BOOK REVIEW: CARSTROLOGY

Okay friends and neighbors, it appears you read this book’s title and have voluntarily decided to slough through from here. 

So, sit down, sit back, take a deep breath, relax, maybe even kick off those cool new no-tie, slip-on tennies. This one is going to take a little time, Ray.  

Hopefully, you’re already intrigued, bewildered, maybe thinking over a pretty damn broad range of thoughts about your car and the Great Ouija Board of Life, and maybe you’re even feeling almost a little small, sort of insignificant, and somewhat benighted at this early point in the process.  

No worries.

Just sit back, take a long pull of something cool and refreshing* and we’ll get started here.

Rather than trying to crack wise about it or over-simplify this one, we’ll fire this review off with a perfectly plausible, straightforward statement (which, mercifully, does not sound like AI) that came into our trembling hands directly from a personal letter that author Shahe Koulloukian sent along with the (free) review copy of the book, to wit:

“I didn't write this book for the spec sheet crowd. I wrote it for the person actually gripping the wheel: the habits, the brand loyalties, the excuses we tell ourselves, the fears, the memories, and all those quiet little emotional negotiations we make with our cars. It's less about vehicles and more about the messy, very human side of owning them.”

Bearing that idea and good-sided sentiment in mind will really make this book fun—especially if you like to be the one with new ideas in friendly conversations.  

It presents an honestly excellent hunk of stage business to go to bat with in almost any good company of people who own and operate car keys.  

Yeah, right again okay. We’ve all seen spec sheets that lie through their teeth.  

We’ll stipulate here that this author is mysteriously, refreshingly, predictably, and accurately blunt about his beliefs, theories, suppositions, conclusions, determinations, pipe dreams, and diagnoses.  

Finding out that the true purpose of this book is to have fun with the subject is a joy. 

Here we’ll pause a moment in a long and narrowed paragraph to billboard the brilliant savvy that Mister Koulloukian shows quite early-on in addressing the person who was going write the review of his book (that’s ME: the writer that you’re reading right now) as the (IMHO brilliant) K-Man observantly writes:

“...Coming from someone who’s seen it all in motorsports, PR, sharp writing, and real car culture – your take carries weight; nothing else can match.”

Understand if you will here, in the soft-belled, postage-paid “winner, winner, chicken dinner” business of book reviewing for the internet (and especially the solid and urbane pages and paragraphs of the highly-vaunted, broadly-read, car-conscious, smart, bright, beloved, that above bit of truly artful statement is even better than finding a crisp $20 or two neatly folded and stuck in the dedication page as a non-refundable “bookmark” for the right reviewer (that would be me, D. Stokes…we are not, never, no way “for sale”, but we rent cheap...).

And, as if to back up my theory, this man among men follows up with a pretty damn sportsmanlike final sentence: 

“I’d genuinely value how it lands with you.  No sugarcoating, no polishing – just read it straight and call it straight. That’s the only feedback that matters.”

Understand here though, in that regard, reading this tome straight was well-nigh impossible, me being bent over with often ill-timed convulsive laughter a lot of the time as well fighting back against just shouting out rude remarks about the author’s real purpose and intents in writing this star-crossed coda. Calling it straight was as easy as any book of coded-in-plain-sight messages I’ve ever reviewed.

Here’s a little outburst: This one is fun! (meaning this book) and still pretty darn sophisticated. 

For example, the old, well-weathered joke about “my sign” being: “Bridge Out” is nowhere to be found in all of the hundred and eighty pages that this automobile star chart traverses.  Coincidences are handled well and the inherent side play and exotic intrigue is metered out just right.

Did you know that many new model cars come without spare tires (not even the dreaded, useless mini-spare)?  Well, it’s the truth as well as something to think about, and its revealed here.

As helpful as any author since Milton (Berle, if you need to look the name up), Koulloukian has added various charts, lists, diagrams, and selected items of legerdemain that easily could be confused and or used in easing a reader’s sense of dizziness from reading certain arduous passages. 

That’s not the case back on pages 120-127 in this handbook for true, true believers classically-entitled: “The 50 States of Shift Happens” wherein each of United States of America is divined to have a state car and sign. Here’s a sample:

As you may well have divined from the above, this is all first class, astral plane facts, figures, and (droll) humor about LA cars and beyond, and the zeitgeist that seems to have four wheel drive and direct fuel injection and that cajoles, concedes, compacts, and just generally chronicles the mix of cars and the stars all on its own and all without the use of even a single crystal ball, Wakan Tanka, Wishbone, Tarot Card, Spirit Guide, Incantation, Magic 8-Ball, and/or Ouija Board.  

And all of the above, my friends, still causes this reviewer to wonder (even after reading the book paper cover to paper cover) how this totally unique and original idea about planets rising in retrograde and other stuff being greatly and inexorably influenced by the transit of some distant planet that will be in retrograde for the damned next few centuries actually affect the nature and operation for something as universally dealt with as the modern automobile.  

Come and read, partake, believe, scoff, relate to, understand, reject, obey, dispute, relate to, love, champion, hate, marry, condemn, divorce, run away in horror, or all of the above, it’s sure possible here in “Shahe’s World LLC”.  

Carstrology

A funny name blending cars and astrology (like the left and right in a mirror).  

The moon must not be fully in Aquarius as yet, stop reading this and come back later please.  Better still, get a copy of this fun bag of wonderful, astral-plane mobile bewilderment and have your own damn reading. 

Oooow!  

This one must be way cool on a Kindle and might even be a few shades cooler if there was a spoken “on tape” version actually read by the book’s dark, dashing, actor-adventurer-author-mechanic-philosopher (and he’s a hell of a hoot on the blower, give him a call at the shop).

Just for the record (and to make this wonky review look almost legit): here’s a couple of the main claims that are made in the promo kit we got handed about what your $22.88 (plus tax) buys you at Autobooks over in Burbank.

Ancient secrets you will learn:

· Automobile wisdom based on astrological signs

· Make your soul happy with the car you were born to drive

· Car astrology… from Pontiac to Zodiac

· Why Chinese signs dictate your car repair budget

· How numerology and Mayan signs affect your ownership

· Where sun signs and moon cycles meet the road

Conclusion

Your car may have horsepower, but your personality has the keys (and, as much s - - t and giggles as this book has been, I’m still not sure I understand).  - DS

RUN CREDITS:

More About the Author

A quick trip over to the forever bubbling with excitement IMDb will unabashedly inform that our author friend, Shahe Koulloukian is also a fully formed film actor with a string of impressively heavy rolls in a number of what look to be some v. seriously dour film productions. There are 51 (count ‘em) 51 studio head-shot photos of this gifted reader of the various vibes that flash and flicker in the automotive astral plane.  Fan fill-in form: (each more ____ than the prior).

Glib, good-looking, gifted, gracious with his time, and nearly always spot on with a diagnosis, good old SK’s demeanor seems that of a very powerful man who uses logic and good faith to operate … and who wrote a very funny/pseudo-sardonic book that holds a mirror (really a very shiny Oldsmobile 88  hubcap) up to car owners  (as well as their cars and their car’s assigned stars) and then proceeds to follow through with some suggestions that (almost) make sense to this acolyte.  

Thanks for hanging out all this way (really!) - DS

*Why do people put slices of lime into perfectly good bottles of beer on TV anyway?  Is the beer no good, flat, tasteless, in need of a shot of lime juice to make it drinkable?  Sadly the Zodiac is no help here.  As George Costanaza once so eloquently put it: “...Drink Up!”

But wait, there’s more 

From the website:
“Koulloukian is an Auto Industry Ambassador, speaker, and best-selling author of Car Confidential. As the owner of Mazvo Car Clinic in Phoenix for more than 30 years, he has built a reputation for helping people cut through the noise, understand the true cost of ownership, and make smarter decisions about the cars they drive. He is also the host of “The Car Confidential Show”, where he blends hard-earned, real-world automotive truth with humor, insight, and consumer empowerment.”  

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