You would think that it’s normal for an author to be able to suck you into a story, and cause you to be totally immersed into so much that you really can’t stop reading…or in this case listening.  However, the fact is that it’s actually a rare trait, and therefore why the ratio of authors compared to best-selling authors is so vast.
Khaled Hosseini is definitely apart of that rare breed of great story tellers, and has a keen ability to create a trance within the reader, and hold them there through to the end of the story.  He proved this with his big breakthrough hit debut novel “The Kite Runner” and now he’s gone and done it again with “A Thousand Splendid Suns”.

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Barbara Walters is a television icon.  She’s been on our TV’s for what seems like forever.  She’s pioneered the way for female television anchors that were to follow her, and inspired nearly each and every one of them in some way.  She’s interviewed just about every VIP from entertainment, politics, royalty, and business that there is.   

With Barbara’s track record as a go-getter, we expect that she’ll get all the big interviews that are to come on the horizon, and she usually lives up to that expectation, sometimes even with exclusives.  She’s been paving her way since the 1950’s and she’s still going strong today in her 70’s.  So why then did she feel compelled to expose her life…warts and all…when she could have bowed out gracefully and fancifully?   

I supposed it could be the fact that she demands the same candor from herself as she does her guests.  It must be from her compulsion to be relentless in her interviews (and her life in general) that she even demands that all of the secrets come out of her own self.  

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We all understand how important it is to read the literary classics by those authors who have shaped the American literature scene to what it is today.  We know how crucial it is to experience those works that make us think, make us dig deeper into our own lives and psyches, and force us to contemplate life as we know.  This done through the eyes of characters from years past – brought to us by authors who have molded so many great minds and thinkers of present times.  

Authors like Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, and Jack London should be and often are required reading in so many schools in our great nation, yet so many of there best pieces have past us by.   

However, even though we know that we’re doing ourselves a great disservice by not indulging in these classic works, it’s very difficult for us to get the opportunity to force ourselves to sit with a book of yester-year, when life zooms past us daily at what seems like a thousand miles per hour.  Not to mention the fact that between the internet, and other forms of media, giving ourselves the gift of literatures early works tends to take a backseat to the more hurried pace of timely “new releases” of today.  

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Have you ever wondered about how the heck all of this stuff got here in our world…or even more so, in our universe?  Bill Bryson did … the only difference is that he went on a three year hunt for the answers, and wrote down everything he learned in an over 500 page book that’s actually very entertaining to read.  Not many people can do that with scientific type of stuff…just look in your old high school text books and you can clearly see that. 

Yet Bryson has a distinct way of making learning all of this normally mundane material fun.  He’s done the same thing for years and years for us with his travel articles and books.  Bryson was born in America, moved to New Zealand at a young age, from there went to live in Britain with his wife and 4 kids, and has since made the good old USA home once again.  

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There are those books in life that you read, and then they go onto a shelf to collect dust forever…and then there are those books that are meant to be read over and over again.  The Last Lecture is one of those books meant to read over and over.  It’s a book that will teach you lessons about life that you’ll want to be reminded of time after time.  

The tradition behind the last lecture isn’t anything new.  In fact, chosen noted professors have been doing it for years and years.  Basically they’re asked to give a lecture with the assumption that their life was soon to be over, and to reflect on what the most important lessons that they could share would be.  However, by the time that Randy Pausche was asked to give his, those thoughts were already prevalent on his mind.  Not more than a month earlier had he been given the dismal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer…of which there was only a 4% survival rate!  

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It’s pretty much impossible for a book that’s sold over four million copies from it’s release just in 2006 to the present time… and translated into thirty separate languages to not have some value and resonance to it.

The Secret not only encompasses that notion, but it literally is one of those rare books that when somebody reads it, it changes there entire outlook on life completely. It’s one of those rare audio books that when you hear it, you automatically want to lend it out because you know it can be so useful for so many people. It would be interesting to know how many people have actually given “The Secret” as a gift because that’s the type of book that it is. You want other people to experience it.

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