Welcome to Issue 65 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Happy Easter and Spring, Everyone!
What will you be putting in your Easter baskets this year? When I think back on all the Easters of my childhood filled with chocolate bunny rabbits, colored eggs, and jelly beans, one Easter that stands out for me is the year I received the classic children’s book Beautiful Joe for Easter. I was a reader and a book meant more to me than chocolate any day.
Who needs more sugar, seriously? A book is a gift that keeps on giving.
This month, as always, there are some great books to read, share, and give as gifts to fuel new life into loved ones.
Happy reading!
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen.”
— William Wordsworth
In Tales from Behind the Wheel: Year One, rideshare driver Jonathan Wong shares some of his most memorable stories driving passengers around the greater Honolulu area. In these pages, he reveals that while sensational stories about rideshare drivers and passengers seem to be in the media all the time these days, those stories are exceptions. The truth is that most rideshare drivers perform a wonderful service to assist people in their needs to get from Point A to Point B, and most rideshare passengers are everyday people going about their everyday business. But just like in any other situation that involves humans, rideshare opens up opportunities for bizarre, hilarious, and poignant moments.
Wong has divided up this book into several chapters about the different kinds of passengers or experiences he’s had while driving for both Uber and Lyft. Each chapter is itself divided up into several very short stories. Jonathan begins with an introduction about what it’s like to be a rideshare driver. By sharing his stories, he wants us to see a slice of life and the variety and similarities of the human experience.
To read more, visit Tales from Behind the Wheel.
After reading Tales from Behind the Wheel, you might be interested in being an Uber or Lyft driver yourself. Fortunately, Jonathan Wong’s other book, Driving Profits, is designed to help you do just that. Jonathan Wong walks would-be rideshare drivers through what he calls, “America’s easiest and most flexible money-making opportunity.” Based upon Wong’s own experiences driving for Uber and Lyft, but also drawing upon a great deal of research into other rideshare companies as well as compatible businesses, this book is packed with everything you would ever need to know to become a rideshare driver. Honestly, I couldn’t believe how thorough this book was and all the ins and outs of the rideshare business Jonathan illuminates, plus the countless tips he offers as an experienced driver that will make your solopreneur venture all the more successful.
Yes, when you’re a rideshare driver, you’re a solopreneur. You are basically a contract worker operating your own business. That means, as Jonathan points out, that you can set your own hours, work as much or little as you want, and work for more than one rideshare company at a time if you so wish.
To read more, visit Driving Profits.
Getting Past Anxiety by Melissa A. Woods is a surprising and enjoyable book. The title suggests it may be a self-help book, but it’s really a novel intended to inspire the reader to overcome his or her own anxiety issues after reading how the main character, Stella Maris, overcomes hers.
The story begins when Stella, who lives in the Seattle area, is about to get on a plane to fly to New York to visit her boyfriend. Because of her anxiety issues, Stella finds that she just can’t get on the plane, and the situation just gets worse from there. Her anxiety eventually leads to the end of the relationship with her boyfriend. It also makes her afraid to drive, which in turn makes it impossible for her to fulfill her duties in her sales career.
Stella begins looking for answers so she can try to return to a normal life. Eventually, one special person arrives in her life who leads her to another person who leads her to another until she finally meets Rachel, a therapist, who helps her resolve many of her issues from her past that are causing her anxiety.
To read more, visit Getting Past Anxiety.
Do Good, Feel Better, by Laura McKnight, is a feel-good book that will make you realize how you can feel even better by doing good—and perhaps best of all—in the ways that best suit you.
Almost everyone wants to do good—to help those in need and to make the world a better place—but too often, we feel guilty when we have to say no, or we have too many other obligations for us to focus on doing good, or we just don’t feel comfortable with the ways to do good that are available to us. All that will change for you once you read Do Good, Feel Better because you’ll discover what your Social Impact Personality Type is and the best ways to do good according to your personality.
McKnight reveals that there are three Social Impact Personality Types: Activator, Connector, and Investor. She defines them as follows....
To read more, visit Do Good, Feel Better.
If there is one thing that has gone right in Ron Elgin’s life, it was marrying his wife “Beautiful Bonnie.” I say that after reading this advertising executive’s newest book The Man Behind the Curtain because more times than not, as he reveals in this collection of ninety-one short and laugh-out-loud funny stories, she has saved him from making an even bigger fool of himself.
But all joking aside—and I’m only half-joking—Ron Elgin is a seriously successful retired businessman from the advertising world. He was a partner in Elgin Syferd, the biggest ad firm in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest region for many years, which later became part of DDB Worldwide. In this follow-up to his first book Huckster: My Life as an Ad Man, Ron shares stories from the last fifty years of his life, from how he refused to wear an ROTC uniform in college and still ended up serving in the military during the Vietnam War to his return home with his new bride and his entry into the advertising world. One story after another tells of working with successful though sometimes zany clients, creating effective ads, managing quirky but ingenious employees, and doing good in the local community in the most unexpected of ways—like auctioning off vasectomies.
And then there are the trips to Europe….
To read more, visit The Man Behind the Curtain.
A Last Chapter of the Greatest Generation by Judson Stone reminds us that the debt we owe as a nation to the greatest generation cannot be underestimated, and Dr. Stone knows that firsthand. As the son of a World War II veteran who continued to serve his country for decades after the war, Judson had an up-close-and-personal view of the greatest generation. Readers may not know Colonel Frederic A. Stone’s name, but he certainly led a remarkable life, and in this new biography of his father, Judson Stone brings to the forefront the qualities that made his father in many ways a typical American and in other ways an extraordinary man.
Like most biographies, A Last Chapter of the Greatest Generation begins with some family history, which I found fascinating. As for Colonel Frederic Stone himself, his story is one of growing up in New York in the 1920s and 1930s, falling in love, trying to decide what to do with his life, and ultimately, becoming an aviator in World War II. Some of the most interesting moments in the book describe how Stone was part of the campaign to fly over the hump in Asia.
To read more, visit A Last Chapter of the Greatest Generation.
