Summer and upcoming book reviews

Spot the traffic cone

It's been a pretty darn good Summer in my neck of the woods.  The weather has been great, and a long break from the chalk face was brilliant.  Blogging mercifully took a back seat, apart from a sporadic rant.

But while the weather is still holding, the realities of having to get back into routine have landed with a thud.  Another year in servitude to Hekia Pro Rata (let the reader understandeth). Sigh. And another year of pounding the keyboard?  Well, yes.

I had hoped to complete a couple of fairly extensive book reviews over the Summer, but have been thwarted at every turn.  Bob Price's The Amazing Colossal Apostle is a work that many of his fans have been hanging out for for a very long time.  Unfortunately Bob chose Signature Books of Salt Lake City as publisher, and it has been one long delay after another.  When the book finally launched, another Signature pratfall meant they were unable to sell for several more long weeks on Amazon.  Hardly had it appeared there - finally - than it was out of stock.  As best as I can tell, a copy is dog-paddling across the Pacific toward Auckland at this very moment, and when it arrives I'll be posting a review, possibly in several parts, and probably in early March.

The other major review, one which I'd hoped to have well and truly out of the way by now, is of David V. Barrett's The Fragmentation of a Sect.  Securing a copy has, however, been a source of ongoing frustration, and we're now probably talking about the end of March (hopefully 2013, but who knows?)  This is an important work for anyone interested in the way autocratic sects grow and divide, and of special interest to those who remember the heyday of The Plain Truth magazine and Garner Ted Armstrong's World Tomorrow radio and television ministry.  Again, based on what I know about it second-hand, it will definitely be worth detailed examination over several postings.  When this will be possible is, sadly, anyone's guess, but hopefully some time before it's out of print!

On a lighter note, the photograph is one I took at Port Waikato over the break on the mobile phone.  Atop the tree is a large size traffic cone, proving, as a friend who spotted it first remarked, that today's teenagers aren't all that different from those in times past.