Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is about how the author, Don Miller, discovers the importance of living a good life, while working on the script for a film based on his book 'Blue like Jazz'. Before he started working on the script, his life was stalled and he was inclined to believe that there was no meaning to life. But things started changing when he meets couple of guys who want to make a film on his life. Through his interactions with these guys and thanks to a seminar that he attends on story writing, he learns the elements of a good story. Gradually, he starts experimenting with his own life by consciously applying the elements of a good story to his real life. As he puts himself through deliberate plots, such as hiking the Inca Trails, a bike trip across the United States and the Mentoring Project, it dawns upon him that the elements that make a good story are pretty much the same that make a good meaningful life. Eventually, ... let's keep the suspense :)

The book is honest, daring, inspiring, creative, brilliant, interesting, amusing, thought-provoking and sometimes provocative. However, it's also boring and repetitive, with some personal ramblings, in the beginning where Don describes the "boring" part of his life. Maybe it's to his credit that he made me feel bored by describing how boring his life was. I almost lost interest in the book after reading the first few pages. I'm so glad I didn't give up on it. The book really catches on from Part 3 where Don actually starts living a 'good story'. That's where it turns from an average book to a great book.

The book has lots of interesting stories, especially the amazing story of his friend Bob. The part where he describes his emotions on the way to meeting his father and the description of the actual meeting, were really touching.

I liked the message in the book and can relate some elements of my life to Don's at times. The idea of living a good story really challenges me. It makes me think about my own life and compels me to live a good story - a story that's worth sharing, a story that has a meaning. I'm sure it'll continue to haunt me for days to come and might actually prompt me to take some real actions.

This is the first Don Miller book that I've read. Though it's not the best book I've read, Don's brilliance has shone through it and made me wanting to read his other books as well as the movie.

Thanks Don, for sharing a wonderful story.

P.S.: I received this book free of cost from Thomas Nelson Inc. under their Book Review Bloggers program. I would like to thank them for offering me the opportunity to review this wonderful book.

Feed your Intellect and Feed the Hungry

I came across a wonderful non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program, called Free Rice. This website has two goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Here's how it works. It offers free quizzes on various subjects like Art, Chemistry, English Grammar and Vocabulary, Geography, Language Learning and Math. For each correct answer that you give, it donates 10 grains of rice to help end hunger through the UN World Food Program. Many corporates across the world sponsor this program.

So what are we waiting for? Here's the link to Free Rice:

Free Rice

Go ahead and improve your knowledge and help a great humanitarian cause. It's like killing one bird with two arrows. Or is it two birds with one arrow? Anyway, it doesn't matter because we shouldn't be killing the birds in the first place.

Visit the site often and spread the word by sharing it with your friends, family members and colleagues.

Everyday Greatness: Inspirational, Insightful and Touching

Everyday Greatness is a collection of some of the best and most inspiring stories from Reader's Digest over the past eighty years. The main idea of the book is that the world celebrates heroic achievements and rare talents, but there's greatness in small and simple deeds in everyday life that deserves a bigger honor. The book is dedicated to celebrating the important elements of human character such as responsibility, courage, integrity, humility, vision, ethics, respect, empathy, charity, perseverance and simplicity, which are often overlooked in this material world.

The book contains sixty-three motivational and inspirational stories, hundreds of quotations, a few jokes and other short stories. Though the cover displays "Stephen R. Covey" in big letters, the stories aren't written by Covey. He provides commentary at the beginning and end of each chapter that compel the readers to introspect and reflect over the morals presented in the chapter.

The good part about this book is that you don't need to read it cover to cover. I don't think it's meant to be taken in large dozes. You can pick up the book, read a story in 5-10 minutes, and put it back. Idea is to do self-reflection after reading each story and try to implement the values in one's life in order to lead a life of meaning and satisfaction.

Being a member of Toastmasters International, I found this book particularly useful. It gave me lot of fresh ideas for my future speeches and table topics. It would be very useful resource for anyone involved with any sort of public speaking activity.

My biggest complaint about this book is that all the stories have an "American" theme. Though many stories have a universal appeal, there are some which I didn't find as appealing as an American would probably find. The book would have been more balanced had the stories been selected from different cultures and regions around the world. I'm sure everyone would agree that there's lot of "Everyday Greatness" in other parts of the world.

Some of the stories in the book are very insightful and really touched my heart. The book claims to expand your thinking and open your mind and I agree that it succeeded in doing so in my case. I wouldn't call this a compelling read, but it's one of those books that you treasure in your collection. I would recommend this book and rate it 4 out of 5.

P.S.: I received this book free of cost from Thomas Nelson Inc. under their Book Review Bloggers program. I would like to thank them for offering me the opportunity to review this wonderful book.

Toastmasters Evaluation - Some Noteworthy Tips

I came across some very useful and interesting videos about Toastmasters evaluations on YouTube. Being a participant in the Evaluation contest this year, I found these videos particularly useful. I have hand-picked three videos for anyone serious about improving his/her evaluation skills.

Video 1:



Video 2:



Video 3 (Complete evaluation workshop - 4 part series):



Happy Evaluations !