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: 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: 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: Choprah, Robbins, and now Brother Ty... ;-)
Review: Buckley is, IMO, one of the funniest satirists writing today. In "God Is My Broker" he turns his sights on the self-help industry, with hysterical results. You're taken on an interesting if far-fetched journey through the life of the 'narrator', Brother Ty. The plot is pretty clever and entertaining, although that really isn't really the point in this book. The story serves as a backdrop for Buckley's hysterically incisive criticisms of Deepak Chopra and others of his self-help ilk, while throwing a few stones at the foibles of organized religion for good measure. Oh, and for the record, this novel is a SPOOF ladies & gentlemen -- don't expect to build a holy stock portfolio with it, but DO expect to laugh! :) P.S. I'd give this book a 5-star rating, except A.) it's kinda short, and B.) Buckley's "Thank You For Smoking" was even better IMO.
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: 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.
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: 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: Pure fun and good reading...
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.
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