Beautiful Lies: A Novel

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Health improvements

WOW!!! I predict a wonderful future for Lisa Unger's first novel, "Beautiful Lies." I forecast its presence on the NY Times Bestseller List for many a moon. However, unlike a number of successful bestselling novels, this one is well written. It also has a most original plot and a quirky, three dimensional protagonist, as well as realistic minor characters. And, oddly enough, there are no real villains in a story where bad things certainly happen. In the novel her main character, Ridley Jones, says/thinks "there are no heroes or villains in real life, 'only good and bad choices.'

Our gal Ridley is a thirty-something freelance writer who does work for Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, etc., so she is pretty successful. But rents are high in New York City and even successful freelancers are hard pressed at times to come up with the rent. Ridley does not have this problem. She inherited a healthy sum of money from her uncle, "who wasn't actually an uncle," but her father's best friend. He absolutely adored her. This money cushions her against potential poverty and allows her freedom from financial worries. And "freedom" is a concept of immense importance to her.

Ridley's "fairly uneventful life" is turned upside down one morning...the morning she gains a bit more than her share of 15 minutes of fame. She sees a toddler about to be hit by a speeding truck and leaps into the street to save the boy. Fortuitously...or not, a photographer is on the scene and Ridley, in full action, appears on the cover of the local papers. The story is picked up by the morning talk shows where she and her family bask in the glory of her brief but bright spotlight. They have no idea what her moment of fame will bring her...like an envelope in the mail containing a note and an old photograph. The faded photo is of a young woman - who could be Ridley's double, a man and a little girl who resembles Ridley Jones as a little girl. The note includes a phone number and the question, "Are you my daughter?"

Unhinged, our heroine seeks reassurance from her doting father, a successful pediatrician, and her mother, a controlling, uptight woman. They slough off the incident and tell her that some wacko is having a joke at her expense, insisting that they are her birth parents. Still uncertain, she looks for her older brother, a drug addict who lives on he streets, and when she finds him he makes some disturbing comments which fuel her confusion.

Then she meets her handsome and mysterious new neighbor, Jake, a sculptor and a real hottie. Her life will never be the same.

Set in Manhattan's East Village, just a few blocks from where I live, Ms. Unger really brings the neighborhood to life with her wonderful descriptive writing. "Beautiful Lies," a taut psychological thriller is 375 pages long and I read it in 2 sittings. It is truly UNPUTDOWNABLE!!! I can't recommend a book more highly than that!
Magnetic clasps - Clever Clasp.
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

Nineteen Minutes: A novel by Jodi Picoult

Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends
Software improvements

This time around, Picoult finally lived up to my hopes and she did so by tackling a difficult subject, one that has been in many novels thus far...a school shooting, a look at both the victims' world and that of the shooter (who is also a victim, in his own way), the alienation of kids who are on the outside and the interconnection between the popular kids and those who aren't. Although the novel is graphic, it would certainly provoke plenty of discussion and understanding between parents and teens, although parents may want to consider how ready their teen is to read a book so detailed and so complex and with graphic sexuality (including rough sex).

As a long-time reader of her books, my one disappointment with Picoult has always been how often her endings seemed to fall apart into stereotypical or "pat" solutions, when the rest of her writing, up to that point, would be so very, very strong. And yet, I KEPT buying her books, because she did everything else so well - solid, compelling characters, great plots (until those endings), riveting events. I kept rooting for her. I knew she had the chops to produce a solid book, from start to finish, without those letdowns at the end (and I'm sure others will disagree with me about the endings, as she IS a popular writer).

This time,with Nineteen Minutes, she pulls it off, does everything right...and I'm delighted to be able to say so. I wasn't able to stop reading, except for short periods when I had to stop and think about WHAT I was reading. I have raised three teenagers and her portrayal of teenage life, the cruelties of the bullies, the fears and insecurities suffered by even the most popular kids, was eerily accurate.

Buy this one, savor every word and take time to think about how you'd feel in a similar situation. This is the kind of book that can be life-changing and motivate readers to change things and make the world better for our children. How and why readers do that is up to them, of course but, at the least, they'll be haunted by this book long after they finish it.

As for me, I'm going to reread it - and soon. It is simply that good.
Parents save where you can - get $500 in Pampers or Huggies.
Absurdistan: A Novel

The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
Goal improvements

Nathan is a retired life insurance salesman who has lung cancer that has gone into remission. Recently divorced, the assets split amicably, he decides to go back to his roots and live the rest of his life in Brooklyn. He rents a flat in his old neighbourhood and slowly settles into what seems to be a quiet retirement. Nathan has also started to write a book of sorts, "The Book of Human Folly", an account of every blunder, embarrassment, idiocy and inane act he has committed and experienced throughout his long life. These tales of life's absurdities are also about other people, revealing the pure folly of the human condition. The narrative for the most part centres on Nathan's nephew, Tom, a failed academic who has given up on life, where they coincidentally meet in Brooklyn, and grow to be good friends. This short summary may appear boring, a book about normal people living mundane lives, but that's what makes this novel so good, the mundane becomes the miraculous, the ordinary the extraordinary.

Paul Auster is arguably one of the greatest living American writers working today. Reading his novel's is a captivating journey into the extraordinary, a glimpse at possibilities, an opportunity to view the world from a different perspective, and in some cases, one changes and sees life differently, a sometimes for the better.

I'll never forget my first Auster novel, "A New York Trilogy" becoming totally submerged in a world so alien, so odd and so fascinating, that it was astounding to discover an author with such talent and erudition. This writer had something special happening, thus I read everything I could get my hands on: "Moon Palace", "The Music of Chance", "Leviathan" and "Mr.Vertigo", which happens to be one of the most original tales to come out in the last twenty-five years. "The Brooklyn Follies" had me enthralled from the first chapter, wanting to know more about these characters, their talents, loves and mishaps, coming to the conclusion, that we are by and large a strange species, and at bottom, it is our need for companionship, love if you will, that gets us into trouble but also keeps us struggling, at times making life worth living, and sometimes a living hell.

Nathan is at worst a cynic, although a man who really wants to do the right thing, help his apathetic nephew, reconnect with his only daughter, innocently flirt with the married waitress at his lunchtime haunt, (which has dire consequences) and write about the human condition. Nathan is everyman, a good soul and has grown not to take life too seriously, which he has discovered comes with age.

This is a compelling novel about ordinary people with dreams and aspirations, disappointments and triumphs, embarrassments and success - a depiction of the modern human condition with all its craziness, stupidity and humour.

An excellent novel.
Distance Education Helps You Get Ahead.
You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation

The Brief History of the Dead: A novel

The One Percent Doctrine
Personal Finances - K.I.S.S.ing Your Checking And Credit Card Accounts

With the publishing industry fixating on the next DaVinci Code, alphabetical mysteries, and serial killers, it's a treat to find a truly original young writer. And Brockmeier is no flash in the pan, either; He's won the O. Henry Award, the Nelson Algren Award, An Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

I would imagine some readers thought Brockmeier was riding on the coattails of the LOVELY BONES, but that's just not the case. Brockmeier doles out equal portions of pessimism and optimism, and just when you think you've got this pitcher figured out he throws you a knuckleball.

The novel alternates between the adventures of Laura Byrd, a Coca Cola researcher stranded in the Antarctic, and the City of the Dead. The earth has been decimated by a virus called "The Blinks." Brockmeier's notion of an afterlife is a way station where people must stay until people whom they have known on earth have also died. Over half of them have known Laura Byrd.

The people who live in the City of the Dead are not ghosts. They will remind you of your next-door neighbors. They get up, have breakfast, and go to work, just like normal people. They appear to have corporal bodies. One of the characters, the Blind Man, wonders about this. He has a theory about the difference between the spirit and the soul. He believes the spirit connects the body and the soul, and that when the spirit dies, we move on to the next life.

Parts of the novel are definitely satirical. There's a Coca Cola executive who's still trying to cover-up Coca Cola's connection to the Blinks for one thing. It can also be funny as when one of the new arrivals, an avowed atheist, is thrilled that he was wrong. But was he? Brockmeier never really lets the reader gain a firm footing.

Brockmeier is smart enough to alternate between Laura story and the City of the Dead. Without Laura the novel might lose its credibility. When Laura strikes out on her "sledge" to find her co-researchers, Puckett and Joyce, we're hoping one of them is alive and immune and maybe Laura will start a new civilization. At least I was. But maybe that's the incurable romantic in me.

Some will find the ending a bit disappointing. It was metaphysical to say the least. It reminded me a lot of the ending in 2001 Space Odyssey. But I remember watching that movie with my dad, a farmer with his feet planted firmly on the ground, and he was just as transfixed as I was. You will be, too, if you give THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD a chance.
FREE package of Dove beauty products.
Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman

House of Meetings by Martin Amis

Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends
It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle - make the change.

Martin Amis's new novel is House of Meetings. Obviously making use of some of the research associated with his previous non-fiction book, Koba the Dread, which was about Stalin (though he also acknowledges his debt to some later books than his own) he has written a novel about a "survivor" of the Gulag. But of course the novel is in great part about the ways in which this man didn't really survive the Gulag.

The narrator is a Russian born in 1919. He is telling his story, in what seems to be a long letter, to his stepdaughter, an American girl, sometime in 2004 or so. In the present he is taking a trip back to the location of the slave labor camp in which he spent ten years from about 1946 to 1956. He is also agonizing about the botched hostage situation in North Ossetia, ongooing as he writes. It becomes clear he intends to die soon, and this narrative is a confessional, as well as a lament for his native country.

The fulcrum of the story is a love triangle, involving the narrator, his ten years younger brother Lev, and a beautiful young Jewish girl named Zoya. Just after the War (in which the narrator, in his words, raped his way across East Germany -- in company, to be sure, with the rest of the Russian Army), Zoya moved into their neighborhood in Moscow, and immediately established a reputation as a woman of little character. But a very beautiful woman. The narrator, a war hero of sorts, handsome, used to having his way with women, becomes obsessed with her, but is rejected. And ends up being sent away to a labor camp. And he is astonished to learn that his rather ugly younger brother has taken up with Zoya, and indeed married her. But then Lev too is sent to the camps -- the same camp. And the two men spend several years there -- though Lev is a pacifist, and refuses to become involved in fights against the camp bullies, or the administrators. Which leads to something of a rift between the two men -- a rift exacerbated in the narrator's mind by his jealousy. But something changes horrendously when Zoya is allowed to make a conjugal visit -- in the "House of Meetings". And when soon after that, the camp is closed and the inmates freed.

The later life of the three is also described. The narrator is fairly successful, in Russian terms, eventually emigrating to the U.S., while Lev's marriage disintegrates, and he marries another woman, and has a son, destined to die in Afghanistan. But all is leading to a final confrontation between the narrator and Zoya, and to a final revelation in a long buried letter from Lev to the narrator. All this incident is skillfully unfolded, if to be honest the final letter isn't quite the explosion we have been led to expect.

Much of the interest in the novel is in the quite compelling descriptions of life in the labor camp. Besides being a portrayal of slave camp life, and a portrayal of a ruined man, it is to some extent a pained depiction of a dying country. It is very well written. A bit less "bravura" in prosody than earlier Amis books, though still often arresting. And very moving, quite believable, quite profound. One of Martin Amis's best novels, for certain.
To Do To Lose Weight
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Goal improvements

Mega-best-selling Kellerman delivers another psychological suspense tale starring shrink hero Alex Delaware. While the Delaware novels are wildly popular, this one, at least, gets by only on plot. The characters are sketchily drawn, except for Delaware's new dog, who receives far more intensive (and ridiculous) development than any human in the book. Kellerman also takes the shortcut of having his characters deliver plot details and provide background motivations in artificial dialogue that should have been left to an omniscient narrator. But Kellerman does have a strong plot going for him (once we've waded through excessive descriptions of meals and interiors). The story centers on a young woman, whom Delaware treated as a child and who returns to tell the psychologist of the deathbed confession of her aunt and adopted mother--a woman whom Alex remembers as a heroically capable mother and nurse. The recently deceased woman allegedly told her niece that she had killed someone. The crux of the mystery is whether there was a murder at all, or whether it was the medication talking, or guilt over a patient's death. Delaware and his sidekick, detective pal Milo Sturgis, follow the tangled trail to a surprising conclusion. Good story unfairly weighed down by bad dialogue and stick characterizations. Kellerman's enormous fan base, however, will overlook the novel's flaws the way we excuse our loved ones' weaknesses. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Healthy Tips For Every Day
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

Beautiful Lies: A Novel

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster
NLP Concepts And Methods

WOW!!! I predict a wonderful future for Lisa Unger's first novel, "Beautiful Lies." I forecast its presence on the NY Times Bestseller List for many a moon. However, unlike a number of successful bestselling novels, this one is well written. It also has a most original plot and a quirky, three dimensional protagonist, as well as realistic minor characters. And, oddly enough, there are no real villains in a story where bad things certainly happen. In the novel her main character, Ridley Jones, says/thinks "there are no heroes or villains in real life, 'only good and bad choices.'

Our gal Ridley is a thirty-something freelance writer who does work for Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, etc., so she is pretty successful. But rents are high in New York City and even successful freelancers are hard pressed at times to come up with the rent. Ridley does not have this problem. She inherited a healthy sum of money from her uncle, "who wasn't actually an uncle," but her father's best friend. He absolutely adored her. This money cushions her against potential poverty and allows her freedom from financial worries. And "freedom" is a concept of immense importance to her.

Ridley's "fairly uneventful life" is turned upside down one morning...the morning she gains a bit more than her share of 15 minutes of fame. She sees a toddler about to be hit by a speeding truck and leaps into the street to save the boy. Fortuitously...or not, a photographer is on the scene and Ridley, in full action, appears on the cover of the local papers. The story is picked up by the morning talk shows where she and her family bask in the glory of her brief but bright spotlight. They have no idea what her moment of fame will bring her...like an envelope in the mail containing a note and an old photograph. The faded photo is of a young woman - who could be Ridley's double, a man and a little girl who resembles Ridley Jones as a little girl. The note includes a phone number and the question, "Are you my daughter?"

Unhinged, our heroine seeks reassurance from her doting father, a successful pediatrician, and her mother, a controlling, uptight woman. They slough off the incident and tell her that some wacko is having a joke at her expense, insisting that they are her birth parents. Still uncertain, she looks for her older brother, a drug addict who lives on he streets, and when she finds him he makes some disturbing comments which fuel her confusion.

Then she meets her handsome and mysterious new neighbor, Jake, a sculptor and a real hottie. Her life will never be the same.

Set in Manhattan's East Village, just a few blocks from where I live, Ms. Unger really brings the neighborhood to life with her wonderful descriptive writing. "Beautiful Lies," a taut psychological thriller is 375 pages long and I read it in 2 sittings. It is truly UNPUTDOWNABLE!!! I can't recommend a book more highly than that!
Easy Way To Lose Weight
Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Jane Dyer

300 by Frank Miller, Lynn Varley

300 by Frank Miller, Lynn Varley
A Story of Success and The Law of Attraction

The Battle of Thermopylae ranks as one of the ancient world's most important events, where Spartan King Leonidas and his 300-man bodyguard met the massive army of Emperor Xerxes of Persia, who intended to add Greece to his empire. To no one's surprise, the Spartans were destroyed. While the battle bought the Greeks enough time to defeat the mighty Persians, it was more important for the metaphor it created: occasionally one has to lose to win. This is clearly the inspiration behind Miller's attempt to place this epic tale in the context of a graphic novel. A renowned comics artist and writer known for hard-boiled stories of almost operatic intensity and stylishly overwrought violence, Miller (Sin City) injects his own brand of graphic sensationalism into this ancient tale of national survival. Miller clearly isn't as interested in being a historian as he is in telling a story, but his portrayal of the ancient world is compelling. His drawings of the bearded Leonidas are pensive and starkly imperial. The Persian King Xerxes is represented as majestically African, his body covered in a gaudy and bejeweled network of meticulously rendered chains and bracelets. Form and content are ideally wedded: Miller's writing is stark, his drawings moody and dramatic, and intensified by Varley's grimly appropriate palette of earth and blood. The reader can see and feel the harshness of both the Grecian landscape and Sparta's battle-worshipping culture, as Miller presents the complex historical moment facing the 300. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Which Shampoo do you prefer?
Untapped Riches: Never Pay Off Your Mortgage--and Other Surprising Secrets for Building Wealth

Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends

Absurdistan: A Novel
Get rid of acne! Participate now for a year supply of skin products.

Is it really over? Is this wonderful series really coming to an end? Sadly, it appears so, as this is apparently the final book in the conversations with God series (which has changed my life for the better). But while it may be the final book, it is one of the most important, for it deals with the one issue that everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from, must inevitably face: What happens to us after we die?

That's the one big question that is looked at in this book. Just what does happen when we die? Happily, the answers put forth not only make sense and give a reasonable view of the transition from physical life to spiritual life, but when one takes the answers given in this book and compare them to near death experiences and other other-worldly experiences, they match up.

The big message of the book is this: It is impossible to live and die without God, but it is possible not to know this. No matter where you are, what you do, or how you die, God is with you. It's possible to know this, and it's possible not to know this.

On to the subject of death itself, the book goes over death and it's implications. There's a lot of stuff presented here, so i'll just list some of the biggies:

1. Death happens in three stages, realizing that you are not a body, experiencing what you want to experience after death, and merging with your higher self.

2. One goes home to heaven when they have experienced all that they wanted to experience in this physical lifetime. The spirit of the individual may know this and when the lifetime will finish, but frequently the individual does not know when he or she will die.

3. The death experience is different for everyone, depending on your expectations, views, and ideas. If you expect to find nothing, you will be allowed to experience that (the second stage of death) until you decide to look for something else. If you expect to find yourself embraced in the arms of a loving God, you will be allowed to experience that. If you expect to find yourself being judged and sent to hell, you will be allowed to experience that (though you can change it by choosing to look for something else).

4. Death is simply becoming whole again, for you splintered upon birth. Death is the transition from one state of existance to another. Everyone inevitably makes it home.

That's just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what happens after death. There's a life review, there's the big question that you will be asked (so big that all of heaven will pause to hear your answer), and there's deciding what to do next. Overall the book does accomplish what it set out to do, to explain death, what it is, what happens, and how you affect your own experience.

Granted, what's said should be taken with a grain of salt because we, of course, cannot confirm for certian what happens after physical death. I don't agree with everything said in here about death (For example, spirits who see themselves in hell don't feel it. I'm not quite sure what to think of that), but I find myself agreeing with most of what is said here. There are some passages in paticular (the passages on page 109-111 made my heart and my spirit soar as I read them) that are just so beautifuly written and so emotionally moving that they are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful and divine words ever inspired to be put on paper.

In addition to death itself, the book also discusses other aspects that add to the death process such as the topic of how one perceives things. One big note here is that your perception really changes your life and your world. Your perception helps determine, to an enormous extent, how your life plays out. I love this quote on page 214:

God: It's really quite simple. Tune in to how you feel.

Neale: Now I can just see someone saying, "Boy, what a piece of new age jargon-Get in touch with your feelings."

God: Those who see it as jargon will experience it as jargon. Those who see it as wisdom will open the door to a whole new world.

There's also a good amount of material describing why you're here on earth in the first place (experience things that help you grow and evolve as an individual spirit). There are no victims and villians, and everyone has their own truth, but there are people, places, and things that help guide people to that truth within them. Some people may indeed dismiss such statements, but when one thinks about it in a certian context, it does make sense. How does one really find wisdom and truth?

God: All human beings are born with the wisdom of the universe imprinted on thier souls. It is in the DNA of everything...this is why, when people are confronted with great wisdom, it often sounds so familiar to them. They agree with it almost at once. There is no argument. There is only a remembering (page 5).

I could keep writting for pages at how incredible and easy to understand this book is, but I will finish with this: What is in this book is not for everyone. Followers of religion may hate what it says and others may say that it's all a bunch of wacked out new age propoganda, but there is good stuff in here. When I got this book I was going through a stage in my life where I was afraid of what was going to happen to me after my death. Yet, after reading this book and recognizing (remembering?) so much good stuff in it, all my fear of death has vanished completely, replaced with that simple statement. "It is impossible to live and die without God, but it is possible to not know this." Although it's sad to see such a wonderful and life changing series of books come to an end, it has finished with a wonderful ending that helps to reassure, comfort, and explain one of the things we as humans fear the most.

Thank you Mr. Walsch. Thank you so much for bringing us all these wonderful books. Rest assured that there is one spirit, one person out in the world whom you have helped guide towards a more loving path in life. Thank you so much.

Highly recommended.
How To Prevent Weight Gain
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury

Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends

Beautiful Lies: A Novel
Sephora Pure Beauty Bath and Body Works Participate now and get your $500 Visa Gift Card.

Is it really over? Is this wonderful series really coming to an end? Sadly, it appears so, as this is apparently the final book in the conversations with God series (which has changed my life for the better). But while it may be the final book, it is one of the most important, for it deals with the one issue that everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from, must inevitably face: What happens to us after we die?

That's the one big question that is looked at in this book. Just what does happen when we die? Happily, the answers put forth not only make sense and give a reasonable view of the transition from physical life to spiritual life, but when one takes the answers given in this book and compare them to near death experiences and other other-worldly experiences, they match up.

The big message of the book is this: It is impossible to live and die without God, but it is possible not to know this. No matter where you are, what you do, or how you die, God is with you. It's possible to know this, and it's possible not to know this.

On to the subject of death itself, the book goes over death and it's implications. There's a lot of stuff presented here, so i'll just list some of the biggies:

1. Death happens in three stages, realizing that you are not a body, experiencing what you want to experience after death, and merging with your higher self.

2. One goes home to heaven when they have experienced all that they wanted to experience in this physical lifetime. The spirit of the individual may know this and when the lifetime will finish, but frequently the individual does not know when he or she will die.

3. The death experience is different for everyone, depending on your expectations, views, and ideas. If you expect to find nothing, you will be allowed to experience that (the second stage of death) until you decide to look for something else. If you expect to find yourself embraced in the arms of a loving God, you will be allowed to experience that. If you expect to find yourself being judged and sent to hell, you will be allowed to experience that (though you can change it by choosing to look for something else).

4. Death is simply becoming whole again, for you splintered upon birth. Death is the transition from one state of existance to another. Everyone inevitably makes it home.

That's just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what happens after death. There's a life review, there's the big question that you will be asked (so big that all of heaven will pause to hear your answer), and there's deciding what to do next. Overall the book does accomplish what it set out to do, to explain death, what it is, what happens, and how you affect your own experience.

Granted, what's said should be taken with a grain of salt because we, of course, cannot confirm for certian what happens after physical death. I don't agree with everything said in here about death (For example, spirits who see themselves in hell don't feel it. I'm not quite sure what to think of that), but I find myself agreeing with most of what is said here. There are some passages in paticular (the passages on page 109-111 made my heart and my spirit soar as I read them) that are just so beautifuly written and so emotionally moving that they are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful and divine words ever inspired to be put on paper.

In addition to death itself, the book also discusses other aspects that add to the death process such as the topic of how one perceives things. One big note here is that your perception really changes your life and your world. Your perception helps determine, to an enormous extent, how your life plays out. I love this quote on page 214:

God: It's really quite simple. Tune in to how you feel.

Neale: Now I can just see someone saying, "Boy, what a piece of new age jargon-Get in touch with your feelings."

God: Those who see it as jargon will experience it as jargon. Those who see it as wisdom will open the door to a whole new world.

There's also a good amount of material describing why you're here on earth in the first place (experience things that help you grow and evolve as an individual spirit). There are no victims and villians, and everyone has their own truth, but there are people, places, and things that help guide people to that truth within them. Some people may indeed dismiss such statements, but when one thinks about it in a certian context, it does make sense. How does one really find wisdom and truth?

God: All human beings are born with the wisdom of the universe imprinted on thier souls. It is in the DNA of everything...this is why, when people are confronted with great wisdom, it often sounds so familiar to them. They agree with it almost at once. There is no argument. There is only a remembering (page 5).

I could keep writting for pages at how incredible and easy to understand this book is, but I will finish with this: What is in this book is not for everyone. Followers of religion may hate what it says and others may say that it's all a bunch of wacked out new age propoganda, but there is good stuff in here. When I got this book I was going through a stage in my life where I was afraid of what was going to happen to me after my death. Yet, after reading this book and recognizing (remembering?) so much good stuff in it, all my fear of death has vanished completely, replaced with that simple statement. "It is impossible to live and die without God, but it is possible to not know this." Although it's sad to see such a wonderful and life changing series of books come to an end, it has finished with a wonderful ending that helps to reassure, comfort, and explain one of the things we as humans fear the most.

Thank you Mr. Walsch. Thank you so much for bringing us all these wonderful books. Rest assured that there is one spirit, one person out in the world whom you have helped guide towards a more loving path in life. Thank you so much.

Highly recommended.
Healthy Eating Diets
Jamie Foxx Comedy Roast

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman
Parents save where you can - get $500 in Pampers or Huggies.

I read Dr. Collins' book with great anticipation, because of the his scientific reputation (one of the most respected research scientists in the world and the head of the Human Genome Project). I figured he'd offer a balanced approach to scientific and theological issues. I think that's why many people will read this book.

So, to the text. A large portion of the book is devoted to the basics of science such as the Big Bang, the theory of evolution, etc... In my opinion, this part of the book is probably one of the better overviews of the contentious issues in science today. Dr Collins makes an extremely convincing case for the plausibility and likelihood that the Universe was created through the Big Bang and that life on earth was created through evolution. This is the part of the book I have no qualms with.

The second part of the book is where my quibbles begin. At the beginning of this section Dr Collins lays out the case for the "Anthropic principle", a hypothesis that points to various aspects of the universe and suggests that they may point to God. Many of these points are very interesting and make for some thought-provoking discussions.

The more dubious part, to me, is where Dr Collins points to parts of the human psyche as evidence of Godliness. While initially deploring any explanation that suggests "God's in the Gaps", Dr Collins continues on to suggest that the human altruistic drive along with the collective search for spirituality is evidence of God. With this, Dr. Collins falls prey to the very philosophy he deplores, the "God in the Gaps" theory. It's unclear to me if he realizes that he's fallen prey to it, as he does not address this potential problem in his philosophy. He does point out that some suggest alternate reasons for the humans altruistic drive and search for spirituality, but ultimately rejects them because of the science, not the philosophy, behind them.

After this there are some middling attempts to synthesize parts of the bible with science, but they fall pretty short in my eyes. Dr Collins seems to be in favor of a semi-literal interpretation of most of the bible, but makes halfhearted attempts to convince the reader of his position. This largely continues until the end of the book where Dr Collins discusses some interesting ethical dilemmas.

So to summarize, this is a really great science book and has some decent theological points, but there's nothing too conclusive in it.
Healthy Weight Lose
My Secret: A PostSecret Book

House of Meetings by Martin Amis

Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again
Desiring What Is

Martin Amis's new novel is House of Meetings. Obviously making use of some of the research associated with his previous non-fiction book, Koba the Dread, which was about Stalin (though he also acknowledges his debt to some later books than his own) he has written a novel about a "survivor" of the Gulag. But of course the novel is in great part about the ways in which this man didn't really survive the Gulag.

The narrator is a Russian born in 1919. He is telling his story, in what seems to be a long letter, to his stepdaughter, an American girl, sometime in 2004 or so. In the present he is taking a trip back to the location of the slave labor camp in which he spent ten years from about 1946 to 1956. He is also agonizing about the botched hostage situation in North Ossetia, ongooing as he writes. It becomes clear he intends to die soon, and this narrative is a confessional, as well as a lament for his native country.

The fulcrum of the story is a love triangle, involving the narrator, his ten years younger brother Lev, and a beautiful young Jewish girl named Zoya. Just after the War (in which the narrator, in his words, raped his way across East Germany -- in company, to be sure, with the rest of the Russian Army), Zoya moved into their neighborhood in Moscow, and immediately established a reputation as a woman of little character. But a very beautiful woman. The narrator, a war hero of sorts, handsome, used to having his way with women, becomes obsessed with her, but is rejected. And ends up being sent away to a labor camp. And he is astonished to learn that his rather ugly younger brother has taken up with Zoya, and indeed married her. But then Lev too is sent to the camps -- the same camp. And the two men spend several years there -- though Lev is a pacifist, and refuses to become involved in fights against the camp bullies, or the administrators. Which leads to something of a rift between the two men -- a rift exacerbated in the narrator's mind by his jealousy. But something changes horrendously when Zoya is allowed to make a conjugal visit -- in the "House of Meetings". And when soon after that, the camp is closed and the inmates freed.

The later life of the three is also described. The narrator is fairly successful, in Russian terms, eventually emigrating to the U.S., while Lev's marriage disintegrates, and he marries another woman, and has a son, destined to die in Afghanistan. But all is leading to a final confrontation between the narrator and Zoya, and to a final revelation in a long buried letter from Lev to the narrator. All this incident is skillfully unfolded, if to be honest the final letter isn't quite the explosion we have been led to expect.

Much of the interest in the novel is in the quite compelling descriptions of life in the labor camp. Besides being a portrayal of slave camp life, and a portrayal of a ruined man, it is to some extent a pained depiction of a dying country. It is very well written. A bit less "bravura" in prosody than earlier Amis books, though still often arresting. And very moving, quite believable, quite profound. One of Martin Amis's best novels, for certain.
All About Diet & Nutrition
Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends

300 by Frank Miller, Lynn Varley

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Real Freedom Is Denying Myself

The Battle of Thermopylae ranks as one of the ancient world's most important events, where Spartan King Leonidas and his 300-man bodyguard met the massive army of Emperor Xerxes of Persia, who intended to add Greece to his empire. To no one's surprise, the Spartans were destroyed. While the battle bought the Greeks enough time to defeat the mighty Persians, it was more important for the metaphor it created: occasionally one has to lose to win. This is clearly the inspiration behind Miller's attempt to place this epic tale in the context of a graphic novel. A renowned comics artist and writer known for hard-boiled stories of almost operatic intensity and stylishly overwrought violence, Miller (Sin City) injects his own brand of graphic sensationalism into this ancient tale of national survival. Miller clearly isn't as interested in being a historian as he is in telling a story, but his portrayal of the ancient world is compelling. His drawings of the bearded Leonidas are pensive and starkly imperial. The Persian King Xerxes is represented as majestically African, his body covered in a gaudy and bejeweled network of meticulously rendered chains and bracelets. Form and content are ideally wedded: Miller's writing is stark, his drawings moody and dramatic, and intensified by Varley's grimly appropriate palette of earth and blood. The reader can see and feel the harshness of both the Grecian landscape and Sparta's battle-worshipping culture, as Miller presents the complex historical moment facing the 300. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Good Diet Foods
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

House of Meetings by Martin Amis

Judge & Jury
Mind improvements

Martin Amis's new novel is House of Meetings. Obviously making use of some of the research associated with his previous non-fiction book, Koba the Dread, which was about Stalin (though he also acknowledges his debt to some later books than his own) he has written a novel about a "survivor" of the Gulag. But of course the novel is in great part about the ways in which this man didn't really survive the Gulag.

The narrator is a Russian born in 1919. He is telling his story, in what seems to be a long letter, to his stepdaughter, an American girl, sometime in 2004 or so. In the present he is taking a trip back to the location of the slave labor camp in which he spent ten years from about 1946 to 1956. He is also agonizing about the botched hostage situation in North Ossetia, ongooing as he writes. It becomes clear he intends to die soon, and this narrative is a confessional, as well as a lament for his native country.

The fulcrum of the story is a love triangle, involving the narrator, his ten years younger brother Lev, and a beautiful young Jewish girl named Zoya. Just after the War (in which the narrator, in his words, raped his way across East Germany -- in company, to be sure, with the rest of the Russian Army), Zoya moved into their neighborhood in Moscow, and immediately established a reputation as a woman of little character. But a very beautiful woman. The narrator, a war hero of sorts, handsome, used to having his way with women, becomes obsessed with her, but is rejected. And ends up being sent away to a labor camp. And he is astonished to learn that his rather ugly younger brother has taken up with Zoya, and indeed married her. But then Lev too is sent to the camps -- the same camp. And the two men spend several years there -- though Lev is a pacifist, and refuses to become involved in fights against the camp bullies, or the administrators. Which leads to something of a rift between the two men -- a rift exacerbated in the narrator's mind by his jealousy. But something changes horrendously when Zoya is allowed to make a conjugal visit -- in the "House of Meetings". And when soon after that, the camp is closed and the inmates freed.

The later life of the three is also described. The narrator is fairly successful, in Russian terms, eventually emigrating to the U.S., while Lev's marriage disintegrates, and he marries another woman, and has a son, destined to die in Afghanistan. But all is leading to a final confrontation between the narrator and Zoya, and to a final revelation in a long buried letter from Lev to the narrator. All this incident is skillfully unfolded, if to be honest the final letter isn't quite the explosion we have been led to expect.

Much of the interest in the novel is in the quite compelling descriptions of life in the labor camp. Besides being a portrayal of slave camp life, and a portrayal of a ruined man, it is to some extent a pained depiction of a dying country. It is very well written. A bit less "bravura" in prosody than earlier Amis books, though still often arresting. And very moving, quite believable, quite profound. One of Martin Amis's best novels, for certain.
Your Way To Lose Weight
The Children's Hospital

Water for Elephants: A Novel

Nineteen Minutes: A novel by Jodi Picoult
Internet improvements

Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan
Sephora Pure Beauty Bath and Body Works Participate now and get your $500 Visa Gift Card.
Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
What Is Advaita Or Oneness

Mega-best-selling Kellerman delivers another psychological suspense tale starring shrink hero Alex Delaware. While the Delaware novels are wildly popular, this one, at least, gets by only on plot. The characters are sketchily drawn, except for Delaware's new dog, who receives far more intensive (and ridiculous) development than any human in the book. Kellerman also takes the shortcut of having his characters deliver plot details and provide background motivations in artificial dialogue that should have been left to an omniscient narrator. But Kellerman does have a strong plot going for him (once we've waded through excessive descriptions of meals and interiors). The story centers on a young woman, whom Delaware treated as a child and who returns to tell the psychologist of the deathbed confession of her aunt and adopted mother--a woman whom Alex remembers as a heroically capable mother and nurse. The recently deceased woman allegedly told her niece that she had killed someone. The crux of the mystery is whether there was a murder at all, or whether it was the medication talking, or guilt over a patient's death. Delaware and his sidekick, detective pal Milo Sturgis, follow the tangled trail to a surprising conclusion. Good story unfairly weighed down by bad dialogue and stick characterizations. Kellerman's enormous fan base, however, will overlook the novel's flaws the way we excuse our loved ones' weaknesses. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Alkaline Diet
Vanity Fair : Magazine

House of Meetings by Martin Amis

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Asthma Attack Treatment Thanks To Hypnosis

Martin Amis's new novel is House of Meetings. Obviously making use of some of the research associated with his previous non-fiction book, Koba the Dread, which was about Stalin (though he also acknowledges his debt to some later books than his own) he has written a novel about a "survivor" of the Gulag. But of course the novel is in great part about the ways in which this man didn't really survive the Gulag.

The narrator is a Russian born in 1919. He is telling his story, in what seems to be a long letter, to his stepdaughter, an American girl, sometime in 2004 or so. In the present he is taking a trip back to the location of the slave labor camp in which he spent ten years from about 1946 to 1956. He is also agonizing about the botched hostage situation in North Ossetia, ongooing as he writes. It becomes clear he intends to die soon, and this narrative is a confessional, as well as a lament for his native country.

The fulcrum of the story is a love triangle, involving the narrator, his ten years younger brother Lev, and a beautiful young Jewish girl named Zoya. Just after the War (in which the narrator, in his words, raped his way across East Germany -- in company, to be sure, with the rest of the Russian Army), Zoya moved into their neighborhood in Moscow, and immediately established a reputation as a woman of little character. But a very beautiful woman. The narrator, a war hero of sorts, handsome, used to having his way with women, becomes obsessed with her, but is rejected. And ends up being sent away to a labor camp. And he is astonished to learn that his rather ugly younger brother has taken up with Zoya, and indeed married her. But then Lev too is sent to the camps -- the same camp. And the two men spend several years there -- though Lev is a pacifist, and refuses to become involved in fights against the camp bullies, or the administrators. Which leads to something of a rift between the two men -- a rift exacerbated in the narrator's mind by his jealousy. But something changes horrendously when Zoya is allowed to make a conjugal visit -- in the "House of Meetings". And when soon after that, the camp is closed and the inmates freed.

The later life of the three is also described. The narrator is fairly successful, in Russian terms, eventually emigrating to the U.S., while Lev's marriage disintegrates, and he marries another woman, and has a son, destined to die in Afghanistan. But all is leading to a final confrontation between the narrator and Zoya, and to a final revelation in a long buried letter from Lev to the narrator. All this incident is skillfully unfolded, if to be honest the final letter isn't quite the explosion we have been led to expect.

Much of the interest in the novel is in the quite compelling descriptions of life in the labor camp. Besides being a portrayal of slave camp life, and a portrayal of a ruined man, it is to some extent a pained depiction of a dying country. It is very well written. A bit less "bravura" in prosody than earlier Amis books, though still often arresting. And very moving, quite believable, quite profound. One of Martin Amis's best novels, for certain.
Healthy Weight Lose
Stumbling on Happiness

Beautiful Lies: A Novel

Cell: A Novel
Desiring What Is

WOW!!! I predict a wonderful future for Lisa Unger's first novel, "Beautiful Lies." I forecast its presence on the NY Times Bestseller List for many a moon. However, unlike a number of successful bestselling novels, this one is well written. It also has a most original plot and a quirky, three dimensional protagonist, as well as realistic minor characters. And, oddly enough, there are no real villains in a story where bad things certainly happen. In the novel her main character, Ridley Jones, says/thinks "there are no heroes or villains in real life, 'only good and bad choices.'

Our gal Ridley is a thirty-something freelance writer who does work for Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, etc., so she is pretty successful. But rents are high in New York City and even successful freelancers are hard pressed at times to come up with the rent. Ridley does not have this problem. She inherited a healthy sum of money from her uncle, "who wasn't actually an uncle," but her father's best friend. He absolutely adored her. This money cushions her against potential poverty and allows her freedom from financial worries. And "freedom" is a concept of immense importance to her.

Ridley's "fairly uneventful life" is turned upside down one morning...the morning she gains a bit more than her share of 15 minutes of fame. She sees a toddler about to be hit by a speeding truck and leaps into the street to save the boy. Fortuitously...or not, a photographer is on the scene and Ridley, in full action, appears on the cover of the local papers. The story is picked up by the morning talk shows where she and her family bask in the glory of her brief but bright spotlight. They have no idea what her moment of fame will bring her...like an envelope in the mail containing a note and an old photograph. The faded photo is of a young woman - who could be Ridley's double, a man and a little girl who resembles Ridley Jones as a little girl. The note includes a phone number and the question, "Are you my daughter?"

Unhinged, our heroine seeks reassurance from her doting father, a successful pediatrician, and her mother, a controlling, uptight woman. They slough off the incident and tell her that some wacko is having a joke at her expense, insisting that they are her birth parents. Still uncertain, she looks for her older brother, a drug addict who lives on he streets, and when she finds him he makes some disturbing comments which fuel her confusion.

Then she meets her handsome and mysterious new neighbor, Jake, a sculptor and a real hottie. Her life will never be the same.

Set in Manhattan's East Village, just a few blocks from where I live, Ms. Unger really brings the neighborhood to life with her wonderful descriptive writing. "Beautiful Lies," a taut psychological thriller is 375 pages long and I read it in 2 sittings. It is truly UNPUTDOWNABLE!!! I can't recommend a book more highly than that!
Eat Healthy Foods
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Absurdistan: A Novel

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury
Suicide in Cyberspace -Your Outward Links Can Kill Your Rankings

When you land in Russia these days, you are likely to see this sign: "Rossiya strana vozmozhnosty" ("Russia is the land of opportunity"). And then, amid the expected shabbiness, you see Hummers and Rolls Royces. Russians exceed even Americans in their taste for size, status and ostentatious wealth. The situation lends itself to parody, and Gary Shteyngart's new novel, Absurdistan, does a marvelous job of satirizing the new Russian oligarchy, as well as the American lifestyle and the two countries' shared megalomania, consumerism and appetite for exploiting small countries.

The narrator, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, is Misha Vainberg, a 30-year-old "incorrigible fatso" with an unrestrained appetite for whiskey, women and sturgeon. He was sent to the United States "to become a normal prosperous American at Accidental College." But during a trip back to Russia, his Mafioso father is charged with having murdered an Oklahoma businessman and then assassinated himself. Under those circumstances, Misha can't obtain a visa to return to his beloved USA.

In desperation, he buys Belgian citizenship and a passport in Absurdistan, a new country being forged out of a staged war between the Sevo and Svani peoples in a small territory between Iran and Russia. The founding fathers of Absurdistan are gangsters working with a large American corporation called Golly Burton (say it out loud -- Russian mouths tend to turn h's into g's). Together they devise a scheme in which the U.S. government will pour billions of dollars into their country. The war is orchestrated from the top of the Hyatt hotel, where hired Ukrainian gunmen bomb sections of Gorbigrad in front of an international crew of TV journalists.

But the performance gets out of hand. "The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake," Misha notes, "a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared." There are 3,000 dead and hundreds of U.N. tents with tens of thousands of starving refugees, which makes Misha a little uncomfortable while dining at the expensive hotel. The whole situation is beautifully absurd, reminiscent of Catch-22, and offers a provocative critique of oil wars and war profiteering.

Despite Misha's education in multicultural studies, he spews out sardonic comments about anything ethnic. He doesn't spare Judaism, although he is Jewish. (Drunken Hassids in Brooklyn botched his circumcision badly when he came to the States as a college student.) While making love to his young stepmother, Misha lectures her on religion: "Whatever you may think of Judaism, Lyuba, in the end it's just a codified system of anxieties. . . . You should pay particular attention to the character of the Hebrew God and His utter contempt for all things democratic and multicultural."

Misha even derides America, despite his proclaimed love for it, and especially American colleges: "A surprising number of graduates," he notes, "went on to raise organic asparagus along the Oregonian coast." They "mostly have gay parties on rooftops where they reflect at length upon their quirky electronic childhoods and sometimes kiss each other on the lips and neck."

Shteyngart makes fun of everything, even himself. He appears as a minor character, Jerry Shteynfarb, a writer aspiring to become the Jewish Nabokov. He immigrated to the States at the age of 7 and made his fame by writing The Russian Arriviste's Hand Job. (Shteyngart emigrated at the age of 7 and in 2002 published a hugely successful novel called The Russian Debutante's Handbook, which made him a literary sensation.)

One risk of relentless irony and humor, though, is that we might lose the drama. Like many comic novels, this one is light on suspense. The ridiculed characters come off as caricatures. With his barrage of ridicule directed at others and himself, we can't worry much about Misha, his grotesque love affairs (rendered in full detail) or his quest for Belgian citizenship. Everybody is a crook of one stripe or another, and that induces a certain degree of predictability and monotony. Nearly everybody Misha meets in the new country offers the same formulaic greeting: "When you are in Absurdsvani, my mother will be your mother, my wife your sister, and you will always find water in my well to drink." Funny the first two times, not so much the 10th. Several other jokes are repeated, too, with diminishing returns.

However, the exuberance of Shteyngart's language keeps us engaged. Misha describes himself as "an American impounded in a Russian body." Energetic wit shines through every page. Seeing one of the women he's interested in, Misha says, "Gone was her usual Leather Lyuba motif; in its place, a blouse and skirt of dark contemporary denim fastened by an oversized red plastic belt with an enormous faux-Texan buckle. It was very Williamsburg, Brooklyn, circa right now."

The novel is grounded in a noble literary lineage. You can hear echoes of Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, with its glorification of size and appetites. Misha is a man of leisure on the order of Goncharov's Oblomov, who spends most of his time in bed. Although it's not written with as much compassion as A Confederacy of Dunces (justifiably so -- do we need to sympathize with the oligarchy?), Absurdistan exhibits a similar sense of humor mixed with sharp insights into the absurdity of the modern world.

Reviewed by Josip Novakovich
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Eat Healthy Foods
People : Magazine

Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman
Health improvements

Is it really over? Is this wonderful series really coming to an end? Sadly, it appears so, as this is apparently the final book in the conversations with God series (which has changed my life for the better). But while it may be the final book, it is one of the most important, for it deals with the one issue that everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from, must inevitably face: What happens to us after we die?

That's the one big question that is looked at in this book. Just what does happen when we die? Happily, the answers put forth not only make sense and give a reasonable view of the transition from physical life to spiritual life, but when one takes the answers given in this book and compare them to near death experiences and other other-worldly experiences, they match up.

The big message of the book is this: It is impossible to live and die without God, but it is possible not to know this. No matter where you are, what you do, or how you die, God is with you. It's possible to know this, and it's possible not to know this.

On to the subject of death itself, the book goes over death and it's implications. There's a lot of stuff presented here, so i'll just list some of the biggies:

1. Death happens in three stages, realizing that you are not a body, experiencing what you want to experience after death, and merging with your higher self.

2. One goes home to heaven when they have experienced all that they wanted to experience in this physical lifetime. The spirit of the individual may know this and when the lifetime will finish, but frequently the individual does not know when he or she will die.

3. The death experience is different for everyone, depending on your expectations, views, and ideas. If you expect to find nothing, you will be allowed to experience that (the second stage of death) until you decide to look for something else. If you expect to find yourself embraced in the arms of a loving God, you will be allowed to experience that. If you expect to find yourself being judged and sent to hell, you will be allowed to experience that (though you can change it by choosing to look for something else).

4. Death is simply becoming whole again, for you splintered upon birth. Death is the transition from one state of existance to another. Everyone inevitably makes it home.

That's just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what happens after death. There's a life review, there's the big question that you will be asked (so big that all of heaven will pause to hear your answer), and there's deciding what to do next. Overall the book does accomplish what it set out to do, to explain death, what it is, what happens, and how you affect your own experience.

Granted, what's said should be taken with a grain of salt because we, of course, cannot confirm for certian what happens after physical death. I don't agree with everything said in here about death (For example, spirits who see themselves in hell don't feel it. I'm not quite sure what to think of that), but I find myself agreeing with most of what is said here. There are some passages in paticular (the passages on page 109-111 made my heart and my spirit soar as I read them) that are just so beautifuly written and so emotionally moving that they are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful and divine words ever inspired to be put on paper.

In addition to death itself, the book also discusses other aspects that add to the death process such as the topic of how one perceives things. One big note here is that your perception really changes your life and your world. Your perception helps determine, to an enormous extent, how your life plays out. I love this quote on page 214:

God: It's really quite simple. Tune in to how you feel.

Neale: Now I can just see someone saying, "Boy, what a piece of new age jargon-Get in touch with your feelings."

God: Those who see it as jargon will experience it as jargon. Those who see it as wisdom will open the door to a whole new world.

There's also a good amount of material describing why you're here on earth in the first place (experience things that help you grow and evolve as an individual spirit). There are no victims and villians, and everyone has their own truth, but there are people, places, and things that help guide people to that truth within them. Some people may indeed dismiss such statements, but when one thinks about it in a certian context, it does make sense. How does one really find wisdom and truth?

God: All human beings are born with the wisdom of the universe imprinted on thier souls. It is in the DNA of everything...this is why, when people are confronted with great wisdom, it often sounds so familiar to them. They agree with it almost at once. There is no argument. There is only a remembering (page 5).

I could keep writting for pages at how incredible and easy to understand this book is, but I will finish with this: What is in this book is not for everyone. Followers of religion may hate what it says and others may say that it's all a bunch of wacked out new age propoganda, but there is good stuff in here. When I got this book I was going through a stage in my life where I was afraid of what was going to happen to me after my death. Yet, after reading this book and recognizing (remembering?) so much good stuff in it, all my fear of death has vanished completely, replaced with that simple statement. "It is impossible to live and die without God, but it is possible to not know this." Although it's sad to see such a wonderful and life changing series of books come to an end, it has finished with a wonderful ending that helps to reassure, comfort, and explain one of the things we as humans fear the most.

Thank you Mr. Walsch. Thank you so much for bringing us all these wonderful books. Rest assured that there is one spirit, one person out in the world whom you have helped guide towards a more loving path in life. Thank you so much.

Highly recommended.
Diet's Tips And Secrets
The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be