Spencer Books

This is an updated, easier-to-read version of George MacDonald's novel _David_Elginbrod_. With his bits of poetic theology, he leads the characters and the reader to ultimate freedom from paralyzing fear. It tooks months for me to realize how much _The_Tutor's_First_Love_ affected my life because the truths in this book are not gaudy or sensational but they slowly replace fear with faith. The revival of the works of George MacDonald is truly a Godsend.

This is a wonderful story of a young man who, in order to raise enough money to return to University, takes a job as a tutor at a wealthy estate. He soon finds love and nurturing, however, from a simple pious Scotch family nearby. Though his travels take him off to England and eventually to London he never completely forgets the valuable lessons that his spiritual father instilled in him. This story has ghosts, haunted mansions, secret passages, hypnotism, magic rings, songs, poems, beautiful ladies and sinister villans. The individual characters are expertly developed and extremely complex in their behaviors. I also recomend that you get the full length version from Sunrise Publishers or Johannesen Printing & Publishing entitled "David Elginbrod". The first 80 pages are a little difficult because of the Scotch dialect, but can be easily figured out.

Until I read Metta Spencer's Two Aspirins and a Comedy, I saw television as basically entertaining me, and sometimes informing me. Reading this insightful book shows me how many of my core values and understandings have been formed -- from the tolerance that Howdy Doody implicitly taught to the multiculturalism of I Spy, Northern Exposure and Star Trek.

Metta Spencer brings her skills as a Professor of Sociology, as a long-time peace researcher, and as a psychologist or social psychologist to the question of how we can change our society so that individuals are happier and more fulfilled, and the society is more peaceful and stable.

Two Aspirins and a Comedy is not really a study of television and its uses, it is actually a study of our society and how it meets the needs (and fails to meet the needs) of individuals in it. She sees people who are lonely and out-of-sorts reaching out to television stories for human contact and affirmation of their values. But mostly the television stories that are available fill their mind and their imagination with crooks, sociopaths, and unsympathetic characters, and the stories fill their minds with violence and cruelty. Spencer argues for better stories and more sustaining characters as social policy, and takes up a wide range of arguments about why we have the situation that exists.

Unlike most non-fiction (and unheard of in professional sociology) this account is wide ranging and consistently serious across a range of fields - philosophy, theology, sociology, the physiology of emotions, and so on. The voice of the author - in turn humorous, sad, empathetic, and intellectually ambitious - comes through the whole account.

Try it. Reading Two Aspirins and a Comedy is a unique experience, unlike any other book I know.

I'm an 8th grade teacher (teaching US history) and I use these crosswords as optional brain teasers for my students. Sometimes I give them to students who are finished with a class assignment to keep them busy and thinking about Social Studies. Students enjoy the challenge and learn something along the way. I have bought other "puzzle"-type books, but this is by far my favorite, because students don't need any specific content-type prior knowledge before tacking the crosswords - all the info needed is right there. It was well worth my "investment". Buy it!

I've been very pleased with this book. It's a variety of maps (including a floor plan of the white house) which comprehensively teaches map-reading skills. My son is gifted, age 9 and in the 5th grade, and he did struggle at first with the thoroughness needed to complete the crossword puzzles. He needed supervision and help. It was good to see him struggle and work (evil Mom grin) instead of dashing out easy answers. He's learned to slow down, analyze, and search for the answers and I've noticed that this has carried over to his other work. I'm very glad that I chose this book for him and I would choose it again.

Alexis' writing comes from the heart, she shares her thoughts, feelings and experiences openly. She's not afraid to challenge, or be challenged! Here verses are a blessing and an encouragement!

From the first words, I wanted to know so much about this woman who chose to devote herself to West Jackson, Mississippi. Her poems and pieces were very compelling. She is living an American life that everyone should know about, whether they are religious or not. I recommend this book for anyone who struggles to make change in the world.

THE WEARY MOTEL doesn't have a breakneck plot. It doesn't have lots of suspense. It's not a mystery; it's not a thriller; it's not a romance. It doesn't have a "gimmick" like some books, and it's not topical like others. It doesn't introduce us to any "brave new world." In other words, THE WEARY MOTEL is definitely not the kind of book that's going to land on anyone's bestseller list anytime soon, though it's certainly better written than most that do.

THE WEARY MOTEL takes place in the fictional town of Peebles, population 3,811, in southern Ohio, just southwest of Steubenville (very near the town where Clark Gable was born), near the West Virginia panhandle. It's coal-mining country, one of the least exotic places on earth. Most of the people are extremely poor, and many lives revolve around the sheer battle just to stay alive.

As would be expected, the people that inhabit this book aren't glamorous or wealthy, or involved in any exotic pursuit; they're just trying to make the best of what they've got, and along the way, maybe eke out a little happiness as well. As the novel opens, Jo Rene, a single woman approaching middle age, is setting out on a mission, a mission to spy on her live-in postman boyfriend, Buck, whom she believes, for no good reason, is lying to her and sleeping with someone on his route.

With the second paragraph, Spencer establishes the tone of his novel, and we can see this is going to be a novel that's both grim and grimly funny. Not satire. It's not biting enough for that. Not even black comedy; it's too whimsical. But, it is going to be filled with something much, much better - deep insight into what makes us human as well as raw honesty.

Spencer is an extremely talented author, one of the best and most genuine of all American voices, and while all of his writing skills are strong, it doesn't take many pages to realize that characterization and dialogue are definitely his forte. All the characters Spencer creates are "genuine," they really "come alive" on the page and they burrow into the reader's heart and stay there. Spencer's able to do what so many other, far lesser but better known authors have never mastered, i.e., translate his insight into human nature into the written word.

Spencer's characters may seem a bit quirky and offbeat at first glance, but as the book progresses, the reader comes to identify with them more and more, for what human among us isn't a bit quirky and offbeat, himself, at least at times? Spencer simply reaches deep inside his characters and turns them inside out for the reader to get to know. It is, at least in part, the loving humanity that this author bestows on each and every one of his characters that sets THE WEARY MOTEL apart and lifts it above the ordinary.

THE WEARY MOTEL features an ensemble cast, rather than focusing on one central protagonist. This book tells the story of Dill, Jo Rene's brother, and the heartache he feels over the early death of his young wife, Carol; it tells the story of Jo Rene and her struggle to survive in a family she loves and one we know that, if given a choice, she'd no doubt choose again, though she might want to kick herself for doing so; it tells the story of Dawnell, Dill's teenaged daughter and her desire to break free of the suffocating atmosphere of Peebles despite the fact that she's going to have ties to this little town for the rest of her life.

The supporting characters in THE WEARY MOTEL are as beautifully drawn and engaging as the major ones, although several of them aren't very likable, but then, they shouldn't be. There's Buck, the man Jo Rene should be woman enough to toss out, but doesn't, because love, more often than not, gets in the way of common sense and causes us to do stupid things instead of smart ones; there's Lori, Dill's unhappily married love interest; there's Tonya, the girl who dreams of running away to Florida, but settles for Buck and roses and chocolates, instead, at least for the time being. Then there're Dill and Jo Rene's mother and grandmother, two feisty women who are both surprising and yet, wholly believable.

Like the characters in Spencer's previous book, LOVE AND RERUNS IN ADAMS COUNTY, the characters in THE WEARY MOTEL do the "wrong" thing more often than they do the "right," but they are, above all else, supremely human and extraordinarily memorable. Spencer really lets us see into the hearts of these people and I found myself chuckling on almost every page and thinking, yes, that's exactly the way I felt; that's exactly the way life is.

One of the most memorable and endearing scenes occurs when Jo Rene receives a chain letter. Like most of us, her first instinct is to chuck it into the nearest trash can, but also, like most of us, Jo Rene doesn't want to tempt fate, so she deals with the letter, instead, and in a very comical and human manner.

While the characters take center stage in THE WEARY MOTEL, one really can't review this book without mentioning Spencer's fresh and funny dialogue. His narrative voice is strong and it's unique. It's also as uniquely American as Mark Twain. Spencer carefully walks the line between the comic and the grim without so much as a single misstep. In addition, his dialogue has subtext, something I think many authors today simply dismiss as being unnecessary. I have yet to read another book that can even come close to being as poignant, as truly funny, and as genuinely bittersweet as is THE WEARY MOTEL. The subject matter is sometimes dark and grim and serious, but Spencer never forgets that even in the grimmest moments there can often be found a comic side to life, and to his enormous credit, he focuses on both.

THE WEARY MOTEL is a fresh, funny, and touching novel and one I would definitely recommend to anyone. It's really too bad it's not more widely read. Mark Spencer is an author who's not only mastered his craft; he's an author who knows how to plumb the depths of the human heart.


5/5

I love this book! I love the way Mr. Spencer draws the reader into every characters life, all the way down to the "mind chatter" that everyone has and never talks about. He draws a clear picture of the external settings of an internal madness. I love his sense of humor and the multi-faceted texture of his writing. I own three of his books and look forward to the next!

It is essential that every child and mother should own Wee Sing Bible Songs!

In preparing music for childrens programs, this book/cd collection is a great way to get started. The book contains the music for many traditional childrens songs. It has guitar chords and melody notation for all songs. For songs in a difficult key for beginng guitarists, it has alternative chord combinations to make playing easier. I purchased the CD version of the package so I can listen to a particular song without having to search for it on the tape.

One of the things that children really enjoy about this collection of songs is the hand motions/actions for many of the songs.

This was a great collection for an amature guitarist like myself to use to prepare childrens music for a variety of programs.

I bought this book last summer, and while other teens were reading more popular books, I was reading a history book. It has really changed my outlook on western history. I have always been interested in the Oregon Trail, and such, but this has really encouraged me to read more of her books, and otheres like it. Y'all have got to read this book!!

The women of the early American West played a significant role in history, but many of their stories went untold, their voices unheard -- until this book. It's so readable, so filled with glimpses of lives and dreams, it's hard to put down. Who can forget Shell Flower, the Native American girl who thought white people were owls when she first saw them; or Mary Richardson Walker, struggling to be free yet fit the mold of the "True Woman"; or Lalu Nathoy, who sailed to America from China dreaming of fortune, only to be sold into prostitution. Or Esther Morris, the uppity woman who helped make Wyoming the first territory or state to grant voting rights to women. The book is crammed with memorable characters: the sporting women of Colorado who wore yellow satin and hid their pain with opium, the wild women like Calamity Jane and the French gamblers in California, the homesteaders, basket weavers, quiltmakers, each with a story of courage, hilarity or heartbreak. The book has recipes, letters, photographs, and songs. It's like a patchwork quilt, each piece a bit of priceless history.

ABSTRACT JUSTICE: An Ascent Into Hell, by Spencer Preston. The spellbinding political thriller that dramatically altered the course of the "Trial of the Century". "As the leader of the free world lays dying, a plot unfolds to kill his successor-- a black man.

This is a very enjoyable historical novel about a Luftwaffe fighter pilot during WW2. It is fiction for mature readers, obviously very well researched, and is as gripping a read as many of the autobiographies of the real Luftwaffe pilots that I have read. (eg. Heilmann, Hannig, Knoke. If you know and appreciate these titles I feel you are sure to enjoy this novel)

The story covers the young combat pilot's first sorties against the British during the Battle of Britain, moves to the Eastern Front where he hones his 'trade' and also touches on the air-fighting during the Defense of the Reich and culminates in the Bodenplatte attack. It reveals an interesting look at the propaganda machine behind the aces, and the sometimes insatiable drive for victories and scores among Luftwaffe aces. Interwoven with the descriptions of operations, pilots and personal vs. military politics is an unforgettable love story which does not detract from the impact of the book for air combat enthusiasts. If you have read and enjoyed Len Deighton's "Goodbye Mickey Mouse" you will find "Ace" a similar spin on the pilots and operations but from the perspective of the other side of the channel.
I loved it, found it to be well researched historically and technically and have re-read it many times. I would recommend it to anyone interested in stories about the pilots of the Luftwaffe.

This book is a very practical book that does a nice job breaking down the action research process