2 out of 4 stars
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My Career As A Book Reviewer Defending The Faith by Maurice A. Williams is a collection of the author’s book reviews. The irony has not escaped me that I am a book reviewer reviewing someone else’s book reviews. I hesitated with taking on this challenge because of that fact alone. Ultimately, my curiosity won out, and I wanted to see what Williams offered.
The compilation has reviews on books either associated with Christian beliefs or ones against it that Williams tries to refute. The reviews run the spectrum from evolution to Joan of Arc. Many other fictional stories are discussed as well, including one book from the popular Left Behind series. I found the author’s opinions insightful, especially when he talks about the Christian faith. You could tell he was passionate in his convictions.
One of the most exciting things about being a book reviewer is motivating others to read a book. Williams achieves this in his review on Man In White. I knew little about Johnny Cash besides a few of his songs and his moniker the “Man in Black”. I did not know he had written a book on Saint Paul and his life. Williams’ review convinced me that this was a must read on gaining a deeper understanding of the apostle. On a few lengthy reviews though, I kept wondering when they would end. The review of the book How To Win A Cosmic War was over 2000 words. He gave too much detail on the story and was not as concise with his opinions. I kept flip-flopping back and forth between being intrigued to yawning.
I always considered the job of a preface as arousing the reader’s interest enough for them to read further. I came away from this book’s preface, though, with more of an impression of melancholy than excitement. Williams describes his reason for compiling his reviews as this: “Altogether, I wrote about 100 book reviews that I thought were pretty good, but I fear I will probably wind up with nothing to show for all my efforts as a writer. So, before everything falls apart, I thought I would publish my best book reviews through Amazon.” This did not give me much enthusiasm for what was to come. Although I appreciate the author’s candidness, a more positive spin would have been better to draw in the reader.
The most negative aspect of the collection was Williams’ reason for doing book reviews. He wrote on the book of Revelations and his book reviews were meant to draw attention to it. This shows throughout the collection. Out of the 55 reviews, Williams mentions his book eight times. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I was reading the reviews separately. Since I was reading them back to back though, I noticed it more. I thought it was disrespectful to the writer of the book being reviewed when Williams puts in a plug for his own.
Unfortunately, there were multiple grammatical errors as well throughout the compilation. Most were a missing word or a misspelling. Because of all this, I have to give My Career As A Book Reviewer Defending The Faith 2 out of 4 stars. Anyone interested in the Christian faith or looking for a good book to read will be keen on looking at this compilation.
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My Career as a Book Reviewer Defending the Faith
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However, I agree that it's annoying that he keeps mentioning his book. Also, when doing reviews, I feel that there should have been almost no editing errors so I'm confused as to why there were so many errors in this book.
when I get a little money I buy books; and if I have any left l buy food and clothes
