twenty-three

While visiting Brian McLaren’s website today, I noticed the following: 50 Free Advance Copies of "The Secret Message of Jesus"! To my surprise, I had stumbled upon an opportunity to possibly receive an advance copy of McLaren’s new book and be able to review it on this very blog. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, forgetting about being at work at the time, and I emailed the publisher to sign up. Please, please, please let them choose me.

I know this blog is new. I know that in truth, there’s probably only 10 (if I’m lucky) people who look at this blog with an consistency. I hope that doesn’t figure into their criteria for picking who gets to review the book. And while being a fellow marketer of books and publications, and while I know that search engine ratings can be influenced (we hope) by gaining links to your site from blogs and other popular, high traffic sites, my hope remains that while my blog has no search engine ranking, they will grant me the chance to read this book anyway.

You who read my blog: Stacy, Jesse, Sean, Lisa, Brian, and who ever else might be so kind out there to take a few minutes – wouldn’t you say that I’d have something valuable to contribute to a review of Brian McLaren’s newest work? Wouldn’t you say that my theology is shaped by some of the same ideas we’ve all read in his previous works? And wouldn’t you also say that I’m fairly critical of some of the things he says, while very willing to discuss and hopefully learn from our disagreements? Maybe you would.

I hope this isn’t coming off as shameless self-promotion or as a plea for a free book. I’ll buy it, don’t worry. I just think it would be pretty stinkin’ cool to be an advance reviewer, an early-adopter (as I’m often NOT). We’ll see.

How about if I don’t end up getting picked for the review, I’ll write my own anyways. You’ll all have to wait until the book has been out for a month or so to get my review of course. It wouldn’t be in a timely, "wow,  that sounds so good I’ll go out and buy it on the day it releases" kind of thing. But I’ll do it.

What do you think? Should they let me review The Secret Message of Jesus? I write product descriptions all day, so maybe I’ve got a shot.

Find out more about The Secret Message of Jesus at Amazon.

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