Many of us remember the book reviews in Dell Horoscope by astrologer Michael O’Reilly under the pen-name Chris Lorenz. O’Reilly was extremely fortunate to cover astrology books every month for 27 years – nearly an entire Saturn cycle! But astrology readers are now even more fortunate to have a collection of virtually all of his reviews as a ready reference in The Ultimate Book of Astrology Books – a massive collection.
It’s heartening to realize just how many titles have been written on real astrology in recent decades (no Sun-sign books are included), and how many talented and even brilliant authors have tackled such a wide variety of astrological topics. O’Reilly includes 334 reviews.
The Introduction describes the book’s organization and gives us some insight into the author, who admits his preferences for both asteroids and traditional astrology. The Table of Contents is organized by topic (the basics, natal, books about individual planets, predictive, comprehensive, synastry, financial and many more) and the e-book is hyper-linked to jump to the book or topics you’d like to explore. (One can also use the Kindle book search feature for whatever else you want to find.) The author index at the end is packed with some of the best-known names in the field, as well as numerous other insightful authors. As there are also quite a number of earlier texts reviewed as reprints, O’Reilly’s coverage probably includes not only the last Saturn cycle of publications but the previous one as well.
Those of us who research astrology’s past are often stymied by the inability to find copies of older magazines and books. Michael O’Reilly takes a step to correct that, as he has preserved not only his own work but his coverage of the hundreds of authors represented, too. We can even become aware of trends in topics and publishing.
Michael provides overviews of each book, highlighting the salient points the authors make and often providing a little history or background to the topic and brief excerpts, along with his personal observations. He consistently enters into the spirit of each book, and no two reviews are anything alike. They’re succinct and well-written, and at times we’re also alerted to errors or challenges to reading such as font size or the absence of an index.
Astrology readers may be frustrated by the lack of online reviews. We rarely know the point of view of individual reviewers, and as real astrology still continues to be a publishing “niche,” many specialized topics are often not covered at all. The Ultimate Book of Astrology Books solves these dilemmas by providing a trusted resource and consistently sensible opinions on a wide array of books. You’ll learn much about any topic just by reading the featured reviews.
This book should be required reading for skeptics to learn about the depth and breadth of astrology. We’re extremely lucky to be astrologers in the 21st century with so much literature readily available. This book is truly an expression of the epochal conjunction of Jupiter (books), Saturn (history) and Pluto (repurposing) in Capricorn. Treat yourself and buy it!
The Ultimate Book of Astrology Books is available at Amazon.com in e-book or paperback. (The paperback is reasonably priced at under $30, but be aware that it’s nearly 800 pages long!)