Book Reviews

Summary: A 38 year old man (maybe on the Autism spectrum?) learns to cope with his Mother’s death by writing letters to Richard Gere.

Mental Illness is serious, which is why I think it is so important that Matthew Quick has made a career of writing good, usually funny books about it. The three books I have read all follow roughly the same method.

They are all first person narrative told entirely inside the head of the protagonist. They all have some wacky other characters and come to a sort of resolution without minimizing the real issues of mental illness. They all have characters that want to help one another and are generally likable. (Note: I know that Autism is not really a mental illness, but Quick is mixing it in as if it were. There are also three other characters that more clearly have mental health issues that are also a part of the book.)

In the Good Luck of Right Now, Bartholomew Neal is writing to Richard Gere. Bartholomew’s mother has just recently died of brain cancer. As part of her cancer’s effects, his mother thought that Bartholomew was Richard Gere, her favorite actor. So Bartholomew played along and is now confessing to Gere, seeking his advice and looking for a friend.

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I am reposting this 2010 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99 (along with the also reviewed Sacred Pathways and Sacred Marriage).

Takeaway: God has created pleasure, we should not feel bad when we enjoy what he has created.

I have been puttering through this book for about eight weeks now.  I started it, read a few chapters, then got distracted by some other books.  Then picked it back up as my pastor started a series called “Guardrails” (itunes podcast link).  In some ways, Pure Pleasure is the opposite of the point of the Guardrails series.  But I like to read several books together in tension.  I have been reading three different books on virtue and keep stopping one to read another to keep them in conversation.

The short version of the thesis is Christians were designed as spiritual, physical people.  But too often Christians reject physical pleasures as “less than” or sinful.  Instead Christians should embrace both physical and spiritual pleasures as a form of worship.

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The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones is the first book in a 10 book series about a large-scale scavenger hunt that takes family members all over the world in search for clues to becoming the most powerful person on Earth. Two teenage siblings, Dan and Amy, find themselves in an exciting but dangerous adventure as they search for and follow the clues. Other family members such as the snotty Kabras and “œthe bull in a china shop” Holt family, force Dan and Amy to stay on their toes and remember not to trust anyone, especially family. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, is the writer of this series and the overall story arc for the series, which he then hands off to other writers for the other books in the series.

The author of this book and creator of the main plot of this story, Rick Riordan, has an impressive history as an educator. Before quitting to become a full-time author, Rick taught high school and then middle school for many years. He mainly taught English and History and he particularly loved teaching Greek mythology. The idea to write the Percy Jackson series, stories about a long lost son of Zeus, came from the fact that he had run out of stories to tell his son, who had developed a deep interest in Greek Mythology, and had to then create stories of his own. Also, in writing the series, Riordan created the story hoping to capture the interest and motivate his own son, Haley, who had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. From videos I found on the Scholastic website, Riordan has a clear desire to engage young students to read and specifically writes his book with their needs in mind.

With this particular series, Riordan states that Scholastic actually approached him with the idea for this story and he agreed to develop the story and write a couple of the book in the series. Riordan states in an interview that because he had created the story arc he has a general idea of what would happen in the sequential books but that many of the details are left up to the authors of the each book. He also commented that editors at Scholastic, not himself, would be responsible for keeping the books cohesive. I have read a book where each chapter was written by a different author, and I was not pleased with the outcome. The story felt weird, and so I wonder if the multiple authors in this series did a better job of maintain a more singular voice.

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