Rating: 
Summary: Act Upon-Don't Resist Change.
Review: That's right, if change didn't happen the world we live in would be lifeless. This quick, easy to read little story is wonderful. I appreciate the author's presentation of how to deal with change in this pleasantly simple story-telling format. It made it easy to look at how I deal with change. What came to mind when I read the section on fear was my current situation of needing to find a new tenant for a vacant apartment I have. At first I wanted the current tenant to remain in our apartment-but realized that she needed to move on. I am now moving with confidence in the direction of finding a new tenant. If you enjoyed this book, I highly recommend another book called "Working On Yourself Doesn't Work" written by Ariel & Shya Kane. The Kanes' book is a guide for personal transformation, where the discovery of life's magic is a daily habit.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a Joke...Right?
Review: If you are one of the growing breed of people in this country who require self help books to negotiate buying milk at the grocery store or lay on a sofa fretting over when the bridge you drive over every day will collapse, then this simplistic book is for you. If you are not one of those people and have halfway decent common sense then keep your money in your wallet. If you really must have it, the author and publisher and book retailer thanks you. This book is a joke!! It's equivalent is the grapefruit pills that help you lose twenty pounds overnight.
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been better
Review: I saw this book in stores and on the bestseller list, and thought it looked rather silly, but after hearing some positive things about it, I picked it up in the library and read it in about 40 minutes. It has some good ideas, but they weren't expressed very well. What prompted me to write this review was reading other reviews here -- especially one in which the reviewer said that based on this book, people who suffered under Hitler or Stalin should have gone along with the "change" rather than resist or question. Other reviewers as well wrote that this book advocated going with the flow. I think that is partly the fault of the poor writing of this book. The ideas weren't developed and made clear. The cheese analogy didn't work for me at all, but I did get the message about change. When the authors say, "move with the cheese" it does sound like they are urging the reader to accept change and go with the flow, so it is confusing -- it gives a mixed message. It says to go find new "cheese" when the old one isn't working any longer, but then it also says to adapt to change. The book invites misconceptions because of the oversimplification of the message. I think the basic message of the book is to move and grow. I would hope that when the author says "move with the cheese" he does not mean to accept any change that occurs, but to move when things are getting bad. In Nazi Germany, this would have meant reading the signs and getting out of there before the big trouble began. One of the maxims in the book is, "Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come." Well, the word "adapt" might be misleading here. Getting out of Nazi Germany isn't adapting, but I believe that is what the authors meant -- read the signs, see that the cheese has gotten old and gone bad and get out of there. I would imagine that many in that situation felt they could not leave Germany for it was their homeland (Cheese Station C), and they did not want to venture out into an unknown situation (the maze). But ones who did found new and better cheese in a new country -- if they saw the signs from the apparent small changes and were able to flee in time. This book didn't change my life, because I knew all this stuff already. I don't agree with the reviewer who said that people either love or hate this book and those that hate it are the ones who can't accept what it says. Most people don't like the book because they feel it insults their intelligence. I think the book was disappointing because it had a lot of unrealised potential.
Rating:
Summary: Not Hungry for This Cheese
Review: This book was given to me as a gift. It costs 12 dollars to buy and it takes 20 minutes to read. Believe me, your money is better spent elsewhere. Mr. Johnson basically trys to take a story about mice and relate their existence to ours. We may be able to use mice to test medicine and vaccines, but they should not be used as a basis for how to live our lives. As humans, we are FAR more complicated than a couple of mice in a maze. If you are looking for a "Self-improvement" book, I think your money would be better spent on Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People."
Rating: 
Summary: A few comments
Review: There is no doubt this book was a cute idea, because it's selling like hotcakes. And there is no doubt that there is some validity to the idea of being prepared, both emotionally and mentally, to deal with the inevitable changes that will occur in one's life and job situation. Unfortunately, the book naively assumes that all change in one's life is for the better, and it is simply one's attitude toward it that is wrong-headed. Hence, you just need to understand that fact and learn to be prepared ahead of time to adapt to these things, and all will be well. That is probably a wise strategy, at least on the job, since you probably won't have much choice about it, anyway. In that case, you may as well "grin and bear it" and get with management's program, whatever it is. And in that cause, this book may provide you with some useful "attitude therapy" to accomplish that task. And that brings me to my main point. I worked for many years at a large, high-tech company in Silicon Valley. It is one of the most respected companies in its field and is considered to have excellent management. The management believes in really shaking up things about once every 2-3 years, in the interest of making us a leaner/meaner, more adaptive, more responsive, and more dynamic organization. After some years of observing this process, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. In the last several years management has decided to start doing this basically every year. Over the last several years, at least in my particular area of engineering, most of the good people have gotten tired of this constant change for change sake and have left for other, presumably more stable, companies. The result is a organization laden with the less-than-stellar employees who weren't as easily able to leave and find a better job. Apparently the switch from a 2-3 year cycle to a 1 per year cycle was a little too much change from the standpoint of the better employees, who have left, leaving the organization with all the mediocre ones. Now management is wondering why they can't keep their top employees anymore. Eventually (after all the good employees have left), management may realize that because introducing change every 2-3 years is good, doing it every year is even better may be a wrong assumption. Unfortunately, this book isn't likely to cause them to wake up to that fact, but well, one can hope. In the meantime, like Alice in the storybook tale, I am running faster and faster just in order to remain standing still.
Rating:
Summary: Reminders Don't Hurt, I Guess.
Review: Here's the premise in one sentence: Learn to embrace change instead of fearing it, and you'll be more happy/successful/productive, etc. in your life. If you STILL choose to read the book, it should take you an hour. Maybe you will appreciate being reminded of the obvious-- there are many books like this that do a good job of articulating things that you've already known intuitively. Readers over 30 probably won't get a lot of mileage out of it, but I recommend it to kids in their late teens through early twenties. ...
Rating:
Summary: An incredibly bad book.
Review: This one of those horrible books that you can't believe that anyone has the audacity to give 5 stars. I can't see how anyone could like this horrible, simplistic, annoying book. It basically comes down to don't mope about bad stuff that happens, just get on with your life. That's it. Not a terrible message in a certain context, but what happened to grieving time, coping, reflection? Learning from our mistakes, analyzing the situation. Instead it advocates simple reactionary behavior without contemplation or strategy. Complete and total garbage.
Rating:
Summary: The best in non-fiction.
Review: A great find. a wonderful story. The best in non-fiction. A grabber with heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book to help deal with change
Review: I feel that this is an excellent book to help anyone deal with the continual changes in todays world. I also recommend Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins to help deal with self limiting beliefs and build rapport with other people.
Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: I really enjoyed this book. The message that struck me most strongly was
that continuing to do the things that used to work when they no longer do is a
BAD strategy for life. The story is basically about a maze with cheese and
four mice and what they do when the cheese in one part of the maze runs out.
Two of the mice go out exploring the maze looking for new paths to cheese,
while the other two go to the same empty room, day after day and complain
about how wrong life is. Come to think about it that sound a LOT like some
people I know !!! The two mice who go scurrying off to find new cheese don't know where they
will find it, they are however more interested in finding new cheese than in
complaining about the cheese which is no longer there. They look to see life
as a challenge and not as a mechanical replay of the day before. There is another book that also deals with mechanical ways of operating in
our lives that I would like to recommend to you, "Working on Yourself Doesn't
Work", by Ariel and Shya Kane. The authors explore the many facets of
mechanical behaviors and the miraculous possibilities that open up as they
start to lose their control on us. Buy them both.
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