Gone Shopping! An Odyssey of Discovery

Rating:
Summary: A Worthwhile Addition To One's Personal Library
Review: Gone Shopping! Is one of those rare books that you pick up that you can say is truly life-changing. According to Carson, the author, when we search for happiness we are actually taking a shopping trip to a special place called "the KT Mall." The KT Mall has five levels to it, the first covers the essentials of food, clothing and shelter. The second is security and peace of mind. The third level fulfills our need to affiliate with others. The fourth level deals with our self-esteem. But it's at the fifth level, where we fulfill our deepest personal needs. Carson takes you on this imaginative "shopping" trip where you begin to unravel, layer by layer secrets of human nature that keep many of us from ever really experiencing true happiness. This book weaves a tapestry of ideas that are worth reading more than once. My congratulations to Carson on a beautiful book!

Rating:
Summary: An existential exploration as well as a rollicking fun read
Review: Gone Shopping!: An Odyssey Of Discovery is a sublimely surreal novel of an ordinary man drawn into a supernaturally extraordinary shopping mall. Reality begins to bend at the edges when he encounters a bus station on the third floor, and the further he ventures, the more mysteries both internal and external are revealed - and beneath all the bizarre whimsy, he must ask himself deep inside what the true meaning of happiness is. An existential exploration as well as a rollicking fun read, especially for those who understand the true passion of shopping 'til you drop.

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Summary: Shop for happiness, discover wisdom
Review: What begins as an ordinary day at a new shopping mall turns into a delightfully fun, poignantly profound adventure in the novel "Gone Shopping! An Odyssey of Discovery" by Doc Carson.

The heart of this mystery is about finding happiness. As the shopper works his way through the odd stores on each level of this surreal five-level mall he begins to understand that happiness isn't something we stumble upon, it's something we create by recognizing the five ingredients of happiness-each one symbolized by a floor of the mall.

All the clues are there but solving the riddle requires the shopper to give it some thought - not just daydreaming thought, but focused, puzzle-solving thought. On the top floor the shopper meets a plucky young woman artist and a sagacious old man and together in a provocative dialogue they grapple with the hard questions of life: why so many people only make it to the third or fourth floor of the happiness pyramid and why so many take the stairs when there are elevators. Carson, in his subtle symbolism, has perceptively hidden the elevators in the back of bookstores. Excellent books like this help lift us to the apex of happiness without having to keep taking the stairs in life.

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Summary: It's Not "Hotel California" But...
Review: You can experience a fun adventure with one mans strange life altering odyssey at the five-level KT mall. The riveting, thought-provoking novel says that our "work blocks" build our observable identity, but what is really inside? The story propels us to the real center of the KT mall and inside our own mind, illustrating that each level represents one essential ingredient for happiness. A backhoe zooms by on one level and perhaps the driver should be shouting, "books like "Gone Shopping!" are great, life is too short, read fast!"