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Followers started off very strong with great writing about loneliness, wanting to be accepted, to have friends, to be followed, to be someone. It explores two women in New York as they struggle with their fledging careers. If it had stayed in this vein, I would have given it five stars.

Yet it veered of course, with interesting additional plots about hackers taking down the internet and revealing people's deepest secrets, about a community where everyone lives on camera, and a community where information technology has been banned. Each of these could have made good plots, but to interweave all of this with what had started off as a promising novel, together with sections that felt like they were written with middle aged female tabloid readers really weakened the novel.

Still, it is worth the read. Read the first part, and if, it keeps your interest, continue on to the end.

I read this for two courses in Christian History. It is an impressive tome chock full of information; a valuable resource. One warning, MacCulloch's biases sometimes get in the way of providing full information and there are plenty of times that an editor could have made the book much better by removing unnecessary snarkiness.

This is a solid, well written description of key spiritual disciplines in the Christian tradition. It includes references to many of the great writers.

Jones challenges us to ask big questions and challenge underlying assumptions about our life. He especially turns this to how we think about church, decline, the role of ministers, and so on.

He provides valuable insights for those looking for new ways to address old questions.

I loved A Spirituality of Fundraising. I read it for a class in seminary. It helps bring the discussions about stewardship back to things that really matter, like our relationships with other people, and our vision for the communities we are part of.

We talk about the desire to become more loving of our neighbor in our daily life. Jesus calls us to this. But what does that really look like? How do we set about doing this?

bell hooks presents good, practical, and challenging steps.

This is a long meandering book with sections of brilliance. It is especially important for people interested in global health issues.

There There weaves together a wonderfully complex cast of characters that you don't find in your typical novel, connecting them in unexpected ways. This is a book to read to understand the characters and what they say about life in America today. Very highly recommended

This is a must-read. It is beautifully written and shows the reader a world closely tied to our own, that we are better off for learning about.

This is a really good book if you want to get a clearer understanding of various ways in which Buddhism came to America. It presents a solid framework for understanding religion in the current age and I found it very helpful to my understanding of Buddhism.

Please read this book. It is really important. It looks at explores the broader issues of racism in America from a very well thought out and presented Christian context.

This is a good solid book to have in your library if you are a congregational leader. It is worth reading, and coming back to when you are helping an organization through a period of change.