A familiar but spirited call for Christians to “view life through God’s eyes.”
A writer offers a plan to help Christians strengthen their connections to God.
In his nonfiction book, Ink seeks to emphasize the aspect of fellowship and family that he maintains should be the cornerstone of Christian life. “In today’s world, with more people on the planet than ever before, we also seem to have a growing number who are lonely and lost,” he writes. “Many are lacking a strong family or group of friends.” Because, according to Ink, each committed Christian is “a child of God through adoption,” one of the primary duties of the faithful becomes the extension of that family to others in need. Christians are enjoined in the Gospel of St. Matthew to share the Good News with all people, and the author frankly addresses some of the trials of that obligation, from dealing with radically different kinds of Christians to learning from nonbelievers. In order to rise to these kinds of challenges, Ink proposes a three-pronged plan, each part of which will be familiar to most Christians: Bible study, prayer, and fellowship. Each of these prongs is examined in turn, with the author providing commentary drawn not only from extensive reading of Scripture, but also from contemporary religion writers. The commentary is often predictable (“Prayer is not always answered the way we hope or desire. Sometimes our prayers are not compatible with God’s plan”). But the narrative’s consistent return to the central point of fellowship tends to lift even the occasional banal observation. Ink writes that no Christian succeeds or fails alone. Believers’ milestones and wisdom are shared with others. “This is not done in a haughty, snubbing fashion,” Ink writes in the direct, engaging style that runs throughout the book, “but rather in the tone of a caring teacher who wants to help another person succeed.” Christians who sometimes feel pulled apart by a chaotic world will take heart in this note of togetherness.
A familiar but spirited call for Christians to “view life through God’s eyes.”Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-973670-00-1
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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