerous obstacles. Why was this an important book for you to write?
My legacy is important to me and I want to share my story to inspire people. I want my children and future grandchildren to know the real me, my life story, and that no matter what life throws at you, you are to never succumb or play the victim role. No excuses.
I wrote the book for my family’s history; the saying that every time an old person dies, a history book dies with them.
I don’t want my history book to die with me.
What I liked most about this book was the honesty in the retelling. You left nothing out, good or bad. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The hardest to write about, is by far, the suicide of my beloved mother. She was not only my mother, but my best friend and someone that I could talk to about anything. My mother always had my back and she loved all of her children, unconditionally.
The Ghetto Blues is dedicated to my mother and father.
When writing a biography it enables you reflect on life choices. Is there anything that you see differently now that you’ve written this book?
There’s a lot that I see differently as I reflect back on my life’s choices, but without the decisions that I made, there would be no Ghetto Blues.
My experiences taught me to remember the past but don’t let it define my present and future. I’ve learned from my choices and there’s no greater teacher in life than mistakes.
I felt like this book was about perseverance in the face of adversity. What do you hope readers take away from your book?
I hope that readers take away the fact that no matter what you go through in life, you are the director, producer, actor, and the entire cast of your life’s decisions. You are in control of your own life.
There are two choices, to give up or to never give up.
I hope that the Ghetto Blues inspire young children and people in general that are born into poverty, suffer mental, or physical abuse to never give up.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
![The Ghetto Blues by [Brooks, Tammy Campbell ]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OI1KQ7OtL.jpg)
My legacy is important to me. I want to leave a legacy that my children and grandchildren could be proud of. A legacy that would be a blueprint for future generations to tweak and make better.
I write this book for future generations to learn, grow, and inspire to be a better you. This book is the story of my life and based on true events. It’s about a young lady that struggled through her identity crisis and was raised in unstable environments and poverty.
A story about a life of tragedy, trepidation, but triumph. I never accepted the ideology of a victim. Instead, I embraced strength, resilience, and a warrior’s philosophy. I fit the perfect description of Tupac Shakur’s meaning of the saying, a rose that grew from the concrete. When the odds were stacked against me, I continued to grow mentally, physically, and spiritually.
I believe that you are only a victim when you have no choice; otherwise, you are an enabler. I had no choice being born into poverty, but I had a choice on whether to rise above my circumstances. My desire was to break the mental and physical chains plagued in our communities and instill new ones for me and my children.
My story goes out to all the people that suffered and survived, The Ghetto Blues. I hope to transform and inspire you to never give up on you.
The Ghetto Blues
The Ghetto Blues by Tammy Campbell Brooks unexpectedly won my heart. The book’s full title is The Ghetto Blues – An Autobiography of Tammy Campbell Brooks’ Trepidation, Tragedy, and Triumph, and it follows the life of Tammy from childhood through adulthood. In the opening pages of the prologue, Tammy’s daughter writes, “In this book, you will go through different stages of emotions from tears, laughter, happiness, and joy of growing up in poverty and impoverished environments, but not letting the circumstances define you.” As I began the book, I was skeptical that I would experience all these emotions, but as I concluded the final chapter, “Bells Will Be Ringing,” I found that Tammy’s daughter had been entirely right all along.
Typically, authors are referred to by their last names in reviews, but after reading Tammy’s story, I feel it only right to call her by her first name. Tammy’s story was incredibly challenging for me to read at the beginning because it is so disparate from my own experience in suburban America. Growing up in the projects of San Antonio, Tammy had an upbringing that is almost unbelievable for most readers – gunshots, emotional and physical abuse, poverty, extreme hunger – but she avoids writing about her experiences in such a way as to say, oh woe is me! Completely the opposite, Tammy describes herself as driven and dedicated. Even though she experiences setbacks and succumbs to vices that will have readers wanting to call her up and say, what were you thinking?!, she does not let her weaknesses or mistakes define her, and she is always striving for the best out of herself.
Tammy’s autobiography is written in an almost spoken format, and not at all how Strunk & White might have preferred. While the typos and grammatical errors irritated me at the beginning on the book, I came to realize that if it had been written like Faulkner, for example, it would not have truly been Tammy’s autobiography. Her story is edgy and uncomfortable, and sometimes painful to read. It is the opposite of polished, but it is honest and eye-opening. That said, the book would have benefitted from some additional editing to correct some of the simple spelling errors and word usage errors. Those glaring errors are the only reason I would give the story four stars instead of five, because Tammy’s story is undeniably a full five stars.
Describing Tammy to someone who hasn’t read her autobiography feels almost as if she must be fictional: how could one woman overcome all those challenges thrown at her? Not only is Tammy an inspiration, but she was also eye-opening to me. I knew nothing of the ghetto lifestyle in the projects that she describes, and her story reiterates the age-old adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” At the conclusion of her autobiography, my overwhelming emotion was one of thinking that Tammy’s story would be amazing to share through radio or podcast. The courage and strength that it took Tammy to share her and her family’s story with readers should not be underestimated, and I hope that many readers have the opportunity to learn from her experiences.
Pages: 257 | ASIN: B07BFKCQZ9
Tell Us The Aftermath
Douglas Wells Author Interview
How We End Up is an intricate contemporary story that follows the lives of three strangers and shows how people can intersect at life changing moments. What was the initial idea behind this story and how did that transform as you were writing the novel?
I used to walk the beach in a park near my house. The park gets numerous visitors, mostly families, and I would frequently walk by young children playing in the surf. This area is known for its rip currents, and there are always news stories about people being caught in one and having to be rescued. It occurred to me that one day I might have to jump in after someone, particularly a child. Fortunately, I never had to. It got me thinking about how these rescues are often called “miracles,” but the story stops there. It did not, of course, tell us the aftermath, so I began formulating a story that shows us how they were brought together and tells us what happens to these people over a long span of time.
I felt that this novel was about the characters and how people change over time. What were the driving ideals behind the characters development throughout the story?
The central male character, Jackson, rescues nine-year-old twin girls. Although they they are twins, I saw them as being very distinct from each other, and I imagined they would lead dissimilar lives. Not only are their sexual orientations different, but one is worldly and self-destructive, while the other begins as a bit naïve, which leads them both to disastrous circumstances. Jackson, who achieves literary fame by writing about the rescue, suffers from a case of hubris, which results in his star falling. Their personas and their relationships, particularly their romantic entanglements, are affected, often negatively, by both the inner conflicts of the three characters and by chance. I see this as something we all endure. Some things we decide upon by choice, while others are left to happenstance and over which we have no control. All of these experiences lead to “how we end up.”
When you first sat down to write this story, did you know where you were going, or did the story develop as you were writing?
The “skeleton” of the story was apparent to me from the start, but as I continued writing, the details—specific events, relationships, and the consequences of the characters’ reckless behavior—appeared. This is pretty much my writing modus operandi in general. For me, writing is a discovery process.
What is the next book that you are working on and when can your fans expect it to be out?
My next book is about a character who leads five different lives, each detached from the others. It is somewhat experimental, maybe, but this is all I presently can say about it. If fortune smiles upon me, I might finish it within 6-8 months; after that, I would think publication would follow in about the same amount of time.
Author Links: Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads | Website
![How We End Up by [Wells, Douglas]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iiGSuWh9L.jpg)
BEING RESCUED IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING SAVED.
Jackson Levee, a professor and writer, plucks two drowning twin girls from the Gulf of Mexico. Their attractive single mother has her own ideas about how to thank the hero. Jackson and their family go from being complete strangers one day to intimate friends the next. Jackson soars to literary fame after writing about his rescue of the twins, while the girls mature into beautiful but troubled young women. Over the next twenty-five years, everyone’s recklessness in love, marriage, and life produces wild and devastating results, forcing the three of them to struggle as they try to realize their destinies and find balance in life.
Douglas Wells crafts an intoxicating story teeming with passion and exhilaration to danger, addiction, and despair.
Returning Souls
![Returning Souls by [Colombo, Ernestine B.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61GS7Ne-%2B3L._SY346_.jpg)
Where does a soul go after one’s life is over? Does it drift away into nothing while the body returns to dust? Or does it goes on to rest, to be resurrected? Or does it recycle back into the physical plane of existence in yet another form? These questions always come to mind as we see, feel and live the experience called life.
Returning Souls by Ernestine B. Colombo is a unique book that allowed me to connect with the characters and allowed me to visualize not only the descriptions the author presents but also the struggles and emotions the characters go through in the story.
The story starts by presenting our protagonist, Evelyn D’Arico or Evie and takes her point of view. The beginning is captivating as we find the character lying on the floor, incapacitated and on the edge of death. The narrative masterfully captures the emotions you might have if you were to find yourself in the same predicament. The descriptions easily come as they paint some dramatic pictures. The language is fluid and allows you to get lost in the story. I particularly liked the author’s presentation of the behavior of the pets. I always believe that animals are more attuned to the metaphysical plane of souls and spirits.
The story, to me, presents a unique idea that I have not read in any piece of literature, the concept of Pre-incarnation. As the story progresses the reader gets to know a different character, Astara. She is a girl a little over 12, living in the Mesolithic time period. She is a unique complement to Evie’s character. Switching between the two characters points of view is handled expertly and I enjoyed being able to inhabit both of these two fascinating characters.
The story is touching as well as we get to learn of her sister who is suffering from Down syndrome. This for me, was one of the more emotional elements to the story that left the character endearing. The relationship was believable and the condition, I thought, was explained with care.
This book will take you on a reincarnation adventure with a deep look at the beauty, and maybe even the futility, of life. This is a must read for people coming of age or people looking for a metaphysical story that stands out from the rest as different and compelling.
Pages: 292 | ASIN: B079ZZ2M84
LITERARY TITAN 