Reviews for The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, on Tour : Aged Far Too Much to Be Put on the Front Cover of a Book

The average rating for The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, on Tour : Aged Far Too Much to Be Put on the Front Cover of a Book based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-25 00:00:00 Chris Reder It's always disheartening when the first two books in a series start off so brilliantly, and then it all seems to go downhill. This book got a couple of laughs from me, but only a couple. Nothing like the first two Sacred Diaries where I laughed so hard that tears came down my cheeks. In fact the only memory I have of laughing this time was near the beginning when Leonard rang Adrian from a phone box up the street. My favourite people this time by far were Leonard, Angels and Anne.... I kept finding myself relating to Angels, Leonard is his usual self and you can't help but love him! As for Anne, she's just someone you aspire to be like. The Diary was not written in the same style as the previous two and that was disappointing. There were a couple of scenarios that dragged on far longer than necessary, and I just found myself getting bored and frustrated with the characters (Brian and Harry). Adrian Plass remains one of my favourite authors, but I was relieved to finally finish this and unfortunately it will not find its way on to my bookshelf!

Review # 2 was written on 2018-12-11 00:00:00 Cynthia Shaver Number five in the Sacred Diary series - I'm making my way through the books and am getting dangerously close to getting to the end. There's currently one more book, written in 2013 after a nine-year hiatus in the series. As always, Adrian Plass is a unique voice in Christendom - walking an artful line of satire, humour, entertainment, insight and reverent irreverence - all with his particular British perspective and tone. His books always carry an element of needed critique, challenging sacred cows and prodding Christian culture. This book, in which a group of his well-known characters (plus a new one called Angels) undertake a seven-day speaking tour around the English countryside, is particularly concerted against overly-religious or legalistic bible-bashing. There are more serious monologues in this one than I remember in the other books in the series. These monologues are largely delivered by Adrian's fictional wife Anne, and his son Gerald, who has lost none of his humour but has now grown up, matured, gained considerable wisdom and become an Anglican curate. The message of the book largely drives towards a more compassionate and loving Christianity. There is one particularly awkward moment though. At one point, discussion amongst the characters turns to the subject of hell (dicey). There follows a quite acerbic little attack on "a well-known Christian ... [who] had recently declared that a compassionate God could never consign anyone to everlasting torment. Instead, apparently, he'll [God'll] simply annihilate the souls of the unsaved." It's actually very rare for Plass's books to single out specific individuals, but it would be accurate to assume, I think, that this "well-known Christian" is none other than Tom (NT) Wright - one of the finest theological minds of our era, who, in 2004 (when this book was published) was the Bishop of Durham. Plass writes, "Anne said she disagreed with what she called 'this cheerful little distortion of scripture', and reckoned everyone else ought to if they'd got any sense. Dangerous nonsense, she called it." "What a comfort" says Angels sarcastically, "for people to think that their souls might be annihilated by a compassionate God." If I had been there, I might have said, "Well actually, Angels, if life and death judgements are going to be handed out at some point, I do think I would prefer non-existence (or 'annihilation' by its technical theological name) to never-ending pain that goes on for eternity without hope of release. The second of those two scenarios being the one that your new friends Adrian and Anne are so adamant to preserve in the face of our learned friend's suggestion - assuming they haven't suddenly become universalists, atheists or believers in Purgatory." Then follows a particularly uncomfortable and ill-advised humour piece in which Gerald speculates on what hell might be like. I say "ill-advised" because if a bit of old fashioned eternal punishment is really your belief then to joke about it seems somewhat gross - gallows humour and black comedy notwithstanding. I digress, ranting about something and giving it a proportion of space in my review that isn't equal to its size in the book. I note with some amusement that the categorisation given by Zondervan on the dust jacket of this book places it in a vague, po-faced section called "Inspiration / Motivational / General" - presumably because there was no category called "Christian / Satire / Humour / British". And, I say, we are the poorer for that fact. Long may Adrian Plass keep on writing, because I know of no others like him, and I'm running out of books.