My Latest Book

Tis the season for presents and stocking stuffers. My latest book, fourth in a series, Amazing Facts IV LINK should fit well into both categories. In fact all of my books are great presents to give to yourself or a loved one this holiday season. Where else can you get this much wisdom between two covers? Great way to shop without leaving the comfort of your home. Type my surname name on Amazon for a view of all my books, including free sneak previews inside. Happy Holidays! Also, if you do buy any, please leave a review.


Since I have no ads and never charge for producing these weekly Friday Thoughts, picking up my books is a great way to show your support. Thanks!

Christmas Books

If you were thinking of picking up a few books for Christmas presents, Bacon Orgazmia and Amazing Facts II - Tons of Trivia now have "look inside" on Amazon, which offers a free peek inside to see what you are getting before you buy. To see some of the other books, just type shubnell in the search box and my Amazon author page comes up. PS - if you do read any of the books, please leave a review. I appreciate it.

Bacon Orgazmia LINK

Amazing Facts LINK

Top Ten Books

From the New York Times 2015

41	George W. Bush
10% Happier	Dan Harris
13 Hours	Mitchell Zuckoff
America	Dinesh D'Souza
Blood Feud	Edward Klein
Capital in the Twenty-First Century	Thomas Piketty
David and Goliath	Malcolm Gladwell
Duty	Robert M. Gates
Flash Boys	Michael Lewis
Hard Choices	Hillary Rodham Clinton
Humans of New York	Brandon Stanton
Killing Patton	Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
One Nation	Ben Carson with Candy Carson
The Future of the Mind	Michio Kaku
Things That Matter	Charles Krauthammer
Thrive	Arianna Huffington
Uganda Be Kidding Me	Chelsea Handler
Unbroken	Laura Hillenb
What If	Randall Munroe
Yes Please	Amy Poehler

Free Microsoft Books

Came across this site recently and thought it is worth passing along. The site offers over one hundred Microsoft e-books for free. Topics like Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Office 2013, Office 365, Office 2010, SharePoint 2013, Keyboard shortcuts, CRM, PowerShell, etc. Likely will appeal more to the technical bunch, but also useful to get the most out of software you may already be using. For instance, instructions for using Windows voice commands to tell your computer to perform many actions.  LINK

Prison Break

Brazil offers prisoners an option to take four days off their sentence by reading a book and writing a report on it. They can get a reduction of up to 48 days per year. This is something every country should consider.

Unelectum All

I am so excited. It is official! My latest (45th) book "Unelectum All" is available on Amazon, Barnes, etc. The stores do not yet stock it, but it can be ordered at the counter. The title says it all. Obviously it is political and is packed with facts, figures, and quotes from some of the good, bad, and ugly politicians that we are responsible for voting into office. This is all tempered with my opinions and a bit humor thrown in. We can correct our errors next year by serving up our own form of term limits - not re-electing any incumbent from either party.

Amazon has the 'search inside' feature turned on, so you can take a peek before you buy a few dozen for Christmas gifts. LINK With each gift you make three people happy, the receiver, me, and yourself for being such a good person. Thanks!

Book Sizes

I know everyone sits up at night wondering why books are the size they are. Well, I went looking to find out. Books are as big as they are because medieval sheep were as big as they were.

Medieval books were constructed of parchment, mainly sheep skin. If you take an average sheep and skin it and trim off the odd parts, like legs, etc., you get one gigantic sheet of parchment. When it is folded in half, it makes two pages of an old book. Fold it in half again and you get the size of an encyclopedia. In half again and you get the current hardback book size.

Next time you're squinting at your copy one of my books (you do have one, don't you), wishing the pages were just a bit bigger, blame the medievals for not having bigger sheep. Kind of reminds me about the width of railroad tracks and horses behinds, but that is for another day.

How Many Books

How many books have ever been published in all of modern history? According to Google’s advanced algorithms, the answer is almost 130 million books. Yes, that number includes my books.

In order for Google Books to successfully catalog the world’s supply of printed knowledge, the company needed an estimate of the amount of books it needs to scan. That’s why Google set out to find the number.

First it had to define what a book is and agreed on ‘tome', an idealized bound volume. A tome can have millions of copies, like a bestseller or can exist in just one or two copies, such as a rare 'Tom Sawyer' first edition. ISBN, or International Standard Book Numbers, are designed to be unique identifiers for books but have only been around for  about 40 years and are mostly used in Western countries.

The company poured over a billion raw records and used many and various algorithms to determine and discard duplicates. Of course the absolute number needs to be constantly, because new books are being published every day. In fact, I have a new one that should be out within about a month. "Flowers, Foreplay, Facelifts, Flatulence - A humorous romp through the four stages of relationships."

The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude

I have not done any book reviews here before, but I just finished a delightful book.

Reading the book made me feel like I was sitting across the table from an old aunt, who had just returned from a life's journey and is sharing stories of her adventures and the people she met along the way. Of course, like Sister Mary Olga, she is already through two thirds of her Jack Daniels and well on her way through her second pack of Marlboro 'prayer sticks'.

This would make a wonderful play and has more mayhem than 'Nunsense'. A true bonus is the good moral lesson seasoned in with the wacky humor.

I almost forgot how wonderful it is to read a book, close the cover, and feel like I just attended an Oscar winning performance.


Here is the website

Profound Thoughts Book 2

Profound Thoughts Book 2
Chapter 1 from my second book in a series of great thoughts from great minds. This book is about Friendship, Kindness, Happiness, and Laughter.

Shades of 1984

For those who have not read George Orwell's book, "1984" it might be a good time to do so, or at least read an online summary of it.

Tiburon, a town of 8,000 in Marin County, CA, officials want to photograph every car and use the license plate information to solve crimes in the town of 9,000.

Many see the plan as an intrusion into the rights of citizens, but officials say it is a sensible precaution that absolutely will not cross privacy lines. The town manager says, "The proposal has been misunderstood." Yeh, right! We have been misunderstanding a lot lately, like, 'Trust me, if we spend another trillion dollars today it will save more tomorrow. . .'

Free Peek

If you are new to this blog, Please sit back, relax, have a read, and come back often. You can upload it to your iPhone and there is also an RSS feed.

You can click on the July 5 - July 12 link on the left, and get a free peek at a sample chapter in one of my recent books. It is the first in a series "Shubnell's Profound Thoughts Book 1" Great thoughts from great minds about Life, Time, and Ageing.

The second book, coming soon, will be "Shubnell's Profound Thoughts Book 2". Great thoughts about Friendship, Kindness, Happiness, and Laughter.

For the curious, go to Amazon.com to find almost all of my books.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you soon.

Profound Thoughts

Here is a copy of Chapter one from one of my new books. This the first in a series of compiled great thoughts from great minds. Hope you enjoy.

You can click on the arrows above the book to turn pages or place the hand cursor to the right side of the page and click to turn. Also, there is a little box above the book at the top right that you can click to see the book in full page mode.


Profound Thoughts 1x

Self Serving

I just had another book published on Amazon, 'Number One Book of Wacky Lists' - Should have the search inside feature available within about ten days. It's a hilarious compendium of lists from the sublime to the absurd. Interesting facts and bits of wisdom, humor, and just plain common sense.

Something for everyone to enjoy. . . and it is only $9.99. Check it out, you might like it.

PS - There is a link on the left for all my books.

Terrible Tommy on Scribd

Here is a copy of an ebook I just published on Scribd. This one and more ebooks from me will soon be available for only a buck. Wow, cheap at twice the price. Enjoy!

You can click on the arrows above the book to turn pages or place the hand cursor to the right side of the page and click to turn. Also, there is a little box above the book at the top right that you can click to see the book in full page mode.