Beam Me Up Jesus: A Heathen's Guide to The Rapture by Jim Gerard

Published by Nation Books an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group.

Distributed by Publishers Group Canada

Jim Gerard - author of Yankees Suck, and Celebrity Skin - brings us a light-hearted and often laugh-out-loud funny look at the end of the world in his book Beam Me Up Jesus: A Heathen's guide to the rapture. It's written with a fearless and straight talking attitude which will leave you in tears with laughter. The introduction itself is comical and in the twenty chapters he delves into this subject with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek as the chapter titles show:

• The Rapture - A Brief Introduction
• The Book of Revelation - Reader's Digest Version
• Whose Rapture is it, Anyway?
• The Rapture in Pop Culture
• Signs That the Rapture is Near, or It's Not Global Warming, Stupid
• Televangelists and Other Public Figures Who Believe They Will Be Raptured, but Who Most Definitely Won't Be
• Why Jesus is Upset That the Christian Right Has Exploited Him for Their Own Purposes and Tarnished His Reputation, but Can't Do Anything about it
• Antichrists, False Christs, and False Starts
• How to Get Raptured, the Multicultural Rapture, What to Pack for the Rapture, and How to Make Sure You Get Left Behind
• The Rapture - God's Greatest Product Launch
• Rapture Spin Control
• The Tribulation - God and Satan's Lollapalooza
• The Post-Rapture Survival Guide (Including How to Protect Yourself against Plagues, Dragons, the Mark of the Beast, the Whore of Babylon, and Satanic Spam
• The Mark of the Beast
• Post-Rapture Culture
• Sex and Relationships
• Left Behind - What to Do After God Breaks Up with You
• Left Behind and Begrudging It (PTRSD - Posttraumatic Rapture Stress Disorder and Other Tribulations
• The Post-Trib: What Happens After the End of the World?
• God: The Last Word

This book is hilarious. It's a well balanced mix of information, sarcasm, digs and humour. I just adored the little lists that were included such as Miracles that were Falsely Attributed to Jesus, which includes the miracles of changing water into bud lite, and also not healing a leper, but offering to sign him up with an HMO. Another favourite of mine is the list of Christian Right Saturday Morning Cartoons which includes titles such as Casper the Holy Ghost, and Beavis and Butt-Head, Born Again.

It's a book that I believe people from all walks of life can giggle at, as long as they have an adequate sense of humour. If you think your faith may prevent you from enjoying this title, check Amazon.com. I was thrilled to see that in the reviews at Amazon.com there were Christian reviewers who had also given this book the thumbs up!

A fun read.

As an added note: I will be posting a review in the future of another title by this author: Who Moved My Secret? which is a parody of The Secret. I plan to read The Secret first so I can truly appreciate the parody.

Author's website: http://www.gangof60.com/

Author's blog: http://www.gangof60.blogspot.com/

Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

Published by Marlowe & Company - An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Inc

In Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto, Anneli Rufus shows us, with brilliant honesty and style, the good and bad to being a Loner. Strangely enough (and it makes perfect sense to me) it seems that the only bad points to being a Loner are brought about by those who prefer to be sociable, and the media with it's misuse of the word in reporting.

In this book, Anneli brings to light so many things which should be obvious to us and yet often pass unnoticed. I hadn't given much thought to the media using the word Loner to define just about everyone who commits a crime but spend a few minutes searching online and the word is there almost constantly. Scarier still is the fact that when you research these 'Loners' they are often anything but. Corrections are rarely made though and so the stigma remains.

The author strives to bring clarity to the definition of a Loner and rescue this word from it's negative connotations, and she succeeds. Her explanations are simple to understand and she provides a great deal for us to think about. I especially liked the section on childhood in which she explores the effects of making children (and parents) suffer playdates rather than letting children play alone and use their imaginations more.

I love that the author brings the message to us that it's okay to be different, it's okay to be a Loner, and that it isn't freakish or weird. I would have loved to have read this as a teen when people couldn't understand my preference for remaining with the same 2 friends and burying my head in books a lot.

This book is one of those which will appeal to everyone. Loner or not, young or old this is a gem of a read. It is sprinkled throughout with many wonderful facts and I have to admit, I think I was born in the wrong era. My dream job was apparently available long ago and paid 50 pounds a year for life, for someone to live in an underground cell and be supplied with as many books as they desired.

The most wonderful aspect I think, of this book though, would have to be the many shining examples of how Loners have changed the world. The works of Anne Rice, the brilliance of Albert Einstein, H.P Lovecraft, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Beatrix Potter, Joe DiMaggio and many, many more.

A great read. Anneli Rufus is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

Author's website: http://www.annelirufus.com/

The Farewell Chronicles [How We Really Respond To Death] by Anneli Rufus.

From The Publisher (Marlowe & Company - An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Inc):

From the award-winning author of the cult bestseller Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto—an unprecedented book that recognizes that our responses to death do not begin and end with sadness and sorrow. The longer we live, the more people we know—or at least know of—who die. Sympathy cards and sad movies tell us we should grieve and be sorrowful. But losing those around us arouses many other feelings as well as, or instead of, sadness: feelings we're terrified or ashamed to talk about because we suspect that if we did, others would call us crazy, cold, unfilial, unfaithful, or immature. Thus at those very moments when we face the most transformative dramas of our lives, we lock away deep inside of us our truest, rawest reactions.

Now in The Farewell Chronicles, with a voice and style that is all her own, Anneli Rufus investigates our responses to death as no writer has ever done before. Starting with keen observations on the deaths of many she has known—loved ones and casual acquaintances, children and adults, friends and enemies—Rufus explores with candor, clarity, and compassion those reactions that feel so real and yet so scarily inappropriate: from guilt, greed, and relief to apathy, rejoicing, and beyond. While polite society hesitates even to talk about death, The Farewell Chronicles breaks this code of silence, daring to show that mourning is as individual as we are, and that there are no "right" or "wrong" ways to mourn.

Once in a while, a book comes along which changes the world as you see it, for me, this is one such book. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago just because the title and subject interested me. This book shows in the most down to earth, real, refreshingly honest way that there is no right and wrong when it comes to grief, that it changes for each individual.

It is a book that I think everyone ought to read at least once. Whatever your experience with death, it doesn't alter how much you can learn from this book and how you can walk away at the end of it knowing that you are not alone, that others have experienced similar reactions and most importantly, that it's okay. You can even learn how to deal with those who are mourning, in a way that is more helpful to them.

I loved that sprinkled among the personal experiences in the book, there are various facts regarding mourning and death. It was a wake up call for me as I hadn't realised just how much society has changed, regarding what is acceptable or expected in these darker moments of our lives.

I have nothing but praise for this book and the author who created it. Even now, many years after the deaths I have experienced in my life, this book has made such a difference to me and the way I think.

Author's website: http://www.annelirufus.com