Fans pick 100 books like Said the Lady with the Blue Hair

Another book on money. I couldn’t have survived the leaner times as an actor without the lessons in this book about how important saving money is. It seems logical, but most people don’t do it or don’t do it correctly.

This book helped me to further increase my financial acumen. What happens to a successful actor who knows little about money? He loses his house and his car and loses out on great opportunities. I vowed never to be that type of actor. I vowed to be the entrepreneur that I know I am.

I love this book because it started my journey of Sales with Soul. It taught me that sales isn’t a numbers game, it’s a people game.

This book gave me the courage to take my business to the next level by coming out of my shell and into the light with my keynotes, workshops, and training offerings.

As soon as we meet Rick Masters, the hero in our story, we know we are in for a bumpy ride.

Rick is struggling like crazy to keep up with the other real estate agents in his office, and he’s failing miserably. Luckily, Rick meets a guide who teaches him about a new way to communicate, and a powerful way to sell more.

This book reads more like a novel than a boring business book. In fact, it’s even a love story! I’ve implemented many of the strategies from the book, and each time I have, I’ve seen a dramatic improvement in my sales results. If you are in business or sales, this book is a must-read and a fun read!

Robert Reffkin is a Fortune 500 CEO and he’s filled this book with strategies for creating a magnificent career or business.

He tells about his life story and the moments that have shaped him with an accessible tone that draws you in from the start. You want to see the guy succeed and you become his cheerleader on the journey. In that process, you come to learn exactly why no one succeeds alone! You will close the book at the end with useful tools you can use right away to improve your network and grow your sales.

I truly enjoy historical fiction that presents a culture or era from a different point of view. This one is set in early twentieth-century Hawaii. It features a girl, Letty, returning from a boarding school on the mainland. Letty’s devoted to animals, and she is one of the first female veterinarians in history. She jumps into the ocean to save a horse. Her healing powers are strengthened by her connection to the ancient Hawaiian land. The undercurrent of power gives this novel a fantasy feel, but it doesn’t lose its historical aspect. Then Letty learns the price of her healing power—her kisses can kill. Even worse, she’s attracted to the man who owns the horse she saved. 

Having lived in Hawaii for a decade, I find a lot of creative treatments splash around in the tourist waters but rarely scratch the surface of the rich and complicated layers that inform the culture. Hand’s attention to detail made me feel like I was knocking the sand off my slippers (flip-flops for you mainlanders) and about to enjoy some home-baked banana bread. 

That’s not to say it’s not a flat-out, great, spooky mystery, which it is, and its climactic ending might make you opt for a staycation. One of my creepiest real-life moments was walking on a lava field and having to turn around because I was overcome with the feeling that I should not be there. Hand’s novel captures and amplifies that unnerving chill.

Hawaiian Antiquities, published in 1903, was translated into English from the nineteenth-century writings of David Malo (1795–1853). Malo was a major scholar of Old Hawai‘i who spent his life among the courts of the kings and chiefs, where he learned traditional practices and oral traditions. His writings cover a wide range of topics, including cosmogony, origins and genealogy, social classes, geography (land, sea, and sky and clouds, winds, and rains), the calendar (seasons, months, and days), flora and fauna, fishing and farming, houses and canoes, food and clothing, sports and games, religious worship and observances, healing practices and necromancy, and traditions about the ancient kings of Hawai‘i.

Bamboo Ridge Press was established in 1978 to publish the multiethnic literature of Hawai’i. In this selection the best of its first eight years, the writers, of various ancestries, celebrate their families, cultures, and traditions, but also the cultures and traditions of others—a Hawaiian poet writes about a Tang fisherman; a poet of Chinese-Japanese ancestry and a writer of Puerto Rican ancestry reflect on Hawaiian activism; a white poet features bodhisattvas and Kuan Yin while another dedicates her song to a Hawaiian musician. Native Hawaiian writers are underrepresented in this collection published during a renaissance of Hawaiian culture, but a year earlier, in 1985, Bamboo Ridge also published Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Sea, an anthology of Native Hawaiian writers.

Frank Leong is a wealthy shipping industrialist who moves his family from China to Oahu at the turn of the nineteenth century. Frank is murdered, which completely destroys his family. Whispers of an ancient parable haunt the Leongs, of a red string that connects someone to their perfect match but can also punish for mistakes in love. Frank’s pregnant teenage granddaughter, Theresa, is the next target to suffer from her family’s curse. The story is told from multiple points of view in this tragic multigenerational story of secrets and betrayal. My own interest in family history made this novel resonate deeply within me as several generations of women fail in their relationships.

Despite the scholarly title, this book is a highly readable account of traditional Hawaiian culture in Ka‘ū, the southernmost district of the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Mary Kawena Pukui (1895–1986) was a preeminent Hawaiian scholar, author, composer, hula expert, and educator. She was born and raised in Ka‘ū, a remote, rural area where the old culture endured outside of the Westernization of the islands. In 1935 she traveled home with anthropologist E.S. Handy to gather information from her elders. Their book provides details and insights about the district’s history and ecology, the legendary setting (gods and spirits), the extended household and kinship system, the life cycle of individuals, manners and customs, and the relationships between people and ancestral spirits and animals.