Reviews for Jesus: An Authorized Biography

The average rating for Jesus: An Authorized Biography based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-07-01 00:00:00 James Paschall I'm reading this purely because my sister DESPISED it and I have to know why. Oh. My. Gosh. I rarely read books that I can't understand how they were published. I usually can see some audience for it or some purpose they fulfill. This book, however, is just dreadful. It had to be published solely on the author's reputation for The Last Lecture, because no self-respecting publisher would agree to print this. I read this because my sister needed someone to make fun of it with her, and I foresee it as a punchline to many jokes in the future. Here's what makes it so awful: The writing is RIDICULOUSLY bad. Honestly, probably some of the worst writing I've ever experienced. It's completely saccharine and overly folksy. He even stoops to write, while one of the girls is commenting on a joke that the only good thing to come out of Iowa is I-35, "I-35, and of course, the girls from Ames." UGH!!!!! It's like he has a crush on this group of women and is trying to kiss up to them. He also frequently ends a paragraph with phrases like "So that's why she made that choice", or "so that's how she knew it was the right thing." Who writes like that once you get past junior high? Probably plenty of people, but they don't become PUBLISHED AUTHORS. There is no rhyme or reason to the organization of the book. Why do some of the girls get full chapters, and others are barely mentioned? Why randomly insert a brief story about their fear of having to kiss a black boy during a game of Spin the Bottle and the "racial and sexual tension" they felt, and then never bring up race again in the entire book? He certainly wants to make Ames into something really formative to the girls, but the reality is that they all left after high school and don't have much connection with it anymore. There's little to make this narrative distinct to Ames, but the author clearly wants to think that there is because he pounds the Ames angle over and over again. And there's nothing about it that makes it interesting. The writing isn't skilled enough to evoke a wonderful sense of place, and therefore all the places mentioned are just meaningless and boring. The women in the book may be educated, funny, smart, kind, and wonderful, but you'd never know it by the writing. Sometimes the author would mention that one of them had a Ph.D. or something else really notable, but their achievements are barely touched on. I was actually a bit surprised that they went to college because he makes them all seem completely shallow and only interested in drinking in cornfields. I thought at first that I just don't have anything in common with them, and they represent the kind of woman that annoys me, but I think the fault lies with the author. There is no sense of the depth of these women, and he often focuses on really terrible, catty things they do. And why do we want to read about women that were considered cliquish, and even turned against one of their own members? (Can you imagine being the woman who disliked them in high school, being contacted by a reporter who is writing a book about the people that excluded you for a book about friendship? Lame.) I know that friendship is a complex thing, but I didn't get that there was anything significant or remarkable about this group. Which brings me to... WHY ON EARTH IS THERE A BOOK ABOUT THESE WOMEN?!?!?!?! NOTHING HAPPENS!!! Absolutely anyone could have a book like this written about them and their friends. I could write a book about my childhood friends and call it "The Girls from Tempe" and it would be just as compelling. I could write a book about my current group of friends and call it "The Girls from Bloomington" and it would be a billion times more interesting. We all want to believe that we are significant and we "all have a story to tell", but sometimes it's good to realize that's just not the case. It's like hearing about someone else's family jokes, and they're totally not interesting or funny. Most of us don't have lives that deserve a book. However, with a better writer, I think these women probably could have had an interesting book written about them. They certainly have experienced some tragic events, but so has everyone else. Therefore, the writer needs to trick you into wanting to know about them. I've read memoirs about the sad things that very often happen to regular people (divorce, death, illness, etc.), but they seem interesting because the writer adds to it through the writing itself. Jeffrey Zaslow isn't good enough to pull that off. I hated this. HATED. I would never have picked it up on my own, and I hated every moment of reading it. I hated that the author wanted to believe that the phrase "the girls from Ames" meant something, like they were the only women the city had produced or like they had done anything significant. Instead, we're presented with a book full of boring personal memories about people we don't care about in a place we don't care about, and are told it will speak to women everywhere. Please.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-04-28 00:00:00 Alexander Valladares When I heard the author and two of the subjects on NPR I immediately bought a copy, wondering if I would know any of the "girls." I was living and working in Ames in 1981 when their class graduated from Ames High, and sure enough, I immediately recognized one of the main characters, and had connections with the families of others. Reading the book was much like the odd dislocation that Walker Percy describes in The Moviegoer when surprised by a scene on screen that is familiar in real life. That said, Zaslow is a columnist and this is a story that needs the skills of a novelist. You can't build character by simply piling on anecdotes, and he is hampered by a lack of source material (and by an inexcusable lack of research--no evidence that he visited their old haunts or even read their yearbook), an inability to recreate a sense of place or time, what appears to be cursory interviews with a broad number of sources, and his core experience, a reunion with the main subjects in North Carolina, where there is no connection with their common roots. While the cast is not exactly War and Peace, it is difficult to keep the characters straight, an experience not aided by the author's determination to use just first names. Was Kelly the feisty one or the sassy one--no that was Cathy, or was it Karen or Karla? The fuzzy pics on the cheesy paper used in the original edition are not a plus. You do learn a bit -- who knew that Brad Pitt was "a pleasant-but-not-especially attractive journalism major at the University of Missouri"? Or that Hollywood hair dressers have a code of not gossiping about their clients--except when someone is writing a book about the friendships of 11 Iowa girls and apparently needs to spice up the flagging narration with a flurry of name dropping. This is not to take away anything from the 11 original friends or their admirably deep and lengthy friendships, but if you're looking for an equally deep explanation of such relationships, you'll not find it here.