The Deception Perception by David Icke

This isn't something I would normally read but I wanted to do something special for The Ethereal 2014 Reading Challenge. 

I don't usually include the blurbs about books but what this book is about is just too hard to explain...especially with a straight face. But even the blurb doesn't explain it well enough. 

From Amazon.com

David Icke, the world s most controversial author, has spent the last quarter of a century unravelling the secrets of the Universe, reality and the forces that manipulate our world. What was once ridiculed and dismissed is now being confirmed again and again as Icke, a figure of fun for so long, is acknowledged as a man way ahead of his time.

DavidIcke.com adds
In this massive work of 435,000 words, 900 pages and more than 800 illustrations, Icke lays out in dot-connected detail a lifetime of research and insight about our ‘computer’-simulated reality, the holographic universe and the hidden non-human forces that are manipulating human life via hybrid bloodline families and networks into a global Orwellian state of total control. 

What Icke exposes across a vast range of connected subjects, people and events provides the tools and awareness for humanity to stop this unfolding nightmare and restore the world to what it once was and will be again – a place of love, harmony, peace and awakened consciousness. 

As Icke says: ‘I can now see that my whole life has been leading to this book.’ 

The Perception Deception is destined to be a work recorded by history as the masterpiece that changed the world.

My Review
The chapters on how everything is an illusion, part of the Matrix, and has frequency are excellent. This was my favorite part of the book. I also liked the parts about Gnosticism. However, Icke conveniently leaves out the parts where they did believe a true god exists. He gives the impression that all they believe in is the Demiurge which just isn't accurate.

The rest of the chapters seem to describe how every single aspect of life has been taken over by the Archon intentions. Yes this is implied by the title but if I am to believe David Icke than everything that has ever been created is to enslave me. And all of it is done by an interdimensional race to serve Saturn aka the Demiurge aka Satan. This book made me feel hopeless and depressed. Everything is to serve Saturn/Satan/Demiurge and enslave us. Yes, everything.

Icke's reason for this enslavement?

Because they are jealous of humans. And they feed off our misery. Our misery is like batteries providing juice to them.

Okay, but what happens once all of the human race is enslaved? I just couldn't figure out what the Archon end game is here. If everything isn't even real anyway, what is the point?

Is there something that hasn't been left untouched by the Archon Satan-serving lot? Icke basically lists every aspect of life as being there to serve Satan; religion, entertainment, food, medicine, science, government, our DNA...

I waited for him to talk about the things that are good in this world. And I waited and I waited and I waited. I think David Icke has got to be the most miserable human being who has ever lived.

I kept reading chapter after chapter waiting to hear about the good guys in all this. Who are the heroes? There was only ever one mentioned.

David Icke will save us all.

This book was 900 pages of how everything in all of history in all of (fake) time has been building up to enslave the human race but David Icke will save us from that fate. The solution to this enslavement is believing every word of David Icke and...

Wait for it...

Love.

We can only love each other because fighting them will do nothing. We need to follow the Golden Rule.

Let me repeat it for emphasis. After reading almost 900 pages David Icke says the solution to this mass enslavement by interdimensional beings that have permeated everything that has ever existed is to love each other and follow the Golden Rule.

Gee thanks David Icke. I hadn't thought of that.

My rating .

My Thoughts About David Icke

The blurb alone shows how egotistical this guy is and how he has a total savior complex. Who writes about their own book that it's "destined to be a work recorded by history as the masterpiece that changed the world?"

Well this "masterpiece that is destined to change the world" has a total of 10 reviews (8 positive and 2 negative) on Amazon and one of them is mine. This masterpiece isn't even in the top 100 on Amazon. But the sheeple don't recognize his genius right? 

I mean if everything he says is true about the Archon interdimensional alien race trying to enslave humans is true, how is that David Icke even got this book published, much less is even alive to tell the tale? You'd think the Archon race would have suppressed the knowledge he shares at some point in the last 25 years, right?

From Here to Maternity by Kris Webb and Kathy Wilson

Book Description from Amazon

Saturday morning coffee sessions are never going to be the same. . . .

Sydney marketing exec Sophie presumed "making sacrifices for your children" meant giving up Bloody Marys and champagne for nine months. When she thought about it, that is. . . . But then two blue lines appear on her pregnancy test. How does a baby fit in with a hectic job, a chaotic social life, and the absence of Max, the Y chromosome in the equation, who has moved to San Francisco?

Support and dubious advice are provided by an unlikely group that gathers for a weekly coffee get-together at the King Street Cafe. With Debbie the glamorous man-eater, Andrew the fitness junkie, Anna the disaster-prone doctor, and Karen the statistically improbable happily married mother of three, Sophie discovers the ups and downs of motherhood. And when an unexpected business venture and a new man appear on the scene, it appears that just maybe there is life after a baby.

Written by two sisters who live on different continents, Kris Webb and Kathy Wilson, From Here to Maternity is a novel that tackles the balancing of motherhood, romance, and a career, while managing to be seriously funny.

The quote from a review by The Age on the cover claims "A story best described as Bridget Jones has a baby." Wrong. Bridget Jones is actually funny. 

From Here to Maternity is about Sophie who is a working woman that has just broken up with her commitmentphobic boyfriend and found out that she is pregnant. The story is about how she navigates single parenthood, starting her own business, and of course, dating.

From Here to Maternity was boring and I had to force myself to finish the book. You'd think with two authors the book would have been a bit better, but it just fell flat. What's worse is that the actual "maternity" part was pretty much skipped over. The authors could have done so much more with the time Sophie was pregnant but they skipped that part and started at her daughter's birth.

Then again considering how unfunny the book was overall, they probably couldn't have made pregnancy funny either. It was charming and had just the right amounts of sentimentality so I descided to give it a chance. I kept waiting for it to get better, but it never really did.

What I did like about the book was that it is set in Australia. So many of these chick lit books are set in England that I thought "down under" was a nice change. I liked how realistic the scenes with the baby were. Clearly the authors are mothers. I also like that Sophie made some parenting mistakes. However, I didn't like that she drank while breastfeeding. Those scenes made me cringe.

I also found the idea that Sophie would fly to Hong Kong for a business meeting with her 3 month old ridiculous. What was completely unbelievable was that the baby slept the entire way. I guess the authors decided trying to pee while holding a baby in an airplane bathroom was funny enough and they didn't need to do anything else.

There were so many situations like this that could have been uproarishly funny but they were boring. There were scenes where baby Sarah didn't cooperate and they made me smile but it was only once or twice that I laughed out loud.

And there was a plot hole that makes me want to write the authors an email with a bid fat DUH as the subject headline. Sophie and her best friend were looking for a baby product that they could sell to stores. Why oh why didn't the authors realize Sophie had the perfect idea when she was shopping for a diaper bag!? Sophie was complaining about how all the diaper bags were pastel colored or had cartoon characters on them. I thought for sure the product idea she would have come up with was the designer diaper bag that doesn't actually look like a diaper bag.

I did love the book ending though. Of the two men in Sophie's life I think she chose the right one. This made sludging through this boring book almost worth it but the book wasn't what I would consider a romance. The romance was only a subplot. Overall it was boring and entirely forgettable. My rating .

Paper Towns by John Green

Book Description from Amazon

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

I've kind of had my fill of Young Adult novels but I promised my 12 year old son I would read all of John Green's novels. Considering he's obcessed with PC gaming and anime this was one of the rare things we actually have in common. (Although had I read Green's novels first I may have refused to let him read about so much drinking, sex, and general shenagins. Whenever I complain about how the novels are too inappropriate for him he says something like "Oh Mom. Kids read this in school!" I read things like the Red Badge of Courage in school.)

Paper Towns at first seemed different than John Green's previous books for the first third of the novel. The first part of the novel is about Margo begging Q (Quentin) to help her with a night of revenge and teenage shenigans. Quentin has been in love with Margo since age 9 and even though she hasn't spoken to him since they shared a traumatic experience at that early age, he obliges her request even though it involves breaking the law.

Quentin expects Margo to suddenly become a regular part of his life again but is disappointed when she runs away from home again. He knows she leaves clues about her whereabouts and this time Margo has left clues just for him. Quentin along with a mix of his and Margo's friends team up to use the clues in an attempt to track down Margo. Time is of the essence because they fear this time Margo will commit suicide or worse, is already dead. The more clues Quentin finds, the more he wonders if he ever knew Margo at all.

If you have read Looking for Alaska, the plot to Paper Towns will seem quite familiar. The themes are even the same. The main characters are both obcessed with girls that have never loved them back. The books are just too much alike for me.

In one part, Quentin talks briefly about Moby Dick yet never realizes that he's Captain Ahab and Margo is the white whale. The difference is instead of wanting revenge he has a savior complex. Not only is Quentin obcessed but he's also a grammar Nazi and frankly seemed to be completely unable to let loose and have fun. He looked down on his friends for behaving like normal teenagers. I didn't really like him. Just as in Looking for Alaska, it is solving the mystery that kept me reading not because I actually cared about the main characters. 

The idea that Margo has left Quentin all of these clues about her whereabouts without having spoken to Quentin in years simply isn't that believable. What's even more unbelievable is that Quentin's band geek friends end up dating Margo's friends who are in the popular crowd. 

What bothered me the most about this novel is that at no point does anyone step back and say, "Maybe Margo is batshit crazy? Maybe the fact that she repeatedly runs away, does so with such needy drama, and likes to stay in condemned buildings means she has a mental illness?"

The worst part of the novel is that the four teenagers sacrifice walking at their graduation to go on the final rescue mission to find and possibly save Margo. Because parents of four teenagers would say "Sure, make a 21 hour road trip across the country on your graduation day with 5 minutes notice." In fact, permission was never given. The teens basically tell their parents they are missing gradation for this trip and they just need to deal with it. Did I mention they do all this with 212 beers in the van?

They never realize that Margo is mentally ill and cannot be rescued without some serious professional help. This is made all the more unbelievable because Quentin's parents are psychologists and Quentin routinely listens to their conversations. You would think he'd at least pick up some of the symptoms of mental illness or at the very least ask his parents if Margo's lifestyle choices are normal. 

The ending of the novel tried to be really deep but it's really just Quentin unable to see past Margo's insanely self-centered and bratty behavior. There's a lame attempt to convince us that Margo had always cared about Quentin even though she hadn't talked to him for nearly a decade. This book seems to almost teach kids that running away is the answer and living in condemned buildings with rats and rotting floors is adventurous and glamerous, not incredibily dangerous and stupid.

Looking for Alaska treated depression and suicide with the seriousness that it deserved, but in Paper Towns it's treated as mere eccentricity and wanderlust. Had Green written about Margo's behavior with more seriousness, I would have enjoyed the book more. Or at the very least if he had someone at some point suggest she get mental help.

The book endly badly as well. It's never known how the hunt for Margo even affects Quentin. The book ends without giving Quentin any time to process what happened. You never find out whether or not he thought it was all worth it in the end or how it changed him.

My rating: 

(*Note* Since this technically wasn't a romance. I'm not sure it can really be counted for the VaVaVoom Read-a-thon.)

Three Consecutive Valentine Themed Read-a-thons!

The first read-a-thon is Feb 6 - 10 and is hosted by The Book Nympho. Books must be romance.

The second read-a-thon is Feb 7 - 17 and is hosted by My Shelf Confessions. Books may be any genre.

The third read-a-thon is Feb 17 - 23 and is hosted by Novel Heartbeat and
Confessions of a Bookie Monster. Books may be any genre.

Announcing the 2014 Parenting Reading Challenge

Do you have a large TBR pile (to be read) of parenting books like I do? Maybe there are some parenting books that your family or friends insist you need to read? Or maybe you heard about some funny parenting memoirs or novels? I'm hosting a reading challenge at The Single Mommy Blog to get you motivated to read those books!

Books may be novels, mom lit, parenting advice and how to, inspirational such as the Chicken Soup books or Mom devotionals, parenting memoirs, or parenting humor.

For all the rules and to sign-up please visit here! Please do not sign up on this post. It is for informational purposes only.

The Fault in Our Stars Movie Trailer

Here it is! The trailor for the movie based on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is out.

Looking for Alaska by John Green (Spoiler Warning)

Book Description from Amazon

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .

After. Nothing is ever the same.

**Spoiler Alert**

This is one of those books where reviewing it is impossible without revealing spoilers. In this case the spoiler would ruin the entire story. So if you do not want the entire book ruined, please do not continue reading this review. I hate writing reviews with spoilers but I can't figure out a way around it this time.

First, what I didn't like. Now, I've never lived at a boarding school but these high school kids seemed to behave more like college kids to me. There was just so much drinking and smoking! Yes I was in high school once and I suppose I actually did drink about as often as these kids (never smoked) but maybe because I'm a mother, there was just something off putting about all that drinking and smoking.

I wish I had read Looking for Alaska before I read The Fault in Our Stars because since I knew what kind of writer John Greene was, I saw it coming. Each chapter is a countdown to something big. Granted this made me want to keep reading. I wanted to know what was going to happen on the day Pudge was counting down to.

Okay, I'm going to give you one more chance to stop reading this review. I'm going to start revealing spoilers!

To be honest, I didn't really like Pudge all that much. He treated Lara really badly because he was in love with Alaska. Oh that cliche teenager issue of unrequited love. Actually now that I think about it, I didn't really care too much about any of the characters. Don't get me wrong, I liked most of them but I didn't care deeply about what happened to them. The entire book is a mystery and I enjoyed it so much because I wanted to solve the mystery. (Which makes me wonder if I really should start reading some mysteries, but I digress.) 

I really should say "mysteries." First, I wanted to know what Pudge was counting down to. Once I learned what the life altering event was, I wanted to know why it happened along with Pudge and the gang.

But like I said earlier I kind of knew what was going to happen from the very beginning. I just knew Alaska...and here's the big, huge spoiler....was going to die. I didn't know how and it honestly didn't happen the way I expected it to. Alaska dies in what appears drinking and driving accident that may or may not have been a suicide. 

Pudge and her other friends spend the rest of the novel struggling with their feelings of guilt because they knew she was drunk and let her drive anyway as well as investigate like Mystery Inc. (Scooby Doo and the gang) into clues about whether Alaska killed herself. 

One scene that I found completely and utterly unbelievable was how the students at the boarding school was informed of Alaska's death. No school headmaster in his right mind would tell Alaska's closest friends during a school assembly like that. 

I'm going to get personal here. Real personal. 

Reading this book was actually very hard for me because my husband died 7 years ago in a head on crash a week after admitting he was suicidal. However it's because I've experienced this that I know what John Greene wrote was realistic. In fact, he nailed it. 

I remember pouring over clues trying to figure out if my husband's crash was accidental. I called the truck driver's work to speak with him and asked to meet with him about the crash. I met with him and asked almost the same questions the kids as the police officer. I spoke with the coroner's office and asked then a dozen question. And I waited the excruciating weeks for the police report because they did a toxicology test on the truck driver. My one clue that is wasn't a suicide was that my husband braked before the impact.

What I liked about the book is that Pudge and gang never come to a definitave answer. Instead they learn that they have to let go of trying to answer all the questions and focus on remaining close friends. They do this by bonding together to plan a hilarious and epic school prank involving a stripper at a school assembly. I loved that it was humor that helps all of them heal. I felt like all the loose ends were tied up, even if the mystery was not totally resolved.

Now here's what I hated about the ending. For being a group of kids as close as they were, they didn't seem too broken up about leaving boarding school and each other to go back home for the summer. I thought the way they were so nonchalant about it was completely unrealistic.

Another thing I loved about this book was all the "last words" quotes. Last words as in the last thing famous people said before dying. I found this absolutely fascinating and wish John Green had included more than he did. It made me want to start collecting my own "last words."

I also loved how philosophical the book was. Unlike The Fault in Our Stars the way the teenagers discussed philosophical matters was a lot more realistic. It didn't bog down the story or ever seem pretentious like it sometimes did in The Fault in Our Stars. 

Also one issue I think Greene seems to have with both of these books is that he doesn't know how to realistically write about teenage love, dating, and relationships. He also always makes his teenage characters far too mature. They are always deep and even wise beyond their years. Just once I'd like to see someone that reflects current teen culture.

Considering I plan on reading all of his books I probably should look for a John Green reading challenge as this point.

My rating is a solid  

The book is being made into a movie. I have to admit I think this book would make a far better movie than The Fault in Our Stars.