Review: The Lucado Inspirational Reader

Max Lucado is one of those big name Christian authors who has written lots of books that sell well. I keep meaning to read some of them but have only got round to reading one, Outlive your life. And I really enjoyed it. So I was quite interested to get a copy of the new The Lucado Inspirational Reader – Inspiration and Encouragement for Your Life
collection, which is a compilation of quotes and longer 1-2 page extracts from many of his books from over the years.
Essentially this is like a highlights show, bringing you some of the best parts of Max’s many books, so you don’t have to read them all. Everything is arranged by category, with a topical index as well, and it covers themes like compassion, forgiveness, Church, Jesus, faith plus lots more. Everything is covered in Max’s unique journalistic poetical style that really highlights God’s love for us, and is firmly rooted in Biblical truth. And all presented as short bite-sized nuggets of truth and encouragement. And at over 400 pages you are getting lots of highlights for your money
As The Lucado Inspirational Reader – Inspiration and Encouragement for Your Life is a selection of quotes it isn’t necessary to read from cover to cover, and you can easily flick through to a section that interests you. the extracts are all chosen to be inspiring and encouraging, but they are not patronising and are very easy to read.
If you don’t have many Max Lucado books, and want to get into his work this is a great starting point. If you already have quite a few of his books there will however be a lot of this that you already have.
A couple of flaws I have with it are while it tells you the book the quotes are from it doesn’t give page references, which would be handy for the extracts you want to read more from, and there are large text quotes from some of the longer extracts that take up space repeating something that has just been quoted.
If you like Max Lucado but don’t have many of his books this is a worthwhile investment. If you don’t like his style the highlights format of this collection probably won’t do anything for you. The hardback edition would make a good gift (it even has a To/From page at the front in anticipation)
Legal bit that I have to do or else I get dragged to a cave somewhere dark by Jack Bauer or something…: Thomas Nelson sent me a free copy of this book through the BookSneeze programme. I chose to receive it from a selection of books, and was not obliged to give a positive review.
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