Mark Gilroy

Bringing Books to Life!

Let’s Smoke A Brisket!

From shopping for the best cut of meat available at your grocery store to slicing and serving it to friends, here are the secrets to smoking a perfect brisket on the Big Green Egg (or whatever smoker you prefer to use). I try to cover all the key elements that are valuable to both beginner and experienced smokers.

How do you select the best brisket available where you shop? How much trimming should you do? Do you really rub a “rub” onto your brisket? How long do you need to cook it and at what temperature? Why is it so important to let your brisket “rest” before serving it? How do you slice it?

I make no claim of being a master griller. You’ll probably never see me at a competition. But no one turns down a dinner invitation to my house when brisket is on the menu! Let’s Smoke a Brisket on the Big Green Egg is a distillation from watching countless videos and my own trial-and-error experience of smoking a ton of brisket.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Make This the Next Book You Read

A book that wants the best for you!

Jordan Peterson, a Canadian Psychologist, has become a viral sensation because of his media interviews and YouTube presentations on practical and controversial topics covering personal growth and healthy relationships like child-rearing, marriage, the meaning behind religion, friendship, personal responsibility, equality, and gender issues (from assumptions about toxic masculinity to transgender studies). Based on consuming a number of those interviews and presentations, I started reading 12 Rules with a definite expectation of a clear, pithy, and practical path to self-improvement. After all, don’t all of us know, any book with a set number of secrets, principles, rules, precepts or irrefutables will include some common assumptions, a few surprises, and always, in an easy-to-digest style? That leads to my recommendation that you read the 12 Rules, though it is seasoned with a warning and wrapped in a book review!

A Recommendation

Read it. Or listen to it. Sooner than later. As in, your next book. Peterson is so brutally honest (one of his rules is to tell the truth or at least not lie) that you can’t help but be a little more forthcoming with yourself and others in the reading. He is so willing to go against popular culture and the PC ethos of academia that you’ll feel a bit like a bold and strong bulwark against the fickle winds of enlightened conformity. He is so versed in not only his field of behavioral psychology but also philosophy and religion and literature and history that you will feel smarter whether or not you understand every word of the book. He is so down-to-earth practical that your are going to be challenged to take responsibility for your personal life and the way you interact with others—and help those others while doing so.

The second rule, treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping, is case in point. Peterson uses statistics and studies to shine a spotlight on the sad truth that many people treat their pets better than they treat themselves. For example, it is more likely that a person will fill a medicinal prescription for their cat or dog than they will for themselves. His argument sparkles as he warns us in this chapter:

You need to articulate your own principles, so you can defend yourself against others’ taking advantage of you. You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.

That quote alone is worth a five-star review and recommendation. But there are still a couple of warnings!

[Read more…]

Rise of the Beast – FREE Sample Chapters

About Rise of the Beast

One man has a chilling vision of how to save the world as we know it.

“The barbarians have breached the gates and the world burns before our eyes. The ones who can do something to save humanity refuse to act. On the Island of Patmos, the place of my father’s birth, St. John the Apostle had a vision of a Beast rising from the sea. So I have prayed to the God I don’t believe in and have told him that I will do what all others fear to do. I will rise from the sea. I will ride the blood red horse of the Apocalypse. I will be the Beast who destroys the world in order to save it.”

One man has lost his way home.

Missing-in-action and presume dead, a disillusioned ex-Army Ranger, Burke, is a private contractor in the shadowy world of corporate and non-sanctioned political espionage. He lost his soul on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and is now willing to provide any black ops service as long as the client pays on time.

Burke agrees to infiltrate and spy on Jonathan Alexander, one of the world’s richest men, to cash in on a particularly big payday. But as he reads the words of a madman, Burke must confront his own identity. He was once a man of faith and humanity. Whatever the cost, he must stop Alexander, turning himself into the most hunted man in the world and endangering everything and everyone he holds dear.

The beast rises from the sea … billions are targeted for death … the battle for the future has begun. [Read more…]