Amazon.com Review

Sure, it’s neat to know which famous people have the same birthday you do, but wouldn’t it be fascinating to know what else you have in common with these celebrities? The Secret Language of Birthdays will show you this and much more. Through “personology” (a combination of characteristics influenced by sun sign, season, and day of the year) and an analysis of several thousand character profiles, authors Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elfers have pinned down the traits most common to people born on the same day.

Rather than taking a strictly astrological approach–how the planets, sun, and stars affect a person’s behavior–the authors compare the commonalties of people who share birthdays, and piece together a personality for each day of the year, effectively slicing through geographical and cultural differences, while avoiding the one-size-fits-all trap of newspaper sun-sign horoscopes. Some readers may find the authors’ strict use of the Gregorian calendar limiting, but conversion to other time-keeping systems is fairly simple (the authors make note of this problem and contend that a day is a day, whether someone names it October 21 or 1 Rajab). Goldschneider and Elfers focus on a model of the year as a wheel spinning in a recurring circle of patterns, an idea that reaches back far beyond the linear calendars we use today. Each birthday discussed includes important numbers, tarot cards, and a dose of psychology, so while you learn a little about the other people with your birthday, you may even discover something new about yourself. –Brian Patterson

From Booklist

Take a little astrology, mix it with some tarot and some numerology, add a dash of psychology, frost with your birthday, and you’ve got “personology.” For those who don’t believe in astrology, the tarot, or numerology, this premise is certain to sound like hokum. But surprisingly, Goldschneider’s assessments of personality on the basis of one’s birthday seem fairly accurate–at least in this reviewer’s smallish survey. The author’s theory is that because all of life is cyclical, people born on the same day occupy the same point in the year’s cycle and thus share characteristics. Even total nonbelievers will find this big, attractive book fun to read. Each day gets a double-page spread with a personality description, health information, and the date’s relation to astrology signs and the tarot. There are also long lists of people born on each day, though here’s where personology gives pause. Can March 10’s Harriet Tubman and Chuck Norris really have all that much in common? Ilene Cooper

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