"Elizabeth the First Wife" by Lian Dolan

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 9 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles

The genre I call boychik lit is centered on men. Chick lit – like Sex and the City – is relationship games for women. Sometimes I read chick lit to see what our better halves are thinking. Elizabeth the First Wife is about Elizabeth Lancaster, a Shakespeare scholar from Pasadena, who is recently divorced from a famous Hollywood boy-toy. He barges back into her life to ask her to coach him in a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he hopes will help him shake his reputation as an empty-headed hunk. As they prepare to do the show at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, real-life lovers chase each other ridiculously around the maypole of both serious and casual relationships. Men, you might read Elizabeth the First Wife to find out what they think, but if you think you’ll get a clue, think again.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My new novel Christmas Karma is also set in Pasadena, and I think women as well as men will find it funny.

"The Woody" by Peter Lefcourt

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 8 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles

I hold author Peter Lecourt in high regard as a skilled practitioner of what I call boychik lit, or male-centered comic fiction. The Woody is a wacky satire about boneheaded liaisons in Washington politics, featuring an unlucky Congressman who gets caught with his pants down. The appearance of this book in the late 1990s coincided with the early Clinton scandals, although it's just possible the events that inspired it had more to do with the embarrassments of Gary Hart's earlier presidential campaign. As Jackie Mason said, "That guy was on top of everything!"
It's stunning to think how innocent those days now seem by comparison. But as a lesson in electoral politics along with hysterical examples of how politicians screw things up, you can’t beat The Woody.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. If you like political satire, try my novel Farnsworth’s Revenge. And you can catch these audio book reviews on BoychikLit.com.
Cross-posted to Goodreads.com.

"My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson" by Sidney Rosen

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 7 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles My Voice Will Go with You is a nonfiction collection of essays.

Psychiatrist Milton Erickson is regarded as the father of neurolinguistic programming. This book is a collection of very short stories he told clients who were in a trance state as a means of reprogramming their thinking about a problem they brought to him. Erickson believed that stories heard and then forgotten have the most power over future actions. That's because, once the conscious, censoring mind has ceased analyzing the experience, the persistent memory of the story can percolate in the unconscious. The book illustrates vividly the power of a story to transform thinking and behavior--immediately. The accompanying commentary by author Sidney Rosen tells why each story is effective in changing behavior.
My Voice Will Go with You. I sincerely hope it does.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My new humorous novel Christmas Karma will be released in paperback and Kindle on November 8th, and you can find these audio clips on BoychikLit.com.

Read more in my review of this book on Goodreads.com.

Holiday Book Release "Christmas Karma" Promotion

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Christmas Karma

by Gerald Everett Jones

Giveaway ends October 20, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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"Shakespeare" by Bill Bryson

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 6 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson is a nonfiction survey of what few facts are known about the famous playwright.
Shakespeare's vocabulary included about 20,000 words. You probably know about 50,000. But – get this -- when Shakespeare couldn't find an appropriate word, he just made one up.
In fact, he gave about 800 words to us. Among these are: abstemious, assassination, barefaced, excellent, zany, and countless others, including countless.
Shakespeare's familiar turns of a phrase included: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, be in a pickle, the milk of human kindness, salad days, and foregone conclusion.
Turns out, the two biggest influences on our language have been The King James Bible, a brand-new book in Shakespeare’s day, and his plays.
Hey, read anything by Bill Bryson. He knows a thing or two.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. You’ll find many humorous turns of phrase in my novel Mr. Ballpoint, and you can catch these audio clips on BoychikLit.com.
Read more about Bryson's Shakespeare.