Rating: 
Summary: Horror? Hope!
Review: I am surprised to see the "Horror" genre attached to Rob's joyous, chunky, sexually affirmative novel of the future. The only horrifying thing about it is that it ends. A retelling of the Rapunzel myth, a direct and pungent insight into the life of a rockstar, and a weirdly beautiful exhortation to action, The Televisionary Oracle took me on a wild ride inside Rob's head, through his heart, and out through his sole(s). What impressed me most in this Tom Robbins-like romp were its deep philosophical underpinnings. Rob seems to be telling us -- amid mind- and gender-bending antics, sexual romps, and fairytale interludes -- that beauty and truth as just as compelling as nihilism and death. Nice idea for a new millennium.
Rating:
Summary: The Original Multi-Sensual Funky Fantasmorgasm
Review: I loved this book. While entertaining me, it taught me multitudes of lessons that I am still trying to assimilate. One of these lessons is that I must kill the apocalypse by loving it. I am in awe of this concept. While internalizing this dogma, I have learned that the alchemical process of taking in the bad stuff and melting it down to its purest, non-harmful form is truly a means to reach enlightenment. Everything that is perceived as negative has its uses and the energy therein must be harnessed to move forward. This book will change your life. Use it in everyday life, even if it's just to keep the kitchen table from tottering around, and you will notice a difference in your life.
Rating:
Summary: The Original Multi-Sensual Funky Fantasmorgasm
Review: I loved this book. While entertaining me, it taught me multitudes of lessons that I am still trying to assimilate. One of these lessons is that I must kill the apocalypse by loving it. I am in awe of this concept. While internalizing this dogma, I have learned that the alchemical process of taking in the bad stuff and melting it down to its purest, non-harmful form is truly a means to reach enlightenment. Everything that is perceived as negative has its uses and the energy therein must be harnessed to move forward. This book will change your life. Use it in everyday life, even if it's just to keep the kitchen table from tottering around, and you will notice a difference in your life.
Rating:
Summary: Kissably Brilliant, Surprisingly Linear, Fantastically Fun
Review: I was getting ready for my stop in the NYC subway which meant closing the Televisionary Oracle and putting it back in my bag. Before I did this however, I impulsively kissed the book's cover, causing the woman sitting next to me to say, "Must be a good book." I said "You know when you read something you've been waiting SO long to hear?" She bravely jotted down the name of the book and I nightly continue to bathe in its satisfying, delirious, sacred waters. "I laughed, I cried, it's better than Cats." Thank you Rob, you crazy, beautiful man (and honorary woman), for having the courage and chutzpah and foresight to write this sexy romance, spiritual treatise and instruction book for live living. Read this book. Pace yourself; It's like very rich fudge, or an amazing amazon adventure. I feel like writing Rob and requesting an "I survived the Televisionary Oracle" t-shirt. Then perhaps the perfect passing beauty and truth fan will reverently, respectfully kiss ME underground. Goddess Bless all B&T fans past, present and beyond.
Rating:
Summary: a spectacular work of symbolic genecide & fermented magic
Review: If you are a devote beauty and truth fan this is a must have. Even if you are just a fan of meaningless poetic perfection dont miss this prophetic encounter with the third kind. This hip-clever-new-age-for-the-masses tale will take your mind and set it free of expectaions and a need to ask why. Be sure to leave all your beliefs behind and become coverted to the sexually righteous stage of the televisionary oracle.
Rating:
Summary: Beauty and Truth are hip!
Review: That's the message Rob wrote in my copy, and I was delighted to see it. The book is fulfilling on so many levels, and I am going to have to read it at least 5 more times before I will feel I have the full impact. Yet reading it is not a chore, but a delight. Small doses suited me best, as each section left me with something new to think about. It also left me smiling. I am telling everyone I know! Special note to fans of Robert Anton Wilson: this is your sorta thing!
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible Tome
Review: There are novels that are so bad they don't require a long review. This is such a thing. It received a star from me because there is no way I could give it a black hole. Do not waste your money. I have already pissed-away my time on this terrible exercise.
Rating: 
Summary: Amusing, if you like 500 pages of preaching...
Review: This book has a couple of things going for it. It's creative, clever and has a message. But...
It's not exactly good literature. A good read should keep you wanting more. By about the 200th page, I'd got the author's message and was ready for the end. I kept reading... and I suppose that says something... as I hoped that something new would be offered. However, it was more of the same preaching of the same message. I find it amazing that the last line of the book, "Lust globally, f*** locally" was used several times earlier in the book. If that doesn't indicated that Brezsny thinks a novel is the venue for a sermon, I don't know what would! Repetition works great in a song or a speech, but not a novel!
The author leaves absolutely nothing to the reader's imagination. He tells every stinking thought of each character down to the point of minutia. Personally, I like to be left wondering a bit...
On the whole, I can't recommend it. Sorry, Brezsny! You should've cut it down by 300 pages!
Rating:
Summary: A Phd. in coffeeshop pabulum
Review: This book was interesting at first. I even felt, a couple of times, that it was speaking directly to me. Then, I kept reading and the magickal communication just became an overwhelming, incessant, flow of politically-correct jargon and new-agey soundbites and, eventually, nonsense which I presume was put down on paper with the intention that it would get Mr. Breszny lots of bootie from hairy-legged, crystal-rubbing, 19 year-old "hippies".
This book is a long exercise in self-indulgence and self-congratulation. As one who has spent plenty of time around the patchouli and B.O. smellin' womyn of the New Enlightenment (ironic that they all have their bills paid by an oil magnate daddy somewhere in...), I feel that I've heard all this before. I think it was that one dude at the coffeeshop who was a shaman in a past life and then was a Roman emporer and then went back to being a shaman and now is a combination "Life-coach"/past-life regression therapist/and pot dealer. That dude knew exactly what to say to make the utterly-vacant, frizzy-haired, chicks with twenty cats and a piano think that he was so wise and wet their pants. I think Brezsny might be the same way.
Rating:
Summary: For the insane...
Review: This book was perfect for me, but I'm insane. For those of us who like to live life a little to the left, this book will inspire in you a new person, and reawaken faith you didn't know you had in things you didn't know existed. Rob Brezsny is my hero.
|
