Same Kind of Different As Me March 8, 2009

A modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together

 

Authors: Ron Hall & Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent

 

Genre: Memoir

 

ISBN: 978-0-8499-1910-7

 

Intended Audience:  I obviously did not realize this at the time of purchase, but this book would be most enjoyed by those those of the age 40 and up, and with strong religious beliefs.  

 

Summary:  Same Kind of Different As Me is two different stories told by two different men, who meet one day and begin to share with each other and create a new story together.  Ron Hall is an art dealer living in an upscale neighborhood, working to fund his lavish lifestyle, and Denver Moore is a homeless man who frequents local shelters and soup kitchens, just working to make it through the day.  Debbie Moore drags Ron along to help in the soup kitchen, and feels a calling from God that Ron and Denver need to be friends.  With her urging, the two begin a lasting friendship that changes both their lives drastically.

 

Review:  Ron and Denver both wrote the novel as two separate writers with two separate stories.  This was a good technique to use because Denver wrote in his negro slang and told his stories of slavery and racism, and Ron wrote from his perspective, which helped to show how completely different their lives were.  I think this also hurt the novel because Ron’s perspective completely dominated the novel and left Denver with fewer chapters and less of an impact on the reader.  I think they also went off the focus of their amazing and unlikely friendship, and went into too much depth with Debbie, the person who brought them together.  They didn’t properly utilize their pages, and they often lost focus of the story.  Apart from the actual novel and writing technique, there was one aspect of the story I wish they had left out.  Debbie was a die-hard Christian, and they mention several times her “callings” and “experiences” with God that are described as nothing short of bizarre.  There’s one particular instance when she claimed to have actually felt God’s presence with her, and her reactions and the entire situation were just written as if she were a crazed lunatic.  This is still a good story, but a little less Ron, Debbie, and God and it could have been a great novel.

 

Rating:  2 out of 5

Good In Bed March 4, 2009

Author: Jennifer Weiner

 

Genre: Fiction/Romance

 

ISBN: 0-7434-1817-4

 

Intended Audience: With a title like “Good In Bed,” what more do you expect than your classic female comedy/romance novel.  An easy read, any female would appreciate this brain-candy, but girls under the age of about 16 might not be able to relate to the story.

 

Summary:  Cannie Shapiro has the classic life of every main character in female-oriented novels.  She’s in her twenties, is (surprise!) a writer, is overweight, and happy with her life.  Until her ex-boyfriend writes an article about “Loving a Larger Woman” and all of America reads about his experiences in their plus-size relationship.  Cannie struggles with her ex-boyfriend’s betrayal, and her life falls apart.  When she begins picking up the pieces, she emerges a completely different person, with a completely different life.

 

Review:  The novel is obviously not one to challenge your vocabulary or make you think philosophically, but sometimes it’s nice to read and just vacate the brain for awhile.  I always say these types of girly novels are better than “chick-flicks” because they’re more than 2 hours long, and you get to create the people involved in the relationship.  This novel, however, did not live up to these relatively low standards of a simple comedy/love movie in the form of a book.  The love interest was old and kinda creepy, the main character just loses it and goes mental for a period of time, and the ex-boyfriend is completely non-existent.  I don’t know why Weiner even bothered to write him in, because for being the main antagonist, he didn’t really do much.  Now I know that all novels are subjective, so someone else could read it and see Andy Baldwin with Jessica Biel and hearts and flowers and la-de-da, but it just wasn’t there for me.  Aside from the character issues, I feel the novel was also poorly organized.  It starts off slow and steady, with the plot moving along at a slow but consistent pace, and then it’s as if Weiner were running low on paper and had to quickly solve issues, make ammends, and unite the happy couple before she ran out.  The ending just seemed so sloppy and botched that it took away from the rest of the somewhat decent novel.  The story line is not original, so to be anything noteworthy, the novel had to shine like the Isadora diamond in “How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days.”  And it most certainly did not. 

 

Rating:  1 out of 5

Beesly March 3, 2009

“When you’re a kid you assume your parents are soulmates. My kids are going to be right about that.”

This I Believe March 3, 2009

There Is No God

By Penn Jillette

I believe that there is no god. I’m beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in god. Not believing in god is easy, you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love, and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in god and then look for evidence of god. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.
But, this “This I Believe” thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, “This I believe-I believe there is no god.”
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows, and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world, and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery, and I get joy every day.
Believing there’s no god means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there’s no god stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without god, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart, and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,” or another two words that the FCC likes less. But, all obscenity is less insulting than, “How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do.” So, believing there is no god lets me be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.
Believing there is no god means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No god means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no god gives me more room for belief in family, people, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O, and all the other things I can prove that make this life the best life I will ever have.

“This I Believe” is a fantastic collection of essays written by some of America’s most revered, unusual, and normal, average-Joes. This particular essay was written by Penn of the “Penn and Teller” comedy/magic show in Vegas. Crazy as he may seem, his “This I Believe” essay stood out to me more than Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bill Gate’s. To genuinely understand and have an appreciation for what he has to say, I feel you need to read, contemplate, question, and then re-read. I may not completely agree with everything he believes, but I feel he has a lot of interesting insight and ideas, and his essay makes me contemplate what I believe. And so begins my essay…