Book Review: The Quotable Chesterton

I recently received from Booksneeze.com, a complimentary issue of: The Quotable Chesterton, The Wit and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton in exchange for a review.

I am including a small excerpt of the book summary written on the back of the book:

G.K. Chesterton was a literary giant of his age. With an exceptional intellect, he wrote about history, politics, economics, philosophy, social and literary criticism, and theology. He published essays, novels, biographies, short stories and poetry, and the Christian classics Heretic, Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, which C.S. Lewis credits as instrumental in his conversion to Christianity.

My Review

What drew me to this book was the idea of it being chock-full of quotes by a brilliant man. He covers almost every area with a quote and the author of this book, Kevin Belmonte, has captured them and placed them in alphabetical order. I must say, however, that this book was not at all what I expected. I thought I would smile, laugh, maybe even just think...hey, I never thought of that before. Each quote I read confused me to no end. I consider myself to be very smart in the literary field, but he had me questioning my intellect and I do not like that feeling. The author did help the boredom of the book by at least placing the quotes in alphabetical order based on the topic. That way, you could at least try to skip around to something understandable or at least interesting. I found two, possibly three things that I understood in the entire book. You cannot just read through this book...it takes a lot of thought. I do not recommend this book unless you have a lot of time to sit and ponder what you read after you have read it.

Disclosure of material connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the booksneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonals in Advertising".