Bless The Child by Cathy Cash Spellman

Part Of The Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

What if your drug-addicted daughter left a newborn baby on your doorstep and disappeared?  What if she came back three years later and took the child you love into a satanic cult?  And, what if that child turned out to be mankind's last hope in the war between good and evil? 
Would you risk your soul to save her?

Maggie O'Connor is about to answer these questions...maybe with her life.  A vibrant, attractive, recently widowed partner in a Manhattan antiquities shop, she is too young to be a grandmother.  Yet the love and the bond between her and her little granddaughter Cody is deep and rare enough to make her fight - not just for custody, but for the child's life itself.

The law won't back her up.  But the exorcist priest believes.  And the rabbi who practices Kabbalah knows too much not to believe.  And ancient, raging memories of an Egyptian prophecy are rising within her own terrifying dreams.

When I saw this book at the Friends of the Library Bookstore, sometime last year, I knew the title was familiar but couldn't remember why.  I went ahead and bought the hardcover, for $1, and took it home.  It's been sitting on my shelves ever since, but since this was Halloween month, I wanted to get it read.  Once I started reading it, I realized why it was so familiar.  This was the book the Kim Basinger movies, of the same name, was based off of.  Luckily for me, the book was way better than the movie, which was mediocre at best.

I'm going to be honest with you right up front, this won't be a very detailed review, I have been trying to figure out what I can say about the book without spoiling the surprises, and I've decided that's not very much.  If you have seen the movie, which for your sake I hope you haven't, you'll know the basic plot points already.  If not, I apologize now for what will probably being a boring review.

What drove this book for me were the characters.  Lead by the strong willed, Maggie, the entire cast seems to be ready made for the big screen.  There is the fiercely loyal cop who not only falls for Maggie, but is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her and Cody.  There is the priest who was sent into exile for his views, he too falls for Maggie, but it's the memories of the past and a crisis of faith that help him put that into context.  The white witch, bookstore owner, proves to not only be a powerful ally for Maggie, but a good friend as well.  Maggie also has a martial arts master, her friend and business partner, and her housekeeper that will do what needs to be done to rescue Cody.  I'm not even getting to the FBI agent, the rabbi, or the various international agents that all, in some way, help Maggie along the way.  It's a large cast of characters, not one of them was weakly drawn.

What I was really impressed with is that Cathy Cash Spellman manages to mix in Christianity, Satanism, Egyptian Mythology, Kabbalah, and a few other disciplines and make it work.  Nothing feels forced or out of place.  She was able to create a seamless narrative that allowed me to believe in the Isis Messenger and the amulets.  I actually was hoping they were true, but alas they weren't.

I'm not sure what else she has written but I'm curious enough about her writing style to do a little more digging into her other books.

Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund

Synopsis From Back Cover:

By decoding light from space, Lucy Bergmann's astrophysicist husband discovers the existence of extraterrestrial life; their friend, anthropologist Pierre Saad, unearths from the sands of Egypt an ancient alternative version of the book of Genesis.  To religious fanatics, these discoveries have the power to rock the foundations of their faith.  Entrusted to deliver this revolutionary news to both the scientific and religious communities, Lucy becomes the target of Perpetuity, a secret society.  When her small plane crashes, Lucy finds herself in a place called Eden with an American soldier named Adam, whose quest for both spiritual and carnal knowledge has driven him to madness.

I have started, deleted, started again, and deleted again more times than I think you really want to know or I am willing to admit to.  I have even wasted an hour on Facebook, avoiding this review.  For some reason I'm having a damned hard time reviewing this one and after about 2 hours of this, I think I know the answer why.  I loved the first 2/3 of the book, the last 1/3, I could really do without.  My problem is that last 1/3 is tainting my whole view of the book.

I loved the way the characters are introduced, especially  Lucy and Adam.  Lucy is happily married art therapist, who get to travel the world with her husband as he attends conferences.  After his tragic death, by a falling piano, her world is turned upside down for a bit.  A year later, when she is attending a conference in Cairo, being held to honor her deceased husband, she is still consumed by grief.  When her plane crashes into a sea, she climbs out, shedding her burning clothing as she goes.  By the time she reaches land, she is naked, hurt and searching for the naked man she saw as her plane was going down.

We first meet Adam after he has been abandoned by his captors who have stripped, raped, and beaten him repeatedly.  He is mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically broken.  Because of the setting he wakes up in, he thinks he is the Adam of the Bible and has been personally created by the hand of God.  He has decided living in a religious haze is better than dealing with the truth.  It doesn't help that he was already traumatized by the war itself.  Once Lucy joins him, he thinks God has finally sent him his Eve.

When these two characters come together I loved it.  Their interactions are fascinating to read and their story is told in a wonderfully quirky way that I find compelling.  Even when another American soldier joins them in Eden, I love the way all three of them work together.  There is a wonderfully drawn out examination of the themes behind the original Adam & Eve, but it's not done in a literal manner.  Everything is done in metaphor and comparison, and all of it in such a subtle manner that you could just choose to ignore it all and enjoy the story for itself.

It's when Lucy and Adam are taken out of that setting that I started to not appreciate what it was I was reading.  Out of that context, I found the religious explorations to be a little too heavy handed and not all that interesting.  There was no longer a smoothness about the story that I had been enjoying and the themes felt a little too forced at times and a bit boring on top of it.  I don't think it helped that the bad guys were one dimensional and took away from the story. I would have either liked a bigger, meaner villain or no villains at all.

If I was forced to give an answer to the question of whether or not I liked the overall story, I would have to say yes.  But it would be a hesitant yes, that could just as easily been a no.

I would like to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read/review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read other opinions on this one.

Afterlives of the Rich and Famous by Sylvia Browns

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Get an All-Access Pass to the Other Side

For decades—on television, in consultations, and in packed auditoriums across the country— renowned psychic Sylvia Browne has been asked one question again and again: “What is my favorite celebrity doing on the Other Side?” Now, for the first time, you can follow the red carpet into the heart of the spirit world. Browne reveals intimate details of how some of our most cherished actors, musicians, and public figures have fared since their deaths, giving us one more glimpse into the personalities we loved and lost. Both moving and rollicking, this is one book that’s truly impossible to put down!

Afterlives of the Rich and Famous features intimate afterlife accounts of Princess Diana, John Lennon, Heath Ledger, Marilyn Monroe, and other charismatic celebrities. By channeling her longtime spirit guide, Francine, Browne gained unrestricted access to a dimension most of us can only imagine, one in which telepathic communication is the norm and everyone occupies their healthy, thirty-year-old beautiful body. In candid reports, these stars reveal fascinating details about their new lives and the work they’re doing on the Other Side, many even sharing whether and where they intend to reincarnate.

With accounts written entirely in a trance state, Afterlives of the Rich and Famous offers an unprecedented look at life on the Other Side. You’ll find detailed descriptions as Browne brings the spirit world vividly to life and explains how we get there, from what transpires at the moment of death to the extraordinary welcome spirits receive. Afterlives of the Rich and Famous is a book that no one else could have written and a must-read for every fan of this extraordinary assembly of celebrities.

I'm not sure how much of Sylvia Browne's vision of the Afterlife is one that I personally belief in.  Probably not much of it at all, but what I appreciate is that she believes it.  This isn't a woman who is making stuff up to give false hope and  make a ton of money.  This is only the second book of hers that I've read, but the fact that she truly believes in what she writes is evident and welcomed.

This book, like the last one I read, is easy to read and she doesn't come across as thinking that she is better than us for not knowing this stuff to begin with.  The book itself is broken up into four sections that allowed me to quickly get a grasp on the material.  The Introduction, is simply that.  It gives a quick glimpse into her background and what the book is going to be about, the current happenings in the lives of celebrities that have passed away.  The second section is titled, "Death...and Then What?"  It simply gives a quick introduction to the Afterlife and what happens as someone departs from this world and goes back home.  The third section is the glossary and it came in handy a few times.  While nothing is too terribly technical, it's helpful to have a reference point for certain terms and ideas that the author talks about as she relates the afterlives of the celebrities.  The fourth section is the good stuff.  In it Sylvia recounts what some of the most cherished celebrities are now doing with their lives.

What I loved about this section is how she broke it up.  The first part of each celebrities bio starts off with who they were and what they accomplished on Earth.  After that, Sylvia lets us know what they are up to now.  She does this by going into a trance and channeling her spirit guide, Francine.  Francine then shares what information she has about the given subject.  If found the recap of their Earthly life to be helpful as it reminded me of some of the great movies and accomplishments they achieved before they passed.  It also recounts, briefly, their personal life and manner of death.

The second though gives the reader what they picked this book up for to begin with.  Sylvia lets us know that who met them on the other side (it was nice to know that animals are always the first ones to greet them), what their mindset was when they arrived, and what they have been doing since.  She reveals that Anna Nicole Smith has begun, once again, to study Buddhism and is training to teach meditation.  She has also reunited with her son and couldn't be more content.  Francine let Sylvia know that John Ritter along with Lucille Ball are taking studying cardiovascular genetic disorders in order to someday prevent them.  Natalie Wood, Dean Martin, Eva Gabor, and Gregory Peck are a few of the other celebrities that Sylvia allows us to know about.

Whether or not I believe in the vision that Sylvia Browne puts forth in this book doesn't really matter.  What matters, at least to me, is that she gives us something to believe in.  She gives us an account of the afterlife that is both reassuring and in a few cases dark at times.  Not everyone passes from this world into a perfect afterlife, Bela Lugosi being one of those.  No matter what though, Sylvia gives us a recounting of those afterlives as she sees them.  It's an unflinching and at times personal glimpse into the lives of those that we cherished while they were here with us and still miss since they have left.

I would like to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  You can read more thoughts on it by visiting the tour page.

The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World by His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, MD

Synopsis:

Blending common sense and modern psychiatry, The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World applies Buddhist traditions to twenty-first-century struggles in a relevant way. The result is a wise approach to dealing with human problems that is both optimistic and realistic, even in the most challenging times.

How can we expect to find happiness and meaning in our lives when the modern world seems such an unhappy place?

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has suffered enormously throughout his life, yet he always seems to be smiling and serene. how does he do it? In The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World, Dr. Howard Cutler walks readers through the Dalai Lama's philosophy on how to achieve peace of mind and come to terms with life's inherent suffering. Together, the two examine the roots of many of the problems facing the world and show us how we can approach these calamities in a way that alleviates suffering and helps us along in our personal quests to be happy. Through stories, meditations, and in-depth conversations, the Dalai Lama teaches us to identify the cultural influences and ways of thinking that lead to personal unhappiness, thereby making sense of the hardships we face personally as well as the afflictions suffered by others.

Back in my college days I would have loved this book. I would have poured over it's pages and gotten lost in the words. They would have been soaked in my brain and soul to be quoted for years to all my friends until they got sick of me saying them. Now this was when I was devouring books like The Celestine Prophecy and Mutant Message Down Under and could occasionally be found deep in thought taking myself way too seriously.

Now that I'm a little older, OK a little more than a little but not too much, I found myself fading in and out while I was reading it. I wanted to take it seriously and ingest the knowledge being offered by someone who is not only smarter than me but more at peace with themselves than I am. I just couldn't connect with it. I'm not sure if it's that I'm not in the right place in my life, if my mind was preoccupied with work (retail over Thanksgiving weekend), or if I'm just not that interested in the subject matter anymore. Whatever the reason I found myself wanting to enjoy it, but I couldn't.

I would highly encourage everyone to read this book because it may be the right fit for them. I may keep it around for a while and try it out again at a later date.