John Shore Christian Blog and Commentary

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My Big Week in Christian Book Publishing

The book business is reeeeeeeeeeeeeally slow; it is like unto the rest of our media as the Pony Express is to email. Insane. Anyway, it means that whenever anything actually does happen with any book you write, it registers (to you, anyway) as a fairly big deal. This week four things happened with books of mine, which I figured I'd now bore you with.

First, on Tuesday I found at my door a box delivered by UPS that turned out to contain the first copy I'd seen of Midlife Manual for Men, a book I wrote with Steve Arterburn that'll be in stores in a week or two. It's got an exceptionally well designed, slick, super-shiny cover, with the raised/embossed lettering and all. Very snazzy. (You can see the front of that cover on its Amazon page, which is here.) And there're bunch of endorsements on the book's back cover and front page that are so glowing they're actually embarrassing to read. Also in the box was the four-disc CD audio-version of MM4M, which is the whole book read aloud by Steve.  Midlife is Bethany Publishing's lead book for at least Spring '08, so they've printed tons of copies of it, and it'll be available everywhere. I have no idea if anyone'll want to interview me about the book, or whatever. Steve's the star, of course. He'll be doing all kinds of media about it.

Anyway. It was fun to see that stuff.

Also, The Discerning Reader, a website whereon a handful of conservative Christians review books in order to "help Christians avoid being unduly influenced by books and teachers that are not honoring to God" (according to their "About" page), has just published a review of my book, "Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang," by God (as told to John Shore). (Amazon-wise, that book is here.) That DR review is here. One of the more formidable things about the review is that it features, right off the bat, the word "anthropopathism."

Quick: Say "anthropopathism" three times. Or once, even.

At the top of their reviews, The Discerning Reader runs quick summations of the review/book at hand. The one for Penguins says: "In short: A witty and unpredictable book for unbelievers. Christian readers beware."

So you've been warned. Beware!

Also, this week Crosswalk published an excerpt from the introduction of Midlife, which you can read here.

Finally, I found out this week I'll soon be getting a decent little royalty check from the German edition of Penguins, which apparently is doing pretty well. That's nice to find out.

And there you have it. Not much, as I say. Unless you're me. Then it's kind of not entirely unexciting.

 

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