Skip to main content

Luv is a Verb (52 Weeks of Book Challenge Week Fourteen)


I hate recycling blog post titles (read the original here), but when a good one works for more than one application? Well, I'm going to try to not beat myself up about it too much.

Also, there might have been a song that inspired the original post title. Watch the video, if you dare. Otherwise, feel free to scroll down to the review.





Love Does: Discover A Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
Bob Goff, 2012, Thomas Nelson

Summary:
Love Does is a collection of stories from the life of the author, Bob Goff. The stories within the book center around a single idea - that love is not passive. It lives, it moves, it breathes, it... well, it does. 

Why I Read It:
Well, this was another one of the half a dozen or so books I downloaded before I went to Kenya back in the fall with the intention of reading on the plane. I should know better by now.

Opinion:
Probably not going to be a surprise to read the words, "I loved it."  Because, overall, I did love it. The stories were written in clear, understandable language. I felt like I was sitting across the table in a coffee shop or in the middle of an auditorium at some points, listening to a man tell stories about his life with a lot of humility and (yes) a lot of love. His call to action - to love, to not hesitate to act - is not difficult to catch, but also not written in a way that makes you cringe every time you come across it by the end.

The only complaint I have feels a little bit like I'm nitpicking, but sometimes things are just that good. While I can't at the moment cite them, there were a few stories where I got the point well before the end of the chapter and had a harder time motivating myself to read through to the next chapter.  A few out of more than twenty stories, though, is not much to worry about in my book.

Conclusion:
It's easy to sit back and watch life go by, to reason that there will probably be another opportunity later. That's not always true. Sometimes that opportunity to stop, to choose to say yes and let love be an action rather than an object doesn't come again. I know there have been some opportunities I've had, people I would never have known or come to love if I had passed them by. Maybe it's time to trying saying yes a little more often.


52 Weeks of Books Challenge? What is that? What book is Cat reviewing next week?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Writer's Toolbox: Thesauruses I Love

I don't know about the rest of you writers in the crowd, but there are times when I struggle to get the right words to come out onto the page. The debate over using thesauruses amongst authors can be fierce. My personal opinion is that there is definitely a place and time to use them (they've saved me from missing deadlines on a few occasions), so long as a writer is careful not to overuse them. Because I do consider them an essential in my writer's toolbox of resources, I thought I would share the ones I make the most use out of and where you can find them. 1. Webster's New World Thesaurus (credit: @catpollockwrites IG, posted 8/24/2017 ) When you were in grade school, did your teachers ever hand out those monthly or bimonthly Scholastic book catalogs with all the age-appropriate books coming out that they wanted you to buy? That, my friends, is how I got a hold of my thesaurus. It's almost like mid-thirties me traveled back in time and whispered int

Metaphors: Candles

I've recently fallen in love with candles. Since coming home from the World Race , I've bought at least one a month. My favorite candles are the ones that come in glass jars - because when they burn out, I can clean the remaining wax out and put the jars to other uses. Right now,  that means they get cleaned out and packed away in anticipation of my move to Flagstaff. But as I was lighting one tonight (vanilla spice... Thanksgiving smells? Yes, please!), I saw a metaphor for writing flickering away in the flame licking at the wick and melting the wax. I suppose it could be a metaphor for life in general, but since the theme of this blog is writing... Well, you do the math.

How to Make Sure Your Book Review Request Does NOT Get Deleted

I've been hesitant to write this post. That is due, in large part, to how angry I get some days after reading book review requests. I curse, I rant, I snark. My cat will tell you it's not a pretty sight. But I also feel like this is a good opportunity to talk about what it is that makes me feel those feelings AND how to not stir them up. I'm not the only reviewer that gets frustrated when I see certain things in my emails from authors looking for a review. And I know I'm not the only one who gets triggered enough to ignore or delete those messages. I never feel good about doing it. It's just that I'm hitting the proverbial wall here and I want to hit it a little less often. So if you're an author looking for loving advice on how to approach reviewers (especially this one), read on. Review Requests I Always  Delete Before I get into what to do, I wanted to take a minute to look at what not to do (and how I handle it). Want to know what immedi