Rating: 
Summary: Leaves you wanting more!
Review: After reading the first paragraph, I thought, "I wish I had written this book."Chesterton has the gift of thought and the gift of expression, a rare commodity in the age of chatter and blather. I found myself puffing to keep up with his logic! I think the power of the book is found in the subtitle: romance and faith. Americans see God through the squint of Puritanism, so we see Him as merely a syllogism or a cosmic party pooper. We forget that our God was once accused of being a glutton and wine-bibber. I could see many alleged Christians doing likewise if He were here today. Chesterton breaths the life back into Adam's clay, and for this I thank him!
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Summary: This book can be peeled like an onion
Review: The Romance Of Faith. Like any real romance, this book about faith can be peeled back in each reading to reveal a deeper and richer truth. With witty voice (I know it's not an audio book -- but you can almost hear him) Chesterton shows us that God doesn't fit into anyone's box -- and that true faith is the most exciting & perilous thing of all. To truly believe leads us to truly live. For years this has been my favorite book -- and one which shows the richness and jolly goodness of faith. One caveat -- must smoke a pipe while reading in order to fully appreciate book.
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Summary: With witty language, the excitement of real life is revealed
Review: Chesterton shows us that God doesn't fit into anyone's box -- and that true faith is the most exciting & perilous thing of all. To truly believe leads us to truly live. This book is as witty as it is insightful -- and deserves to be read multiple times. It has had a profound influence on my view of God and has made the Him seem larger. A fascinating read.
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Summary: G.K. Chesterton is the Man
Review: In the tradition of the heavywights like C.S Lewis. G.K.Chesterton makes the final case for the Truth.
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Summary: What a hoot!
Review: This book is a hilariously funny read of the rolling on the floor variety! It had me LOL uncontrollably in public when I first discovered it at a local bookstore. And I happen to be a heretic, of the early Christian variety with a little New Age thrown in, that Chesterton so apparently dislikes.
Paraphrasing some of my favorite lines (about the editor of the Clarion) "he's one early Christian that should have been eaten by lions" or "there's another word for Agnosticism, it's called Ignorance" or "Jesus tells you to love your neighbor, Annie Bessant says you are your neighbor" and then goes on to complain that the reason you love your neighbor is the same reason you love a woman, because she's different from you.
He also has lot of not so Christian things to say about George Bernard Shaw (apparently a compulsive liar, I never knew! hehehe) and Nietzche. Occasionally Chesterton makes a salient point, such as will being limiting. But most of it is the very "light sophism" that he complains his critics accuse him of. Students of logic would love this book because it's fun to pick apart the endless twisted reasoning. He gets away with it (and why I suspect this book has remained popular for so long) because of the unintentional humorous bon mots combined with a childish glee and naivety and, yes, charm. Chesterton doesn't like the "funny" adjective applied to him and complains he never says anything funny that he doesn't deeply believe in first. Poor guy. Nonetheless not a page goes by that doesn't have you chuckling.
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Summary: The most comprehensive vision of the world as it is.
Review: You cannot read this book in one session and say that you understand it. You need to rethink it all several times, enjoying it as you enjoy a quality picture: after numerous blinks.
GK was able to put inside a brief book a colossal work in all dimensions: deepest logic, total truth content and excellent wording, all backed up by everyday-life examples.
As with any masterpiece, you recognize it in the fatc that if you borrow or add one word in the entire book and you end up destroying it. Chesterton explains why the world is insane in his ABSOLUTE view (take it or reply it, if you can) by recalling old truths and new concepts; he re-news what makes sense and why that makes sense.
One attracting issue about this writer is that he avoids wrestling against anyone who doesn't share his view. He kills the wrong view, elegantly saving the opponent, with humorous prosaic poetry.
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Summary: Witty defense of the historic faith
Review: Chesterton always brings a new twist to the reader's perspective on life. By bringing such diverse topics as insanity, elfs, and the relevance of religion to the forefront, Chesterton interweaves the ancient truths of Christianity with a realistic view of the world. He does much to show that Christianity, by its alleged irrationalities, is the only rational explanation for all the quirks of life. This is Chesterton at his best, and must be read by anyone who is at all interested in the defense of classical Christianity.
Rating: 
Summary: It's All About Quitting
Review: In this book, GK Chesterton tells us that individualism and independent thought are very bad things, indeed. The ultimate value of our lives is apparently fulfilled by submitting to the whims and doctrines of Catholic authorities, wherever and whenever the opportunity arises. But what if the Catholic authority happens to be a priest who sexually abuses children? Is a child who resists the advances of a sexually abusive priest justified in his defiance? I can't see how Chesterton could say the defiance is warranted, since church authority is the highest possible good. In order to recognize that defiance of authority is sometimes justified, we must admit that the Church does NOT have all the answers, and independent analysis of moral problems is necessary. Church authority, in the past, has been used to discriminate against women, homosexuals, and other minorities. Today the Church backs away from these stances, but only because some people had the courage and independence of thought to challenge orthodoxy. The sad truth is that Catholic orthodoxy has never been a guarantor of worthy ethical values, no matter how much Chesterton tries to convince us otherwise.
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Summary: Absolutely brilliant
Review: Like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton is one of the greatest apologists of all time. "Orthodoxy" is a masterpiece of Christian literature, my favourite part being the chapter on paradoxes. Only the most ingrained skeptics won't find intelligent and useful insights in this book, but that's because they refuse to find anything insightful in any Christian's work. G.K. Chesterton has a great sense of humour, a wonderful style of prose, and is clearly a most amazing thinker and a uniquely brilliant Christian. I highly recommend it to all honest seekers & thinkers.
Rating: 
Summary: Wordy, but well worth a read
Review: "Orthodoxy" is described by Chesterton as "a slovenly autobiography", a description that's really not too far off the mark. Instead of depending upon rigorous logic, the contents of this work are rather "mental pictures" of a sort, which is what the author states at the outset. This sort of approach is easy to attack by any contrarian skeptic, but I can't criticize Chesterton, as he and I are really cut from the same cloth. Loath to state the obvious, we both prefer to *illustrate* the truth via induction. This is a perfectly valid method of presenting ideas, it's just that it's easy to misunderstand and misrepresent. It's for this reason that this book probably wouldn't change someone's mind-kind of a litmus test for the open-minded, which, it turns out, self-proclaimed 'skeptics' or 'freethinkers' are anything but. Chesterton makes two really good points throughout the book: 1) sanity lies in maintaining seemingly opposed extremes in a kind of dramatic tension. It's not balance, it's both at once. It's not a contradiction, it's a paradox. Christianity fits this like nothing else: singularity/plurality, freedom/servanthood, individuality/assimilation, etc., all are fused together in seeming contradiction of common sense. But don't we always find truth to be stranger than fiction? In contrast, monomania is a kind of insanity, like total belief in oneself, or the belief that one unfalsifiable human construct, like evolution, completely illuminates everything. 2) The importance of maintaining a kind of humble childlike wonder about the world, the universe, about existence itself. What if you saw a four-inch-long fully-functional helicopter hovering about? Wouldn't that be delightfully incredible? Not too long ago, after reading this book, it dawned on me, upon observing a dragonfly, that that was precisely what I was looking at. I'm not even talking about creationism, irreducible complexity, any of that. It is in fact, neither here nor there. Just the fact that such a marvelous thing should exist, by any means, is truly stupendous. It should inspire deeper thought about fundamental issues. The modern-day 'scientific' priesthood is perpetually at pains to systematically dismantle the ability to see things this way even as they proclaim it superficially. The funny thing about Chesterton's writing is that he gets so wrapped up in his ideas that rather strange-sounding, apparent non-sequiturs come up every so often. A sample Chestertonism: "As a fact, anthropophagy [cannibalism] is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human flesh out of affectation, than that primitive man ate it out of ignorance." Well, duh!? As in his Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton loves to toss off sweeping statements, and is a bit too shy of explicating his ideas with the utmost clarity sometimes; chalk it up to slovenliness, I guess.But for the most part his ideas are sound and his writing thought-provoking.
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