Book Review: The Christmas Sweater
This is book forty-nine in fifty two weeks.
Glenn Beck is a laughably poor writer. I haven’t read his non-fiction stuff, but it sells pretty well. I cant imagine it’s this hard to read, or else it wouldn’t have sold so well, right? I think the last book I read that made me cringe at how badly it was written was Da Vinci Code. This book rips off every Christmas book and movie cliche you can think of, and he doesn’t try to hide it.
I thought I’d choose a Christmas book to help get me in the Christmas spirit, but instead I was put in the Thanksgiving spirit, I was thankful I borrowed this instead of buying it.
The characters or poorly written, everything they do is obvious from a mile away. Actually everything that happens is easy to see from a mile away.
It’s horrible.
I was looking at some past reviews, and one of the warly books I gave a poor review to was A War of Gifts, also a Christmas story. Maybe I just need to avoid them from now on.
D
Other people reading for 52 weeks.
- Heliologue reviews The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
- Nick reviews Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
- Jaime reviews Brave New World by Huxley
I think you are right. I suggest you avoid Christmas themes altogether, when you consider that Christmas is all about a baby that is supposed to be the Savior of the world.
This book makes a mockery of those themes, and made me wish I was Jewish so I never had to celebrate Christmas ever again. Yeah, it was that bad.
Give me a break Martin, the guy is just a bad author, I’m not knocking Christmas.
You may or may not know that much of the story is autobiographical. Instead of the mother dying in a car crash, the author’s mother was convinced that her children would be better off without her. In her suicidal depression she left a note by the crock pot that said that said there was food in it and more in the fridge and that “things would be alright”. As Glen Beck said this morning on the radio, “They weren’t.” The drama and the anguish that the author experienced in the story is not overdone. If anything, it is minimized.
So what do YOU think are the themes of Christmas that are so badly handled? Maybe we are talking past each other and about totally different themes. One theme that I believe belongs to Christmas is that hope can be found in the midst of despair.
The Jesus in whom most Christians believe is the Son of God. He was born into our sinful world for one main purpose and that was to take our sin and guilt into His own body on the cross. God gives you a choice. Either you can fool yourself into thinking that you don’t have a sin debt and that you don’t need forgiveness from the Creator, OR you can believe the truth that all of us are fallen people in a fallen world and we need the forgiveness that He offers.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me.” If Jesus told lies, then ANY kind of recognition of Christmas, bottomline, would be honoring a deceiver. But if He told the truth, he is offering us mercy instead of judgment, hope instead of despair, clarity instead of insanity, love instead of hate, and eternal life instead of death. I’m glad I’m a redeemed sinner instead of a lost sinner. Which kind of sinner are you?
Whether the story Beck borrowed from was more or less tragic than this book doesn’t make it any better written. I’m sorry you didn’t like my review, but because I thought it was poorly done has nothing to do with what I think of our Creator, Christmas or my huge amount of sinning. I think if you read other reviews of the same book, you’ll see many people agree with what I think, it’s just not written very well, whether you like Jesus or not.
I read this book with in three days. I cried and I laughed. Very well written. It touched my very soul. You just don’t get the hidden messages. I feel sorry for you. Thank you Glen Beck for sharing a part of your life with us.
Yeash. I’m starting to think Glen Beck devotees are even more annoying than Rush Limbaugh followers.
Don’t feel sorry for me, I’m very happy reading books now that are authored by people that actually know what they are doing.
I don’t care for Glen Beck, and he is no role model with his ranting, screaming and bashing of all that is to the left of the Rush-minded set. But I sympathize with anyone who has prematurely lost his parents. I lost mine when I was in my forties, and it still feels like it was premature.
That said, I was wondering if I was the only one thinking how poorly this was written. No matter how moving or touching the theme may be, it is not a piece of real literature. It does, however, succeed in taking advantage of the author’s celebrity in order to capitalize on the sad story and earn lots of money to make up for the childhood of wearing Wonder Bread bag snowshoes (a phrase I never could’ve foreseen myself using, in any context!)