Lisa Bush   Reverend Everett Klein   Maddie Timmers  Zac Pawlowski

Tom Hinken   Debra Lambers    Erin Lambers   Paul Lambers

Surfer Dude

Reverend Everett Klein is one of the many clery that frequent The Book Nook & Java Shop.  He is very well read and as you will soon judge by the reviews he provides for us - a very gifted writer.

Thank you Reverend - it is always a pleasure to have your optimistic and very pleasant personality around the shop!

REVIEW

by The Rev. Everett H. Klein

The Secret Scroll, a novel by Ronald Cutler is a “one in a million” experience.  The reader is drawn in on the first page and is kept there until the last word on the last page.  As a mystery around a newly found scroll unfolds, the forces of good and evil do battle in modern day Israel.  A scroll is found that can change the face of the world.  But there are those who would not like its message released.  If Jesus, son of Joseph were to write a message, what would it say?  The story is fully engrossing and very feasible.  A study guide of questions at the end of the book makes it perfect for group discussion.  I wholeheartedly recommend it.

RATING

I rate this book with five stars - ***** - for readability, excitement, and realism.  

C. S. Lewis’ timeless classics “The Chronicles of Narnia” are being made into Movies.  Trailers for “The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe” are already being shown on television.  But there is one story in the series that gives birth to all of the rest.  It is “The Magician’s Nephew.”

Within the pages of this first volume are told the origins of the witch.  Discover the end of one dying world where the witch had lived and the creation of a new one.  Be there as the lion, Aslan creates a new land with a song.  Observe the first rising of a small young sun as Aslan changes his verse.  He varies the song again and plants are formed.  A new tune creates animals of all kinds.  All the while, two young human children are there to witness this new creation.  When they ask Aslan about the world where they first met the witch, he tells them: “That world has ended, as if it had never been.  Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.” (p. 193)  The children return to London and their ordinary life.  One gateway to Narnia has ended; another awaits.  Prepare for the movie.  Read the Magician’s Nephew.”  Read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” too.  Both carry a ***** rating.

It is easy to see why the book, Shadow Divers, climbed the success ladder to the New York Times’ Best Seller List and then stayed there for weeks.  Robert Kurson is a masterful author who takes his readers to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the realm of deep sea diving.  He shares the true adventures of two “recreational” scuba divers, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler (among others), as they risk their lives to identify a World War II submarine.

It doesn’t take long for the author to draw the reader in.  He puts out a line on the first page of the Author’s Note, and before that page is finished, the reader is running with the hook.  By the end of the first page of the story, the hook is set and the reader is being reeled in.  From then on, it is next to impossible to put the book down.  Every page seems to contain part of a mystery or include danger of some kind.  The further into the submarine the divers go, the more they are at risk of never finding their way out.  And the reader is there with them all the way to the end.

Having started Shadow Divers with absolutely no knowledge of what it took to be a deep sea diver, I came away with a respect for both the sport and the people engaged in it.  As a person born with dyslexia, reading has always been a chore for me.  I have learned to pick my books carefully.  Before I finished this book, the author had taken me to a reading plain where words flowed so fast that it still boggles my mind.  No author has ever taken me there before.  For this experience, I am truly thankful.  Shadow Divers is a must read!   * * * * *

A review of Ben Mikaelsen’s book Tree Girl by The Rev. Everett H. Klein

When the news media tells us of ethnic cleansing, we are often given objective, impersonal facts about one faction being stronger than another.  When we hear a government’s view during a civil war, we hear about what must be done to prevent the rebels from gaining a stronghold.  But we seldom hear from those who are being slaughtered.  In his latest novel, “Tree Girl,” Ben Mikaelsen weaves a story about ethnic cleansing as only a young woman who belongs to those being slaughtered could tell it.  She sees the horrors of ethnic cleansing from her hiding place in a tree.  She feels the loss of her parents and most of her brothers and sisters, yet she struggles to help a new life come into the world.  The young woman winds her way through the hills and crosses into Mexico.  There she enters a refugee camp where the people feel no hope, only the struggle for existence.  From her own struggle, she helps others to find meaning in their lives, hope where there was none.

It is not easy to hear this story, yet Tree Girl may be one of the most important books of this century.  Ben Mikaelsen’s masterful writing draws the reader into the lives of those being slaughtered for no reason other than they were born to the wrong parents.  It is a place we need to go, a story we need to understand, for after the cleansing in Guatemala, came Kosovo, Iraq, Rwanda, and the Sudan.  This is their story too.

*****

Reviews by: 

Lisa Bush   Reverend Everett Klein    Maddie Timmers     Zac Pawlowski

Tom Hinken   Debra Lambers    Erin Lambers   Paul Lambers

 Surfer Dude