Prompt – ‘A book recommended by your favourite blog, vlog, podcast or online book club’. This book was recommended by ‘The Bible Binge’.
Medium – Book
About the book – Knox McCoy is a professional podcaster living in the South of the United States, who presents two of my favourite podcasts – the ‘Bible Binge’, where Bible stories are presented as a book, film or TV show, and the ‘Popcast with Knox and Jamie’, where they discuss pop culture. This book is the story of how he reconciled his Christian beliefs with pop culture and how pop culture helped to shape his life and his faith. The book uses humour, popular culture references and some of Knox’s own stories to discuss how his own Christianity and life has developed through the years.
My rating – 6/10. I really, really wanted this to become one of my new favourite books. I love both of Knox’s podcasts, and would whole-heartedly recommend them to Christians and non-Christians alike. They are non-preachy, non-conservative and funny, which I love. Knox’s book isn’t necessarily what I expected from his podcast. There are bits that are great, especially towards the end of the book. I enjoyed his musings on the state of Evangelical Christianity in America in the wake of Donald Trump, especially his notes that whilst such Christians might identify as marginalised and persecuted, actually their beliefs are over-represented, with women, people of colour and immigrants suffering far more. I also liked the part of the book where Knox writes about the questions he still has on Christianity – and about how these doubts and questions are OK, because God knows all of the answers.
However, I did find the book a little hard-going in some places. Firstly (which isn’t really the author’s fault), this book is definitely written with an American audience in mind. Whilst the bits between the pop culture references are great, the actual references are based around American soaps, TV shows and sports, none of which I am familiar with. I also found that the references sometimes seemed ‘plonked’ into the book without any real context. I think I would have preferred the book if it were more of a ‘funny autobiography’, rather than trying to include quite so many pop culture references.
Would I read it again? Yes, actually. I think because I do feel that I didn’t do it full justice. I’m a bit under the weather, so potentially I would have got on with it better if feeling a bit more myself. I love the podcasts so much that I would like to come back to the book again and re-read, to see if my judgement changes!
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