Book Reviews: Lucado & Singer

Finished a couple of books in the last few days and thought I'd provide a little feedback on them.

This weekend I finished "3:16" by Max Lucado. All in all I felt it was a prety good book. The last few chapters seem to get less and less informative, but there were some amazing insights in the first few. I guess to make up for the crummy ending, Lucado includes a devotional to get you through a month of quiet times.

The other book that I finished up about 2:30 this morning was a little more interesting. "The Cross Examination of Oliver Finney" by Randy Singer. The basic story is that proponents of the major religions of the world are sequestered on a secret island in Survivor fashion, for a reality show to see how their religions hold up under scrutiny and stress. Each "contestant" has some sort of legal background and much time is spent examining and cross examining one anothers belief system. To thicken the plot, they all have some sort of life threatening illness. I dont in any way feel closer to my Christ after reading it, but it was an exciting read and did have some beneficial material used by the Christian of the story, Oliver Finney, as he tried to make his case for faith to those representing other beliefs. After two chapters I almost put it down, but it quickly became the action/thriller that I never dreamed it could be. 2 thumbs up, mostly for entertainment value.

That makes 2 down, and about 14 to go. I dont know why I do it, but I am a compulsive book buyer. Thankfully, the Randy Singer book was a loaner acquired in a trade with someone at church. I traded out the Peretti/Dekkar book, "House," for this one. I guess my "career" as a student still has me a little gun shy when it comes to reading "smart" books. I remember back in school there were always books I'd see that I thought I'd love to read. Unfortunatley, there were always a ton of books that I HAD to read. 12 years later and I'm still making up for lost time.