My Favorite Books

The Walking Drum
Ender's Game
Dune
Jhereg
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Curse of Chalion
The Name of the Wind
Chronicles of the Black Company
The Faded Sun Trilogy
The Tar-Aiym Krang

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Review: The Gospel of Thomas : A Spiritual Road to Wholeness, Peace, and Enlightenment

The Gospel of Thomas : A Spiritual Road to Wholeness, Peace, and Enlightenment The Gospel of Thomas : A Spiritual Road to Wholeness, Peace, and Enlightenment by Joseph Lumpkin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Performance: **
Story: ****

Decent information if you are interested in Gnostics and how the Gospel of Thomas intersects with that tradition. Narration was soooo slow it was almost painful. Setting the playback speed to 1.25 helped a lot.

There really isn't enough of the Gospel of Thomas to justify an 8+ hr audio by itself; so the bulk of the book is actually dedicated to filling in context and history of gnostic tradition that is very helpful in understanding and interpreting what is actually in Thomas. Once the foundation is covered, each saying in Thomas is contrasted with gnostic and orthodox traditions, including similar passages in the official christian canon ... which was surprisingly interesting and not as far out there as I was expecting.

#TheGospelOfThomas #FreeAudiobookCodes

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My Ratings Explained ...

  • [ ***** ] Amazing Read - Perfect story, exciting, engrossing, well developed complex characters, solid plot with few to no holes, descriptive environments and place settings, great mystery elements, realistic dialogue, believable reactions and behaviors; a favorite that I can re-read many times.
  • [ **** ] Great Read - Highly entertaining and enjoyable, exciting storyline, well developed characters and settings, a few discrepancies but nothing that can’t be overlooked. Some aspect of the story was new/refreshing to me and/or intriguing. Recommended for everyone.
  • [ *** ] Good Read - Solid story with a 'good' ending, or has some other redeeming feature. Limited character development and/or over reliance on tropes. Noticeable discrepancies in world building and/or dialog/behavior that were distracting. I connected enough with the characters/world to read the entire series. Most of the books I read for fun are here. Recommended for fans of the genre.
  • [ ** ] Okay Read - Suitable for a brief, afternoon escape … flat or shallow characters with little to no development. Over the top character dialog and/or behavior. Poor world building with significant issues and/or mistakes indicating poor research. Excessive use of trivial detail, info dumps and/or pontification. Any issues with the story/characters are offset by some other aspect that I enjoyed. Not very memorable. May only appeal to a niche group of readers. Recommended for some (YMMV).
  • [ * ] Bad Read - Awkward and/or confusing writing style. Poor world building and/or unbelievable (or unlikeable) characters. Victimization, gaslighting, blatant abuse, unnecessary violence, child endangerment, or any other highly objectionable behaviors by Main characters. I didn't connect with the story at all; significant aspects of this story irritated me enough that I struggled to finished it. Series was abandoned. Not recommended.