Sneak Peeks: Two Reviews Coming in PW on Monday, Feb. 9

-- Publishers Weekly, 1/14/2009 12:17:00 PM

I Love You, Miss Huddleston: And Other Inappropriate Longings of My Indiana Childhood 
Philip Gulley. HarperOne, $21.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-06-073659-0
Some kids were evidently not unhappy growing up, but they can still get pretty good childhood memoirs, especially if they are honest about exaggerating. Quaker pastor-author Gulley (the Harmony series) writes a low-key Hoosier who’s who in this memoir set in Danville, Ind., where youthful acting out takes the form of hurling tomatoes and detonating cans of bug spray. Danville includes Quaker widows aplenty, pals named Peanut and Suds, an arthritic and deaf police dog and a mousery that provisions Indiana’s homegrown pharmaceutical manufacturer, Eli Lilly. Gulley has no shortage of material, and the teenage years naturally bring an attack of hormones that prompts pathetic, doomed crushes. We even manage to learn a few facts about the humorist, such as that Gulley grew up Catholic. His chief object of fun is his youthful self, which takes the edge off his views of other characters from his youth, many of whom are relatives. Humor beats nostalgia and drama; this stuff is a laugh-out-loud funny tweaking of a not terribly misspent youth. (Apr.)

A Lifetime of Wisdom: Filled with God’s Priceless Rubies
Joni Eareckson Tada. Zondervan, $21.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-310-27342-4
When a diving accident in 1967 paralyzed her from the neck down, Tada, then a teenager, questioned God and life itself. Decades later, the author and founder of Joni and Friends ministry for the disabled writes from her wheelchair that “there are more important things in life than walking.” In her latest book, Tada jumps back in time to reveal her thoughts as a young quadriplegic, then pleads with her teenage self and the reader to be patient and hopeful. In each chapter, Tada offers a “ruby” of her own hard-won wisdom (e.g., God may not always provide healing; courage in the midst of suffering is a testament to God’s love; God gives grace in tough times) and encourages readers to dialogue with God to understand the purpose for hardships. Tada then supports this argument about suffering with Scripture, folding some verses into the chapters and compiling others into three appendices. Those who are ill, struggling or hopeless may be comforted by her testimony and perhaps roused to pray and perform good deeds while awaiting relief in whatever form it may take. (Mar.)

You Saw It Here First: Two Original RBL Reviews

Christotainment: Selling Jesus Through Popular Culture
Edited by Shirley R. Steinberg and Joe L. Kinchloe. Westview Press, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8133-4405-8
This book of essays has a worthy subject: the comfortable marriage between popular culture and conservative Christianity. Both editors teach at Canadian universities, which could give them detachment on the subjects of music, film, toys and NASCAR. They’ve chosen instead to wage ideological warfare in the guise of critical analysis. The book takes an approach sometimes too narrow, equating, for example, conservative Christian politics with the rather narrower philosophy of Christian dominionism, a far-left bogeyman. Sometimes the analysis is too broad: Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is viewed in the context of a Manichean war on terrorism by the Bush-Cheney administration. The catchy title concept is the only instance of clever use of language. The rest of the book is hidden in a thicket of academic-leftist jargon. Marx might agree that “stock car and political intermediaries have ordered the confluence of the sign value of stock car iconicity to the ‘surplus value of rapture’ to reproduce the iniquitous conditions of production,” but pity the graduate student in media criticism wading through this. (Feb.)

Rich Brother, Rich Sister: Two Different Paths to God, Money, and Happiness
Robert Kiyosaki and Emi Kiyosaki. Vanguard, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-59315-493-6
The author of personal finance bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Kiyosaki has teamed up with his sister Emi, a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, to explore their respective paths to personal success. Alternating stories relate their separate journeys after a childhood in Hawaii: Robert goes from fighting in Vietnam through business failures and successes to teaching others to make money, and Emi moves through alternate lifestyles and parenthood to discover her vocation as a Buddhist nun. Sometimes repetitive chapters on themes such as “transforming paths” and “visions for the future” reveal a surprising convergence: Robert, influenced by R. Buckminster Fuller, combines his love of wealth with an unorthodox search for God, and Emi tries to reconcile a modest spiritual lifestyle with catastrophic health costs—indeed, Robert is up-front that one of the goals of this co-written book is to help his sister learn to become wealthy. The concepts of finding one’s “spiritual family” (or calling in life) and making “leaps of faith” are central to both their quests. This version of the “prosperity gospel” will be unsatisfying to readers seeking genuine spiritual insights, but the mixture of personal stories and self-help exhortations may appeal to fans of Robert Kiyosaki’s previous books. (Jan.)