Posts from — April 2006

One reason that reading seems to be in decline is that it takes more effort to read than to watch TV, play video games, or listen to music or talk radio. This puts reading at an inherent disadvantage to other choices we have for spending our free time. Given this disadvantage, doesn’t it just make sense for authors and publishers to try harder than ever to make their books as readable as possible?

No, I guess not, judging from most of the books I read.

A well-written book is, in my opinion, more engaging and enjoyable than a really good movie. Unfortunately, well-written books are even less common than really good movies, which are also quite rare.

Therefore, when I write about a book I’ve read, I will tell you whether or not I think it is well-written. I will evaluate the readability of a book by asking:

Is reading this book like downhill skiing, like walking upstairs, or like climbing Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen? I have never gone snow skiing (or water skiing, for that matter) in my life; and I don’t plan to because I have a knee that has been surgically repaired in two different ways, and those surgeries were more than enough, thanks. But, I digress.

I have never been skiing, but I know how it works. Gravity and good skis make the voyage downhill effortless and enjoyable for the skier. Yes, I know it takes balance and skill to keep from going Bono, but I’m talking about the amount of physical exertion a skier must spend getting from the top of a snowy hill to the bottom. Compared to other physical activities (like mountain climbing), skiing does not require as much effort from the athlete. Similarly, a good book—one that is really well-written—makes reading feel like you are gliding downhill, enjoying every second. You turn page after page and just don’t want to stop, but when you do stop, you wonder how it got to be so late and how you covered so many pages.

Reading other books is like going upstairs in your home. It takes some effort, but the effort required is minimal for a healthy person. And, when you do it everyday, you hardly think twice about it. A competently written book takes some effort to read and is less enjoyable than skiing along from page to page, but it is not overly difficult.

Some books are so badly written that you feel like you are trying to climb Mt. Everest. It takes extreme effort just to go from one sentence to the next and you look toward the end of the book like a summit that it is almost impossible to reach.

Unfortunately, most books are more like climbing Everest than they are like skiing Vail. But I think it should be the other way around. So, when I write about books I read, I’ll tell you exactly how difficult I thought it was to read the book.

My teacher, Haddon Robinson, once told our class, “The difference between a good preacher and a great preacher is this: The good preacher asks, ‘What is the message?’ A great preacher asks, ‘Who is the audience?’”

I’m not sure I totally agree with that statement, but I am convinced that thinking about one’s audience is critically important to good communication. And, I believe that preachers and authors do less thinking about the audience than they should.

Therefore, when evaluating a book, I will spend some time discussing the audience for the book in question. I will approach the audience question by asking:

Is this book a Toyota Camry, a Blue Bird school bus, or a Mack truck? The Toyota Camry is designed for the widest possible audience; anyone with a driver’s license can drive a Camry. Therefore, a Camry-esque book is one that I think any adult with a high school education (and maybe some Sunday School, too) can read, understand, and learn from.

A Blue Bird school bus is more challenging to drive than a Camry is. It is bigger and heavier and takes special training to be able to drive safely. It is designed for a careful driver to take children to school. In this way, many books are not written for the average Christian population; rather, they are written for Christianity’s bus drivers—pastors who shepherd their people carefully like a good bus driver carefully drives kids to school. Therefore, I will compare books written for pastors and other people who teach and lead Christians to a big yellow school bus.

A Mack truck is more difficult to drive than even a school bus. You have to know how to shift ten gears and how to change lanes without wiping out all the cars trying to pass you. You have to be alert so as to brake in time to stop when traffic jams up suddenly. Similarly, some books tackle difficult subjects in a level of detail and complexity that most Christians and many pastors cannot read them profitably. These are the Mack trucks of the literary world and they are intended for only the most theologically astute: seminary graduates, well-informed pastors, and college and seminary professors.

When I review books here, I will tell you who I think the intended audience is and whether or not the book is actually suitable for that audience. This should help you to know whether or not it is worth your time to read the book in question.

P.S.: I opened this entry by talking about my mentor Haddon Robinson. Here’s a great interview with him that I discovered today; it is probably best read by theological bus and truck drivers, though you Camry drivers out there can certainly understand it and might enjoy it, too.

I hesitate to use the word “purpose” because The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren has become so popular that the word “purpose” is almost a cliche. Nevertheless, one important thing to evaluate about a book is its purpose. Why did someone take the massive commitment of time, energy, and physical resources (paper, computers, etc.) to put this book into print? When I review a book on this blog, I will ask the purpose-driven question in this way. Is this book:

A road or a cul-de-sac? ? A cul-de-sac, of course, is a dead end. People build their homes there to give them a quieter street with no through traffic. So a cul-de-sac doesn’t take you anywhere. You can ride around in that circle all day on a cul-de-sac and spend plenty of time and energy doing so, but when you’re done, you haven’t travelled anywhere.

A lot of books are like cul-de-sacs. The pretend to have a mission, a purpose, a reason for being, but after you read them, they don’t give you any new information. They might entertain you for a while, but that’s all.

On this site, I intend to review primarily (maybe exclusively) non-fiction books. A non-fiction book should inform you, convince you, or persuade you. It might do more than one of those things, but it must do at least one of those things to make it worth reading, in my opinion.

In my experience, many non-fiction books do not meet any of those purposes. They exist, it seems, to enrich the author. Not that writing a non-fiction book is a path to riches (it usually isn’t), but it can raise the profile of the author, even if it doesn’t sell many copies. Really, if you met someone and then found out that he or she was “an author” wouldn’t that be impressive? Of course. And many books seem to serve only that purpose; they are self-referential, doing nothing for you but pointing you back to the writer over and over again.

Another kind of cul-de-sac book seeks not to impress you with the author’s credentials, but instead to get you to read about a subject you are already familiar with. This is called “preaching to the choir,” to use a tried and worn out cliche. The author wrote his book to impress his friends or people that he wanted to become friends with. A book of this type raises the enthusiasm of people who already agree with the author, but it usually contains nothing persuasive to someone who is uncommitted or opposed to the topic the author is treating. Often the straw men in a book of this type are so common that the author must have been born on a farm.

Unlike a cul-de-sac book, a book that leads you somewhere is like a road. It informs you on a topic where you were ignorant, convinces you that a certain point of view is correct, or persuades you to change your actions in some area of life. A book with a strong purpose is like an Interstate highway: it moves you rapidly toward the author’s purpose or purposes.

When I evaluate a book on this blog, I’ll tell you why I think the author wrote it. I’ll give you his stated reason for writing, if he does state the reason, and I’ll let you know if I think there is a hidden cul-de-sac purpose that makes the book pointless.

Did you miss the first post in this series? Click here to read it.

When judging a book, the first thing I’ll evaluate is its length. I’ll tell you if a book is too long, too short, or just right based on this question–is this book:

A roll of toilet paper or a grand piano? A book that is too long is like a roll of toilet paper; it goes on and on, but really just needs to be flushed. A book that is of appropriate length is like a piano—a thing of beauty for which any tree would proudly give its life.

Now, there is a remarkable amount of depth in these images that I might choose to explore in a book review. For instance, even prisoners on death row get toilet paper, but the quality of their TP is probably not very good. So it is with a long, poorly written book. It irritates you while you’re using it and you want to get it behind you (so to speak) as soon as possible.

Conversely, a well-written book on a weighty subject is like an eight foot concert grand made by Steinway. It is beautiful, precise, useful in the hands of a skilled person, and (unfortunately) rare.

In between these two poles of toilet paper and pianos are subtle nuances we can explore. Some books may be softly quilted and sweetly scented, but so is Northern. Both are only good enough to flush.

Likewise, a concert grand is the wrong instrument for pounding out “Heart and Soul” with your elementary school piano teacher. Don’t give me a 400 page Steinway concert grand when a 75 page Yamaha upright will do the job.

I will discuss the length of a book first because I think a book’s length is important. Many, many books are too long because the author is verbose or has an inflated sense of himself or overestimates the importance of her subject. Life is short and full of time pressure; therefore, I feel no regret at all about starting a book but not finishing it, if it is too long or poorly written. Even if the book is good in other ways, the length or brevity of it can kill its effectiveness. How many times have you started a book that captivated you for 50 or 100 or 150 pages, but then got drop dead boring after that? I’ve lost count of how many times that’s happened to me. Therefore, the first two things I’ll tell you in my book reviews are (1) how many pages the book has and (2) whether or not I think the book is the right length for its subject.

A good book review is a reader’s best friend. It helps a reader find the good books, savor the great ones, and avoid the ones that do little more than embarrass the author. As a reader, I read a lot of book reviews because I don’t want to waste time and money on bad prose. Unfortunately, most book reviews are boring and not very informative about the key elements of the book they purport to evaluate.

I have always wanted to write some book reviews here on the blog. More than once I’ve started writing about this or that book, but I’ve never completed or posted those writings. They always seemed artificial and pointless. But my love for books and my desire to talk about them continues, so I’m going to try again.

So, I’ve been trying to hatch an approach to talking about books that don’t just summarize their contents (boring) or tell you which ones I think are good and why (as if you cared).

Well, I think I’ve come up with something that I want to try. I will break down each book I review according to these five categories:

Length
Purpose
Audience
Readability
Accuracy