Goff is an amazing guy. ( )

I enjoyed this book and reading about the authors adventures. Love Does is about being love and not being complacent in life. ( )

Based on his collection of short personal essays, Bob Goff is an interesting person with a penchant for mischief and whimsy. I think I'd like to meet him.

While not a brilliant read, the 31 stories the writer uses to illustrate what he's learned about God did make me smile and occasionally I found myself underlining a phrase or two. Closer to a 2.5 stars because I realize not everyone can be Anne Lamott. Writing about faith is a tricky thing; it's difficult to avoid the pitfalls of sounding glib on one hand and over-earnest on the other. ( )

A book about putting action in place of words, Love Does seeks to change our minds about how we live within the world around us. Written in an almost autobiographical nature, Bob Goff shares many stories from his life, showing how living with whimsy and an insatiable desire to love others can bring change in one's life and strengthen one's relationship with God.

However, the book falls flat on delivering on its title. The person of Bob the author describes in his stories comes off as reckless, naive, and at times a brute. Aside from the literally incredible, nearly absurd stories, the theology presented in Love Does is flimsy and amateurish.

The first half is a more palatable version of the prosperity gospel, implying heavily that following God will improve your life in the same way Mr. Goff's has been. The second half is a treatise on why being a "religious person" makes you a "fakey" Christian, why sin isn't as bad as we might think, and several chapters devoted to propping up the anti-intellectual mentality that anything more than "simple" faith is inherently useless and suspect.

In all, Love Does offers more theological sound statements in its title than anywhere in its pages.

See a full critique here: http://kami.falseblue.com/2014/07/01/love-does/ ( )

3.5 stars. This book is hard for me to review. I love many of the ideas in the book - be secretly incredible, spend more time loving like Jesus did, "hang" your real self and not the fake one out for people to see. The book is more of a collection of essays, and they each are thought-provoking. The entire time I was reading I could see how easy it would be to take the book the wrong way. It would be easy to think that this guy is just a rich jerk who can afford to do amazing, "whimsical" things. It would be easy to say I'm NOT the kind of person who can or wants to run off to some destination with no planning and do something crazy. In fact, I was starting to get stressed out as I was reading because I'm NOT that kind of person. In the end, though, I don't really think Bob Goff is trying to prove anything about how cool and awesome he is with this book. I think he's just trying to inspire people to get out of their ruts and really live loving and caring for others as Jesus did. ( )