First of all, if you own this book <I'm talking about the small mass-market version; if you're fortunate enough to have the hard-cover first edition, put it under lock and key, won't you?>, don't loan it with any expectations of getting it back. It just won't happen. The friend you loaned it to will loan it to another friend who "just has to have it," and that friend will loan it to another friend "who's going through a really bad time and will need this," who will loan it to another friend who has "just met this person, and needs to know all about him/her", who in turn loaned it to. . .and on it goes.
This book is a classic. I don't use that word lightly. I still have my "first edition" put carefully away as if someone handles it one more time, it will likely fall apart.
"Linda Goodman's Sun Signs" is one of those books I pull off my library shelf and read through randomly for sheer pleasure, or because I've met someone new and interesting and discretely discovered their birthday. It's rarely led me wrong.
What's worse, when I read the description of the typical Sagittarian, and the Sagittarian male, it reads like it was written by me, my mother, the CIA, the FBI, and all my friends through more than the half century I've spent on this planet. I first found that rather scary, but now I find it comforting. It means I'm simply being me, the person as I am supposed to be.
Over the years, Ms. Goodman has been criticized for her somewhat "shallow" approach to a controversial topic. Whether Astrology has any "scientific" validity, I leave to better minds than my own. But I can testify, from my own experience, that if I can learn an individual's birthday, read Ms. Goodman's text on that sun-sign, and whenever possible, take into account the ascending sign, the moon sign, and other astrological influences that may alter the basic influence of the Sun on a person's birth, I've rarely found Ms. Goodman to be far off the mark.
But of course, that's simply my own unique experience. Many scientists, physicists, and astronomers will swear on a stack of Bibles that the position of the planets cannot possibly influence the personality of a person born at such-and-such a place at this-and-this an hour, under that-and-that configuration of heavenly bodies. I must in fairness point out, however, that mathematics will also conclusively prove that a bumblebee cannot fly! A bumblebee's wings are too slender, it's body is too fat an unaerodynamic, for it ever to acheive the condition of lift plus thrust being greater than load plus drag; the situation necessary to acheive flight! L+T > Ld + D = F. That's the equation. Look it up.
All I'm saying is that Ms. Goodman's charming book gives me a roadmap of the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac about as reliable as the latest Rand/McNalley to earthbound travel.
And that's about as good as it gets.
Just don't loan it out and expect it back. Buy two. One to loan, and one to keep <and keep the second one for yourself!>!!
