Review: Breaking Good: A Señor Bueno Travel Adventure

Breaking Good: A Señor Bueno Travel Adventure by Mike B. Good
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book as a promotion that the author was doing to get people interested in his book. I was interested in this book because a lot of it takes place at the time I was growing up. Graduated High School in 1971 and Nixon was in the White house for his first term. So I was hoping for a trip down memory lane. I got it. I remember a lot of the songs the author mentioned. But that is where the connections end. I only smoked one joint in my entire life. A girl I was going with insisted we get high when we went t see the movie Tommy. All it did was give me a headache. So, the hero of the story and myself have little in common that way.

I did not consider myself a hippy though my long hair and a desire for peace in life and more liberal ways (I am more middle of the road now with leaning towards conservative) tended to let people think I was. Mike (our hero and first person teller in the book) do at least have that in common. We did not like Richard Nixon (Uncle Dick), and we did not like the war. But I never wanted to grow weed, live in a commune, etc.

I did enjoy the book when it did not get into slapstick, which is most every chapter. I know you are saying how can a book do slapstick. Running joke in the book:

Person: You know Mike that you are a great grower
Mike: I am?
Person: See I knew you knew it

Variations on that dialogue are in every chapter and often many times in a chapter. To me that and others like it become written slapstick. The thing with slapstick is it has to be done in small doses. Look at the Three Stooges, one of the best slapstick teams around. Any of their movie shorts has slapstick in it, but there is really more story being told that slapstick. In a fifteen minute short they may have one or two routines. And that is what is a problem with this book for me. Too much verbal wordplay, too often. Take out some of it and it might have gone up another star.

I would recommend this to people who would want to see the type of life that was lived by the true hippies of that era. It would be recommended for people who would enjoy some drug and crude humor references. It has its moments of brilliance.

View all my reviews

10 Secrets to a Superhero Body and Mind -Markus A Kassel

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars I found this booklet on the Instafreebie site. It is a short read, not more than an hour I would say.  The basic premise is that a superhero is someone that we all look up to and so we would want to be like one. It really doesn't matter that superheros do not exist, and that some of his examples fall flat (Spider Man may talk a good game but his whole story has to do with his lack of confidence in himself).  Still, the booklet is a look into what makes a successful person a success. Much of what we see in a person who is a success is what we see in the comic superheros as well.

 It is not a booklet that I can recommend to everyone. The title indicates that this is for body and mind.  A quick look at the books I could find show that this author has a few books on physical training.  This book seems to focus on that as well. And while I consider training a good thing, I do not see it to be the most important thing.  Another is the difficulty in finding it.  As noted, I found it on the Instafrebie web site and nowhere else.  All of the normal online eBook sites did not show it for purchase or to be given away.   While an interesting read, it is a niche book, mostly for those who want to get fit.  The book if written as a general book, making a person better, would be better. The book starts out that way but then seems to go more into the fitness area.