MINI REVIEW: REDISCOVER THE SAINTS

When the subtitle should have been the title...



I'd received a copy of this book during the Christmas season from the church that I go to. For some reason, it's taken me a long time to actually pick it up, but with All Saints Day coming up soon, I thought this would be a fitting read for this time of year. I'm glad that I finally got around to this, even though it was not what I expected. 

HOW I RATED IT 
4/5 A somewhat misleading title kind of set me up for some undue disappointment, but I still found this to be a nice, short read well-suited to nightly/daily reflection. 

CONTENT
While you would be forgiven for thinking this was a book examining the lives of various saints (with the prologue not doing much to correct that assumption), this is actually not really about that at all. Instead, it is more about asking thought-provoking questions to reflect on. Each chapter is still themed around specific saints, some who are officially canonized and some that are people from Kelly's life. The way that information about the saint ties into the question being asked sometimes has mixed results. Some chapters barely mentioned the saint at all and there are number of examples of Kelly saying that he "met" these saints which often means that he encountered their writing or story, but that is confusing since he also talks about people from his actual life. The chapters themselves can vary a great deal in terms of how coherent they are as well. Sometimes I felt like the chapters were carefully thought out with their punchlines expertly set up, but other times I felt like I was reading a random stream of consciousness that I couldn't always quite follow. All in all, these little details shouldn't have pulled me out of the reading experience as much as they did, but I did ultimately find myself not as mentally or spiritually engaged as I wanted to be because of these issues. At the end of the day, I think the main draw of a Kelly book is to be presented with interesting questions to meditate upon and this book did a fine enough job of delivering that experience. Kelly's humble and down to earth tone is also something I continue to appreciate. 

PAPERBACK QUALITY
Similar to many of Kelly's other publications, this is a thin, floppy, well-constructed trade-sized paperback. I thought the fonts, the formatting, and the margins all made for a nice reading experience. 

CONCLUSION
While I was initially a little let down that this book wasn't more focused on the lives of various saints, I still appreciated this book for what it was. If you are looking for something to help you begin or end your day on a spiritual note, then this might make for a great read.

(+) A very interesting introductory chapter
(+) Great for daily reflection (I liked to read a chapter each night)
(+) Short chapters make this easy to fit into any schedule 
(+) Each chapter ends with a prayer (I may revisit this if only for these)
(-) Title is misleading and sets the wrong expectation going in
(-) Chapter content can sometimes feel a little scatterbrained and unstructured 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

REVIEW: DEFIANT (SONGS OF CHAOS #3)

Image
Sons of the night... In the spirit of continuing to catch up on series I've started, I decided to read the third available book in the Songs of Chaos series, mistakenly thinking it was the last.  HOW I RATED IT  4/5  In spite of my incorrect belief that this was the last book in a trilogy, I had a great deal of fun with the third entry into the SONGS OF CHAOS series.  NOTE:  While this review does not contain major spoilers for  DEFIANT , it does mention specific things about  ASCENDANT  and UNBOUND that could be considered as such.   CHARACTERS As with the previous book, this adventure is told across multiple points of view. Holt, Talia, and Osric all return as key persons of interest and are now joined by others like the half-dragon Rake as well as Paragon Adaskar at different points. Even though each had their own mission, I felt like their stories were much more connected this time around. This might be because they were each trying to combat the Scourge in their own way. We
Read more

REVIEW: DRAGON AGE: THE SILENT GROVE (DRAGON AGE GRAPHIC NOVELS #1)

Image
A king and his rogues... THE SILENT GROVE  is a graphic novel set in the universe of the   DRAGON AGE video games that I'd picked up at a local comic shop a while ago, mostly because they didn't have what I was looking for and I like the Dragon Age franchise. HOW I RATED IT  3/5  Everything about this was just fine. The art, the story, the characters are perfectly serviceable, but I ultimately found this to be just okay as a tie-in story to the DRAGON AGE video game universe.  CHARACTERS This story stars three highly recognizable characters from the games: Alistair, Varric, and Isabela which is an interesting trio to say the least even though Varric and Isabela were both party members in DRAGON AGE 2 . One thing I will praise is that the writers did a good job of establishing each of them for readers who may not have played through the games which is a nice touch (even though other aspects are less accessible to newcomers). Where I think the characters falter is that there is
Read more

REVIEW: EVERYONE'S A ALIEBN WHEN UR A ALIEBN TOO

Image
Our world through the eyes of an alien... INTRODUCTION  No I didn't make some horrible spelling blunder in the title of this post, you're actually reading it exactly as intended. Given to me as a parting gift from a friend at work, EVERYONE'S A ALIEBN WHEN UR A ALIEBN TOO , is a charmingly misspelled adventure into the human experience. It's a piece of fiction that will warm your heart, make you chuckle, and slap you in the face with sorrow, often within the span of a single breath. It's honest and heartfelt in all of the ways that count with some adorable visuals and bold typography to go with it. While some would rightly argue that this is actually more of a graphic novel, the way it's formatted is actually far more like a children's book, just one that's written for adults. HOW I RATED IT  5/5  Though it can occasionally be found guilty of overreaching, this is one book that should really be read by anyone who has even a Grinch-sized a hear
Read more