An approachable, if sometimes blithe, manual for new Christians.
A seasoned preacher offers advice to new Christians in this guide.
As a pastor at Prairie Alliance Church in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, for nearly two decades, Weselake has long been disappointed in the lack of books geared toward adults who recently converted to Christianity. Taking up the challenge himself, he wrote this work specifically for those who “recently decided to follow Jesus” but are insecure in the logistics of Christianity as most of their fellow believers have been raised in churches and have “a twenty-year-plus head start.” In other words, the volume’s ideal audience is those who “ask what the hell ‘Hosanna in the highest’ means.” Though there are a few sections that explain abstruse Christian terminology like exegesis, the guide reflects the style of a veteran evangelical preacher in defaulting to humorous anecdotes and analogies to explain the religion’s principles. Indeed, the entire book is centered on a “bedtime story” told by the author about an evil wizard who turned the world upside down. This “UPSIDEDOWN dream of God” becomes the guiding principle of Weselake’s approach to Christianity: “Up to God,” “SIDE to each other in authentic community,” and “DOWN in humble acts of service.” Each of these three categories is accompanied by specific acts that will help form the religious worlds of young Christians, spanning from their private lives (“daily devotions”) to their public personas (“telling others about Jesus”). Written in a conversational style that succeeds in its goal to ease new Christians into the faith, the manual is unafraid to break the stodgy norms of Christian publishing. “Uncle Nathan” (Weselake’s version of an illeism) halfheartedly suggests that readers “light up a joint” at one point, and at another, retells a Russell Brand joke about “wanking off.” This style may be refreshing to some readers but often feels artificially forced and, thus, overcompensating to appear trendy. Moreover, many new converts who are looking for the fundamentals of Christian doctrine will be sorely disappointed, as the book prioritizes orthodoxy in one’s daily actions over explanations of the basics of the religion’s theology.
An approachable, if sometimes blithe, manual for new Christians.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-03-910187-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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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