Sorta Recommended Read - Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Here's the thing - I'm not a very big fan of first person, totally self-absorbed reflective writing. That being said, there were some real gems hidden between useless nicknames and pages of boring that made this book worth reading! His tagline, "Nonreligous Thoughts on Christian Spirituality," is a bit deceptive, for this is a book written by a Christian about Christianity. However, it explores what its like to have doubts, and how choosing to live spiritually does not always coincide with being raised a believer.

I took away a lot of great quotes that sounded almost like they could have come out of my mouth, but I also took away a dislike of nicknames and outdated hippie language - though the book was copyright 2003, it felt like I was reading something from the '60s and '70s. My favorite quote was actually a starting paragraph of one of the later chapters in the book, which I'm sure many of you will also appreciate:

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealously, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch face down and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said before, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more."

Overall, this was a good book, once you looked past the fact that it read like an old man's hippie diary.



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