Attractions Books

This book, the pre-quel to Unnatural DTWOF, is hyterical. Mo and her friends go on with life (78-126) and there are several characters who have disappeared in later books, notably Mo's therapist. Highly recommended

Serial Monogamy is the story of all lesbians. The processing, the search of good loving is a constant in every lesbian life. Or that it seems. Sociologically fabulous.

In 1989, while on a family ski trip to the Cascade Mountains, Grace had the most amazing man share her chair at the ski lift. This man was dressed all in white and marveled at the miraculous world around him. He called Grace by name and told her that he had been present at her birth. He then disappeared as if the incident never happened. In fact, Grace was the only person to actually see the man in white. Then in 1999, on Grace's forty-forth birthday, she has another odd experience one that will change her life forever.

Falcon, Fallon, and the Theory of Everything is written as a fictional spiritual journey of Grace as she examines her religious beliefs, her spiritual nature, and the miracles in her life. Much of Grace's early path is like that of any other person. She feels the need to explore her past, let her parents know who she is, her spirituality starts to find its way into her everyday life, and she yearns to expand her knowledge on the subject. These common aspects are comforting and allow the reader to share a common bond with Grace and her experiences as the story becomes more miraculous in nature.

What a surprise read. It made me laugh and it touched my heart. I have to find out what comes next!

Thayer White's explanation of his experiences and the conclusions he has reached are clearly and plainly stated. A seeker will not have to find another book to define any of his words, and they flow smoothly, giving an easy read. One feels like they have sat down and discussed spiritual thoughts with the author in person. The little 'joke' breaks between chapters are fun and thought provoking. Lots of answers here for those finding the law of attraction fickle.

Feeling content with oneself - something so many people reach for but so often fail to achieve. "Finding Your Soul in the Spirituality Maze" is a guide for those who wish to attempt the New Age Spirituality path to contentment. Promoting how to align one's mind with the soul's desires, attain peace of mind, and warning what to avoid to prevent the creation of roadblocks in one's path, "Finding Your Soul in the Spirituality Maze" is a deftly written guide for followers of New Age and for community library spirituality collections.

A great book that offers a way to enhance your self esteem and confidence while increasing your attractiveness by uncovering and following your own dreams.

It also helps to boost your persuasion power with verbal and non-verbal communication. It's sort of like taking a course in "How to Build Your Own Attractor Factor," a quality that everyone desires but few possess.

Yes, you can find that perfect relationship and that great job or starting your own business is not beyond your grasp.

It's all about communicating between the inner you and the forces that connect you to the universe.

Thank you Peta for this very powerful and well written book.

This is a wonderful book if you're wanting to learn more about you and your personality and how to make your personality more charismatic. I highly recommend this book!

A comprehensive coverage but reviews focus more upmarket. Little coverage of the good small b&b's.

Frommer will never dissapoint you. If you have limited number of days and want to see as much as possible, this is the right guide. IT also details all essential services and key WEB sites. For this price tag, just keep it in your backpack.

You give up many things that you take for granted when you become disabled, but, with the help of this book, traveling doesn't have to be one of them. The editors make it easy to plan an out of town trip by letting you know some of the obstacles you will find on your travels. By knowing them in advance, you are better prepared to handle them calmly rather then letting them frustrate you and ruin everyone's trip.This guide gives me confidence to go places that are new and not worry on what I will find when I arrive.

As the Disability Host on BellaOnline, I recommend this book. It gives you complete information regarding accessibility and travel. You won't want to travel without this book.

I'd wanted to visit this once-renowned or reviled tourist attraction halfway between Santa Cruz and San Jose, but not much remains after lots of "mysterious fires," in the 50s and 60s. German shepherds prowl the premises, redwoods and weeds sprout largely undisturbed where a filling station, zoo, roadhouse, and self-sufficient white supremacist spread where cattle were raised, crops grown, peep shows beckoned, and reportedly Hawaiian Punch was invented. It attracted drifters during the Depression, many of whom stayed on to eke out a living. At one point, it was over 90 men and four women. As you might expect, William E. Riker, a native Californian, played early successes at spiritualism and bigamy into a career manipulating the hearts and minds of whomever had the patience or the desperation to put up with remarkably turgid-- even by cult standards-- rants about the White Man's Burden, messianic prattle, and Babbitt-like nostrums of self-help delivered in a brisk, ad-man lingo.

Lewis, a local historian of the Monterey Bay area, does her best to gather all the newspaper documentation, a few scraps of interviews with those who lived there, the grand larceny trial when Riker was represented-- and later sued by his client for defamation while his lawyer had to fight for his fees rather than a "spiritual" offering set aside for him in heaven-- by a young Melvin Belli during WWII. Lewis does not delve much into the white supremacist teachings that Riker espoused, and you get little sense of what may be after all lots of nonsense. I suspected that Lewis lacked the fortitude for hashing out Riker's prattle, and the excerpts she provides do not exactly whet your appetite to want to read more about his fevered plans to save the Golden State from foreign takeover, to find Christ in "Father" Riker, and to attain some sort of transcendental state by nodding along with what the founder dished out along with gas and grub for whomever passed by.

Riker's no poet, but must have possessed considerable charisma to entice so many to stop not only for punch or a sandwich but to stay there for years, in primitive conditions, working at this roadside attraction. He also amassed most of what Holy City took in; its inhabitants contributed their earnings back to Riker. The off-beat allure, inherent within this published preservation of the relics, of Holy City somehow lingers beyond the data assembled by Lewis. Perhaps such cults must lurk beyond the journalistic, legal, and municipal record. At least one murder happened here, celibacy among the members vs. Riker's own right-- even though or because he resembled a bloated Babbitt than Elmer Gantry from the photos here-- to bed any lady who wandered into his lair, surely created an atmosphere that demanded more exploration by today's investigator of this sylvan realm. The flavor of the garishly advertised-- with a row of highway Santas and pitchman billboards-- place must be guessed at more by scanning the rare postcards and ephemera collected by Lewis for reproduction. I'd have liked more day-to-day details of the place, but apparently the historian appears to have compiled as much as she could into a small book under a hundred pages, divided between text and illustrations.

Riker later accepted, after the trial and after WWII, that Jews and Aryans could both rule the world. He ran for governor more than once, but failed to rouse support. A new highway bypassed his development, and a fickle public nosed about other cults with younger gurus. This led to "Father" Riker selling half his share to a Hollywood M.O.T. investor-- this precipitated legal battles and residential unrest, hastening the decline of Holy City. A letter here printed from late in his life, eagerly proposing its sale to nudists in a public offering of stock, testified to Riker's salesmanship skills, his way with an argument, and his folly. I'd have liked to find more about this character; Riker has collected I reckon about all that's left from a life that touched thousands, but which, like the ruins of Holy City, appears barely visible beneath a busier, tamed, if still half-evangelical, half-New Age and spiritually restless Californian corridor between bohemian Santa Cruz and enterpreneurial Silicon Valley.

Today, only a glassworks making works of art and its owner, Tom Stanton, reportedly inhabit these forlorn premises. Long after the post office closed, its hundreds of residents dispersed. The communal circus that lasted more or less from 1919-69 finally closed, scattering the few faithful who stay silent, devoted followers of "Father" toiling away for salvific dreams that remain elusive and nearly silent within these pages.

At first I was a little disappointed when I saw that there were only 94 pages to this book, and even those are loaded with photographs, but this material is so rare that it's worth the price of a regular size book. I had heard about Riker and Holy City back in 1968 from someone who had once visited there, and I have only encountered paragraph sized references since, but eventually one of those spurred me to find about four web pages on this subject.

Once I got the general idea of the Holy City story, and figured out where this place is hidden from the modern world of political correctness, I felt compelled to visit personally. It's mostly an empty crossroads in the woods, and I got lost a couple of times trying to arrive there, but it was worth it to meet Tom of the Holy City Glass Shop and to see the outside of Riker's old house. Tom's very good with the occasional visitor who comes out of curiosity, although his business isn't related to what Riker had there, and he was able to answer every question I posed.

Often denounced as an eccentric cult leader, Riker is still fondly remembered as the most colorful character in the history of the San Carlos, California area. His Utopia was located on this mountainous summit to the west of the downtown area from 1918 until about 1941, between San Jose and the seaside community of Santa Cruz. Riker erected large garish signs and displays to advertise his ideas about religion and the white race, and his commercial buildings provided all manner of roadside attractions to travelers, including a restaurant, gas station, amusement parlor, hotel, soda pop bottling plant, print shop, barber shop, telescope, and radio station.

Adopting the tactic of designating "teachers" for his recruits, much as early Christians did (Although there never was a church built in Holy City), Riker routinely transformed even the homeless into loyal and confident supporters. And it was often they who operated the many Holy City services so appreciated by motorists. During World War 2 his politically contradictory and outspoken passions for both the German and Jewish peoples nearly got him convicted of treason.

The highway cuts through the mountains to connect San Jose to Santa Cruz, but business largely collapsed there when the site was bypassed by the modern highway. All that remains of the original Holy City is a few private buildings and the natural background which appears in some of the old photos; Riker's house, garage, and storage shed are difficult to see from the road as they are partially blocked by the trees which grew up since. Across the street from the Riker house is Tom's glass shop, on part of the property that Riker established for commerical use, and Tom keeps some faded copies of Riker's old newspaper posted on a bulletin board.

Riker's own published materials from Holy City include: The Philosophy of the Nerves; the New Jewish Religion; World Peace & How To Have It, and many smaller publications such as his Enlightener newsletter in 1917; Sheet Music titled "Please Don't Leave Me, Daddy" in 1945; The leaflet "I Will Come Again" in the 1950s; "A 16 Point Program" in the 50s; and "Make Me Your Next President" in the 1950s. Materials such as these rarely pop up even as collectibles, so Betty Lewis's book is the most useful explanation available.

My impression of Riker is probably more positive than the way most people see him today, although I don't agree with everything he said on race. And his religious views look a lot like what was popular in my father's day, but Riker was certainly more eccentric or poetic in the way he expressed himself. My impression is that Riker was very much a product of his time. Anyway, if you buy this book and feel like mulling it over some more, feel free to contact me.

This is one of my favorite early Nora Robert's books. The prequel, Summer Desserts was good reading, but I enjoyed Lessons Leared more because the characters were better developed. I especially enjoyed the colorful, sexy, funny, loverboy character of Carlo Franconi. The tension between Carlo and Julie is palpable. Well written and interesting, this was one of the few Robert's books that had me wondering if the lovers in this story were truly starcrossed or if they would find their way together in the end.

Sexy Italian chef Carlo Franconi goes on a 3 week book tour to promote his new cookbook. With him on his travels is super- organized publicist Juliet Trent, who is determined not to fall for this latin lover type. Of course, she does and he finds the one woman he's been looking for all his life. Carlo visits his friends from the book, "Summer Desserts" and it is fun to read about them again. You will probably enjoy this book more if you have already read "Summer Desserts".

Excerpt from the back of the book:
"An expert in the kitchen-and the bedroom-Carlo Franconi was more than willing to teach publicist Juliet Trent the secrets to his success. Juliet never combined business with pleasure, yet she was captivated by Carlo's outrageous boldness and charm.
But twenty-one days on tour with the world's sexiest chef was enough to stir any woman's emotions!"

Midwest Marvels: Roadside Attractions Across Iowa, Minnesota, The Dakotas, And Wisconsin by freelance writer Eric Dregni is a handy 437-page travel guide to many of the munificent and iconic roadside attractions scattered along the highways and byways of five midwestern states. Lavished throughout with black and white photos of strange scenic wonders, Midwest Marvels is a type of entertaining curiosity tour featuring a text which is illustrated with photographs and down home folk tales. All of the attractions are real and actually exist, albeit sometimes hard to believe (Og the Gorilla, King Kong of the Prairie?). Midwest Marvels is well researched, as for example, the chapter on Peanuts Park, in St. Paul, Minnesota which has a thumbnail sketch of the famous comic artist, born in St. Paul, containing little known facts about Charles Schulz's history of leaving the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1950 for greener pastures when it decided his weekly fee of $10 was "too much for simple drawings (p. 149)." Midwest Marvels is filled with the quirky, wild, wacky landmarks of the Upper Midwest. From the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, to the Effigy Mounds of Marquette, Iowa, Midwest Marvels presents useful information about attractive features, history, locations, hours, prices of admission, and local colour stories. It is well worth the price to the traveler unfamiliar with what the five-state Upper Midwest area has to offer the curious passerby.

As a lifelong resident, I've always found the caricatured depictions of the Midwest and we Midwesterners (e.g. Fargo) pretty entertaining in that there's an undeniable kernel of truth. This book, to my simultaneous horror and delight, does not require suspension of disbelief. The narrative, maps and photos cast crossed kino eyes on the sublime weirdness of Midwestern reality- like the Ron Schara Wooden Leg Museum in Gaylord, MN.

Read this book. It will inform your roadtrips and make for swank church-basement conversation on Saturday night.

My husband and I brought this book with us on a trip to Minnesota in April 2002. We are sure glad we did! This book lists so many great roadside attractions. We stopped and saw a giant fiberglass walleye, Frank Lloyd Wright's gas station, the Jolly Green Giant, a giant hockey stick, a huge dala horse, the spam museum and multiple other fascinating sights listed in this book. That made our trip so memorable. Our friends loved seeing our pictures. Using the book, we were even able to plan day trips from Minneapolis to hit several sites. I only wish we'd had time to see it all! A must-buy book for a traveler in Minnesota.

I received this book for Christmas 2001. Had been looking forward to it as I've always been interested in the roadside attractions of MN, ND, and the upper midwest. This is an excellent book that not only covers the gigantic roadside statues in MN, but also a number of unique events and places--such as the "Museum of Questionable Medical Devices" in MPLS.

My only complaint regarding the book is that the photos are in black and white. Color would've added a lot to the book (including a higher price, I'm sure). Also, I would've like to have seen more than just one poto for several of the icons--e.g., the picture of the Frazee turkey burning down is great, but how about a picture of the new one? Also, the black duck (Blackduck, MN) is the old one, what about the new one? How about that "famous" picture of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker standing in front of the black duck?

Regardless of these minor complaints, the book is full of great information about the attractions, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy it. In fact, I have made a couple more purchases for friends. It makes a wonderful gift for those interested in travel, those who have visited MN, or ex-patriots of the state. It also serves as a great compliment to the book "Roadside America", for it's added information about each statue/attraction.