Review
5 Star Highest Rating: An exceptional book
Most single women have experienced the sinking feeling of fishing for a date from someone special without receiving so much as a nibble. It is enough to make women wonder if there is something wrong with their bait.
Steve Nakamoto, a former Dale Carnegie instructor, personal development trainer, and professional tour director understands these feelings. He has written an intelligent, funny, and wise book for women who are looking to catch a guy---hook, line, and sinker. In this entertaining look at relationships, he compares men to fish who are secretly longing to be caught. Women, on the other hand, are wily yet compassionate anglers looking to reel in the big one.
Men Are Like Fish will take readers on a fact-packed fishing trip where they will learn tips on how to initiate great relationships or enhance the ones they already have. The book is sweetly old-fashioned, yet wickedly on target. Nakamoto has also sprinkled zippy cartoons/illustrations and unusually helpful quotes throughout the book.
While the title might imply a single-minded effort to drag an unsuspecting man into the net, the book is actually somewhat Zenlike. It will help women to improve their self-images, broaden their interests, and accentuate the unique qualities they possess that will naturally draw good relationships to them. Nakamoto also spends a good deal of time discussing the end of relationships. He shows women how to let go gracefully, with as little pain as possible, so that they can continue to grow without harboring bitterness. He uses several examples from his own life, sharing many of his triumphs and failures with a good-natured sense of humor.
Nakamoto shares one especially funny story about a tight jeans contest where he lost a shapely girlfriend/contestant to judge Clint Eastwood. He writes, I consoled myself with the thought that Deanna must have had a tough choice: Clint Eastwood (People Weekly s 2001 #2 most popular screen actor of all time) or Steve Nakamoto? It could have gone either way, right?
Nakamoto also shares good, solid advice. One especially helpful area is Favorite Fishing Holes: 101 Hot Spots Where the Big Ones Are Biting. It consists of a list of fun and inexpensive activities and places to explore that are bound to be interesting, even if they do not spark a new love affair. Among the many activities that Nakamoto recommends are going to art gallery openings, visiting wineries for wine tasting and tours, and taking city tours or day trips in one s own city or in a nearby town.
Nakamoto does not guarantee eternal love for readers. However, both single women looking for that perfect catch and those seeking to recapture the romance of an exciting relationship will find great value here. Men Are Like Fish is guaranteed to give even the most jaded and discouraged romantic angler a new, more joyful perspective on the oldest sport in the world.
--- Reviewed by Kathleen Youman --Clarion Reviews
From the Publisher
QUESTION TO THE AUTHOR: TELL US ABOUT YOUR BOOK MEN ARE LIKE FISH. WHY DID YOUR WRITE THIS BOOK? EXPLAIN YOUR TITLE AND WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOUR MESSAGE AND THE BOOK AS A WHOLE.
Men Are Like Fish uses a fishing metaphor to illustrate how a woman can hook-up with the right man and land his elusive love. It’s another way of looking at love in a fun and simple way (from a man’s point-of-view).
I wrote this book as the result of my own search for answers. I had a love affair that ended badly for me many years ago and it took me a long time to recover emotionally. Then I came across the work of Tony Robbins in the field of neurolinguistic programming which gave me some specific cause and effect reasons why romantic love happens.
I began working on the idea of a book titled "Instant Romance" which was about how you can use neurolinguistic programming techniques to get people to fall in love with you, especially on cruises and Club Med vacations.
Then one day I started noticing how people use fishing words in relationship phrases like he’s a nice catch, she landed a husband, he fell for her hook, line, and sinker, there are more fish in the sea, and don’t let the big one get away, to name a few. Part of my training with Tony Robbins was in the use of metaphors to create perceptional shifts and better understanding of complex ideas. So my book idea evolved into "Fishing For Love."
But writing still seemed a chore for me, so I took the easier route and decided to create a book of 500 quotations around the love and fishing theme. I went to book writing seminars and had my book idea evaluated by literary agents and book editors at the Maui Writer’s Conference. In a nutshell, the feedback was that any relationship book with the word "Fishing" as its lead-in would end up in the sports section of the book store. Also my original book idea was written for men and the agents and editors said that no publisher would take on a relationship book targeted for a predominately male audience. That’s because research shows that nearly 80% of all relationship books are purchased by women.
So I had to come up with an idea about relationships from a man’s point of view but written for a female audience. They also told me that the book of quotations was a bad idea and that it would only fly if I actually wrote a first person narrative with personal anecdotes. At the time it that seemed like a hard task for me to accomplish.
Then I came across a lady on a sightseeing tour that I was conducting (my part-time occupation is as a professional tour director) who told me, "Steve I’ve heard you talk about your fishing for love idea and it reminds me of the old saying that a man chases a woman until she catches him."
I found out that the saying was an American proverb which meant that if the woman is doing the catching, that makes the man the fish. I had it the other way around. Once I realize that love works best in America when it’s the man who is the fish, then the book fell into place. I had the first edition of the book completed about 6 months later.
That first edition came out in January 2000 and won an honorable mention certificate in the Writer’s Digest 2000 Self-Published Nonfiction Book Awards. For the next two years I went on over 180 radio talk shows where I discussed my book and tested out some new ideas. I definitely learned more in those two years of promoting than the previous 7 years when I was researching and writing the original book.
So it’s the second edition of Men Are Like Fish that is out now in bookstores and Amazon.com. This new edition is expanded, rewritten, updated, and loaded with unique new decision tools. I also took a calculated risk in making this new version a little bit more provocative. I hope that women can see the greater value in well-qualified straight talk instead of the usual wishy-washy self-help takes. But I realize that love is a very personal and sensitive issue so some women are just going to get offended and angry at the audacity of a man advising a woman on what to do.
