Comfort Read ~ A Book Review of ‘Secrets & Mysteries of the World’ by Sylvia Browne

Like an alcoholic grabbing a margarita after being fired from a job and then finding themselves in a Tex-Mex franchise restaurant eating chips and salsa, I bought 'Secrets & Mysteries of the World' from the bargain bookshelf of my local Barnes & Noble.  Laugh and point if you must, but honestly those without trash reading sins are the only ones who are allowed to throw stones.

            If you must know, I have read 23 books this year...and yes, I am including this one in the count.  My goal is 52 books and guess what?  I bought another Sylvia Browne book to read.  I know some of you are rolling your eyes at the ceiling and apparently I'm embarrassed because I have just written 150 words trying to explain what I don't really have to explain because deep down inside, I suppose I feel a little ashamed.  Like I'm coming out of the closet and asking all of you to accept me as I am - accept me as someone who reads books written by psychics - someone who has a bunch of 'Time-Life' books on every imaginable topic - someone who has debated selling these books only to thumb through them and remember that little girl I once was who would always write down the 'Time-Life' phone numbers from the 'Time-Life' cable commercials to read a series on mysterious monsters.  I am the same grown up who, after never buying the books as a child, bought them in a used bookstore and carried them around Springfield, Missouri...because that is the way I roll. 

            Alright, I'm done with confessions.  I am quite prepared to admit that I liked Browne's book.  It was exactly what I thought it would be.  I wasn't blown away by her verbiage, but I did identify with her down home way of looking at the world; she is a Kansas City native after all.  Plus I think some people may recognize her from her various appearances on 'Montel Williams Show' and 'Larry King Live.'

            As a writer I enjoy these types of books because they fire my imagination.  It is besides the point if I actually believe everything that she reports.  There is a certain 'wow factor' when she makes me think in a way I never thought about before such as her assertion that the individual building blocks of the Egyptian pyramids each containing specific otherworldly information.  Browne also had me thinking about Jesus in a different way, she is a Gnostic Christian, and I suppose this idea has been out there for some time, but I had never heard of it, that Christ was never really dead in the first place when he rose from the grave.  She confirmed the feeling I have had for some time that Christ probably is a bit put out that such hellabaloo is made about his death while a lot of his teaching are ignored.  Further, why was the original Roman Catholic church so put out about Mary Magdalene - so they might have been married, had children, what's so wrong with that?  Get over it.  Making Magdalene out to be a whore seems a tad disrespectful to both Mary and Jesus...just an observation.

            Of course I simply ate up the parts where Browne talked about her encounters with space aliens.  I don't care if the stories themselves might not be true; I ate them up like catnip.  Meow!  An invisible alien who chats about the future?  Yo, ET, give me a call!

            Browne wrote about the usual suspects when we talk about mysterious places. One was Stonehenge (which I took my pet crystal Fred to see...hey, he asked to go).  For those of us who aren't British citizens Stonehenge is off one of England's highways - kind of like an archeological equivalent to Stuckey's.  Easter Island was mentioned which always makes me sad for the residents because they are wedged in the middle of the Pacific and the only reason anyone ever drops by is to see their island is for the statues.  They probably don't have cable or Wi-Fi computer access thus every Friday night is just like every Monday night except it is a different cruise line filled with tourists with cameras asking the same damn questions over and over.  Browne also wrote about Atlantis and hinted that a lot of us alive today had previous lives in Atlantis, which makes sense to me because I have a distinct sense memory of eating soup made with jelly fish and some other thing I couldn't identify (I didn't like much).  I had never heard of Lemuria, but believe me, now it might just pop up in some short story of mine.

            Browne's writing is much like her speaking voice which sounds as if she has been smoking a carton of cigarettes a day since she was seven.  You can practically hear her narrating each chapter and then taking a smoking break, even though she claims she doesn't smoke. 

            I know, I know, some of you might be disappointed, but I would recommend 'Secret Mysteries' simply because it was a fun fast read that will provoke conversation even if you have no belief whatsoever about having a sixth sense or things that go bump in the night.  I'm still reading the book about Wall Street (JB, I told you that economics is a like reading a foreign language for me, I'm on page 100) thus I didn't feel a bit bad about sashaying over to the discount book area during my last outing and spotting another Sylvia Browne book and buying it.  Because, if you haven't figured out yet, that's the way I roll.

Westerfield © 2009