Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd (5 Jun 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0099519881

*************************

With many books still to read and review as well as a new book to finish writing, i decided to close the pages and put my pen down. I decided to pause and take a thought for John Grisham's novel Playing for Pizza. I finished reading this novel a week ago and i had to take a moment before making any comments. I had to sit and ponder over the experience of reading this 336 page novel.

This was my first John Grisham novel to read. I had watched the movie adaptations of his novels "A Time to Kill" and "The Pelican Brief". I must say that i was incredibly impressed and was fascinated by the plots. In a nutshell- incredible. Therefore, you must imagine the excitement i had when i decided to pick up and read Playing for Pizza. So the question now is "Why did i choose Playing for Pizza?", considering John Grisham has many novels to choose from. Well, the answer is that whilst standing in Waterstones Bookstore, i was hooked after reading the first two pages.

Rick Dockery is an NFL Quaterback for one of America's most famous football teams, the Cleveland Browns. The story opens with Rick on a hospital bed after being injured at one of his teams most crucial games. Unfortunately his team has lost the game and it's his fault. As he lies on his back in the hospital, Rick watches as his career takes a nose dive. The team does not want him back. The fans want him dead and the press repeatedly crucify him.

Rick's agent struggles to find him a job as America no longer wants to tolerate the disgraced Quarterback.However, in the midst of all of this humiliation, a glimmer of hope opens up for Rick. His agent finds him a job to play for a little known team called the Parma Panthers.

Rick is delighted that at least someone wants to give him a second chance however, his hopes are deflated when he realises that the Parma Panthers are in Parma, Italy.

Rick has never been to Italy and he has never in his life earned as little as 2000Euro's. This offer seems riduculous to accept however, Rick is quickly persuaded when he realises that he has to escape the insults of Sports reporter Charley Cray. As Cray is out to murder Rick's career, Parma Italy begins seems like an inviting offer.

As Rick arrives in Parma, Grisham provides vivid imagery of the scenery in utterly beautiful language. Rick meets the Parma Panthers and their American Coach. They are a group of individuals who play the game not for a salary like Rick. They play the game for the passion of it and for the free Pizza and beer after the game - Playing for Pizza !

Rick soon gets used to the passionate nature of the Italians. Grisham's writing is often amusing as he graphically describes the Italians, their city of Parma and their strong love for Pancetta ham, Pasta, wine and cheese.

The goal of the team is to win the Italian Superbowl and their hopes lie in Rick Dockery helping them achieve this.

This is a story about their successes and their failures. It's about how an Italian team in Parma Italy taught an egotistic American Quarterback that there are more important things in life than money, power and prestige. Rick Dockery learnt about honour, loyalty, friendship and buckets of passion.

Playing for Pizza is not an intricate plot like the "Pelican Brief". Neither does it have emotionally wrenching moments like "A Time to Kill". Instead, it is a simple story with a simple lesson that many may fail to identify. The lesson is an initiation into life and coming to maturity.

"I Have Reached Bestsellerdom" !

As a new author i have this goal in sight and that goal is to be a bestselling author. The passion arises from this amazing desire to have millions of people read my stories, enjoy them and discuss them over coffee and a croissant. I suppose that is the desire of every writer - i.e for their work to be read, all over the world, by millions. If that was not the case then why do we publish and more so, why do we blog?

In my quest for achieving 'bestsellerdom' ( The Kingdom of the Bestsellers), i spend my time learning from the masters of the craft. What is it about a bestselling story? What is it about a bestselling writer? What is it about the bestselling author (i.e. their attitude/personality) - Why do some people like them? What sort of people hate them?

Therefore, i have lined up the three books above on my desk - Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, John Grisham's Playing for Pizza and Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.

I have one hundred pages left of John Grisham's book and already i've learnt a lot and am looking forward to posting a review of it. Just from brief browses through Obama's and Coelho's books I immediately see the reason for these author's star quality. Their books have easily flowing language, making for the ultimate page turner!

Through surfing the net and my sister's great efforts to publicise my first book (in fact my first attempt at writing anything in my life), i have met some authors, publishers and journalists from Zimbabwe and afar - to name a few, Sarudzayi Chifamba Barnes ( Reviewed her novel Endless Trail- read it on this blog), Emmanuel Sigauke (Not a fan of poetry - i prefer the biblical psalms but i reviewed his poetry collection Forever Let Me Go and it was not bad) and Jonathan Masere (who seemed a bit offended by one of my Christian Book Reviews but we managed to have a civil discussion about it).

Then out of the blue i got an email offer for a free proof copy of a novel by Zimbabwean author Brian Chikwava - called 'Harare North'. If i'm honest i had to surf the net in order to find out who Brian Chikwava was. Bearing in mind that prior to my churning out a 736 page novel i never used to read and i certainly never used to write. I barely scraped a C grade at O'level English. Anyway from reading the proof, i decided that i needed to buy the real published copy. I plan to buy it this week. The reason is because i think the proof had real bad grammar mistakes - meaning i did not understand the English. I mean, i thought i was bad ! However, from reading some of the reviews that people have written, the language in the book was deliberate. Anyway, i'm buying my copy to see for myself. In addtion, i'm still smarting from the toilet paper joke on page one. My first thought was it's ok for the diaspora to laugh - they have real toilet paper. But it might not be so funny for those who have to use the newspaper in real life and then have to pay out sums of money that they don't have to unblock the toilet or flush out the septic tank. - But then again it's all fiction (at least for some) - and i'm getting my copy.

Then i've now come into contact with a blog of another newly published Zimbawean author called Petinah Gappah. I had never heard of Petinah either. Do you blame me? I mean i did'nt even know that Charles Mungoshi wrote poetry or had written many books (I got that information from Emmanuel Sigauke and then i had to do some serious net surfing so as not to look stupid). I only knew Mungoshi as one of the actors in the local drama's - which i must say i thoroughly enjoyed.

Anyway, i will add Ms Gappah's collection of short stories to my library and read them - i am certainly sure to learn a lot from her as well as all the authors and publishers mentioned.

Anyway, my goal may seem to some an unachievable one in the midst of inexperience, the need for supposedly aggressive editing needed in my first novel (pointed out by some readers/authors in both public and private arena's), the fact that i have extremely few contacts, no invitations to literary events and very few flocking to read my blog posts.

However, a characteristic that i am learning from the great achievers is that you keep believing in yourself even in the face of staggering oppositions. And believe me the oppositions are staggering. However, despite this, You maintain your confessions and never give up !

Like Barack Obama i too have dreams from my Father. And because of the powerful spirit of faith within me i believe that i will manifest that goal and many a people, in fact millions of different races, will have a smile on their face whilst they drink coffee and eat a croissant buried in the pages of a novel by Sarudzai Mubvakure!

Be expectant for a review of every single book mentioned in this blog post ! - happy reading !

Breaking the chains of Shadow Beliefs by Bernard O Antwi

Paperback: 83 pages

Language: English

ISBN: 978-0-9558082-7-2

Publisher: Lion Press Limited

Review - Part One

Whilst dreamily reading Playing for Pizza by John Grisham and eagerly awaiting the delivery of Many Rivers by Chris Mlalazi, I received a pleasant surprise through my post box. It was the paperback advice book by Bernard Owusu Antwi called Breaking the chains of Shadow Beliefs.
Once I’d taken out the book from the brown envelope, I instantly liked the cover design – a silhouette (shadow) of a man running and breaking through a link of chains. From the title of the book I immediately had the question – what is a Shadow Belief? This was obviously enough ammunition to turn the pages and begin to read the 83 page book. From a brief overview I discovered that the book is divided into three parts, with an introduction at the beginning. The introduction explains what a Shadow Belief is. Part One looks at the Characteristics of Shadow Beliefs. Antwi outlines 9 characteristics. Just to name a few - Sin, Fear, Pride, Procrastination, Self defeating attitude etc. In Part Two, Antwi outlines 7 consequences of shadow beliefs. Then Part Three, I’m glad to say, is the perfect resolution to his work – 7 Keys to Resolving the Predicament of shadow beliefs.
From my general overview of the book I realised that simply doing a single review of this thoroughly, biblically, researched work would be unfair. Therefore, I decided that a series of reviews of each part of the book would be interesting to do. It then made me think of a previous book that I have reviewed – The Laws of Thinking by Bishop E Bernard Jordan. I will be revisiting that book and reviewing each of the 20 Laws in Bishop Jordan’s work and probably cross reference with Antwi’s work.

What is a Shadow Belief?

Antwi says, and I quote, “Shadow beliefs are the unconscious negative thoughts in our heads that can manipulate our whole lives, decide our abilities, what we can do and what we cannot do and drives our behaviours.”

He says that shadow beliefs are a problem as they seem to cause pain, damage and prevent the progression and success of the individual. Antwi, I believe, is on the right track by making reference to the fact that negative thoughts can have quite a harmful effect on our lives. My understanding is that thoughts as a whole i.e. whether positive or negative have a great impact on the shaping of our personalities - or the shaping of who we are as individuals. The bible clearly states this in Proverbs 23v7 –“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…” (New King James Version). Therefore we are a sum total of our thoughts. With this in mind, shadow beliefs can be quite destructive. Therefore, Antwi’s calling to help us to erase shadow beliefs from our minds is a great one.

Antwi quotes Napolean Hill as saying “What the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”.

This again is true as the bible says this in James 1v13-15 “When tempted no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full grown, gives birth to death”

That scripture is, as Antwi outlines, saying that thoughts when they are conceived, crystallise into actions. The scripture above talks about negative thoughts however, if you have positive thoughts they eventually crystallise into positive things happening in your life. Shadow beliefs crystallise to negative and painful things happening in your life.
In the midst of these powerful truths that Antwi was sharing I was struck by the following statement that Antwi made: “Beliefs are more powerful than thoughts”
My first question was - are they? Then I looked at Napoleon Hill’s statement which seems to contradict Antwi’s statement. Hill says conceive, believe then achieve. There seems to be some sort of order there i.e. conceive is birthed from thoughts, then believing precedes the action. Anyway, who is to say that Napoleon Hill is the authority on these things? So let us look at the English dictionary:

Belief: something that is accepted as true
Thought: an idea, a consideration

Just from those definitions alone, before you have accepted something as true, you have first been presented with the idea or the concept of it. Therefore thoughts have a direct influence on beliefs. My question was then should the statement not be – thoughts are more powerful than beliefs?

As I looked through the bible searching for scriptures, what Antwi meant dawned on me. Antwi is right when you look at it from a different perspective. I realised that we may have many thoughts that run through our minds however, the only ones that have an impact on our lives are the ones that we brood on, conceive and then become a part of the battery of our beliefs. Until a thought is conceived, it just remains a thought that can evaporate, disappear and have no impact on our lives whatsoever.

Therefore, yes, beliefs are more powerful (influential) than just mere thoughts that can evaporate. However, it must be realised that beliefs were once mere thoughts. Thoughts are the culprits of the shadow beliefs that Antwi talks about. So to get rid of a shadow belief you are going to have to get rid of the original negative thoughts that were conceived to become a part of the belief system. In the bible Romans 12v2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” In other words – change your thoughts – change your thinking to positive and you will transform your life!

The subtitle of Antwi’s book is – Discover What Stops Your Progress. In the current climate where people all over the world are experiencing financial hardship, affected by wars and rumours of wars, affected by natural disasters and planes falling out of skies – it is refreshing to hear a word from someone to help you to get out of the rut, progress forward and live a victorious life.

I will discover Antwi’s teachings as I go through page by page, review by review.
In my next review we will look at the first instalment of Antwi’s characteristics of Shadow Beliefs – Sin and Fear. I look forward to sharing it.

A Disappointing Truth - What is the Colour of Love?

Rudo Mwari is a young, beautiful, teenage girl. She is a young, African girl that has secured employment to work as the house girl of the white Englishman, Mr George Witt, who has come to live in Rhodesia.
Rudo and George live in Rhodesia however, they live on either side of the racial divide. This is a wall that separates the black people and the white people. It is a wall that separates the colour of their skin. However, the laws of segregation are broken on every level in Georges home as he agonises between the opposing forces of desiring what is forbidden and the fear of getting caught.
Rudo has no idea that the association with her white boss will one day result in the birth of a daughter, Sarah. It is an association painted in the shades of love but also an assosciation that may cause a spiral of events that will hurt all those around them, including Sarah. In the novel 'A Disappointing Truth', find out the colour of George's love for Rudo.