Year Of No Clutter

 

   All of us accumulate stuff. As we live our lives there are things that we receive that seem to mean to us importance.  Our report cards, our first piece of writing, and so on.

  Our parents, especially our mothers, coo over our accomplishments and save them in boxes to pass on to us once we are adults.

   Some of us become what is politely called hoarders, unable to throw away past records of life steps.

   We may even collect our trophies in separate rooms and close off the doors so others don’t catch on we are just unable to organize.

    Schaub in this memoir points out it is generational. At least it was for her family. Her father taught her by example to hoard. It is something taught and then caught.

    Sometimes it makes no sense. You may collect cans or paper or books or food even.  Sometimes even the science projects of long time ago get in your collection.

    But it can be controlled. Schaub took a whole year to get the habit down of control. Her delightful journey she took  along with her husband and children is detailed in a humorous way in this book.

    She had a place called the Hell room where she hide the clutter. Every hoarder has a place of clutter no matter what the name.

    Hoarders will recognize the problem. Non-hoarders will smile and cut the hoarders some slack, with understanding.

    I recommend this book highly. All will recognize themselves as we all are hoarders to a certain extent. If not hoarders we do have clutter of different types.

   Read. Weep. Laugh.

   The book is published by Sourcebooks and retails for $15.99.

 

The Chamberlain Key by Timothy P. Smith

 

   The idea that the original manuscripts of the Bible had secret meaning behind the words used-- secrets that were hidden until now--has been with us a long time.

   When I saw this book in an advertisement in a respectable Theological magazine, I knew I had to get it and review it and set the record straight.

   This teaching that the words of the original languages hide some secret message is still being circulated today and being taught in some so called respectable theological seminaries. So it is an issue that must be answered. And having books such as this come out don’t help.

   It is being marketed as a nonfiction book. Smith is not a theologian as far as I know. It seems he got it in his mind that since he had six sons and a daughter and his father had six sons and a daughter and Leah, in the book of Genesis, the first book in the Hebrew Bible, had six sons and a daughter, there was a message hidden for him to discover in the Hebrew text.

   He claims to have discovered a key code using his first name which unlocks a message which has been hidden from us.  It is best explain by Smith himself at www.chamberlainkey.com.

   All I am going to say is this is poor Hermeneutics , the study of interpretation.  That is, the rules to proper understanding of the text. This story is not good scholarship.

   I cannot and won’t recommend it

   That said let me say I was sent this book gratis for the purpose of a review by blogging for books. Com. I was not required to give it a pass. I was only required to read it and post a review in my book blog.

    All views are my own and do not reflect on the publisher.

You Know BC and AD

   Once again I will be reviewing a book handed to me at the Los Angeles Book Festival. This one is a delightful tale covering the period before the creation of man and the creation of the angels.

    I expected this to be somewhat like The Screwtape Letters which C. S. Lewis penned.

    Not quite. This book in a creative manner attempts to explain what heaven and the angels were like before Lucifer fall.   Or you could see it as using God and the angels as a family. The angels seem to have rivalry going on. On that level it also works.Or the author wants to show a  family that has troubles,maybe, this is a creative way to do it.

     It is not meant to be an angelology--that minor doctrine which covers the angels in Christian theological studies. It is meant to be a fun book.

    I myself found it very disrespectful both of the spiritual creatures that inhabit the spiritual realm and the Godhead. But as for the purpose of entertainment, it does a good job.
    You can tell it is self published, as the manuscript is poorly constructed and in need of a final proofreading. The word to and too were confused. Transitions were weak.

    As a story, the suspense also was weak. Even books looking at events with a touch of humor need that element.

   More respect needed to be shown to the Godhead. Nevertheless I am sure Carothers didn’t mean to write more than a piece of Christian Fantasy Fiction, as stated in her preface.

   She writes well and knows her subject. There really is not much out there about that time period to help in her research. So her imagination had to take over. For that she should be congratulated. She did it.

   She used Xlibris as her self publisher.

   Information about Xlibus can be found at: www.Xlibris.com or the book can be purchased at: orders@Xlibris.com.

Arms From the Sea by Rich Shapero

   Every year the city of Los Angeles, in the state of California, holds a Book Festival where publishers and self publishers display their books to the public.

   I have a few to review. They are what would be known as self published stories. As a whole, the area of self publication is fine when one author decides his point of view must be released on the public, and he or she is willing to pay-- sometimes dearly-- for the privilege of being out in the market place.

   This first book is in the genre of science fiction. It is set in the future. 

    It opens with an act of defiance. In this city of salt a young man defiles a monument. In order not to be captured he decides to die rather than be caught and imprisoned. So he decides to bite the capsule rather than to  allow the state to capture and terminate him.   This action  moves him from one state of existence to another.

   He is not dead. Or is he? He has passed from one world to another. Will he manage to fit in?

   And when he wants to redeem the world he came from, will he succeed? Can he change it?

   The book ends with him in the hospital. He has been captured. For his crime he has lost his hand.

    I see this as science fiction in the characters used. They are not all human. There are spirits also. In this sense I see it as science fiction but not quite fantasy.

    The author’s use of the parameters of the genre seem, to me, to be handled poorly. There is so much he could have done, but his message—the purpose for his prose, got in the way. He seems to want to say dreams can have the power to change reality.

   He uses the symbol of the sea as the genesis of all dreams and the force of change.

   Does he succeed in proving his thesis, whatever that is?

   I don’t think do.  Each fiction story must have a reason for existence. This book, in my opinion, only could have seen the light of existence because he author found a vanity press to take his money and publish it.

    To contact the author you can go to richshapero.com.