I originally discovered Steve Pavlina‘s blog when searching for public speaking, several years ago using Google. His blog led me to Toastmasters which I then discovered met in a hotel literally 100 yards from where I live in the UK!.

Since then I have followed his experiments with great interest using his blog as a model for everyone I meet who is interested in blogging (I have now introduced over 20 folks). A lot of what he says resonates with me particularly his attitudes to food (I became a vegetarian about 10 years ago) thinking and life in general (My favourite experiment was his experiments with polyphasic sleep, I’m convinced it drove his wife, Erin, nuts). Some things I disagree with like his attitude to mushrooms which he doesn’t view as a fruit and somehow considers them undesirable, this to me is weird for someone who is a convinced raw foodist.

I jumped at the chance of getting a free, prepublication, copy of his new book, Personal Development for
Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth (Hay House;
October 15, 2008), in exchange for writing this review. I was dismayed when the book arrived in pdf form rather than as a hard copy. So in true Pavlina fashion, how could I turn this setback into a positive outcome. The answer; do an electronic review, here it is:-

This is the full text of the book, 101,365 words according to wc (excluding external quotations), as processed by Wordle. I then ran the full text through a text analyser to discover the most frequent phases etc which is where the post title of truth love and power comes from, it is used in the book 111 times! The top two individual words are to, you.

The wordle sums up the book beautifully and is for me an excellent review. The book itself looks a good read (although without its physicality its impossible to review since a lot about buying a book is the form as much as the content)  and I’m sure it will be succesful, although for my part its more interesting following Steve on his journey through life.

Note to publisher: None of the text files used by wordle etc have been stored

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