{"id":6606,"date":"2010-05-18T17:02:38","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T22:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=6606"},"modified":"2010-05-18T17:02:38","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T22:02:38","slug":"book-review-stuff-christians-like-by-jonathan-acuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20100518-6606.htm","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: &#8220;Stuff Christians Like&#8221; by Jonathan Acuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>View my <a href=\"disclosure.htm#books\">disclosure statement<\/a> for more information on how I choose books to review.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve never checked out the <a href=\"http:\/\/stuffchristianslike.net\" target=\"_blank\">Stuff Christians Like<\/a> blog, you&#8217;re seriously missing out. Every day Jonathan Acuff (or a wickedly funny guest blogger) posts a satirical piece about some aspect of modern Christian culture.<\/p>\n<p>Acuff is certainly not the only blogger who pokes fun at Christian culture.  In fact, such sites abound.  But Acuff&#8217;s &#8220;Stuff Christians Like&#8221; manages to set itself apart from other sites in that it&#8217;s not cynical.  Acuff isn&#8217;t giving up on Christians or on the church. He&#8217;s not setting himself up as a holier-than-thou.  He&#8217;s just making observations, in love, about our unique culture (which is also HIS unique culture.)<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t usually <i>buy<\/i> this sort of book.  Actually, I try not to <i>buy<\/i> books if at all possible.  I borrow hundreds of books from my library each year, and limit my purchasing to books that I&#8217;ve already read and know I want to read again and to library book sale items (bought at the going rate of $0.50-1.00)<\/p>\n<p>But I especially don&#8217;t buy this kind of book&#8211;little humorous essays that you read once and laugh and then put away, never to pick the book up again.<\/p>\n<p>I did, however, get the downloadable audiobook&#8211;and am thoroughly impressed.<\/p>\n<p>Acuff does his own reading, which is genius on quite a few levels.  Acuff is a pretty smooth reader&#8211;with pauses where they&#8217;re needed and proper inflections at varying points.  But what&#8217;s more, Acuff doesn&#8217;t just read.  Sure&#8211;he reads&#8211;but he also sings, uses the occasional odd voice, and makes comments about the reading process. It makes for great hilarity.<\/p>\n<p>The contents of this title are a mix of Stuff Christians Like (the website) classics and brand new humorous essays.  Expect to hear about honeymoon sex, popcorn prayer personalities, and being the &#8220;token Christian&#8221; in your workplace.<\/p>\n<p><i>Stuff Christians Like<\/i> would make a great gift book for anyone who grew up in the Christian subculture of the 80s, 90s, and today (fantastic-now I sound like a local radio station &#8220;playing your favorites from the 80s, 90s, and today!&#8221;)If you&#8217;ve been on a church missions trip or had your child&#8217;s number appear on a screen during a worship service or given or received a tract instead of candy on Halloween, you&#8217;re going to be amused by this book. <\/p>\n<p>The book version would make for good bathroom reading, I think&#8211;though nothing can beat this audio version.  As an individual who is HIGHLY oriented toward the written word (I require subtitles in order to understand almost any movie), I generally don&#8217;t prefer audio books.  But this isn&#8217;t so much of an audio book&#8211;it&#8217;s more like a four and a half hour long comedy track.  I LOVED IT!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Rating:<\/b> 4 stars <br \/>\n<b>Category:<\/b> Satirical Essays on Christian Culture<br \/>\n<b>Synopsis:<\/b> Jonathan Acuff pokes good-natured fun at Christian culture&#8211;in absolutely hilarious essays.<br \/>\n<b>Recommendation:<\/b> If you grew up in the Christian culture&#8211;or now belong to it&#8211;you&#8217;ll probably be nodding your head and laughing along.  You&#8217;ll like it.  If you aren&#8217;t a Christian and\/or don&#8217;t have any familiarity with Christian culture, this isn&#8217;t going to make a lot of sense to you.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>View my disclosure statement for more information on how I choose books to review. If you&#8217;ve never checked out the Stuff Christians Like blog, you&#8217;re seriously missing out. Every day Jonathan Acuff (or a wickedly funny guest blogger) posts a satirical piece about some aspect of modern Christian culture. Acuff is certainly not the only &#8230; <a title=\"Book Review: &#8220;Stuff Christians Like&#8221; by Jonathan Acuff\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20100518-6606.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Book Review: &#8220;Stuff Christians Like&#8221; by Jonathan Acuff<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[36],"tags":[48,121,622,1047],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}