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The Heart Revolution by Sergio De La Mora is a book that surprised me with its power, creativity, and positive messages. Sergio De La Mora invites you to take a 40-day heart challenge reading along and rethinking your life, framing it in a positive light and allowing yourself to trust entirely your heart. It is the power of your heart that can lead you to success or keep you from fully embracing your greatness. I was skeptical when I began this book, but the author Sergio De La Mora won me over with his authenticity and his passion. De La Mora is the founder of the Cornerstone Church of San Diego, California, one of the fastest growing churches in the USA. He lives in San Diego with his wife and six daughters. But almost more importantly than any of that he came from a background of poverty as a Mexican immigrant to the US and was quickly initiated into gang culture as were some of his brothers. Sergio De La Mora was using drugs regularly as a young teen, smoking PCP and hanging with a gang his brother’s friends had started to keep from getting beaten up. Tragically, De La Mora was stabbed in the back when he was in grade eight and he spent many months recuperating. A good deal of that time was spent listening to radio and as he grew to appreciate the power of words, he realized he wanted to become an on air radio personality. He got his DJ’s licence and became quite well known as a celebrity Disc Jockey. The entertainment industry only fueled his drug habit. On a day when De La Mora, was promoting one of his own dance events, he discovered a flyer for the Cornerstone Church and he followed his instincts into a meeting there. De La Mora describes his young self, anticipating an imminent spiritual and physical break down, attending the meeting while high on cocaine. “So the night before I had come to church I had done two things. One, I did half a gram of cocaine, because I never went anywhere without being high. And two I told God these words: If You can change my life and take this monkey off my back I will do anything You want.” He knew he needed to get out of the life he was living and he found this particular church just when he needed it. The pastor there won him over and Sergio quit his job and became active at the church. Prior to the meeting he had felt that God couldn’t forgive him, a strung out Cholo. Regardless of your particular spiritual beliefs, or your degree of religiosity, this is a book that comes down to passion and life goals and philosophy. It is incredibly innovative. I loved that there were small breaks after some chapters directing the reader on line to sermons that supplement the writing. This is a smart way to encourage two things books to become more interactive and relevant and people to become more involved in the actual revolution itself. I applaud Baker Publishing and Sergio De La Mora for being creative and innovative in an industry that is in flux. Here for instance http://www.sergiodelamora.com/heartrev is an example. The foreword of the book is by Ed Young Jr. I will keep this book for a long time as a reminder to recharge and revisit the idea of leading with your heart. In fact I didn’t want it to end in some ways. The chapter on Revolutionizing Your Beliefs is particularly intelligent and discusses the difference between living religiously and having a relationship with Jesus. I love that I can extrapolate from that whole chapter what I need to illustrate even in my own life the power of negativity to drag you down and zap energy and the opposite and empowering nature of having an active relationship with your heart and your belief systems. It is more than just a semantic debate. It is the difference between passive religion and actively living your best life. Throughout the book there are numerous personal stories of people who felt unloved and people who were grieving giving themselves over to the heart revolution. Most of the examples are relevant and well used. But my only criticism is one example used in a chapter on Forgiveness that I found jarring. A family of children is sexually abused by an acquaintance. The repercussions of this are devastating for the entire family. However, the father of the children finds it in his heart to forgive the abuser. He confronts the person, a family friend and tells him he has to apologize, essentially. As a parent I find that to be really hard to believe, and I think the example will lose some readers. Aside from that poor example there is a lot here to like. Sergio De La Mora is smart and savvy and his passion is infectious and young enough to not yet come off jaded or overpackaged.

Thriftymommastips ranks this one a $$$$ out of $$$$$
The Heart Revolution by Sergio De La Mora, 2011, Baker Publishing Group, $17.99 US, Non Fiction, Christian Life, 278 pages.

Barrio Bushido is disturbing and violent and poetic and a profound social statement. Barrio Bushido is Ben Bac Sierra’s first novel and, as graphic and absolutely horrific as it was at times I couldn’t stop reading or envisioning this as a really great movie script in the same vein as Trainspotting or Fight Club. Barrio is the gritty realistic sad tale of three gang members, growing up in a Latin ghetto area of California. The main character is Lobo, the wolf, leader of the pack. He is a strange disenfranchised soul with the heart of a poet. He spends his days in a drugged haze knowing he is inevitably headed towards a fate that involves self destruction. The bull, Toro, is babysat by a television when his mother goes to work cleaning office buildings and homes. While his sister can come along on the jobs, he cannot because he is too rough and so on one of these occasions when he is left home, as a five-year-old, he falls out the window of his apartment building. He waits and wanders after the fall searching for help that doesn’t come. As a youth he will find a place in the marines where he tries to earn respect and the love of his mother. He endures the Gulf War and is little more than a young adult when he learns to wear the scars of his many battles with pride. Santiago is the third pillar of the odd triad of brothers. He pulls the drooping needles from his parent’s arms and feeds his brothers and sisters. Benjamin Bac Sierra is an intense writer. He manages to create empathy for characters that are completely vile outlaws. Bac Sierra knows his topic well. He is a former homeboy himself and a veteran of the Gulf War. The author himself, a former homeboy and a veteran of the Gulf War, clearly knows his topic well. He grew up in San Francisco’s Mission, joined the Marine Corps at 17 and saw front line combat in the Gulf War. In an incredible transformation he managed to complete a Bachelor of Arts at U.C. Berkeley after an honourable discharge from the marines and is now a professor at City College in San Francisco. Bac Sierra’s characters are nothing if not realistic. They jump off the page fighting. Bac Sierra is a masterful storyteller with a true strenth for characterization. Lobo is no cliche; instead he is a gangster with a weakness for his girlfriend Sheila and a strangely romantic soul. He is placed in an impossible situation when a rival gang member, he is supposed to kill ends up kidnapping Sheila to turn the tables on Lobo. Lobo is a strange contradiction, speaking in swear words and poetry at the same time. These characters are remarkable and magnetic. The story is gritty and compelling in the same way some traffic accidents are. But this story isn’t for everyone. It is a fiction story with a high degree of realism and extreme violence. This is a brave first novel rooted in some reality. It will be very interesting to see where the author goes next, also if someone options this as a script.

Barrio Bushido, by Benjamin Bac Sierra, El Leon Literary Arts, $20.00 US., 282 pages. Fiction.
Thriftymommas rating $$$ out of $$$$$. Excellent characterization and dramatic plot, but too much hostile language towards women and the violence, while understandable in this context is really over the top.)

I am giving a copy of Barrio Bushido away this month as part of my I Heart Books Event.
Mandatory:
1. Follow me on GFC (google friend connect.)
2. Leave your contact information so I can reach you if you win.
I will draw for this one on Feb. 27th. Open to Canada and US.

Reviewed by Paula Schuck