"Your neighborhoods are full of religious diversity these days. The religious "brands" today are no longer Christian-based as years before. No longer can you assume your neighbors are Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, or Episcopalians. Today's religious landscape is a buffet of faith entrees with a variety of choices of gods and prophets upon whose tenets you can feast."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Author Marvin Olasky has put together an easy to read, large font well researched 245-paged paperback. 'Large font' because us Christian Conservatives can't read small print and besides we squint too much already as we abuse ourselves with provocative photos of Madonna and Jenna Jameson spread out in front of us. Mr. Olasky first presents the reader with a chapter about a particular religion's beliefs and practices. He then follows that with the history, the workings and/or the real-world results that particular religion has achieved. As I suspected, both Hindu's and Buddhist's believe in both everything and nothing and should make absolutely no sense to anyone looking for answers to Life's meaning, eternity or death. Since I am daily hemmed-in by extremely wealthy and usually very cordial Jewish men and spewed on by always bitchy Jewish-princess wives, I was delighted as I learned about 'Jews' in the first two chapters. Mr. Olasky also mentions one of the prime reasons that your Mr.Wonderful believes the Judeo-Christian Bible is the truth, when he writes:

"The Bible is different from other scriptures that treat religious founders and ancestors as demigods. Biblical writers, rather than exalting their ancestors, often portrayed giants as ethical pygmies ... If the Bible's goal was propaganda, its writers were incompetent ... "

Typo:
Page 184 "... by the Creator with rights of life, liberty and the pursuit if  happiness."

Begun: 11/12/2005   Finished: 11/27/2005 Purchased: March 2005
Where: conservative bookclub.com
B&N Net Rank: 204,641

The national bestselling story of Earth's first interstellar colonists-and the mysterious planet that becomes their home.

"Coyote marks a dramatic new turn in the career of Allen Steele, Hugo Award-winning author of Chronospace. Epic in scope, passionate in its conviction, and set against a backdrop of plausible events, it tells the brilliant story of Earth's first interstellar colonists -- and the mysterious planet that becomes their home."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Since the book begins with a thinly veiled scenario of evil Conservatives, under the "Liberty Party" having conquered and subjugated a large chunk of America (and most likely banned pornography and outlawed abortion, ending life on Earth as Liberals know it) I braced myself for another moronic screed like David Brin's Earth. However, apparently an editor reminded author Allen Steele that there are just as many Right-leaning, private-school-educated bookworms, who actually read the titles they purchase prior to placing them on their shelves for visitors to view, as there are of those favoring the political Left, because his political rantings soon faded like the white passion-spots spewed on a blue denim dress. I found it odd that the beginning paragraph of the body of the book begins with a quote from Leviticus 25:10: "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof" with this inscription off the side of the Liberty Bell being the first and the last mention of religion. This lack of spirituality remains even after the D.I.'s (Dissident Intellectuals) who, in year 2070 successfully hijack the $100 billion United Republic Service Spaceship Alabama, and rechristen its pair of remora-like shuttles from The Jesse Helms and The George Wallace to the Plymouth and the Mayflower. These names certainly refer to the 17th Century dissidents who fled Europe due primarily to religious persecution, not political. I was initially drawn to this book by its thick 431 pages and the beautiful cover artwork. I was not disappointed. The illustrations and maps, unclutter the reader's mind and allow us to see that which the author meant us to see. Sometimes the book is from the view of the all knowing observer and sometimes from that of a particular individual. Of course, like in John Hersey's White Lotus (being I cling to my belief that females are finer creatures than males) I find it hard to take to heart the male author's viewpoint, when, in the book, it is supposedly emanating from a girl. It's evident that Mr. Steele did extensive scientific research, especially on near light-speed space flight, resulting in an entirely entertaining and plausible adventure encompassing an almost two and one-half century trek of one hundred Earthling's and their subsequent exploits and establishment of human of life on planet Coyote. This book was an easy, enjoyable read and I recommend it to all fans of science fiction.

Typo:
Page 62 ... "Jorge reluctantly leave his helmet in place."

Begun: 11/11/2005   Finished: 11/26/2005 Purchased: Nov. 11, 2005
Where: Half-Priced Books
B&N Net Rank: 21,708

"The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story - a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking. Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Don't you love the subtitles and sub-sub titles book publisher's feel they must flaunt to maybe attract a few additional readers? Before long the first two chapters of any hardback will appear on its dust cover.

Begun: 10/29/2005    Finished: 11/12/2005 Purchased: September 2005
Where: Powells.com
B&N Net Rank: 6,856

"'Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,' observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death in 1940. 'My books meet no needs except my own, their circulation is practically private and I'm lucky to be published.' Yet today, West is widely recognized as a prophetic writer whose dark and comic vision of a society obsessed with mass-produced fantasies foretold much of what was to come in American life. Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), which West envisioned as 'a novel in the form of a comic strip,' tells of an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist who becomes tragically embroiled in the desperate lives of his readers. The Day of the Locust (1939) is West's great dystopian Hollywood novel based on his experiences at the seedy fringes of the movie industry."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

I believe Stephen King recommended I read these pair of stories penned by the dead-for-sixty-five years, Nathanael West. Miss Lonelyhearts is about a bigger drunk than your Mr.Wonderful, who handles an 'Ask Abby' type column. "The bar was only half full. Miss Lonelyhearts looked around . . . However, after a third drink, just as he was settling into the warm mud of alcoholic gloom . . . " It's a short, easy-to-read fifty-eight page ode to sadness. Miss Lonelyhearts' actual name is never mentioned and less you be mislead, 'she' is a 'he.' The story ends as vaguely and as sadly as it begins. Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust are engrossing and entertaining, especially for those born after 1950, as they reveal everyday life in pre-World War II America.

Begun: 10/29/2005   Finished: 10/30/2005 Purchased: Sept. 2005
Where: powells.com
B&N Net Rank: 17,392

"David, King of the Jews, possessed every flaw and failing a mortal is capable of, yet men and women adored him and God showered him with many more blessings than he did Abraham or Moses. His sexual appetite and prowess were matched only by his violence, both on the battlefield and in the bedroom. A charismatic leader, exalted as "a man after God's own heart," he was also capable of deep cunning, deceit, and betrayal. Now, in King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel, bestselling author Jonathan Kirsch reveals this commanding individual in all his glory and fallibility."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

I found this three hundred and six paged book, caboosed with an Appendix, Chronology, Endnotes (footnotes) of twenty three pages (again mostly left unread), Bibliography and Acknowledgments, an easy and compelling read. Reading was made more comfortable by the absence of effort it took for my fifty-four year old pupils to focus on the large, almost "Dick and Jane-sized" font. Not recommended for any 'baby' Christians as King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel demolishes any possible thoughts that the Bible is anything more than a part history, part fantasy, redacted and cobbled together storybook written and then, in author Jonathan Kirsch's opinion, rewritten around, King David. (However, your Mr.Wonderful's Christian faith, after two theophanies, held firm <grin>.) And of course, King David, like virtually any book written about ancient times claims David, Son of Jesse, enjoyed homosexuality. For those biblically ignorant (which would be any of you who think that Islam and Christianity have anything more in common than what the founders of Islam chose for them to have in common) David was the young shepherd who killed Goliath, the almost ten-foot tall Philistine giant-soldier, with a single stone shot from his sling. King David both predated and out-sleezed our own President William Jefferson Clinton, by sending one of his most trusted and loyal soldiers, Uriah the Hittite, into a battle-field charge he was certain to die in. This was so David could bone and later marry, Uriah's devoted wife, the irresistably lovely, sometimes roof-top bathing, and future mother of King Solomon, Bathsheba. I compared a few of the quoted biblical verses against my nearby Bible and found them to be accurate. Actually, and this should come as no surprise, I now understand and grasp more about the life and times of David (1035 to 965 BCE) after reading this work than I did through years of reading the Bible.

Begun: 10/02/2005   Finished: 10/29/2005 Purchased: May 2005
Where: HamiltonBook.com
B&N Net Rank: NA

(courtesy Alibris)
Best Sellers, 02/01/1965
"Read the book. It is no small praise to Hersey to say that the Prologue and Epilogue alone will be rewarding even if the rest, absorbing though it often is, is seen as sprawling narrative between two brief moments of great lyric intensity." -- F. L. Ryan

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

"The book, although very long ... "    Yes, at six hundred and eighty three 8 1/2" by 5 1/2" yellowed pages set in font-size-ten Primer typeface, designed by Rudolph Ruzicka circa 1949, I am forced to agree. Don't expect any slam-bang action sequences or happy endings though, after your weeks of plodding through this thinly veiled statement for the 1960s era U.S. Civil Rights Movement (that many, many Democrats, including Al Gore's own father voted against while supporting Negro-hating unions.) I find it more than odd to compare 20th Century White's, literally Shanghaied from my own Arizona, and the American Southwest, to China to be sold as slaves, with the Blacks sold into slavery from the Dark Continent in the 18th and 19th Centuries. This is not because of the obvious color differences, as author John Hersey (who lived in China from 1914 until 1924) exploits in this book having enslaved Whites pitted against their Yellow Master's, but the fact that the Black slave population of America, most likely, had no common written language, no academic education whatsoever and were taken from a place and a time that, even in the 1700s, historians would not term civilized.

Begun: 08/26/2005   Finished: 10/18/2005

"How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare? Stephen Greenblatt enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life - full of drama and pageantry, and also cruelty and danger - could have become the world's greatest playwright. Greenblatt makes inspired connections between an entertainment presented to Queen Elizabeth on a visit to the countryside during Shakespeare's boyhood and passages in A Midsummer Night's Dream; between his family's secret Catholicism and the ghost that haunts Hamlet; between the hanging of a Jewish physician in London and The Merchant of Venice; between Shakespeare's own son Hamnet's death and the most famous burial scene in literature."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt was fairly high in the Barnes & Noble Sales Rankings, but I wonder how many people actually completely read the book. I'd wager not many. To really enjoy this quarto the reader must have more than a passing knowledge of Shakespeare. Having been in a few Shakespeare-penned plays (most always as an old man, sometimes as Falstaff), and working weeks and weeks with the material, I thought I possessed that knowledge. Har. To find pleasure in this book you should have taken a university course or two centered on Shakespeare, or have been intimately involved with the stage productions of six or seven of his most popular works or have read twenty or so of his efforts, including all the sonnets. A BA in Medieval English history would be helpful. Also, it would be advantageous to be thoroughly familiar with William's contemporary, Christopher Marlowe's, Tamburlaine. And be certain to have nearby, an unabridged dictionary, the ten-inch thick edition, supported by a table with sturdy legs. Having written that and should I had possessed the above educations, I'm sure I would have found this three hundred ninety paged trade paperback, not including the seventeen unread pages of "Bibliographical Notes", quite enjoyable. However, poorly equipped as your Mr.Wonderful was, having gone into full-time labor during my first year at Maricopa County Community College in 1970 (during which many mornings would find me asleep in my 1963 Plymouth Fury, situated in the empty parking lot of the YMCA a few blocks from my parent's townhome) I was sadly intellectually unprepared for a book of this magnitude. However, knowing that tens of thousands of visitor's to these pages were waiting for my review <grin> I struggled through it. And I do mean struggle. I learned a great deal about the times, for instance, that the Black Plague, for those it did not kill, was an accepted fact of life and the London stages simply were closed by an edict from the Throne whenever deaths rose above a certain number. I became aware that there were zero Jews in England during William's lifetime and that they were hated, vilified and slandered more than the Reverend Billy Graham would be at a Pro-Choice rally. And, I read, once again, that virtually every literate male, worthy of history taking note of, whether he be Shakespeare, Marlowe, or James I of England, preferred intercourse with other males (and I'm not referring to them talking about darts; the metal pointed ones anyway) but also were married and fathered children, if only to carry on the family fortune and name. This is the book that further expands on those unending footnotes that litter every single page of any play written by The Bard. I'm happy to have the knowledge I've gained from grinding through this book over the past twenty-two days, one hour, thirteen minutes and fifty-four seconds, but, unless you have a burning desire and exhibit the background I've outlined above, you might want to pass on Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare.

Begun: 09/10/2005   Finished: 10/02/2005

"Dennis Covington's father made only one investment in his life, and it was an unfortunate one - two and a half acres of an inland Florida real-estate scam. The entire area, swamp, prairie and palmetto thicket, lay raw and unsurveyed until it was illegally claimed and fenced in by The Hunt Club, a group of gun-toting, talk-radio-listening, anti-government zombies. His father's acres were not only worthless, they were barred by armed guards. This sorry patch of land was Covington's only inheritance."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

In the above quote, I love how the publisher so easily strings together "talk-radio-listening" and "anti-government zombies". It's puzzling because I don't recall any mention at all of the Southern neaderthals author Covington specializes in, ever listening to "talk-radio." Like his Salvation on Sand Mountain, Redneck Riviera, while not absolutely spellbinding and memory-searing as Salvation, is still an easy, and, what I term, a friendly read. This large-fonted one-hundred and eighty-two paged hardcover could easily be read in one sitting. I imagine the $25 list price may have had more than a little to do with this less than one-half inch thick hardback (that your Mr.Wonderful purchased new for a mere six bucks) enjoying poor sales. For the memories it brings back, whether raised in the south or not, Redneck Riviera could be enjoyed by every Baby Boomer. The book exists only because of the staggering need of our "Greatest Generation" fathers to purchase raw and remote wilderness lands. In Arizona, this need was fed by the Land Baron (and felon) Ned Warren, while in Florida the huckster brothers Jack and Leonard Rosen dished out vastly overpriced parcels. My own father had bought land, sight unseen from Ned Warren while the senior Covington purchased his acreage, once again, sight unseen, from the Rosen team. More than an adventure story of a fearless author-son trying to reclaim his inheritance from pig hunting, pit-bull owning, rifle-slinging, 21st Century land-pirates, I found the book a nostalgic feast of 20th Century life in the U.S.A. that most American families will never taste. A life that included home-cooked meals eaten together at your house, a mother home in the afternoon when the kids arrived from public school, and annual adventure-filled family vacations by cars prone to blowing tires and spouting steaming radiator water as if they were wheeled whales breaching the asphalt surfaces of Eisenhower's freeways.

Begun: 09/06/2005   Finished: 09/08/2005