Rating: 
Summary: Buckley Effectively Punctures Self Help Balloon
Review: A few years ago Wendy Kaminer wrote a book, I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, that took on self help books and programs. Now Christopher Buckley assigns himself the same task writing a fictional account of a monastery headed by an abbot who is a devotee of Deepak Chopra. It's a fluffy, hilarious, yet incisive probe that makes a lot of self help writers and their readers look silly. Its a slim book, but with about 3 laughs per page you get you're money's worth. Don't read it if you are a fan of Chopra, Robbins or Covey though, as I'm sure it will stunt your spiritual growth, and set you back on your path to make millions of dollars in this lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: A pleasant surprise from what look liked a self-help book.
Review: When I first bought the book I thought it was a self-help book for recovering market losers (like me) to help me refocus into the spiritual aspects of life. As I read the book, I started wondering if the story was true. The later chapters seemed so absurd that it couldn't have been true. At the very end, it really was a pleasant surprise. What turned out to be a quest for self-help turned out to be a book that panned all the self-help gurus. Bravo to the authors! The witty biblical quotes and expressions were gems that kept me laughing. I only gave four stars because I found the Market Meditations at the end a bit too much.
Rating:
Summary: Humorous poke at self help, Catholicism and spirituality!
Review: This is a fun light read that sends up Catholicism (I'm Catholic, and I found some of the "in" jokes to be quite funny! :-), self-help and other maladies of the 21st century.Read it!
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining Audio Book
Review: "God Is My Broker", by Brother Ty, with Christopher Buckley and John Tierney, Audio Cassette, Bantam Doubleday, 1998. This is a funny tape recording of the supposed self-help book, with "...the 7 ½ Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth", as written by a monk and previous Wall Street Stock Trader. Brother Ty cannot help his clients (or himself) to make any money on the market, so, he enters a monastery, where the claim to fame is making wine. Brother Ty wanted to conquer his drinking habit! When the Cana Monastery falls on hard financial times, Brother Ty turns to God and the monk's breviary to determine money-winning tips on the market. This is the first sub-plot in this complicated but funny book. The second sub-plot is based upon the first Miracle of our Lord at the Wedding Feast of Cana, where He changed water into wine at the request of His Mother, Mary. Since the monastery is called Cana, you can bet that someone (?Brother Abbot?) will be attempting his own version of the wine-making miracle: this time to keep Federal Agents happy. Then, there's the investigating Italian Monsignor, representing the Vatican and Cardinal "Blutspieler"; this urbane Italian, interested in soccer (at least when Milan is playing), is also a wine connoisseur. He really does not like his German boss, the Cardinal "Blood-player", and therefore the Italian settles in for a long stay at the Cana Monastery, which by now has hired a good-looking lady to deal with the necessary television advertising. Of course, the wine is not being made at the Cana Monastery, but being imported from Chile, which means that Brother Ty has to continuously check with his "broker" to get tips to pay for the imported wine, and the improvements at the monastery, and so on. The two, three, perhaps four sub-plots are tied together by the intermittent announcement of a pertinent law of "spiritual and financial" growth. One of the authors, or both, must have had training in the Catholic school system, since their comic references to Church affairs and internal politics, given with great reverence, are fairly accurate. This six hours tape recording helped me during many hours of heavy traffic on 495, the ring road around Boston.
Rating:
Summary: Help yourself
Review: I guess I'm firmly in the growing Christopher Buckley fan base, and so I'm not sure how objective I am when I write a review of one of his books. Suffice it to say that this one -- written with collaborator John Tierney-- has the same crisp writing, the same kinds of unusual story lines and plot twists, the same kinds of colorful characters that made Mr. Buckley's other novels wonderful examples of worthwhile light reading. In this story, a failed investment banker becomes a monk and in the incarnation of Brother Ty, he somehow becomes a catalyst in the ethically flawed rebirth of the monastery's wine. The story is a satire that takes aim at self-help books, but as someone raised Catholic (and practically living in the shadow of the Vatican), a former financial journalist, and a wine lover ... well, a story line that among other things takes aim at the Holy See, Wall Street, and Napa Valley hit close to home in too many ways for me not to love it.
Rating:
Summary: Humorous poke at self help, Catholicism and spirituality!
Review: This is a fun light read that sends up Catholicism (I'm Catholic, and I found some of the "in" jokes to be quite funny! :-), self-help and other maladies of the 21st century. Read it!
Rating:
Summary: FUNNY GOTCHA BOOK!
Review: Let's give credit to brother Ty for making us interested enough to read to the very end. I read this book in two days, and if you knew my schedule, you'd find it hard to believe. However, it is interesting to note, the purpose of this book is to make us aware that there are no such things as "Get Rich-Quick Schemes", and that the guy/gal whose pushing this type of literature is already rich. Remember the line "The only way to get rich, is to write a book yourself".
Rating: 
Summary: No longer funny when you know it's fake.
Review: There IS NO Brother Ty, this book is a work of fiction. I found it at an outlet store, misfiled in the "religion" section, and bought it for about [$], which is about what it's worth. First off, the book was funny as long as I thought it was a real account about real people in real circumstances. I find monastic life intriguing and I love reading about the day to day existence of monks. However, once, I realized it was just a novel, my interest waned immensely, and the book really lost it's "bite." I realize that if I had approached it as a work of fiction I would not have been so disappointed. However, if I had found the book in the fiction section of the bookstore, where it belongs, I never would have bought it. The writing is good, but it loses so much punch when you discover (after about 30 pages) that it's fiction. Now, if we could only get a story about a monastery that was this entertaining...
Rating:
Summary: So Funny It Should Carry an FDA Warning on the Side!
Review: This book is a pure delight. Whether the subject is Wall Street philosophies, "mission" statements for religious orders, fradulent e-commerce, self-help, the Vatican hierarchy, or degrees of celibacy, Brother Ty skewers magnificiently. The unfortunate consequenses of a poor Catholic education have never been put to such a redeeming use. I laughed out loud so hard when reading this book that my children started worrying about me.
Rating:
Summary: You'll laugh out loud
Review: Hilarious! As an ex-Catholic living in Chopra Land (Berkeley), I nearly split my sides laughing. The footnotes alone are worth the price of the book. And it's lightweight (in every sense of the word) -- perfect to take on a trip.
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