You may have noticed the Mind and Media logo on my sidebar, just below the links--yes, I am an EXCLUSIVE REVIEWER. That's right. Ahem. Anyway, Mind and Media is a new business intended to help promote Christian authors via the blogging world, as well as being, in my understanding, a bit of an experiment to show how much of an impact blogs can have on advertising. I came across it either on Brandywine Books or a subsequent link, and thought it sounded like fun--get free books, talk about them on the blog, and, of course, become an EXCLUSIVE REVIEWER.

So I got my first book the other day. I'm supposed to post a logo of it, but can't figure out the HTML yet--maybe later. It's called Seeds of Destruction: Planting Destruction of America's Children, written and self-published by Georgiana Preskar and available from Amazon. First of all, the subtitle has got to go. It doesn't make much sense, and sounds as the author's goal is to destroy America's children, when in fact she's crying out against that destruction by society. Secondly, I'm beginning to realize that it simply isn't true that anyone can be a writer. Setting aside the issue of simple sentences and poor punctuation, there are people who just don't know how to tell a story. Ms. Preskar begins the book with an introduction that seems to lay a good foundation with the information that her town was just another quiet town until one man made national news by trying to get rid of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Great, thought I, so she's going to start here and show how our society is corrupted by these small actions. Then the first couple of chapters describe her and her husband's desperate grief when their son leaves for college. Besides being thrown off course, I found it disturbing that her son living 20 minutes away dragged her into such devastation and aimlessness. Maybe I'll understand when I'm a parent...

So far I've skimmed through nine chapters of the book. While I do agree with her general view that society is corrupting children, she needs at the very least a good editor (the book was edited by her family), or ideally a ghost writer. She doesn't know how to focus or create an argument, so each chapter leads to a new tangent and fresh rant on Nazis, homosexuality, TV violence--it's too much. I'm disappointed, because it sounded like an interesting book, but we'll see if things improve as I continue to read.

I should also mention that Mind and Media would like to have as many bloggers involved as possible, so visit the website if you're interested in receiving free books!