Website Recommendation:
Scientology Volunteer Ministers

Book Review:

How to Get Out of the Hospital Alive: A Guide to Patient Power by Sheldon P., Md. Blau, Elaine F. Shimberg

While this book addresses some very serious dangers that we probably all ought to be aware of, and know how to avoid, it also stresses some very rare problems, which may result in over-paranoia for some readers.

I think it's vital to know what the actual risks are that we might need to face, but I think creating a "dangerous environment" is not at all helpful, and perhaps this author, in his attempts to help, has done a bit too much of that in this book.

For instance, he writes that adverse drug reactions result in 140,000 deaths per year. Pretty intense. He discusses ways to prevent this from happening to oneself or one's loved ones. Very good information.

The five pages he devotes to infant abductions, however, is a bit extreme, I think. In From 1983 to 1996, 89 infant abductions occurred in hospitals. Which, of course, is way too many, but I think that the prioritizing of the issues in this book leaves something to be desired.

After reading just a little of it, I began thinking that hospitals were horribly dangerous places to be, and I had to really look at the facts presented in order to see that the presentation of the facts was more horrifying than they needed to be.

I really like the advices for how to protect oneself in a hospital, but I think it could have been presented better.

Website Recommendation:
Scientology Spiritual Counseling

Book Review:
The Beauty : The Bride Quest #4

The basic plot and theme were interesting enough, but this is another romance novel that I really feel was just rushed through, with somewhat sloppy results.

The heroine had this "fear of men" which was told to the reader often enough - but not really demonstrated. The motivations of all the characters was stated in an overly straightforward manner - again and again and again. And both the dialogue and narration, as an another reviewer mentioned, were filled with "'twas" and "zounds", which would have been fine if it did not read in such a stilted manner.

The plot was actually quite good, and the characters themselves were interesting and fairly believable (although the heroine's attempted rape seems to have left her curiously unscathed.) All in all this is an acceptable romance novel, at least compared to most in print, but I do think that better editing would have made this a much more enjoyable story.

I wouldn't recommend this one unless you really have nothing better to do on a rainy day, but I haven't given up on the author. I think she could do better, and I will read her books again, hoping for better results.