Nick

Reviewed by Nick, 2/27/15

I love reading books about how reading books can change your life. Author Andy Miller is closing in on 40 and feeling the pressure of working as a book editor while juggling his responsibilities as a husband and parent. He does not feel “engaged” with his life and he has lost his love of reading. So he begins a year-long journey of reading books he has always wanted to read, what he calls his “List of Betterment,” which includes classics from various eras, plus two Dan Brown thrillers. This book is at times a memoir, a confession, literary criticism with an occasionally outrageous Hunter Thompson vibe that makes you laugh. The result “is the story of an attempt to integrate books—to reintegrate them—into an ordinary day-to-day existence, a life which was becoming progressively less engaging to the individual living it.” By the end of his year of reading dangerously, Miller was feeling much better about his life and he had inspired me to create my own “List of Betterment.” The first book on my list is a title I am ashamed to admit I have never read:  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

More reviews by Nick.

Reviewed by Nick, 2/12/15

Reading Miller’s Blue Like Jazz years ago made me a loyal Donald Miller fan who looks forward to his next book with joyful anticipation. It has been a long wait—five years—but finally he has a new book out: Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy. This book has been a fun and enlightening read for me because I have a “history” with Miller, but I am not sure if a first-time reader of Miller would like it as much as I did. Miller is 43 years old and this book tells the story of his engagement and marriage after an abundance of failures in the relationship game. His brutal honesty about his shortcomings and the well-earned wisdom he gains is inspiring. I think this book would make a great gift for a man struggling with relationship issues who is serious about changing for the better.