What Good is God? by Philip Yancey

From the Amazon product description: Journalist and spiritual seeker Philip Yancey has always struggled with the most basic questions of the Christian faith. The question he tackles in WHAT GOOD IS GOD? concerns the practical value of belief in God. His search for the answer to this question took him to some amazing settings around the world: Mumbai, India when the firing started during the terrorist attacks; at the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; on the Virginia Tech campus soon after the massacre; an AA convention; and even to a conference for women in prostitution. At each of the 10 places he visited, his preparation for the visit and exactly what he said to the people he met each provided evidence that faith really does work when what we believe is severely tested. WHAT GOOD IS GOD? tells the story of Philips journey--the background, the preparation, the presentations themselves. Here is a story of grace for armchair travelers, spiritual seekers, and those in desperate need of assurance that their faith really matters.

This was just okay for me. It probably was not a good choice for me in audio and would have been better in print. The book is a compilation of speeches that Yancey has given. Each speech is preceeded by an introduction to the location and situation of the speech; the introductions are filled with anecdotes. Then he reads the speech, the speeches are also also filled with anecdotes. So it was hard for me to keep track of where I was in the book because the feel of the introductions and the speeches were so similar that I would confuse them. They were interesting but they all seemd to run together as I listened. I think in print, it would be more apparent where you were and you could kind of mull over and let one section "settle" before you moved on to the next. My other problem was that it was narrated by the author. His voice was very soothing, really very soothing, so soothing it was to the point that it reminded me of an old Saturday Night live bit, it was just too much. So I was plugging away at it because it was a freebie I won and I always feel like I ought to finish those. i was getting more detached from it and less interested when I bought Can you Keep A Secret? and took a quick six hour break to listen to that. When I returned to What Good Is God? I was ready to listen again, more attentive, and really enjoyed the last few discs. That's what leads me to say it would be better n print when you could read and stop, read and stop, rather than audio where it just keeps coming at you whether you are ready or not.

Thank you to Mason Canyon at Thoughts in Progress for hosting the giveaway that sent this book to me.

Here is the author's website: http://www.philipyancey.com/home/about