Reviewer Gordon Osmond : Gordon is a produced and award-winning playwright and author of: So You Think You Know English--A Guide to English for Those Who Think They Don't Need One, Wet Firecrackers--The Unauthorized Autobiography of Gordon Osmond and his debut novel Slipping on Stardust.
He has reviewed books and stageplays for http://CurtainUp.com and for the Bertha Klausner International Literary Agency. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School and practiced law on Wall Street for many years before concentrating on writing fiction and non-fiction. You can find out more about Gordon by clicking HERE
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Author:John Fuller with Paul Batura
Publisher:Moody PublishersISBN:978-0-8024-8750-6
Click Here To Purchase First Time Dad: The Stuff You Really Need to Know
Author:John Fuller with Paul Batura
Publisher:Moody PublishersISBN:978-0-8024-8750-6
In the screen version of Sloan Wilson's 1955 novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Gregory Peck and Frederic March, both first time dads, engage in a climactic discussion of priorities between a man's family and work responsibilities. After reading John Fuller's book, First Time Dad, one is left with no doubt what side of the argument the author favors. Indeed, the author even uses the archaic spelling ("busyness") when discussing the world of commerce.
First Time Dad is part memoir, part how-to manual, part bibliography centered on the Christian canon, and perhaps predominantly, a Christian tract. Mr. Fuller, having raised (one to a height of 6' 6") half a dozen children including a special needs child and an adopted one, is clearly qualified to address the subject of parenthood. Also, the author writes in a clear, straightforward style, so clear in fact that one questions the necessity for a chapter précis at the beginning of each.
It will probably come as no surprise to the reader to learn that babies need 'round-the-clock care, that children grow up fast, and that every child is different. A lot of the husband-treatment-of-wife advice can be summarized in the lyrics of Try a Little Tenderness. Mr. Fuller introduces one particular platitude with, "At the risk of stating the obvious. . . " Mr. Fuller runs this risk fearlessly and frequently.
The book is most fascinating when it probes the motivation of the absent dad. Is he truly enthusiastically engaged in his extra-family pursuits, be they hobbies or office projects, or is fear of or resistance to involvement with spouse and child the real motivator? A lot of dads would be well advised to give that searching question some serious thought.
Mr. Fuller clearly digs Dobson (James), even regarding the latter's remarkable statement that at the end life no non-procreating man is as happy as he could have otherwise been as a parent. In this world, there are apparently no foxhole bachelors. Some readers may also wonder if as children they would have been wounded gravely by growing up in a home with an occasional exposure to less than totally "wholesome" music, say grand operas featuring adultery and murder, or an occasional tune-in to the dry and iconoclastic humor of the Simpsons. One also suspects that the flavor of ice cream doled out by the ideal dad as an expression of love would be vanilla.
The author seems to resolve the priority conflict posed atop this article, as well as the problem of apportioning a dad's love between wife and child, with the statement that, "my relationship with God is my life's priority." Choir members who are prepared to dance to that tune will find much familiar, clearly expressed, and well documented instruction in First Time Dad.