Stephen F. Venable

Advantages: Easy to read, practical
Disadvantages: -

...Things are starting to look summer-y around here, and the first flyers for potential camping experiences for the summer have started appearing on bulletin boards around the seminary and college. It reminded me of a book I read as part of a class I took devoted to learning about church camps. According to Karen-Marie Yust, professor of Christian Education at my seminary, Christian Theological Seminary, the book 'How to Use Camping Experiences in Religious Education: Transformation through Christian Camping' by Steven Venable and Donald Joy is about the only book available on the topic of Church Camping. It is a very brief book, some 120 small pages, and only briefly touches on many practical issues related to church camp planning, leadership, and implementation. Yet, as Yust says, it is about the only book available. True, more... Read review

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Advantages: Fascinating story, a Must-Read, historically important work
Disadvantages: None

...". Stephen leads the (oh so common in lesbian novels up to the 70's) usual unhappy life. Her taste seems to be femme with a capital F; her choice of straight girls doesn't make for a fulfilling love-life, either. Luckily, she's independently wealthy. The war helps her out (picture troops of happy butches...) and she falls in love. She becomes a famous writer.... **** Radclyffe Hall based her storyline on the then new theories of sexologist Havelock Ellis. Unfortunately, the assumption that homosexualilty is biologically determined often ended up in calling it a "sickness" or some "unfortunate biological abnormality". Radclyffe must have thought that the biological argument would have people shut up. Well, she also assumed that her book would be a smash hit and was surprised that it got banned despite the foreword written by Havelock Ellis. Sure... Read review

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Advantages: High adenture, much derring-do, real horror, and at the core of it - Repairman Jack!
Disadvantages: Where?

...'The Tomb', by F. Paul Wilson, is the first novel in a sequence featuring the character of Repairman Jack, a man who fixes things for people. Not cars or refrigerators, but situations. A man with, as far as the US Government is concerned, no identity, Jack lives outside the rules and justifications society wraps most of us in. A final solution when trouble brews, he lives well helping others, a one man A-team with attitude. Lately though, things have not been going too well for Jack. There was his lover Gina, a woman with whom he had hoped to grow a future until she discovered his cache of weapons and discovered what he really did for a living. Then there is his latest case, in which he is charged with recovering a necklace that carries with it an ancient curse that may just unleash a horde of Bengali demons. Jack might be used... Read review

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