A casual discussion of a lifelong journey of faith that many readers will find relatable and enlightening.
A personal work that details what one woman has learned from her belief in Christianity.
Jones begins her examination of her faith by recalling a memory of a large rock on her parents’ land. There, she first felt close to her childhood idea of Jesus and realized what his love meant for her life. She addresses general questions that readers may also have about Christianity, such as, “But doesn’t [God] have an entire universe to care for? There are more than seven billion people in the world today. How does He have the time for each of us?” Remembering the special place of her childhood, she constructs a metaphor to address such concerns: “[I]n my innocent, childlike faith, [the rock] was a place I could go to feel God’s presence….God is still ready to meet with me whenever I reach out to Him. I no longer need my big rock.” Each chapter follows this pattern, introducing a doubt or concern and then presenting Jones’ reasoning with personal examples that support her spiritual beliefs. From her feeling that a lost pocketbook was a direct message from God about tithing, to her husband’s decision to attend seminary, the author reviews many moments from her history as a Christian for the benefit of those struggling to better understand their own faith. She writes with clarity, plainly and directly addressing both her own questions and those that might plague others. She also carefully controls her tone so as to never come across as judgmental; she maintains the voice of a warm, knowledgeable, and inviting guide without ever coming across as presumptuous or overbearing. However, readers looking for highly precise treatments of specific religious concerns may find that her book has a frustrating lack of organization. Jones structures her work around broad notions, such as “protection” or “empowerment,” which makes some chapters feel like collections of vaguely associated anecdotes, Bible verses, and generalizations. Nevertheless, this remains an approachable, insightful book about the big questions facing modern Christians.
A casual discussion of a lifelong journey of faith that many readers will find relatable and enlightening.Pub Date: May 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1449794811
Page Count: 122
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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