Adam Shields

Takeaway: More inspiration about how to start something new from whatever position you are in.  Godin is about innovation and if we want a strong economy, we need people at all levels that follow through with this book.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

I am a mixed relationship with Seth Godin.  On the one hand I think that he is very inspirational, a good writer and has been very good at communicating to a large group of people.

But I have been frustrated with some of his concepts in the past.  But there is not a lot controversial in this book.  Essentially, the book is giving people permission to start something new, be innovative and ‘poke the box’ to see if there is a better way to accomplish or create something.

That is really all that the book is about.  It is worth reading because Godin has the ability to really get at the heart of a matter.  Accomplishing something big is about actually starting something, seeing it to the end and learning from failure, then trying something else.

Read more

Summary: A fictional re-telling of the Gospels from the perspective of Jesus. Sort of like Christopher Moore’s book Lamb, but much less funny.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Audible.com Audiobook

I know Norman Mailer only by reputation.  I have not read anything else by him.  The Gospel According to Jesus is fairly short and I thought it would be  interesting to see what a 20th century fictional account would be like.  In many ways, it was much what I expected.  It is a first person account told through the eyes of Jesus.  Mailer is respectful of Jesus as a character but does not seem to think that much of Jesus the actual person.

Fictional accounts of the bible are fraught with difficulty.  If you have heard some of the controversy over The Shack, then you know some of the trouble one can get into when you try to write a fictional account of God.  Mailer was not the first to attempt it and I am sure will not be the last.  I most want to compare this with Christopher Moore’s book Lamb.  Although Lamb was not first person Jesus (it was instead first person from the point of view of Jesus’ childhood friend Biff), it has much the same struggle of Jesus trying to understand who he is, and whether he really is the son of God.

Read more

Takeaway: It is hard to discuss 3000 years of history.

Purchase Links: Hardback, Paperback,Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook (The price has dropped in all formats so it closer to reasonable).

You may have seen the first 8 posts I made about this book (see bottom of review for links).  It is a very good book for the most part, but it was exhausting to post mini reviews and probably more exhausting to read them.  So about half way through I gave up reading the book and gave up writing posts about the book.

After a couple months I have come back and finished up the last 15 hours of the book and am ready to be done.  Not that it was not a very good book, but a book of this length and depth is not one I want to attempt again soon.

I appreciate the goal, placing Christianity in a historical context and then using the tools of history to give understanding to the whole of Christianity.  MacCulloch is not a theologian (or even a practicing Christian.)  But he does have a very wide and deep understanding of Christianity that he pushes to new depths.  In general, I think the goal was a good one.  Too often we want to look at bits and pieces of history and not look at it as a whole.  But with any attempt, there will be weaknesses.  And I think, some of MacCulloch’s tools were one of his weaknesses.  He is a historian and while using the tools of a historian gave some very impressive insights in some areas, his treatment of pre-Christian influences I thought seems needlessly antagonistic toward faith in general.  And unfortunately, that is the very beginning of the book.  Several Amazon reviews said they stopped in the first couple chapters, which is unfortunate.

Read more