bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Friday, February 24, 2006 ::

A little light reading ahead
Yesterday I received three separate packages from the same PR firm. Each package contained a book for my consideration. The good news is, all three are books I actually want to read and review. The bad news is, I don't know when I'm going to get the time to shoehorn all this reading into my schedule. But I'll make it work somehow.

First on the list is Brian McLaren's forthcoming book, The Secret Message of Jesus, due out in April in hardcover. The copy I got is a paperback, uncorrected proof, but that's good enough for me. I started to flip through it last night, skipping the intro and ripping through the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1, "Troubling Questions About Jesus," which begins with a series of "What if..." questions about the life, message and meaning of Jesus Christ. Nine paragraph's worth of questions, to be precise. My head started swimming already, so I had to take a pause and set aside McLaren's book for the moment to see what other gifts were to be pored over.

I did find it interesting to read, on the back cover of this advance copy, that marketing to the blogosphere was part of the publisher's integrated marketing plan to promote the book. Along with the ad and media blitz that typically accompanies these campaigns, there's also a "100 person blog team" involved in the promo campaign. I wonder if I'm among them?

(P.S. to McLaren fans: you could win one of 50 free advance copies if you act quickly.)

Next out of the box was an advance copy of Practicing Greatness, a leadership book by Reggie McNeal. Subtitled, 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders, this book is due out in May. So I've got some time to kill before I crank out a review of this one. It looks like a fairly quick "how-to" read. If it's a good leadership book, I will get into it. (I like to read about leaders and leadership, even church leadership, and I like to see how the leadership techniques discussed in those books apply to my role in higher education.) Unfortunately, there are a lot of mediocre books on leadership. I hope this isn't one of them. I know of at least one blogger is a Reggie McNeal fan (here's evidence. I hope he has an advance copy, too.

Finally, there's the latest Donald Miller work, To Own A Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up Without a Father, co-authored by John MacMurray. This one's already out on the market, so I should probably get to reviewing it right away. Plus, since I grew up with an absentee father, I should have some interest in this subject. (I took a peek at the opening paragraphs, and as usual, Miller hooked me right away with a little vignette about a TV dad who substituted for his AWOL pater familias.) But I've already reviewed two Donald Miller books (see here and here), so it's going to be third on the list.

Before I can get to any of these three books, I need to finish Naked Conversations, the Robert Scoble/Shel Israel book about why businesses (and other organizations) should blog. (There's also a companion blog to the book.) I plan to do three reviews of this book -- a general review on this blog, one with an online ministry focus on e-vangelism, and finally one for my marketing higher ed blog. Also, on Monday my boss gave me a copy of Getting Things Done. I don't think she's expecting a book review, but she is expecting me to read it. So it's high on my priority list right now.

books, reading, Brian McLaren, Reggie McNeal, Donald Miller, Robert Scoble, Shel Israel

:: Andrew 07:30 + ::
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