LetsMoveToTheMoon

God, Technology, and Things That Make Us Want to Move to the Moon

Blue Parakeet On Sale Now, My Review Late

October 10, 2008

Scot McKnight posted earlier today on his blog that his book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, is now available to the public via Amazon and bookstores. Upon seeing this, I realized that I have not yet posted my review of his book, which I was supposed to have done before the book was released. I apologize to involved parties for this falling-short of mine, particularly in that I was careless and didn’t double-check the date of its release which I thought to be mid-November. Regardless, I wanted to give a mini-review today in celebration of its public release.

I want to first say that I highly recommend this book. I’ve got two main reasons for that which I’ll quickly explain: it’s a fun, easy read and it’s packed with valuable insights.

I must admit that I expected Scot to deliver when it came to the accessibility of the book, and he met my expectations well. I enjoyed the metaphor of the blue parakeet that was carried throughout the book (although I didn’t understand it completely at first, which was likely my fault). I also found Scot’s stories fun and relevant to the ideas he presented. Additionally, I found the layout and organization of the chapters to be very sensible and appropriate, something that I expected of Scot, as I enjoy his blog partly for reasons related to that.

More importantly, though, I truly felt that the ideas presented in The Blue Parakeet were important and insightful. One of my favorite things about Scot’s writings is that they are filled with great observations. I noticed that throughout this book: Scot observes well (in this case, how the Bible is traditionally read) and offers his and Scripture’s opinion on what should be done to better the status quo. His description of the Bible as story, something that must be listened to, and relational, while not completely new, was thorough and informative, and I found myself thinking about how I approach the Bible in my own life. I think that the “exciting ‘Third Way’” that was promoted on the back cover was thoroughly demonstrated in The Blue Parakeet, and I recommend this book to Bible-readers of all backgrounds.