Ozzy Osbourne marvels at his own success. When he was a child no one (but no one!) would have predicted that of all the kids in his class, of all the kids on his street, he is the one who would go on to worldwide fame and acclaim. Of course we know now that he would go on to build himself into one of the original heavy metal stars, one of the first of a whole new breed of bad-boy rock stars who would be much-imitated and much-idolized. Both with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist, Osbourne will always have his place in the rock pantheon.

But that was only a portent of things to come. At the peak of his storied rock and roll career, no one (but no one!) would have predicted that greater popularity would follow. Always a fringe success, popular in the world of hard rock but not much beyond, suddenly Osbourne was loved, laughed with and laughed at by men, women, boys and girls as they enjoyed his antics and the inner workings of his almost unbelievably bizarre family. The Osbournes is undoubtedly one of the strangest cultural phenomena this side of Survivor. Season after season, countless millions tuned in.

Osbourne’s lifelong commitment to the epitome of all it means to be a rock star is well-known. Year after year, he pursued the desires of the flesh, the allure of wine, women and song. He hoovered up unimaginable quantities of every conceivable narcotic and chased it with never-ending rivers of alcohol. He pursued endless lines of women or, as often as not, enjoyed their pursuit of him. He had all he had ever wanted when he set out to make a name for himself as a rock ‘n roller.

So here he is, on the far side of sixty, reminiscing about his life, his career as a rock star and his shorter career as a television star. There is little regret expressed here; mostly just fond memories of days gone by, though those days were given over to every kind of vice. There is no redemption since redemption would depend upon an admission of wrong. Sure he says he’s gotten off and stayed off drugs and he says he’s mostly gotten away from the booze. But that is far different than expressing true regret. Even after all these years, he’s just the same old guy. It doesn’t seem that he has learned a whole lot along the way.

If you have ever spent a few minutes watching The Osbournes you will know that Ozzy shows the effects of all of those years of partying, not to mention the effects of dyslexia and a strange Parkinsons-like chromosomal defect. In I Am Ozzy he says that he has barely ever been able to read through a book; and yet here he has managed to write one that is well-written and clear in its prose; he says his memory is shot and yet he seems to be able to recall in detail so many events that took place many years ago. Obviously the book was written by or with a ghost-writer; that will come as no surprise. But does he really remember all of these days, all of these events that happened forty years ago? Or is this just a compendium of could-be-true tales drawn from dim memories? I find it hard to believe this book could be consistently factual.

I can’t help but feel that in this book Ozzy is being presented in a very strategic, very careful way. It’s like he is a product just as much as his albums are. And really, it seems that much of his career was a show, a shell. Ozzy was known as a force for the dark side, an outright Satanist who bit the heads off bats and drove countless impressionable young people to the occult. But he never bought into any of the Satanism. It was all just a ruse, a way of making people sit up and take notice. It was all part of his mystique, his carefully-constructed persona. Satanism was just a handy prop that drew legions of fans to his side–fans who were eager to try something, anything, that would be rebellious, that would be an outright show of defiance against God, against parents, against everything.

In one telling moment he writes “Y’know, I used to get upset by people not understanding me, but I’ve made a career out of it now. I even ham it up a bit, ‘cos it’s what people expect of me.” And even in this book I think he is giving people what they expect of him. Whether it’s the honest truth or not seems beside the point. He wants to tell a good story and to entertain people. The book is entertaining in its own way, I suppose, thought the reader’s enjoyment may well be tempered by the profanity of his mouth and of his life. The book is as crass, as given over to vice, as his life has been.

Osbourne says that “whatever I do, I do to excess.” And ain’t that the truth. His life has been one of constant excess. The only thing he seems not to have found in exceeding measure is joy. As he enters his seventh decade, he offers little reason to think that he is really enjoying life, that he has found true joy and happiness. His best days are behind him and there doesn’t seem to be much ahead. He has been an idol to millions, an influence upon a whole generation. And yet the only way he has to measure his life is in things–fat bank accounts, album sales, popularity. As he revels in his years of partying, of desperately seeking life in the arms and adulation of others, you can’t help but detect the emptiness, the gaping void at the heart of it all.

Verdict: Read it if… Honestly, who am I trying to fool? I can’t think of a single good reason.

Patti Smith is the godmother of punk, punk long before it was cool to be so. Starting in the mid-seventies, she blended her beat poetry with three-chord rock and very quickly became the kind of artist that millions of others would aspire to. Her new book, Just Kids, hit the bestseller list almost as soon as it was released. A memoir of sorts, the book really traces just one aspect of her life–her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

Smith met Mapplethorpe on the streets of New York City when they were both just in their young twenties. They began a lifelong relationship, first as lovers and then as friends. Living the Bohemian lifestyle in New York, they traveled in the same Beatnik circles as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendryx and many of the most prominent artists of the era. Smith’s memoir traces the early days of her relationship with Mapplethorpe when they were lovers, inseparable and much in love, to Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989 when they were just friends.

If you know anything of the life of Robert Mapplethorpe, you’ll know that he was openly and proudly homosexual. But he did not actually become homosexual until his early twenties, a couple of years after he met Smith. And even then he seemed to be conflicted, desiring first both and then neither. But eventually he came to terms with his homosexuality, a fact that was soon reflected in his art, much of which was highly-erotic and homosexual in nature. He began to document through photography much of the ugly underside of the homosexual lifestyle. But he and Smith remained fast friends, continuing to live together and continuing to support one another year after year. As Mapplethorpe became a sought-after photographer and as Smith became a highly-regarded musician, their paths continued to cross and their friendship remained. It remained until 1989 when Mapplethorpe’s lifestyle caught up with him and he died of complications arising from AIDS.

I found Just Kids a profoundly depressing book. I saw Smith and Mapplethorpe fall further and further into their sin, finding delight in the occult, getting more involved in drugs, and Robert increasingly giving himself over to homosexuality. They saw friend after friend fall prey to the Bohemian life they had chosen, succumbing to drugs and disease. Any happiness they found was fleeting, any joy directed only to the immediate gratification of their most self-centered desires. They both wanted to find fame and though both found it, it seems that it just drove happiness and purpose farther and farther away.

It is interesting to note that both grew up in religious households, Smith as the daughter of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mapplethorpe as the son of faithful Roman Catholics. And yet both hated God, mocking him through their art and turning instead to what was Satanic, attributing their success more to Darkness than to Light. And not surprisingly, their life and their work reflects that darkness. The wages of sin is death, the Bible tells us. And the stench of death is all over the lives of both Smith and Mapplethorpe. It’s all over this book.

Verdict: Read it if you’re stuck on a desert island and this is the only book that washes ashore with you.

Let me begin with a confession. I’ve never (to my knowledge) seen or heard Mika Brzezinski on television. The cover of her book All Things at Once says that she is cohost of MSNBC’s popular Morning Joe show and I have no reason to think the book would lie. But let me be clear that I had never heard her name until I picked up her memoir. I never would have considered reading the book had it not been on the bestseller list. That’s no knock on Brzezinski (a name I have typed once and copied onto my clipboard so I don’t have to keep retyping it) but just a statement of plain fact.

Because the book is not available in Kindle format, I went looking for it in the Biography section of my local bookstore. But I didn’t actually find it until I meandered over to Self-Help. I guess it is meant to be more than a biography but also a book for women who have found themselves in Brzezinski’s shoes, wanting to be a successful mom and wife and career woman. In short, to be All Things at Once.

As memoirs go, this one was quite well-written (and as self-help books go it was probably very well-written). In 230 pages of really big print with wide margins, Brzezinski tells the story of her life, beginning with a childhood spent in and around the nation’s capital and wrapping up with her present-day career as a well-known media personality. Strangely, she passes over everything between childhood and marriage. Her story may be interesting to those who enjoy her show but, honestly, to me it was really not too compelling. If you love Brzezinski, you’ll enjoy reading her book. If not, there’s probably no good reason to put in the time and effort.

As a self-help book, All Things at Once is significantly more interesting. Here Brzezinski seeks to help other women find meaning and pursue excellence in multiple roles at once. She is honest with many of her own failings in this regard, showing that through much of her life she has been prone to focus too heavily on one thing, always at the expense of another. If she has tried to dedicate herself to motherhood, she has not been true to herself and has made a mess of career. If she went to far to the other side, dedicating herself to her career, she neglected her family. It is a tough balance, that.

Though she seeks to say that she has learned to strike a successful balance between family and career, it is difficult, based on the evidence she provides, to believe that she did so well. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11 (granting that it was a particularly excruciating time for the nation) she spent three full weeks away from her girls. If the nation needed her so badly to be reporting from the front lines, surely her girls needed her just as much in a time of such great turmoil.

One thing the book does well is highlighting just how shallow the media really is and, hence, just how shallow we are as consumers of that media. Time and again Brzezinski has to talk about her physical appearance and how an extra few pounds here and there made the difference between success and failure. Beauty is very important in the media, and to a ridiculous extent. Talent and looks both count in the business, but there are far more untalented beauties than there are plain-looking talents.

Through her efforts in self-help, Brzezinski does offer some wise advise, such as having children earlier in life rather than later in life. But to have children and then to pursue a career that exacts such a toll hardly seems fair. I guess her lessons would carry more weight if she had modeled rather than just suggested them. She wants women to be able to choose career and choose family without having to compromise on either. But it is only the very rare person who is able to do both. And not everyone has the great wealth of Brzezinski which allows her to hire a full staff of nannies to cover when she is unable to care for her family. And, of course, many would see the very hiring of a full staff of nannies to be an admission that she simply cannot do both with excellence.

Though I see it so often, I continue to marvel at just how different life looks when it is lived without God as a (or the) reference point. In this book Brzezinski is primarily answerable to herself; she has to be true to herself. She is also obliged to be true to her husband and her children. But God seems to be left out of the equation entirely. Though she is Roman Catholic by faith, never once does she tell us how faith is integral to who she is and how she lives. That void in her life is immediately apparent.

In the end, All Things at Once stands or falls on the reader’s ability to believe that Brzezinski has succeeded at all things at once. I am not persuaded that she has. I would look elsewhere to learn how to successfully balance all of life’s responsibilities.

Verdict: Read it if you’re a big fan of Mika Brzezinski.

At the end of her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe. Four years later she returns to tell their story. Having fallen in love with this Brazilian man, Gilbert began to build a life with him. But before long the Department of Homeland Security intervened, deporting Felipe for spending too much time in the United States despite not being a citizen. The only solution, the only way to gain his citizenship, was for the two of them to marry. Yet both of them, scarred from prior divorces, had no desire at all to marry. In fact, they had both sworn off marriage, vowing to remain together, but unfettered by that age-old institution.

“…I was not convinced that I knew very much more than ever about the realities of institutionalized companionship.” says Gilbert. “I had failed at marriage and thus I was terrified of marriage, but I’m not sure this made me an expert on marriage; this only made me an expert on failure and terror, and those particular fields are already crowded with experts. Yet destiny had intervened and was demanding marriage from me, and I’d learned enough from life’s experiences to understand that destiny’s interventions can sometimes be read as invitations for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears.” Yet the reality was that if she wanted to live her life with Felipe, she would have to marry him. “Within one year—like it or not, ready or not—I had to get married. That being the case, it seemed imperative that I focus my attention on unraveling the history of monogamous Western marriage in order to better understand my inherited assumptions, the shape of my family’s narrative, and my culturally specific catalogue of anxieties.”

This book, half travelogue and half sociology, follows her as she and Felipe travel through Asia while they wait for the U.S. government to grant him permission to enter America and get married. As she travels she researches marriage, trying to get to the bottom of what it is and why it is so fundamental to humanity. Committed is, then, a book about marriage. In its own way it is pro-marriage, I suppose, though only if we grant quite a wide understanding of what marriage is.

What is most fascinating about the book is that Gilbert seeks to understand marriage without any reference to God. As Christians we believe that God is the one who created marriage, that he is the one who defined marriage (as between one man and one woman, til death do them part) and that he is the one who has made it the only legitimate context for sex and procreation. And in all things, marriage is to be a display of selfless love, of full-life commitment, a reflection of Christ’s love for his people. Thus marriage simply cannot be defined without God because marriage is all about God.

Yet Gilbert determines that marriage is a social institution and one that arises by necessity even though it tends to be far more beneficial to men than to women and even though it brings about as much unhappiness as it brings joy. She shows a complete inability to properly understand the biblical position on marriage, misinterpreting Paul and then looking at the early history of monasticism to declare that Christianity has always been anti-marriage (at least until modern times, though even then it advocates only its own interpretation of marriage). “Or consider Saint Paul himself,” she says, “who wrote in his famous letter to the Corinthians, ‘It is not good for a man to touch a woman.’ Never, ever, under any circumstances, Saint Paul believed, was it good for a man to touch a woman—not even his own wife.” Did she not read about creation where God told man to “be fruitful and multiply?” Did she not read Song of Solomon, for goodness’ sake? If it is not good for a man to touch a woman (as her simplistic interpretation claims) than that couple is in big trouble!

Gilbert rightly identifies the trouble that comes when marriage is made into an ultimate thing. “Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.” This gets her thinking and eventually she realizes “For the first time in my life, it occurred to me that perhaps I was asking too much of love. Or, at least, perhaps I was asking too much of marriage. Perhaps I was loading a far heavier cargo of expectation onto the creaky old boat of matrimony than that strange vessel had ever been built to accommodate in the first place.” Yet, though marriage is not to be an ultimate thing, neither is it to exist only to serve our own purposes. It is possible to err in both regards. When she does advocate for marriage, she does so by saying that marriage should be delayed until people are at least 30 and until both husband and wife (or husband and husband or…) are firmly established in life and career. Thus marriage becomes much less than sacrificial, much less than selfless; instead it becomes a means to further my own ends by taking care of my need for intimacy even though I do not wish to alter my life any more than necessary. Marriage becomes all about me.

Along the way she completely separates sex and marriage. That is an interesting oversight in a book about marriage. As soon as we separate sex from marriage we have made both of them less than they ought to be. She says that “the singular fantasy of human intimacy” is this: “that one plus one will somehow, someday, equal one.” Here she speaks in biblical language of the two becoming “one flesh” and yet she does so in reference only to marriage, not to sex.

In some ways Gilbert reminds me of Donald Miller–someone who is still fussing about issues that he should have come to terms with years ago. It may be cute when a twenty-year-old wonders whether she should marry and how it will change her life–when she goes on a quest to understand marriage. But by the time she is thirty-seven she really should have come to terms with it. It’s not quite so cute anymore.

Probably the most interesting part of reading this book is to watch Gilbert feeling around in the dark, bumping, stumbling, fumbling, as she tries to get to the bottom of marriage. She grapples all around the outside of it, writing about love and sex and infatuation and commitment and parenthood–and yet she completely, utterly misses the point of it all. “We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage.” But no, they did not. Without God she cannot understand marriage precisely because marriage is all about God. The closer she gets, the further she seems.

Verdict: Read it to better understand why we cannot define marriage apart from God

I love to read a biography in which an old man, in the waning days of his life, reflects on the lessons he has learned in the seven or eight decades given to him. There is something inspiring about hearing a man reminisce about the past and pass along the wisdom of the years. I hate to read a biography in which an old man, in the waning days of his life, describes a life given over only to his own pleasure. Unfortunately, Last Words, George Carlin’s posthumously-published autobiography, falls squarely into the latter category.

Carlin was, of course, a stand-up comedian, for decades one of the most famous comics and one who is regarded as among the America’s greatest. He filled concert halls, was a regular guest on the most popular television shows, recorded bestselling albums and taped live performances that continue to air today. His name was known around the world and he made himself a wealthy man. By some standards this made him a singularly successful individual.

Yet this is a story of an utterly wasted life. Carlin shows himself to be utterly self-focused, self-centered, self-obsessed. Shaped by his Irish Roman Catholic heritage, he turned quickly against the faith of his childhood and gave himself up to whatever pleasures the world could offer. The decades, the years of his greatest successes, were full of hard living that included a crushing drug addiction, alcoholism and the inevitable physical effects of both. Even when he fell in love he lived life for no higher power or purpose than himself and his own success. He was away from home so much that his wife filled the emptiness with alcohol, and still he did not lessen his workload; he and his wife did drugs and fought viciously in front of their young daughter who soon got into drugs as well, even sharing with her parents; even when his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he stayed on the road, ending up far away when she slipped into unconsciousness and died.

Not surprisingly, by the end of his life Carlin had succumbed to despair. “I no longer identify with my species. I haven’t for a long time. I identify more with carbon atoms. I don’t feel comfortable or safe on this planet. From the standpoint of my work and peace of mind, the safest thing, the thing that gives me most comfort, is to identify with the atoms and the stars and simply contemplate the folly of my fellow species members. I can divorce myself from the pain of it all. Once, if I identified with individuals I felt pain; if I identified with groups I saw people who repelled me. So now I identify with no one. I have no passion anymore for any of them, victims or perpetrators, Right or Left, women or men.”

In the end, Carlin did not live long enough to finish his memoirs. Someone had to piece together his notes, fill in the relevant details, and send them out to the publisher. He died in 2008 at the age of 71. He went to stand before the God he denied, the God he despised (funny, isn’t it, how you can so despise someone you insist does not exist), the God he made a career out of mocking and belittling.

Some memoirs are written for fans only while others transcend only the most loyal audience. Last Words is definitely for fans only. Profane, loud, over-the-top, this book is an apt reflection of the man himself. A man who was driven by the desire to shock others, this book gives him the last laugh, one last chance to make his audience gasp at his own profanity, his own baseness. But somehow, when read in the context of his life, the jokes no longer seem so funny.

Verdict: Buy it if you’d like to learn how to waste a life.

The mega-selling book Three Cups of Tea told a series of stories from the life of adventurer, mountaineer and humanitarian Greg Mortenson. In 1993, Mortenson, having failed in an attempt to climb K2, wandered into a tiny village deep in the mountains of Pakistan. Embraced by the people of this village, and seeing that they had no school building for their children, he vowed to someday return and build one. Being a man of his word, he did just that. The book detailed how he kept that promise and how he went on to build not just one, but fifty-five schools, in that area. It details the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. He is an amazing individual who overflows with passion, intensity and drive. The book was part adventure, part biography. The story was so compelling, it is little wonder that it generated so much interest.

Several years have passed since those events and Mortenson has since found fame, having seen his book spend three years on the New York Times list of bestsellers (the softcover list, that is; the hardcover edition did not sell well). In late 2009 he released Stones Into Schools the follow-up to Three Cups of Tea. As a sequel, a true follow-up, the book is very similar to its predecessor–so much so that I am not quite sure what to say in order to distinguish the two, beyond pointing out that one happens several years after the other. Mortenson is still walking and riding and driving around the wilds of Pakistan, attempting to begin schools. His heart is really for schools for girls, that marginalized population in Pakistan that he feels offers the key to the nation’s recovery from the influence of the Taliban. He also travels to Afghanistan to begin schools in that always-embattled nation. But the formula is still very much the same. He is approached to build a school in some unbelievably-remote location and, with the help of an unlikely cast of characters, he makes it happen, time after time. Reading about it never gets old.

Here is one significant difference between the two books. Where Three Cups of Tea was occasionally melodramatic to the point of hilarity (this remains my favorite quote: “After they’d traveled half a kilometer, he saw the firefight resume. The widely spaced streams of tracers leaped across the road like ellipses. But to Mortenson, who wouldn’t learn his friends had survived until the following week, when he returned to Kabul, they looked more like question marks.”), Stones Into Schools shows all the hallmarks of better writing and editing. It is, I think, just an all-around better book. Where I found I was a little disappointed by the first, I was quite impressed with the second. At the very least it is an enlightening and interesting read.

Though Mortenson, in the absence of Christian convictions, may place too great a hope in education, it is easy to see how education may be at least one key to a transformation of areas marked by extreme poverty and the influence of a faith that sees little reason to educate its girls. It’s not at all difficult to appreciate what Mortenson is doing and to get swept up in his excitement.

Verdict: Buy It

I didn’t much care for tennis until I met a girl who was a member of a tennis club. Suddenly, at seventeen, I found myself drawn to the sport and was soon taking lessons (with her!) and learning to enjoy the game. She and I played until we got married and have only rarely been out on the courts since. But along the way I began to enjoy watching the professionals play. That was during Andre Agassi’s heyday and it was always fun to watch him, especially when he played his friend and arch-rival Pete Sampras. Though Sampras will go down in history as one of the game’s all-time greats, it was Agassi who was the fan favorite. His flair, his personality, his style–somehow they made him larger than life.

Agassi played until 2006 and, in life after tennis, began to write his memoirs. Released just weeks ago, Open is a look at the life of one of tennis’ most interesting figures. Like so many sports superstars, Agassi was pushed into the game by his parents and had nothing like a normal childhood. From the time he was able to walk (and even before) he was being trained as a tennis star. When he was just a child he would have to spend hour after hour, day-after-day on the courts, relentlessly pushed further and higher by his father. Already as a child he learned to hate tennis even while dedicating his life to it. At just thirteen he was sent across the country to a tennis camp which was more of a boot camp than a training academy. He rebelled, he dropped out of school, but still he learned to play the game. Over the course of his storied career he won eight Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal. He took in $30 million in tour earnings and over $25 million per year in endorsement deals. He left the game rich and famous.

In Open Agassi presents himself as a reluctant celebrity, a hesitant hero. He did not seek fame but had it thrust upon him by others. He learned quickly that this fame would demand of him a brutal toll. By thirty-six he was physically destroyed, having to sleep nights on the floor and having to spend hours working on his body just to be able to stand. His career had wrecked his body and taken the first thirty-six years of his life.

Agassi shows that fame is fleeting and that it does not deliver what it promises. “I understand that there’s a tax on everything in America. Now I discover that this is the tax on success in sports–fifteen seconds of time for every fan. I can accept this, intellectually. I just wish it didn’t mean the loss of privacy with my girl.  … Fame is a force. It’s unstoppable. You shut your windows to fame and it slides under the door. I turn around one day and discover that I have dozens of famous friends, and I don’t know how I met half of them.” The same is true of victory; he pursues it relentlessly at times, yet is so often disappointed. At one point he says, “A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.”

Agassi writes well–very well, even (or, more likely, his co-author/ghost writer does). He has chosen to write this book in the present tense–rather an unusual decision but one that works very well, especially when describing the long and grueling tennis matches. There is an urgency and pain that is communicated so well in the present tense but that might be lacking if it was written in the past. Agassi shows a sly and subtle but terrific sense of humor. His mockery of Michael Chang is friendly, I’m sure, but funny. His description of the first meeting between his father and Steffi Graff’s father is downright hilarious.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Agassi’s continual insistence that he hates tennis, that he despises the game and all that it has demanded of him and taken from him. He hates tennis. Yet whenever he tells anybody this they smile and say, “No you don’t.” No one is able to understand that he hates the very game he has given his life to. He is a prisoner of tennis and a slave to it. This theme carries wonderfully to the final page of the book where it receives a satisfying resolution during an at-first-friendly-then-competitive game with his wife.

If you know Agassi, you will not be surprised to learn that there is a fair amount of cussing in the book. His mouth often got him into trouble during his career and there seems to be little change here. He also spends too much time complaining about Brooke Shields to whom he was married for a short while. I always hate to hear a man complain about his wife, whether they are still married or not, and Agassi gives far too much ink to describing his apathy toward her and the ways in which she bothered him. These are unnecessary details that ought to have been left in the past.

All-in-all Open is a fantastic book and one of the most enjoyable biographies I’ve read in recent days. It offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a sports star whose upbringing seems oh-so-typical. Badgered by a domineering father, forced into a sport he learned to hate (precisely because he was forced into it), having to trade a normal life for it, seeing that it brought him little true happiness, Agassi’s life ought to stand as a warning to the multitudes of parents out there who impose their dreams of superstardom upon their children.

I do not intend to cross-post between my blog and 10MillionWords, at least once the project proper kicks off. However in this case I thought I’d do so simply because Going Rogue was a good fit for my blog while also being a New York Times bestseller.

I kind of like Sarah Palin. I did, really, from the moment she burst onto the international scene as John McCain’s running mate. Of course I live in Canada so she would never have been my Vice President but still, I found in her qualities that I admired. Mostly I appreciated her common sense approach to politics and her aw shucks, hockey mom persona. It was attractive mostly by virtue of how approachable it made her, how normal she seemed. She compares very favorably in this way to the many career politicians who seem completely out-of-touch with the rest of us—men and women who have lived their whole lives in the upper tier of society and who can’t imagine life on the other side of the Forbe’s lists.

With an initial print run of 2.5 million copies, Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue is a guaranteed bestseller. It is interesting to note that it is selling faster than Hillary Clinton’s memoir did in the days after its release and only moderately slower than Bill Clinton’s. Going Rogue has dominated the Amazon sales charts and remains today at #1. Clearly I am not the only one who likes Palin and neither am I the only one who is interested in learning more about her. Not by a long shot.

This is not a memoir written by a politician in the twilight of her career, one who is reflecting on a long life in the public eye (as, for example, Ted Kennedy did very recently). Instead this is a memoir written by a woman who hopes that the best is yet to come. Because of this, the book often reads as an attempt to drum up support and to put to rest the tired old rumors and innuendo. We all know that she will be a front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 (though she obviously never says anything about it in the book) and it is clear that the book is part of a carefully-crafted advance campaign. She has the difficult task of attempting to win over the American people. She needs to tread carefully, drawing in the all-important evangelical vote but without alienating herself from others. She needs to be the all-American mom but without leaving the impression that all she can be is a mom.

Palin positions herself as the anti-Obama, the anti-Democrat. Yet she also distances herself from much of the Republican party. She writes about her fiercely independent Alaskan spirit and her evangelical faith. She provides abundant examples of her leadership skills and her constant battles against corruption. She writes about the delight she finds in being both a mother and a career woman and defends her ability to do both with excellence. She does not quite seek to be all things to all men, but still she seeks to be the every-woman, or perhaps the any-woman. She portrays herself as a completely normal person who has been given remarkable opportunities. She writes often about her faith, though she is sure to mix in the occasional caveat (yes I believe in creation but don’t worry, I believe in evolution too) and the occasional “ass” or “hell” just to show that she isn’t one of those fundies. While she will discuss her faith, she says little of church or denomination or anything that might indicate that her faith is something more than personal. It is, all-in-all, a very carefully-crafted book that must have been vetted by long lines of politicos.

Along the way Palin answers many of the charges against her. She writes about Troopergate (or Tasergate depending on the side you take), about her daughter’s pregnancy, about the firing of one of her subordinates, about her infamous and ill-advised interview with Katie Couric, about the birth of her son Trig and the ridiculous assertions that he was not her son at all. The bulk of the book is given to her weeks in the international spotlight as she joined the McCain campaign trail. There are some very interesting inside looks at life in that spotlight. She tells about having press releases dealing with her family released in her name even though she had not signed off on them. She talks about the campaign completely abandoning her the very moment the election was over. She writes about the constant and vicious attacks against her that she had to defend with her own money and how she spent over a half million of her own dollars simply to head off the worst of these. We see how some people will stop at nothing (nothing!) to implicate her in something (anything!) that will discredit her. The level of corruption in the American political system is both sickening and infuriating.

Palin inadvertently raises some interesting issues for the Christian. Predominantly, Christians will need to consider the implications of having the most powerful woman in the world be a career woman who holds such a job despite having young children. While Christians will be pleased to be able to support a woman who is strongly pro-life, pro-family and pro-constitution, they will also wrestle with the fact that she will want to lead the country even as the mother of several young children. And Christians may wonder what she really believes and how strongly she believes it. She is anxious to win over evangelicals but in the end she offers little of spiritual substance beyond what we might expect from any American politician. After all, no President has yet denied being a Christian.

Going Rogue is well-written and flows very nicely. I suspect that those who hate Sarah Palin will hate her even more by the time they read the last page, and I suspect that those who love her will love her all the more. Already the book has several hundred reviews on Amazon and, judging by the ratio of positive to negative reviews, they show the expected partisan spirit.

Having finished this book I still like Sarah Palin. In my mind I have a difficult time picturing her as President of the United States of America, but I can’t deny that it would be awfully refreshing to see her bring just a little bit of common sense to the White House. Of course 2012 is still a long, long way away and a lot can change between now and then. But still, if half of what she says about herself is true and if she does half the things she claims she would do if given the opportunity to lead, well, we may all be a little bit better for it.

Buy this one. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is a hero. He has been hailed as such from coast-to-coast and from pole-to-pole. He is, as you probably know, the man who piloted Flight 1549, the ill-fated US Airways flight that departed from New York and landed moments later in the nearby Hudson River. In a remarkable feat of airmanship, Sullenberger landed an eighty-ton commercial airliner in a river so successfully that all 155 passengers and crew were able to escape largely unscathed. There were no deaths and only a handful of injuries. The story gripped the nation and Sullenberger was soon making appearances in just every major media outlet. He was a true hero.

Or that’s what everyone says. While I would never want to discount just how remarkable a pilot he must be to land a crippled jet in a river and to do so near-perfectly so that everyone survived, I wonder if this actually exalts him to hero status. When I think of a hero, I think of a person who rushes into danger, not a person who has it thrust upon him. A man who sees another person fall onto the subway tracks, who jumps down onto the tracks and holds the person down while a subway passes overhead–that is a hero. But a person flying a plane and doing a remarkable job of it, isn’t he just doing his job? So is Captain Sullenberger a hero? I am inclined to say that we have to stretch the word just a little bit to apply it to him. Judging by what he says in Highest Duty I suspect that he would be inclined to agree.

When we heard about Flight 1549 in January 2009, we knew that a book could not possibly be far behind. And sure enough, less than 10 months after the events of that day, it has arrived. It is a memoir written by Sullenberger and coauthored by Jeffrey Zaslow who also coauthored the mega-selling The Last Lecture (which makes me wonder, what do you call the co-author of a memoir? “Ghost writer” does not quite seem to fit…). It is, of course, the story of Sullenberger’s life. The thing is, his life has been remarkably unremarkable. Like most of us, he has lived a very quiet and otherwise unexceptional life. But somehow this does not keep the book from extending to some 339 pages which really has to be at least 100 pages too long. As I read I could almost hear in the background the voice of an editor saying to Zaslow, “Look, statistics show that a book of 300 pages sells 27% better than a book of 200 pages. So you’ve got some work to do. Ask him if he’s ever baked a batch of muffins and write about that!” And so, for example, there is a chapter about his humanitarian efforts which include helping to train guide dogs, showing a passenger where to find his luggage and, one time at least, making a phone call on behalf of another person. There are a few chapters like this which really seem unnecessary “fluff”–things so very normal and unremarkable that they seem to be there only for the sake of taking up a few more pages. Yawn.

Notably absent in the book, at least to a Christian reader, is any mention of God. I found myself waiting for Sullenberger to eventually say something about God’s hand in the events of that day. But it never comes. I wouldn’t say this is a weak point in the book and Sullenberger is certainly under no obligation to acknowledge God as his copilot on that day. Yet this really was notable in its absence and especially so in America where such situations tend to turn so quickly to a kind of gratitude to God.

Highest Duty is at its best when it is giving a Captain’s-eye view of the events of January 15, 2009. In those moments, the book is quite riveting, especially to a person who, like me, really enjoys reading about airlines and airline disasters (kind of a morbid preoccupation, I know. Any other fans out there of the series Mayday?). But there is a lot to read before you come to this. Before that are many, many pages of rather unremarkable filler. I still enjoyed reading the book and have no great beef with it–it’s just that it does not make for the most enthralling reading.

Verdict: Wait for the paperback

It is not at all surprising to see the name James Patterson on the list of bestsellers. After all, he has sold an incredible 170 million books over the years, making him one of the bestselling authors of all time. What is surprising, though, is to see Patterson’s name on the non-fiction list. To this point his bestsellers have been novels–the Alex Cross series, the Women’s Murder Club novels, and so on. And yet here he is with The Murder of King Tut, hovering near the top of the non-fiction list.

King Tut is a fascinating character, one of the few ancient kings who is widely-known today. He was a boy king, only nine years old when he became Pharaoh and just eighteen or nineteen when he died. His death has been the cause of much speculation since the discovery of his tomb in 1922. Recent research, based on what appears to be a skull fracture, has put forward the view that Tut was murdered. But Tut’s life is shrouded by the past and history is strangely silent about the events surrounding his death.

This does not stop Patterson from suggesting how he thinks it all happened. Though this book is labeled “non-fiction” and though the cover says it is a “non-fiction thriller” this book is clearly and unapologetically a mix of fact, fiction and speculation. Patterson wraps his interpretation of events in two stories–that of Tut himself and that of Howard Carter, the man who discovered his tomb thousands of years later. Typical for Patterson, the story has mystery, murder, intrigue and a little bit of hanky panky. Where the record is silent, Patterson speaks out, creating an adaptation of history that is all his own. He occasionally seeks to lend his interpretation credibility by writing a page or two about his own research, but really, let’s be honest–this is historical fiction much more than it is a non-fiction thriller. There are thousands of titles in the bookstore written in a similar way to this one and they are all (correctly) labeled as fiction.

While I would not recommend the book as either fact or fiction, I can’t deny that it did provide an opportunity for thought. In a postmodern age, we are often confronted with the very nature of truth. What is truth? What is historical truth? Today it is not unusual to encounter books, labeled as non-fiction, where truth has either been completely fabricated or where speculation, even honest and likely-to-be-true speculation, is passed off as fact. While it is easy to understand this as merely a literary issue, one to be dealt with between an author and publisher, I believe the issues go a little deeper than that. Is truth, and in this case historical truth, fixed? Or can we speculate and do so under the banner of fact? The Murder of King Tut brings these questions to the bestseller list. Unfortunately, it’s brought them to the non-fiction list.

Verdict: Skip it