Have any of you been duped by an author?

[maregough]

I’m sorry that was The Fast Lane to Heaven. He gives lectures on how to connect with the other side. He had a near death experience. He has a foundation and he presents in some churchs. Sounds phony to me.

 

[Loren_1of6]

I read one several years ago calledThe Vatican Connection.

It was presented as factual an investigation that eventually led to the idea that someone very high up in the Vatican hierarchy was responsible for laundering money for the Mafia. Or something like that.

I still don’t know how true it was.

 

[Aquarius]

Fitz:

There was another infamous reporter before Blair too, and I can’t remember his name- was it Glass?

Stephen Glass - New Republic
Janet Cooke - Washington Post

 

[TarAshly]

I must admit I was duped by James Fry big time. I read this book and ate it up, I even sent a copy of it to a friend of mine from high school who is struggling in Rehab write now as encouragement. i was outraged when the author admited it was a lie.

Fitz:

I have to admit something. I could not sleep one night several years back and I turned on the TV. My daughter was gettting ready to go over to the Middle East to serve in our military. I had many sleepless nights.

I saw CSpan and there was an author speaking about her book at some sort of book store. It was amazing. She was Jordanian. Here is an article that I searched out to document my tale.
books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1268998,00.html
(Norma Khouri wrote the book on Honor Killing)

OK, I could not get Norma’s tale out of my mind from that live book review. I searched out the book at my library. It was a New York Times Best Seller. I read the book and cried for this woman, and I recommended the book to my whole family. It was a very amazing story, and her story.

One of my daughters read the book and she stayed up all night crying over it too. She has a close friend that is Jordanian American and all we could both think of is how this type of thing could happen to someone like her friend if she had stayed in Jordan. I remember thinking that all my girls would be in danger living in the Middle East due to such harsh living conditions for women.

About 6 months later I read a Chicago Tribune article saying the author was a complete fake. She never lived there, fabricated the whole story. I was mad at CSpan, the New York Times, the publisher, etc.

This Oprah thing has pointed out how much we need the bloggers, since real business is not spending any of the profits even making sure the stories are true.

Anyone else read this Honor Killing book or have anther that they found out was fake.

 

[Loren_1of6]

All right, you got my curiosity up. I posted earlier that I had read The Vatican Connection several years ago and still don’t know how true the story really is. So I looked it up.

My library system search turned up several copies in my state’s library system. All of them are filed in the main collection under call numbers. This means that they are listed as non-fiction. The general notes say that the book is based on the diaries of a New York police detective.

My internet search turned up one mention of the book at Amazon. The book details don’t actually say whether the book is fiction or not, but the reviewer planted it squarely in the fiction section. He even mentioned that the author wrote another book “based on the same character.”

So I still don’t know for sure if the book is fiction posing as truth. I suppose that I will simply keep my faith in the Catholic Church and in the Magisterium, without worrying overmuch about any one person’s theories.

There is a new book by the same title (published in 2003) that is totally fiction, written as fiction, and classified as fiction. This one I would have no problem with.