The Return of the Ragpicker [Hardcover]

Just bizarre to me how an author could change that much. I read a couple other reviews from disappointed readers and ignored them. Now I wish I would have believed them.

I still love the older Og Mandino books, however, especially the Trilogy, but this one isn't worth the waste of time or money, or worth the disappointment in this author that I've looked up to....read at your own risk.

I suppose for practical purposes this is all right; a person can see different yet similar positive messages, and these offset the sorts you get in everyday life. What is not so good is that the style has degenerated terribly, and events begin to parallel Mandino's life, and eventually adulation for Mandino slips in; Mr. Mandino forgets that it is the reader who is supposed to enjoy the book. There are slight drops from _Salesman_ to part II, where Hafid, the Greatest Salesman, starts his own self-help tour for peasants. You see a huge drop in the prequel to _Ragpicker_, _Greatest Miracle in the World_, when an angel-figure dubs Mandino's work a 'hand of God' work with various timeless classics.

But in _Ragpicker_ the only originality left is that Og drops in a weird bird to accompany the angel-figure we thought had died in _Miracle_. They then discuss how good Og's descriptions are of his place in Arizona(financed by his business successes, natch) and how the book was a great seller and Og can't believe it's true. There are several rounds of 'Couldn't a done it without you, sport,' a general lamentation of the human condition, and an assurance that More Needs To Be Done(the book holds true to these convictions.) Og then spends a lot of time in equal disbelief over various good and bad events while espousing the need for faith. It's not all self-focused as Og gives some recognition to other people's books that he likes but this makes _Ragpicker_ feel more like an effort at networking and showing the author's in with the right crowd than a book for someone who wants guidance. There are far too many novels that give up on having a plot of their own and collapse into post-modern meta-art, but _Ragpicker_ seems even shabbier.

Yet every time I read it, _Ragpicker_ is so laughably fatuous that I find myself cheered up and motivated, laughing while considering the very valid principles discussed--it's easier to work when you're happy, you know. So if Mr. Mandino's intention was, at bottom, to inspire people to do it even at his own expense, a back/forth commute where I read _Miracle_ and then _Ragpicker_ does that. They're both short and facile enough for such quick disposal, and I'm in such a good mood and ideas are buzzing around in my head so fast that things I've put off for months will get done. Their very act of being published encourages me as a writer, in fact. But they are not good literature, and people of a less sardonic bent than myself will find better guidance in _Salesman_.