Diminished Capacity is one of my alltime favorite summer cottage reads.Wacky but loveable characters abound in a story that has laughs and wit in every paragraph.Although our hero believes he suffers from diminished capacities, his sweet nature and clever means of coping provides a strong,funny and moral guide to any helpless souls trying to navigate lifes quirky roadblocks. I recomend reading this by the water on hot hazy day and letting your mind drift with our forgetful hero. But a warning; guard your copy because when your friends hear the quantity of your laughter they will all want to borrow it.My copy is long gone and I still here from friends who have just read or received it. In true great book fashion it is being passed along like a chain-letter and has a life of its own. ENJOY!

This book is so good, that you can't stop thinking about it. Kiraly's imagination and imagery are superb. This would make a great movie! Very seldom does such a book come with rich characters original writing style and have a great plot. You will fall in love with the characters and become genuinely involved in their lives. This story is a true joy - I didn't want it to end. I'm staying tuned for the sequel.

This is the funniest book I have read in a very long time. People asked me what was so funny as I burst out laughing and all I could tell them is you have to read this book because you just have to be there.

I picked up this book at a yard sale for 20 cents, and I didn't have much hope for it. After all, the blurb on the cover says something like "Kiraly Scores A Solid Base Hit". Now I know baseball, and if you're going to use a baseball pun to hype a book "A Solid Base Hit" isn't the one I would chose. Maybe "Kiraly Knocks This One Out Of The Park". Or "This Book Packs A Real Wallop" Or even "Going. Going Gone". But "A Solid Base Hit"? Perhaps, the fantastic, wacky, "anti-baseball" nature of the final game kept the reviewer (and publishers) away from a more ringing endorsement. But as it turns out this book is a pure delight. And a page-turner to boot. I think you'll enjoy it more if you love baseball, but it's not just for bleacher creatures. Much like the movie "Bull Durham", "California Rush" gives you an insider's view of the game and then turns the sport on its head with hilarious, magical results. Part fable, part screwball comedy (or, in this case, knuckleball comedy), the book comes right out of the tradition of grand storytelling with the rollicking tale getting taller and taller until the very last at bat. Ultimately, it reminded me of everything from Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" to Eudora Welty's "Ponder Heart", "The World According To Garp" to "A Confederacy Of Dunces" "Forrest Gump" to "Louisiana Power & Light "Contrary Blues" to "Memoirs Of A Geisha" (Just kidding but also a wonderful book) Suffice it say "California Rush" is one a hell of a yarn. I can't wait to see Kevin Costner in the movie.

I've read this book over and over again and it gets better every time. The first time I read it, I wasn't really much of a baseball fan and I still thought it was a great book. Over the years, I've become more of a fan, and the more you know about baseball the funnier it becomes.

Baseball books are an art form unto themselves. It's daunting to think of writing about a subject that Ring Lardner wrote about so well. Yet, Sherwood Kiraly pulls it off. This is a story that captures the poetry of this sport and the men that play it, but always with a humorous slant. The ending of this delightful book, in particular, is (I had to be cliched) "laugh out loud" funny. It's a wonderful book and can be enjoyed by anyone, not just sports fans.

Sherwood Kiraly has a dynamite book. This is a coming of age story. AJ Fleger is adopted and has always known this. He writes to his birth mother for the same reason we read about in the press--medical information. He allows that possibly a reunion is a bad idea. AJ has an adopted brother Sterling. It was always clear they were not related by blood. They were persons in an ordinary family. Sadly by the time AJ, Adlai, was a teenager it was dysfunctional. There was an angry father who drank too much. Eventually AJ himself becomes a member of AA. For twelve years he was a sentimental drunk. He scraped paint and sold encyclopedias. The father died in 1983 after a third heart attack. He had mellowed by then. At his funeral AJ found out that Sterling was a job coach. Sobering up was the first accomplishment of AJ's life. His brother Sterling failed in his television debut in the 1970's. In 1990 AJ urged him to join a support group for people who had had public setbacks. AJ accompanies Sterling to a meeting and becomes interested in a singer. She will not commit to a date but tells him she is appearing in a lounge at a ski resort. He ends up falling down the intermediate slope at the resort and his failure to injure himself causes the singer to laugh. He decideds to stay in California to cement the relationship. In subsequent months he meets Abby's family and they marry. Not to soon afterwards there is a daughter, Maggie. Sterling goes back into acting, but mainly as a stunt man. Then Sterling has the misfortune to meet his real family, so-called, (I will not disclose the details of the plot here), and finally seeks to redeem his career and self-esteem by embarking upon a super stunt in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve. The author writes effectively in a plain and funny style.

What kind of comic novel is this? Its modest hero reminisces about his first crush: "I would ride my bike down the hill, past her house, like Tom Sawyer showing off for Becky Thatcher. Now I guess it would be called stalking." That kind:in which every funny line says something about the character, and something about the world we live in. Think of a kinder, gentler Saturday Night Live. Can't do it? Then read this book, and see how a basically decent and sincere guy who never thought he'd amount to anything manages to survive the kind of chaotic childhood and addiction-endangered coming of age that's become all too normal, as well as an ensuing romp through our show biz/support group/merchandised- emotions society, while trying to keep up with his obsessed older brother and grabbing at the brass ring of true love. Sherwood Kiraly's narrator A.J. Fleger guides us in a fast-moving story of excess and coincidence with such irony and innocence that it all seems pretty realistic. (This only gets scary when you think about it later.) Along the way you'll learn a lot about southern California, the genius of Robert Lansing, and be introduced to a Gershwin tune called "Blah Blah Blah. " You might say that this is a book about how to find success on your own terms, in a culture that sets us all up for failure.

I really enjoyed this book, and I am not usually one to read humorous novels. The main characters are just the right mix of funny and real that I find myself thinking I'm probably related to some of them. I'll have to check at the next family reunion. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

If Harry Poe's fictious magazine was rating Sherwood Kirary's book Who's Hot/Who's Not, it regretably would put it in the "Who's Not" section. Unlike Kirarly's earlier novel Diminished Capacity,one of the funniest things I've read in years, which is full of wonderfully eccentric charactors, or his next work, Big Babies, which is filled with a lot of irony, there's just not anything to sink the readers's teeth into. Most of the charactors are not worth giving a damn about and the rest of the book is flimsy. Given that his first work, California Rush, was no great masterpiece, the question is, did Kiraly have only one truly funny book in him or will his next work put him back into the pages of "Who's Hot?"