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Ceylon Moon
Ceylon Moon is a poetry collection built around memory, dreams, aging, identity, nature, and the uneasy business of trying to make meaning from a finite life. Aaron Gedaliah organizes the book into five sections that gradually move from childhood and personal recollection into dream life, questions of sanity, imagined voices from the natural world, and finally the experience of growing older. That structure gives the collection a real sense of progression. Early poems such as “I Am Becoming” capture the almost overwhelming vitality of childhood, while later poems look back on youth from a much greater distance. Gedaliah explains in the preface that childhood, dreams, sanity, nature, aging, and the absurdity of life are the central concerns of the book, and those themes keep returning in different forms.
The collection is especially strong when Gedaliah lets an ordinary experience open into something much larger. A toddler running downhill, a morning beside the Mekong, an old temple, a text message from a former lover, a pair of glasses, or a sleepless night can all become occasions for thinking about memory and identity. The poems frequently move between the physical world and an interior one, so landscapes, music, paintings, dreams, and personal recollections seem to talk to one another. That quality is especially vivid in “Ceylon Moon,” where a neglected piece of art becomes almost sentient, carrying with it distant places, submerged memories, and an atmosphere of longing. The language throughout the collection tends toward the sensory and dreamlike, with recurring images of moonlight, water, twilight, trees, music, silence, and shifting shades of blue and violet.
Gedaliah also has a playful philosophical streak, particularly in the “With [in] Sanity” and “The Voices” sections. Poems such as “Being Insane” and “Being in Between” treat sanity and madness less as fixed opposites than as forces people continually negotiate, with conformity on one side and freedom, impulse, and creativity on the other. In “The Voices,” stone, trees, clouds, mountains, and the sea are given their own perspectives, and the effect is surprisingly intimate. Nature becomes a way of talking about stability, memory, surrender, and the human desire to find significance outside ourselves. “A Song of the Sea,” for example, imagines the sea as an ancient rhythm binding us to existence, while “A Song of Letting Go” turns the seasonal loss of leaves into a meditation on accepting time and change.
Toward the end, the collection becomes increasingly concerned with aging, physical decline, estrangement from a more automated world, remembered intimacy, and the approach of death, but it keeps returning to gratitude and connection. “Because My Time Is Limited” places the speaker’s brief life against an immense and indifferent universe, yet arrives at astonishment. The closing poem, “What Is Life?,” reduces the book’s many questions to a simple chain connecting truth, memory, love, and the fragile experiences that give a life its meaning. I’d recommend Ceylon Moon most to readers who enjoy reflective, philosophical poetry and who are drawn to writers such as Rilke, Pessoa, Camus, or poets who use dreams, art, music, and nature as ways of thinking about consciousness. It should especially resonate with readers who’ve reached an age where memory feels less like a record of the past and more like something living alongside the present.
Pages: 84 | ASIN : B0HFQPBLZN
So You Want To Be A Singer
So You Want To Be A Singer by Linda Soules is an engaging and informative nonfiction guide for young readers who dream of turning their love of singing into something more. Written for children, the book takes the excitement of performing and combines it with an honest look at the training, discipline, and dedication required to become a professional singer. Soules treats young readers with respect, showing them that singing is not simply about natural talent or standing in the spotlight. It is a craft that develops through practice, knowledge, patience, and care. The colorful illustrations and approachable writing make the book especially inviting for children who are curious about what happens behind the scenes in the music world.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is the way it explains the science of the human voice. Soules introduces concepts such as breathing, the diaphragm, vocal cords, resonance, range, and vocal health in language children can easily understand. Readers learn that a singer’s body is their instrument and that factors such as hydration, sleep, stress, illness, and regular practice can affect how that instrument performs. Practical details, including vocal exercises, recording equipment, pop filters, and in-ear monitors, make the profession feel real and tangible. These explanations help children understand why successful singers must care for their voices with the same seriousness that athletes care for their bodies.
The book also does an excellent job of showing that singing is both an artistic and collaborative career. Readers travel from practice rooms and recording booths to soundchecks and arena stages while meeting the vocal coaches, accompanists, producers, sound engineers, and musical directors who help bring a performance to life. Soules does not focus only on the glamorous side of the profession; she also discusses repetition, auditions, vocal problems, industry pressure, and the resilience needed to continue improving. Stories of singers such as Aretha Franklin, Marian Anderson, and Andrea Bocelli add historical and inspirational context, demonstrating that remarkable voices are shaped not only by technique but also by individual experiences, challenges, and determination.
So You Want To Be A Singer is an encouraging, realistic, and highly accessible introduction to the world of professional singing. It gives young readers practical information while still preserving the joy and emotional power that make music so appealing in the first place. Children who sing into hairbrushes, perform in the shower, join choirs, or imagine themselves on a stage will find plenty to inspire them, while parents and teachers will appreciate the book’s emphasis on practice, self-care, and realistic expectations. Soules ultimately delivers an empowering message: every person has a unique voice, and with knowledge, training, and dedication, young singers can discover just how far their own voice might take them.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0GYKW5K52
My Core Philosophies
Rise and Climb shares your unfiltered story of the choices that nearly consumed you, and the daily disciplines that eventually helped you change direction. At what point did you realize your experiences belonged in a book rather than simply remaining personal stories?
The moment came when I started seeing the through-line — the same themes repeating across different chapters of my life. Once I saw that pattern, the experiences stopped feeling like separate stories and started feeling like one story worth telling. Reliving those years in detail took something out of me, but I believed the lessons were worth it.
Loss framed my early childhood, and rebuilding from it became one of my core philosophies: when adversity knocks you down, find a way to come back stronger. I subtitled the book Finding Purpose Through Pain because I believe painful experiences contain fuel. That fuel can become self-destructive, or it can be harnessed for momentum, growth, and purpose.
Music runs through the memoir almost like another character. What could music express for you that ordinary conversation couldn’t?
I love the idea of music being another character because, for me, music has always been one of my most trusted friends. It has been there through every stage and has always given me a place to express what I was feeling.
And music goes beyond words. A guitar can communicate emotion through notes in the same way singing does. I often describe “talking through the instrument” as the goal of the musician. I believe the best music connects directly to the truth of the artist, and that has always been what I’ve tried to do with my own work.
That’s also why I named the chapters in Rise and Climb after songs I created during those periods of my life. The songs became part of the soundtrack to what I was living through, and their titles often reveal exactly where my head and heart were at the time.
Each chapter concludes with a “Finding Purpose Through Pain” reflection. Why was it important to move beyond telling readers what happened and ask what could be learned from it?
I wanted those sections to feel like I was talking to my younger self, my kids, or anyone currently going through something difficult. The chapter tells you what happened to me—the “Finding Purpose Through Pain” section asks what I learned from it and how that lesson might apply to your own life. I wanted those experiences to be useful to someone beyond me.
What are you still climbing toward now?
I believe every day is another chance to climb. Every day I rise and get another opportunity to find out what I’m capable of—as a musician, an author, and a public speaker.
I enjoy the climb itself. More than reaching any particular goal, I find purpose in continuing to improve my craft and push toward what I might still become. I don’t really see a finish line. I want to keep learning, creating, improving, and climbing for as long as I can.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
From wild childhood rides on dirt bikes to nights in jail and the silent heartbreak of watching everything he loved burn to the ground, Ben Barbic has lived a life shaped by trauma, trial, and tenacity. Rise and Climb is his raw, unfiltered memoir of a boy who lost it all—twice—and found purpose through pain.
Growing up in the shadow of California redwoods and inside the roar of a motorcycle shop, Ben’s early life was defined by adventure and grit. But after losing his home to a wildfire, living in a trailer without running water, and battling panic attacks and loss, Ben turned to the only things that gave him power—music, movement, and resilience. Through cassette tapes, weight benches scorched by fire, and the soul of hip-hop and reggae, Ben began to rebuild. He became a nationally performing recording artist, an endurance athlete, and a proud father, husband, and entrepreneur.
Unflinchingly honest, heart-wrenchingly personal, and ultimately triumphant, Rise and Climb is a memoir and self-help book for anyone who has ever faced the fire and wondered if they could survive it. Ben Barbic shares his journey, his tools, and his motivations to show readers that they can, too.
Homage to the Beatles
The Word is a work of speculative fiction that presents a world in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo are worshipped as gods, and their songs are treated as scripture. What inspired you to write this book?
It was partly the result of a mildly drunken evening with an old friend, a fellow Beatle fan. The talk was of their enduring appeal and the seeming religious language that was used to describe them as they faded into history. They were often described as Gods and certainly John Lennon seemed to have been made into a secular saint in many people’s eyes. One of us remarked that it would make a good book to describe a world in which they had become an actual religion. And hey presto, I wrote the first book, Love Them Do, about a world set in the future where there was One True Religion, and it was based on the songs and ‘teachings’ of the Fab Four.
The letters between Paula and John become one of the book’s emotional anchors. Why did you choose that correspondence as the primary way to explore belief versus skepticism?
This is the second in the series, and the first featured a narrator who was somewhat sceptical of the divine nature of the Beatles. This was partly to highlight the silliness of some aspects of the religion, but also the narrator was a follower of John, a truth seeker and sceptic who famously sang in his song ‘God’, shortly after the break-up of the Beatles, ‘I don’t believe in Beatles’. I felt he therefore represented John’s own open-minded truth seeking. In this book, The Word, the narrator is a follower of Paul and a true believer in the divine nature of the four Gods from Liverpool. I felt this reflected Paul’s love and belief in the band. He was probably the most upset when they split in 1970. The correspondence is therefore between the sceptical narrator from the first book and the true believer of the second, which I felt allowed for a nice interplay between them.
The humor comes from treating everyday moments in Beatles history as profound religious events. Did writing the novel change the way you think about celebrity culture or the stories people tell about their heroes?
Yes, it was quite fun to write in terms of imagining all the religious Orders that appear that follow a particular God or saint in their story and also interpreting quite normal events through the lens of them being divine. In many ways, of course, their story is remarkable, so it wasn’t always a huge leap to give a religious slant to aspects of their story. The book is partly a homage to the Beatles (it is, after all, a nice religion, based on peace, love and laughter) but it is also about the stories we are willing to believe to make our lives bearable, however irrational they might seem to outsiders, which, it seems to me, is how religion works. If you believe my slightly far fetched stories I will give you everlasting life etc. (in Beatle Heaven in this case!).
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
You won’t be surprised to hear that my next book is the third in the series and features a follower of George. It is called Our Sweet Lord and will hopefully be out early next year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
The Word – The Second Book of the Beatles
Ian Croskell’s The Word is a playful blend of speculative fiction, Beatles history, religious satire, and coming-of-age story. Set centuries after the band’s lifetime, it imagines a society in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo are worshipped as gods, their songs are treated as scripture, and places connected to their lives have become religious sites. The story follows Paula, a student in the Order of Paul at Blossomwood, as she studies the “Great Story” and exchanges letters with John, a more sceptical student from the Order of John. Through classes, legends, pilgrimages, and personal reflections, the book revisits the Beatles’ rise while showing how history can gradually turn into mythology.
The book’s most distinctive feature is the way it transforms familiar Beatles details into sacred traditions. Managers become saints, concerts become miracles, instruments become relics, and song lyrics are interpreted as spiritual teachings. Croskell clearly knows the band’s history, and he draws on an impressive range of anecdotes about their music, relationships, public appearances, collaborators, and cultural impact. The humor often comes from the gap between the original event and the grand religious meaning later attached to it. A snowstorm becomes divine intervention, a pop television appearance becomes a revelation, and Paul’s missing bass inspires a quest worthy of medieval legend. It’s affectionate satire, driven less by mockery than by curiosity about why people need heroes, stories, rituals, and places of pilgrimage.
Paula gives the book its warmth. She’s devout, romantic, talkative, and increasingly willing to question what she’s been taught. Her letters to John create an engaging tension between belief and doubt, particularly when they discuss the love between Lennon and McCartney, the reliability of religious texts, and the human need to find meaning in coincidence and loss. Their conversations keep the novel from becoming only a collection of Beatles facts. By the final chapter, the friendships forming around Paula begin to echo the Beatles’ own origins, giving the story a satisfying sense of renewal. The book’s leisurely, anecdotal structure means that it often feels like spending time with an enthusiastic fan who keeps remembering one more story, but that conversational quality is also central to its charm.
This book will appeal most to readers who already enjoy Beatles history and are open to seeing it rearranged into an imaginative new mythology. Fans who recognize the references, quotations, supporting figures, and small historical incidents will get the richest experience, especially those interested in Lennon and McCartney’s complicated creative bond. It should also suit readers who like gentle religious satire, alternate futures, and novels that mix ideas with character rather than racing through a tightly plotted adventure. The Word is a warm, funny meditation on fandom, faith, friendship, and the stories people build around the artists they love.
Pages: 313 | ASIN : B0H1YV676X
Symphony of Self
Symphony of Self: Compose Your Life, by Ann Mracek, is a reflective self-development book built around a fresh central idea: life can be understood through music. Mracek, a composer and lifelong music teacher, uses rhythm, harmony, dissonance, tempo, improvisation, silence, and legacy as ways to talk about healing, choice, relationships, and personal growth. The book’s guiding belief is clear from the start: “your life is not fixed. It is composed.” That idea gives the whole book its shape, making it feel less like a lecture and more like an invitation to sit at the piano of your own life and notice what you’ve been playing.
What makes the book engaging is how naturally Mracek blends music with personal story. She writes about childhood silence, her imagined dragon, teaching piano students, meeting her husband, writing music, building friendships, and learning to listen inward. These memories don’t feel random. They work like motifs that recur in different keys as the book moves from inner listening to consistency, fear, connection, rest, and, finally, legacy. Her tone is warm and encouraging, and she has a knack for turning abstract emotional work into something readers can picture and feel.
The strongest thread in the book is its focus on awareness. Mracek keeps bringing the reader back to the idea that change starts by listening closely, whether that means noticing old patterns, choosing healthier relationships, or making room for silence. One of the book’s most memorable lines comes in the chapter on rest: “The rest is as important as the note.” That sentence captures a lot of what the book is doing. It honors action, but it also gives real weight to pause, reflection, recovery, and the quiet spaces where a person can finally hear themselves.
The book also has a practical, meditative side. Each chapter includes or points toward guided meditations, and the appendix gathers them as part of an ongoing practice. The musical framework keeps the material organized, so the reader moves through the book almost like a composition: beginning with frequency, finding an inner melody, working through tension, learning connection, resting, and then performing a more honest life. The illustrations add a gentle, playful quality that fits the book’s approach, especially when the ideas get spiritual or emotionally deep.
Symphony of Self is a heartfelt guide for readers who are drawn to music, spirituality, creativity, and personal reflection. It’s a book about tuning your inner life, listening for what feels true, and choosing your next note with more intention. Mracek’s voice is sincere, hopeful, and deeply invested in the reader’s growth. By the end, the book feels like a reminder that becoming yourself doesn’t have to be harsh or hurried. It can be practiced, listened for, adjusted, and composed.
Pages: 352 | ASIN : B0H2X5916C
Jazzoetry Lives
Jazzoetry Lives is a slim but spiritually packed collection of poems rooted in Black history, jazz, memory, grief, and resistance. Author J. Vern Cromartie frames “jazzoetry” as a living form, one that moves through The Last Poets, Langston Hughes, blues traditions, Black Arts voices, and the ache of contemporary racial violence. The poems travel from Congo Square and the Satilla River to Alabama, Oakland, Ohio, and beyond, carrying tributes to figures like John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Kamau Seitu, Amiri Baraka, Bob Kaufman, Zahieb Mwongozi, and Langston Hughes. What emerges is less a conventional poetry collection than a call-and-response across generations, with music acting as both memory and medicine.
Cromartie’s lines often return like a chant, and at their best, that return feels ceremonial rather than merely structural. In “Alabama,” the repeated cry of the title and the invocation of Coltrane create a sorrowful music that gathers Birmingham, the 16th Street Baptist Church, capitalism, and mourning into one long, bruised breath. “And the Killings Go On” is even more direct, almost painfully so, naming Bobby Hutton, Betty Scott, Melvin Black, and Oscar Grant in a cadence that refuses the reader any easy distance. The book isn’t interested in decorative grief. It wants the wound visible.
The writing has a raw quality that feels tied to performance. Some poems read as if they’re waiting for drums, a bassline, or a room full of people murmuring back. “A Gathering of Sounds” captures that beautifully, with music exploding into fragments and sheets of sound before slipping into silence. I liked how Cromartie treats jazz not as background atmosphere but as a way of thinking, remembering, and surviving. At the same time, the collection can feel uneven when its political declarations become too blunt, as in “Elon Musk has a God Complex,” where the anger is clear. Even there, I respected the book’s refusal to soften its judgments. Its ideas are fierce, ancestral, and unapologetically Black, and its best moments make history feel less like a record than a rhythm still beating under the floorboards.
By the end, especially with the inclusion of Langston Hughes’s “The Negro and the Racial Mountain,” I felt the collection circling back to its deepest concern: the freedom of Black artists to speak from their own ground without apology, translation, or disguise. Jazzoetry Lives is warm-blooded, grieving, insistent, and often moving. I’d recommend it to readers who care about Black poetic traditions, jazz-inflected verse, political poetry, and work that carries the weight of cultural memory with both tenderness and fire.
Pages: 54
I Wrote The Book I Desperatley Needed
In Listening to Spravato, you share part memoir and part practical meditation on how music shapes the experience of Spravato treatment for depression. Why was this an important book for you to write?
When I began Spravato, I realized that almost no one was talking about what the treatment actually feels like from the inside. I’m a conservatory‑trained musician — my first instrument is drums — and I studied with the infamous composer and songwriter Leonard Bernstein as well as the Count Basie drummer “Papa” Jo Jones when I was a very young drummer. My whole life has been shaped by sound, yet nothing in my musical background prepared me for the sensory and emotional intensity of Spravato. I wrote the book I desperately needed: something honest, grounded, and willing to describe the strange, disorienting, and sometimes beautiful interior of the experience.
What did you feel was missing from existing conversations about Spravato treatment?
Most conversations focus on dosage, insurance, and side effects, but almost none address the inner landscape — the dissolution of time, the shifting sense of self, the vulnerability, the unexpected clarity. And almost no one talks about how music shapes that experience. Music isn’t background noise in Spravato; it’s part of the treatment. I wanted to bring nuance, honesty, and practical guidance to a space that often feels clinical and incomplete.
I also discovered a huge gap: while there are many playlists for raw ketamine — and I researched a tremendous number of them — almost none are designed specifically for Spravato. And the timing differences matter. Raw ketamine sessions are generally much longer, and more intense with long, slow ascents and descents that unfold over a wide emotional arc.
Spravato, by contrast, is a structured 120‑minute treatment, but the shape of the experience is completely different: a sharper onset, a shorter and more concentrated peak, and a more abrupt descent. Using a raw‑ketamine playlist for Spravato is like using a marathon training plan to run a 5K — the proportions and pacing are simply wrong. That gap was one of the reasons I felt compelled to write the book.
What themes were important for you to explore?
I wanted to explore disorientation and grounding, control and surrender, and the emotional truth of sound. Spravato forces you to listen with your nervous system, not your ego. It also taught me humility: that “good” or “bad” music depends entirely on for whom and for what purpose. The music that defines my identity as a musician is not always the music that supports me in the chair.
Were there genres or artists that surprised you by working especially well—or especially poorly?
Absolutely. As a trained musician, I assumed I knew exactly what would work. I was wrong.
Ambient and drone‑based music — which I once dismissed as “New Age nonsense” — turned out to be surprisingly stabilizing. Jazz and hard bop, much of the music I make, would blow a Spravato patient out of the water; it’s too energetic, too directional, too full of forward motion.
Vocals were the most intrusive — they activate the language center of the brain, which pulls you out of the Spravato experience. And on top of that, my favorite pop/rock ballads — Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, James Taylor — are songs where the lyrics are as meaningful (or more) as the music. Many of them make me cry. That’s not what you want when your brain is in a state of heightened neuroplasticity. You don’t want to be pulled into narrative, memory, or emotional autobiography; you want space, not story.
That said, jazz isn’t completely off the table. The book includes a jazz playlist built from ballads and gentler classics — the kind of pieces where the swing is subtle, the harmony is warm, and the emotional temperature stays steady. When curated intentionally, that kind of jazz can work beautifully.
What conversations do you hope Listening to Spravato sparks among patients and providers?
I hope it helps people talk about the experience, not just the protocol. Questions like: What did you hear? What grounded you? How can we make this safer and more intentional? Ultimately, I want people to feel less alone — whether they’re sitting in the Spravato chair for the first time or guiding someone through it.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
You’re sitting in the chair, the medicine starts to rise… and suddenly, everything feels unfamiliar—and you don’t know how to navigate it. You came to Spravato hoping for relief, but instead you’re facing something intense, unpredictable, even overwhelming. The room is quiet, the experience is shifting—and no one really tells you how to move through it.
Listening to Spravato: Sound, Silence, and the Medicine of Music is not another clinical manual or vague “relaxation guide.” It is a grounded, compassionate roadmap that explains exactly how to prepare, what to expect, and how to use sound and music as anchors during treatment. Bridging clinical understanding with lived experience, Justin Page invites readers into the Spravato chair as a real, vulnerable space—where what you hear, feel, and bring with you matters more than you’ve been told.
Inside the book, you will discover:
- Preparation: How to walk into your session feeling calm and supported instead of anxious and uncertain.
- Sound as structure: The invisible force shaping your entire experience—and how to make it work for you, not against you.
- Music pitfalls: The overlooked mistakes that can quietly destabilize a session, and how to avoid them completely.
- Session phases: What really happens inside your mind as the medicine takes effect, and how to move through each phase safely.
- Environment: Why light, blankets, headphones, silence, and even clinic noise matter—and how to take gentle control of them.
- Landing the session: The often-missed moment where the experience truly “lands,” and how to make it count.
- Integration: A simple, grounding way to make sense of what you experienced—without overthinking or overwhelm.
Drawing on years of severe depression, suicide attempts, and the fragile hope of esketamine treatment, Page writes with rare tenderness and precision. He treats sound not as background, but as architecture, shelter, and sometimes a lifeline. Ambient music becomes a room you can rest inside; a soft piano line feels like a hand on the shoulder; carefully chosen playlists help the mind move through altered states with more safety and coherence.
This isn’t theory alone. The book includes practical tools, sample playlists, and exercises that patients and clinicians can use immediately—like having a calm, experienced guide sitting beside you. Page is skeptical of grandiose claims about “healing frequencies,” yet generous enough to acknowledge that symbolism and intention can matter deeply when the nervous system is open and afraid. His approach is humble, precise, and focused on care in the smallest, adjustable details.
Listening to Spravato invites readers to see the Spravato chair as more than a medical setting: it is a sonic environment, a threshold, and a place where attention to sound can gently reshape the experience of treatment. For anyone navigating Spravato—patients, loved ones, nurses, therapists, and clinic staff—this book offers language, structure, and tools for turning one of the most vulnerable spaces you will step into into something steadier, kinder, and more intentional.
Enter your next session with confidence, safety, and something steady to hold onto.
Clinically Reviewed
