Stuff Christians Like

My pastor and friend robshep turned me onto blogger Jon Acuff. I started following his blog and found him to be quite insightful and astute. This blog is meant for folks who are actively chasing their dreams. Although primarily for would-be authors, it contains wisdom across the spectrum of dream-chasers. As a disciple of Dave Ramsey, he clearly fits into Ramsey's stable of self-help/advice sherpas.

Poking around this blog page, I quickly learned that Jon maintains a second blog called Stuff Christians Like, which is really a humor/satire site related to all things Christianity. I read a couple of his most recent posts and they convinced me to order his book of the same name. I was hoping for a read that would make me smile, while at the same time giving me some dimensions of depth and Christian insight from a man of wisdom. A few days later the book arrived and I worked it into my reading cycle. As it is only about 200 pages long, it amounts to a quick read. Here is what I took away from this book:

• The Jon Acuff that I had followed on his advice blog writes with a very different style than on his humor blog.
  
• While he has a few moments of insight or beauty in his humor book, there is a lot of juvenile and silly/inane stuff too. There is a lot of filler and fluff. While his writing is "humorous", there is very little that I found laugh-out-loud funny and very little that I found particularly clever or thoughtful.
  
• Now that I have finished reading Stuff Christians Like, I am unable to relate to you a single anecdote from the book. To me this is the very definition of light, non-descript, and unmemorable fare.
  
• As I was reading it, I kept counting the pages left hoping that it would be over soon.
  

I think a younger version of me would have appreciated this book more. Maybe my issue is that I don't know funny. Certainly I have not enjoyed the last few humor books I have read. It is very likely that these sorts of books should no longer be part of my reading time as there are other genres that I get into so much more. If this is what passes the bar for funny, I will pass next time.