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McKnight and Ford: Book Déjà Vu?
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Recently I put up a brief review of Scot McKnight’s newest book, The Blue Parakeet. You can read the review here, if you wish. The Blue Parakeet is Scot’s effort to help us think about how we interpret the Bible, and to guide us into a more faithful understanding of Scripture and its truth. One of the striking things about this book, in addition to its content and unusual title, is the cover: bright yellow, with a prominent bird, a parakeet, of course.
Yesterday I received another book in the mail, The Attentive Life: Discerning God’s Presence in All Things, by Leighton Ford. I’m looking forward to reading this book because Leighton is a highly-regarded, mature, wise Christian leader. And I need to learn how to be more attentive to God’s presence in my life.
But when I saw this book for the first time, I had a strange sense of déjà vu. Here, once again, was a bright yellow book with a prominent bird on the cover. This bird is smaller than the one on Scot’s book, and it is a red cardinal, not a blue parakeet. Nevertheless, the similarities are striking, don’t you think?
I wonder if we’ll start seeing more books like this with yellow covers and birds. (Christopher Hitchens’ god is Not Great had a yellow cover, but no bird. I wonder what bird would be appropriate on that book.) By the way, though I haven’t read The Attentive Life yet, I’m sure it will be worth reading. I’ll let you know when I finish it what I think.
All of this yellowness gives me an idea. Perhaps my publishers should re-release my books with a new, yellow cover color scheme. For example, Dare to Be True is languishing these days at around 900,000 at Amazon.com. Maybe the problem isn’t the book, but the cover! Maybe people just aren’t interested in white books anymore. They want more pizzazz . . . and birds.
Think of the possibilities if Dare to Be True had a yellow cover . . . and a blue jay! Nothing would stop this book then. Look out New York Times top ten. Look out Rick Warren and The Purpose Driven Life. Here comes the new, yellow version of Dare to be True!
Well, then again, maybe not.
Topics: Book Reviews |
2 Responses to “McKnight and Ford: Book Déjà Vu?”
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May 6th, 2009 at 5:19 am
How about a hummingbird for Mr. Hitchens’ tome on atheism? After all, the hummingbird is the epitome of random chance evolution, in which they evolved their long, thin beak and hovering abilities in tandem with certain plants making their pistils and stamens more inaccessible over a period of billions and billions of years. Of course, I recently heard that the Earth was in an ice age until about 10,000 years or so ago, and hummingbirds cannot tolerate even the relatively mild Texas winters here and migrate away, so I guessed the hummingbirds had to evolve over 10,000 years, since otherwise they would have died out in the ice age. But then I more recently learned that the ice age had apparently not affected the equator, so hummingbirds are on again, since they still had billions and billions of years to evolve at the equator. Of course, that would mean that they had to evolve the ability to migrate northward and then back southward thousands of miles once the ice age ended, so we are back to the same problem. Forget I mentioned it; use a vulture.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Even: You crack me up! Thanks.