We just recently acquired some books by Kent Nerburn. If you have an e-mail address you must have read his most popular work which does the rounds on or near Valentine’s Day. It is actually Chapter 26 of his book “Letters to My Son.” It is called Partners and Marriage and if you do a search for this title online you will find the article in its entirety. Read it and if you like it (and people usually do), you might want to read more from Mr. Nerburn.

Letters to My Son

Simple Truths

The Hidden Beauty of Everyday Life
Kent Nerburn completes the trilogy he began with his inspirational works Simple Truths and Small Graces. This beautifully written collection contains some of his most touching stories yet. By examining the seemingly insignificant incidents of life — a chance encounter with a boy on a bicycle, a visit to a local school to watch a young girl’s graduation — he shows readers how to look below the surface and find deeper meanings. He calls on readers to listen for the quiet spiritual messages of everyday existence that he calls “God’s whispers.” Crafting stories from common experiences, Nerburn reveals lessons for the soul and opens windows to the heart. Few writers are so capable of moving gently over deep waters. And few give such poignant glimpses into the hidden grace of ordinary days.

Riches in Foreclosures: Buy Your Own Home, Get Quick Cash or Create Passive Income! (Signed)
By Dinna Revilla
Foreword by Atty. Alex Lacson, 12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do to Help Our Country

If you have read Think Rich, Pinoy!, Larry Gamboa’s practical and successful interpretation of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you probably know Dinna Revilla. She was the mentor that Larry Gamboa spoke of. Now Ms. Revilla has come up with her own book based on her experiences in the real estate business. The book is now available at the store at the introductory price of P99.

Buying your first home? Want to make money? Want to create passive income?

You can buy and hold, opt to get quick cash, or get passive income from the properties you’ve had your eye on.

Dinna Revilla, the “Action Woman” and mentor of the Cash Flow Group tells you how you can do it.

This book documents 30 real life transactions, 17 of them are shown with the pictures of the moneymaking properties.

Discover the secretes of negotiations and deals. Get to know about the perks you can get from banks. Know how easy it is to buy foreclosed properties. This book tells you all about it.

This book will give you an insider’s perspective on the real estate business. Take pointers from someone who has done all these transactions and has been right at the heart of the market herself.

This book does not need to be introduced to our regular readers as the first collection of Nick Hornby’s essays has always been a bestseller at the store. This is the follow-up to The Polysyllabic Spree.

Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt
by Nick Hornby

Description:
In this latest collection of essays following The Polysyllabic Spree, critic and author Nick Hornby continues the feverish survey of his swollen bookshelves, offering a funny, intelligent, and unblinkered account of the stuff he’s been reading. Ranging from the middlebrow to the highbrow (with unrepenting dips into the lowbrow), Hornby’s dispatches from his nightstand table serve as useful guides to contemporary letters, with revelations on contemporary culture, the intellectual scene, and English football, in equal measure.

Those who have read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking would already have been introduced to psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman. Dr. Ekman developed the Facial Action Coding System which catalogued every possible human facial expression. He was such an expert on facial expressions that he could easily tell just by looking at faces if a person was lying, if a marriage was going to last, if someone’s joy was sincere. Blink readers fascinated by this uncanny skill will be glad to know that we have two of Dr. Ekman’s books at the store.

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
by Paul Ekman

Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage
by Paul Ekman

Here is a link to an interesting interview/conversation with Dr. Ekman.

Below is an excerpt from the preface of Emotions Revealed.

My goal in writing Emotions Revealed was to help people improve four essential skills, and thus I have included suggestions and exercises in the book that I hope you will find both helpful and provocative.

Those four skills are:

First, becoming more consciously aware of when you are becoming emotional, even before you speak or act. This is the hardest skill to acquire. Developing this skill allows you to have some choice about when you are emotional.

Second, choosing how you behave when you are emotional, so you achieve your goals without damaging other people. The purpose of emotional episodes is to help us quickly achieve our objectives, whether to draw people to comfort us, scare off a perpetrator, or some other of thousands of goals. The best emotional episodes do no harm to and cause no problems for those with whom we are engaged. This is not an easy skill to develop, but with practice it can become part of your life.

Third, becoming more sensitive to how others are feeling. Since emotions are at the core of every important relationship we have, we must be sensitive to how others are feeling.

Fourth, carefully using the information you acquire about how others are feeling. Sometimes that means asking the person about the emotion you have spotted, acknowledging how he or she is feeling, or re-calibrating your own reactions in light of what you have recognized. Your response will depend on who the other person is and the history of your relationship with that person. How this varies within a family, in the workplace, and in friendship is explained in the book.

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.  Read a secret here…

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives
by Frank Warren

Description:
For the Postsecret project, which was started in October 2004, Warren asked people to write a secret they had never told anyone on a handmade postcard and mail it to him. This compilation is astonishing in its honesty and creativity.

A Natural History of the Senses
by Diane Ackerman

Review:
Diane Ackerman’s lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.

“Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.”–The New York Times

The classic Insight Guides series has, for more than 35 years, provided a full account of the world’s leading travel destinations through expert and informative text and stunning photography. Each title combines three books in one: an ideal travel planner, a practical on-the-spot companion, and a superb visual souvenir of a visit. If you want your vacation to be more than a sightseeing trip you can trust Insight Guides because they provide a complete and honest appraisal.

An ever-increasing range of products from Insight Guides also includes: Insight Pocket Guides, Compact Guides, Shopping Guides, Museums and Galleries Guides, Globes and Atlases, Fleximaps and more.

Berlitz — Helping the world communicate since 1878 — is the world’s largest provider of language training and cultural consulting services, with over 460 locations in 63 countries. Their products have helped millions of children and adults speak new languages.

Berlitz language books and audio products have enabled millions of people to study languages effectively at home, and at their own pace. Berlitz have also produced a very successful range of travel guides for well over 100 destinations, as well as specialist travel books such as the renowned Ocean Cruising and Cruise Ships and Business Travel Guide Europe.

Defeating the Hacker: A Non-Technical Guide to Computer Security
by Robert Schifreen

Description:
Defeating the Hacker allows the reader to learn how to protect their computer systems with advice from someone who knows how to break into them.

Robert Schifreen, a self-confessed ex-hacker, made history in 1985 when he became the first person in the world to face a jury trial in connection with computer hacking. His subsequent acquittal in the High Court led to a change in UK Law and the introduction of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. His 20 years experience in IT security now lends itself to global radio and TV broadcasts, as well as appearances at conferences and lectures around the world.

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries
by Marilyn Johnson

Description:
In wry and lucid prose, Johnson takes a mordantly funny look at the history and practice of “the ultimate human-interest story,” the obituary.

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World
by Paul Roberts

Description:
You live in this world. You use oil. You must read this book. The situation is alarming and irrefutable: within thirty years, even by conservative estimates, we will have burned our way through most of the oil that is readily available to us. Already, the costly side effects of dependence on fossil fuel are taking their toll. Even as oil-related conflict threatens entire nations, individual consumers are suffering from higher prices at the gas pump, rising health problems, and the grim prospect of long-term environmental damage. In this frank and balanced investigation, Paul Roberts offers a timely wake-up call. He talks to both oil optimists and oil pessimists, delves deep into the economics and politics of oil, and considers the promises and pitfalls of alternatives such as wind power, hybrid cars, and hydrogen. A new afterword brings the book up to the minute. Brisk, immediate, and accessible, this is essential reading for anyone who uses oil, which is to say every one of us.