A Happy Pocket Full of Money

When I first saw this book, A Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron Gikandi, on my Amazon recommendations, without any hesitation I gave the book a pass. Telling myself, “Haven’t I read enough LOA books to clog my brain to its fullest?”

Somehow, the more I tried to look pass this book on the
customers-who-bought-this-item-also-bought menu, the more it kept showing up even on books I was browsing that weren’t of any hinge of relatedness.

Out of irritation and curiosity, I clicked to check the book out. Upon closer look at the cover, I came to know that the author was the creative consultant on The Secret—mere mentioning of this book almost caused me to gag. I hate The Secret—the book and the DVD; just hate them. They are simply overhyped and overrated. There, I finally say it.

On with this book, A Happy Pocket Full of Money, a hefty price tag that is selling two and half times more than many other paperbacks in Amazon. And with almost all 5-stars ratings, I just couldn’t help but to get this book and investigate.

So, was this book worth my time and money? Here’s my take on what I like and dislike about this book.

What I like; on:

Content Delivery: With a doubt, the author’s insights on creating wealth, abundance, and joy are incredible. He uses many metaphors to illustrate how LOA works. They are current and realistic which make them easy to understand and relate to.

He begins the first few chapters on basic understanding of quantum physics, and then gradually moves onto the spiritual aspects of LOA.

One of my favorite takeaways of this book is this:

Desire and intend, and you shall always have it. Quest for the truth and knowledge, and you shall always know what you seek to know. There are no real boundaries to your growth, for you are more than welcome to experience any choices you make. But you must be certain that these statements are true, for if you believe they are not true or they are partially true or selectively true, that is exactly what you will get.

Especially the last sentence—partially or selectively true—it rings so true for me. Quite often when I moved pass my complete doubt on a particular quest/belief to partially doubt, the result I got from it was always partial or selective.

What irk me about this book are the:

Borders and Line Spacing: Talk about abundance, the author or the publisher certainly didn’t apply one of his “laws” when it comes to line and paragraph spacing and borders especially the right border which width measures only 0.312 inches.

It put tremendous strain on my eyes when reading a whole chunk of texts in one cramped page. Some paragraphs go as long as four-fifth of a page.

For the price of $29.99 for a 228-pages book, least they could do is to be generous with the line spacing. The content itself isn’t at all different to comprehend but I had to pause many times between pages; making it thrice as long for me to complete a book with the same amount of content.

Subliminal Message: It took me almost a quarter of the book before I could muffled the—I AM WEALTH. I AM ABUNDANCE. I AM JOY—subliminal message between paragraphs and quotes. To be honest, I don’t quite appreciate these subliminal messages. It looks like the author was trying to accomplish too many tasks at one go.

I’m no expert on subliminal messages, but to my understanding, they are meant to be, a lack of better word, “hidden” and not thrown at you so vividly and often in infrequent intervals.

With clamped text and subliminal messages scattered all over is enough to clutter your brain and most probably dampen your reading pleasure.

Repetitive Phrases: I read one of the reviews at Amazon, and this reviewer loved the repetitive phrases use so often in the book. I don’t about you but I certainly don’t.

Not all repetitive phrases in the book are in exact wording, some are rephrasing one idea into two or six ways. I understand why some like repetitive stuff because it takes a while for the message to drill it in. Here’s what I think about repetitive messages, nag. Remember how your mom’s constant nags that you completely not hearing her?

I agree with the author that repetition is powerful, but what good does it make if one doesn’t pause to reflect or implement them once received. For what it’s worth, repetitive messages are nothing but noise.

If the literature is of worthy read, I can always reread it many times and highlight those that deem to be useful for me. But for the first take, I’d like to get through the book without jumping through hoops.

So-called Teasers: I don’t mind one or two teasers spread across the book but having one or two in almost every chapter just drive me nuts. Most are towards the end of the chapter but some are midway into a chapter. What teasers am I talking about? Here are some excerpts randomly picked from the first 108 pages:

• All this will make more sense when you understand…
• The pieces of the puzzle will fall into place as you read on…
• As you will see throughout this book…
• It will make sense when…especially after reading…
• Some…will only become clear after you have read the whole of this book.
• This will get easier and clearer…
• You will know more about them in later chapters.

A couple of chapters, the author talks great length about being in the Now; as you see from the above excerpts, these are certainly not the Now talking. How can I be in the Now—enjoying what I’m reading now, when the author so often reminding me about what I will understand or learn in the next few chapters? Subconsciously, I’m anticipating and not able to fully appreciate what I’m doing Now. I’d rather be shown (when I get there), not told (before arriving).

Spelling Errors: I, too, am guilty of making some spelling errors on my blog posts and also notice them on some of my friends’. I tend to be more forgiving on blogs. But for books, it can be annoying when you know there is an in-house editor to do the nitty-giddy checking and editing; unless it is a self-published book. Fortunately those errors are very minimal.

Conclusion:

So, does this book, A Happy Pocket Full of Money, warren your time and money? Yes, it still does if you can overlook the first four points the irked me. But seriously, I would recommend this book to those who are new to LOA or those who haven’t fully comprehend how LOA works or those seasoned LOA practitioners who want different perspectives. Having said, I honestly can’t give a 5-stars rating like many Amazon’s reviewers did. The content only rates 4 and the overall presentation is a 2-stars for me.

Strangely, this book doesn’t dedicate a page on author’s biography or a short bio at the back of the book.

It may interest you to know that the author’s website literally screams Internet Marketing sales copy to me—the layout, bonuses, endless testimonies, and the standard IM web copywriting. I have nothing against IM but many of these products just look plain scrammy and unprofessional. Maybe it’s about time the author hire a good web copywriter and a web designer to redo and update (…offer ends Oct 25. Hmmm, what year?) his site if he wants to increase sales and be taken more seriously.