Martha Sweeney

Happy 2015 National Readathon Day! What are you reading?

#timetoread #theharembook #readingisawesome #readmore

This is just surreal!  What an amazing compliment to receive!  Thank you so much, Abby!

 

My sweet daughter bought me this for Christmas (with her own money too) and it was a far better choice than many a dog treat cookbook I've chosen in the past.

 

So far I've made the "Gingerbread Mailmen" but since I didn't have a mailmen cutter they turned out to be boring old gingerbread bones. Thankfully my dogs are not snobbish and ate them anyway. These called for an entire tsp of ground cloves and let me tell ya, they smelled heavily of cloves. I don't think I'd like to eat them but the dogs, as I said, have no standards (which is why I love them so). This book also doesn't use wheat flour but it's easy enough to make brown rice and oat flour by throwing them in a Ninja or other tough food processor and blending them up to a fine powder. Pretty cheap too. Don't waste your cash on those fancy flours when you can whip them up yourself. Anyway, the recipe was easy to follow, had only a small handful of ingredients and made my dogs happy.

 

So far, I'm liking this book a lot. The recipes seem to use normal ingredients, none stand out as troubling and I haven't run across any that seem too time consuming. I'll try to take pictures before most of them are devoured by this beast.

 

I'll update my review as I go.

 

I'm not single....but my husband likes to take these long walks with me! :)

The Harem is a dramatic romance novel testing cultural boundaries through the innocent eyes of Susan Winthrop.

Getting the dream internship of her life, Susan quickly discovers there is much more involved than she ever bargained for or could have possibly imagined.

Susan Winthrop, a shy, self-conscious, nineteen-year-old college student struggling to find her way in life without the support of family, discovers the position of her dreams, or so she thinks, until the requirements of the
internship and potential employment are revealed.

While Susan struggles with her own morals, she discovers an entirely new world opening to her and her desires. Slowly, she begins to embrace this new position and excel, realizing her own amazing potential in ways she never envisioned and that some may fear.

However, her new found love, friends and colleagues prove fallible. Susan soon discovers that the result of making mistakes at this new level of life are far reaching and can be extremely dangerous and damaging.

The innocent struggle of a young, budding college student suddenly unfolds into a struggle for life in an extremely hostile social and political world that abhors change and regularly embraces fear and persecution.

As Susan wrestles with her new found knowledge, power, wealth and life, she is forced to fight to defend her right to grow as she sees fit.

**Rated R** Erotic, Romance Novel

 

Read The Harem's Preface, Chapter One and Chapter Two at our website: www.theharembook.com

I love Drunvalo!

I first started with his books The Secret of The Flower of Life Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and thoroughly enjoyed them even though they were very technical types of books. The Serpent of Light was written very differently which was a nice changed. You can actually get a sense for his personality and who he really is as a person.

The stories Drunvalo shares in The Serpent of Life are inspiring, whether you believe what he is explaining actually happened or not. If you are not familiar with who he is, I would encourage you to visit his websites, watch some of his youtube videos and read the two books I mentioned above. It doesn't matter, as I said, whether you believe him or not...but it does matter for you to understand and feel the underlining message he is trying to convey.

There is peace and beauty in this world if you are willing to look for it. As Drunvalo has done and recommends, I would do the same...step out of your head and step into your heart and then you will find a whole new world opening up to you!

Peace, Love, Happiness and Prosperity to all of YOU! :)

I enjoyed the first three books of the series. There was intrigue and of course lots of great sex! This book, however, fizzled for me. The sex scenes were still erotic, but the story iritated me in several ways. First...the back and forth POV of Gideon and Ava drove me up the wall. This has been done before and I'm tired of it. Second...the back and forth drew out the story, making it move slow. Third...the story moved slow, very slow, like the creativity for possible things to happen fell short and ended up sounding like most other books in this genre, relying on the back and forth POV to fill pages. I liked it, but I didn't love it, hence the 2 stars.

Sadly disappointed Sylvia.

I love learning about cultures. I'm not a fan or advocate of war, but a lot of what is depicted in The Art of War goes beyond that of common strategies for winning battle. Many of the philosophies by Sun Tzu can be overlapped into all aspects of human behavior singularly as well as groups of individuals. The basic premise of the points can be applied to business and all forms of relationships. To know one person, their habits, can teach you about their thoughts, their desires and their goals. From an observation standpoint, you can learn how to work with people, how to listen to people and how to properly lead people, as well as yourself.

I recommend this book to everyone. Be open to the concepts and look deeper at what Sun Tzu is describing to make it applicable to your life.

I commend Mr. Simmons on his success; he had a goal and was determined to achieve it, and did! Unfortunately, I cannot give this book as high of a rating as I had expected that I would. I received this book as one of the Goodreads Giveaways and was disappointed that it was a proof. There were a lot of editing mistakes, which made it challenging to read.

As businesswoman myself, I do not agree with some of the points Mr. Simmons makes. To achieve success, you must work at it. I agree with Mr. Simmons on that point. However, the journey to obtaining your success is not always a matter of 'working hard.' I see it as working smart. You are the one who makes the decision, but to achieve your success, there are a variety of people that influence your success or failure.

Mr. Simmons appears to be of the mindset I consider 'old thinking' when it comes to business. Thanks to the internet and other resources, the ability to create your own business or product is much different, especially with the need for investors or initial capital. Also, his limited suggestion of investing in the stock market and basic insurance that he describes is very restricting.

I am a person who chooses to look at the positive in every situation. There are no problems, only situations, challenges and opportunities. At times, Mr. Simmons came across pessimistic, stereotypical and uneducated for a man who has had the experience he has had. I disagree with his suggestions to women and children entrepreneurs, ultimately because he is not a woman and his statements are from a male perspective. A negative mindset, for anyone, can hinder your growth in both personal and business aspects of your life.

To me, personally, there are many more appropriate business books for new and aspiring entrepreneurs than Mr. Simmons'. He attempted to relate his points to the book Art of War and he was unable to mesh the two concepts together as accurately as I anticipated.

To start your entrepreneurial journey, I strongly recommend the following books instead: The Magic of Thinking Big, Ask and It Is Given, The Law of Success in 16 Lessons (1925 edition), The Power of Positive Thinking, The Magic of Believing, The Happiness Advantage, Creative Intelligence and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I love and appreciate all of the efforts Ron Paul has been trying to make in the political sector of this country. I won't delve into political banter because I'm not looking to preach, but I wanted to rate and offer my single opinion.

WE are the government. If you don't like it, change it.

Focus on the positive and what you would like to see. :)

I love and appreciate all of the efforts Ron Paul has been trying to make in the political sector of this country. I won't delve into political banter because I'm not looking to preach, but I wanted to rate and offer my single opinion.

WOW! This is a very powerful story. Some may believe I have a bias opinion because of my role assisting, but this is a story I have never seen before. I've been assisting with the editing for The Harem for the last few months. The novel is almost complete and looks like it will be out as scheduled for early December 2014.

The journey the main character, Susan Winthrop aka Wednesday, embarks on is like none I've ever heard, read or seen in a movie, television or theater. The story gives the impression of a harem, but there are a variety of deep and subtle messages the author has entwined into the characters that goes far beyond the commonly expected concepts, knowledge and beliefs.

I have been sucked into Wednesday's life. She starts off as a naive college student who blossoms into a strong, confident, successful and powerful woman who has the ability to influence those around her and the world, even when the Program is called into question by people who fear or do not understand it.

This is a must read for all women. However, I do caution parents of teens because of some of the sexual descriptions and content. This is a book that every woman from college through adulthood MUST READ.

The Harem will make you look at life differently. The Harem will make you look at the world differently. Every woman in the world has the ability to experience and create a life that Wednesday crafts for herself in the novel. The only question is, are you ready to take your own journey?

To the author for the amazing, one-of-a-kind story....

The story overall was wonderfully done and written, however, I was not a fan of the ending. It felt like the author rushed it like she didn't know how to end it or was rushing it because she had keep the book to a certain amount of pages only. I've found a rushed or incomplete ending with several books now. :(

I've read the entire series and this book left me disappointed. There were parts that had a little too much description, some of it not necessary. My biggest challenge with it is the ending. It not only felt rushed, but the behaviors that took place for some of the characters, Ayla, Jondalar and the One Who Was First did not match their personality and habits from their journey and growth. It felt like they had taken 20 steps back which did not line up with them and how they were written for the entire time of the series. I don't want to say anything further because I don't want to ruin it for anyone who still hasn't read. There was so much potential for this book and it was lost.