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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: FUNNY GOTCHA 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: A Classic From America's Foremost Satirist
Review: Christopher Buckley's brilliant satire of get rich quick books and self help muck that might strike a bit too close to home, mocking catholicisms wanning prevelance in society and its eagerness to catch up with modern culture as well as the books themselves. Some might think it as obvious, and thus chastise it for being superficial. I like to think that it's blunt, and a little more truthfull to a somewhat touchy public making it less popular, as is common for true satires to be. Critics sometimes want satires to be subtle and vague, but Buckley once again presents his readers with the obvious hilarity rather than the mundane and snobbish.
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: Ignore the bleating of sheep!
Review: If you're at this site, then chances are you're sort of sick of business books. Probably, that's a kind way of saying it. Seeing another book by Stephen Covey or some other idiot spouting out laws, truths, and platitudes in big print, wide-margined, brightly colored business books inscribed with fulsome praise from every other author of big print, wide-margined, brightly colored business books probably makes you ill like you just ate something slimy that fell out of the nostril of a leprous hippopotamus. Or else it makes you so angry that the rest of the business world (that is to say, all those bleating sheep that come up with words like "consens" and "mute points") expects you to converse in this stuff that you have to read it and be able to remember authors when you could be using your time more wisely like beating your head over and over and over again with bowling pin. If that's the case, this is the book for you. Buckley and Tierney have written the book that everyone who ever wanted to scream in despair and fury at The Oz Principle can worship. It is an excoriation of all the senseless business books that infect our lives. It is the story of a group of monks who begin to become wealthy by pure happenstance (or perhaps through miracles) and find themselves suddenly regarded as business men. So, to run their business they hire marketing people, public relations people, and all begin to read books by Deepak Chopra and the like. The result, as you might imagine, is not a very sound fiscal enterprise. The wit is sharp and biting. It is required reading for anyone who ever read one of the 7 habits and thought that their life was changed. It's an amazingly fresh example of why acumen, expertise, and intelligence can never be truly replaced. It teaches the businessman to ignore the bleating of sheep. READ MORE AT INCHOATUS.COM
Rating:
Summary: You'll laugh out loud
Review: The title of the book really dosnt do justice to the incredible humor youll find inside. Dont expect to learn any new "Laws" or improve your lifestyle, religeous beliefs and business by buying it. What you will find is pure fun and good reading. Add it you your library and it will be one of those books you end up passing around.
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: 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: An extreemly funny book revealing the road to true "success"
Review: This is an extreemly humorous book detailing the path to success in life. I laughed aloud at the well written genuinely "true-to-life" situations Brother Ty narrates in this personal tale of his journey to "Spiritual AND Financial Growth." There is a very tender and heart touching element found in the development of the characters introduced in this story which makes it a delight to read. Also, as a minister myself, (protestant & Presbyterian...so pray for me, my Catholic friends!) I appreciated the accurate use of theology and Scripture found throughout the story, an element missing in many popular "self-help" books. Overall a great book about the insanity (and cure) found in our "growth" oriented modern society. I couldn't help visualizing how this will appear as a screen play. (Now that Robert Downey Jr. is "out and about," he has my vote for "Bro.Ty"!) A fun read that will leave you feeling good about life.
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