Rating: 
Summary: A GREAT READ.
Review: In reading Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, I found myself laughing out loud and being deeply convicted within the same sentence. His words and stories are well chosen, without sounding stuffy, and his message is one which I have long wished to live out. This is one of the first books I have read in a long time that lets a man's faith be lived out honestly, out of the box, and still true to the centrality of faith: a love relationship with Jesus. I felt as though many chapters were telling my story. Thankfully, this is not your typical "Christian" book. Nowhere does Miller try to force you one way or another, but seeks to encourage readers to live authentic lives. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Loved it, Loved it, Loved it.
Review: It says something about a book that makes you want to read it till' you can't stay awake any more at night and when it's the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning (to read more of it). "Blue Like Jazz," is such a book. I can't really compare it to any other book b/c I've never read anything quite like it. It's just a compilation of stories and thoughts told through the eyes of a truly honest and heartfelt man. The thing that really hit me while reading the book was that of encouragement. Thank God there is at least several more people out there (Donald and many of his friends which I feel like I know and would love to hang out with) who are like me in their pursuit to be in love with Jesus. These past few months have been a shaping time for me and granted, I have my own stories to tell and maybe someday I can, but for now, I've never felt God speaking to me so often as I did while reading this book (besides when I read the Bible I suppose). But this time, the voice was so much more personal, more intimate, more real. The hardest thing for me to think after reading this book was that not everybody gets it and not all Christians are there yet. Not to say that I am, but still, it's going to be tough to convey this message of Jesus' love to a world so enthralled in "economic love" (as Miller points out through a speaker he heard). My heart is stirring and I feel like I am just beginning to get this a little better now (Jesus' love). Only one word can describe my experience in reading this book: Intoxicating. (and I've never even been drunk before:) Thank you, Don and please thank all your friends personally from me. My name's Neville. Like you said too, hope we can meet someday.
Rating:
Summary: It really got to me.
Review: It's the first book I finished since finishing Catcher in the Rye over two years ago. It really got to me. I got it on a Wednesday night and I took Thursday off so I could just spend more time reading it. I don't know if it's a great book, I really don't. I just know that it really got to me. I had a copy sent to my friend Keiser the painter. He tends to be sadder than I am, maybe because he's read The Stranger and I haven't yet. Yesterday, I was talking to Keiser at The Blue Lion where we meet and drink coffee. He told me that it was getting to him too and that it was waking up something that has been near dead for a long time. He find's Don's thoughts beautiful. I agree, but painters know beauty better than I do. So, I'd take his word on that.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book that needed a better proofreader
Review: Loved this book, one of the few I have reread. He writes so honestly and lyrically about the struggles of being a Christian, particularly in this culture, where coolness is everything, and no matter how hard he tried, he had to realise that Christianity will never be cool. One thing I never thought about before was that Christ came to take you away from your self absorbtion, which is our biggest disease.
My only quibble is that someone (Mr. Miller or his copy editor) should have done a better job of catching the spelling mistakes: "Patty Hurst" should have been "Hearst" and "towing the line" is actually "toeing the line" to name but a few. Apart from that I would have given it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading
Review: Many within the PoMo movement are like the old Indian fable about the elephant in a house - they're all putting their hands into the house, feeling different parts and reaching different conclusions. This book is radically different in that you get to hear the "elephant's" point of view! If you have PoMo tendancies (forgive the labelling), this book will resonate deeply. For those on the line - you'll be faced with some interesting questions that hopefully will generate new discussions. For those who aren't into the whole "new theology" scene, this is still a fantastic book - well written and charming, deep but not pretentious.
Rating:
Summary: speaking our language
Review: Miller writes an excellent work connecting stories (often funny, entertaining, self-effacing) that do a great job bringing a message to the reader about christian spirituality. What I like about Miller's work is they are so far removed from the 'religious' verbage. It's just plain enjoyable to read. I highly recommend it to people who are sick of seeing people 'play church & christian' and desire to wrestle in this life with what it means to live like a Christian in a messy world. I read this book in two days and the person who I heard about it from read it in one day. You can't put this book down!
Rating:
Summary: Buy several copies of "Blue Like Jazz"
Review: My wife bought this book for me. I read it in a day and a half. Read it again. Read long portions to her. Emailed chapters to my best friends. Told everyone who would stand still long enough about this book. Bought five copies for Christmas gifts. And wrote a review on Amazon.com. I LOVE this book. Buy it! In fact, buy a couple . . . you'll want to give them away.
Rating:
Summary: Putting a Spin on Things
Review: Once in a great while you hear music so rapturous, so exhilirating, so subtle or so climactic, that you wish it could remain lingering forever on that one perfect note--except that you're dying to know what the next note will be. It's like falling in love.
"Blue Like Jazz" was similar to an entire album of great tunes. Each scene, each chapter, made me want to go back and reread. I wanted to savor every bit of grace and wisdom. But then, I wanted also to rush to the next scene. Miller is self-deprecating without sounding whiny. He's witty and intelligent without sounding smug or aloof. And, most importantly, he gets to the real heart of Christianity. He peels back the noise of life and temptation and religion so that we can hear the purest notes of Jesus' love.
I've grown up in church. I've seen it all--the good and bad, the hypocrisy and grace, the religion and the reality. Donald Miller touches on all these things, bringing encouragement for those of us who are sick of "churchiness," bringing hope and fresh air to those who've wanted to know Jesus without all the trappings of religion. Sure, there are a few moments that seem simplistic. Haven't we had enough confusion, though?
"Blue Like Jazz" is a tune I'd like to spin again through my reading repertoire.
Rating: 
Summary: Tepid like Muzak
Review: One of the reviews quoted on the back of the book compares Donald Miller to "Anne Lamott with testosterone" but as so much else about this book, that is hype that is without substance. Anne Lamott has ten times the testosterone of Donald Miller, who skirts reality for religious code language, and shies away from real encounters with God in exchange for the safe comfort of guilt and grace. This book has nothing in common with the real emotional experience that underpins blues and jazz, and very few honest renditions of the gritty reality of God in our lives.
The author compares reading the Koran to "cheating on God", and wishes that he could believe in Buddhism, even though he doesn't know what Buddhists believe. But he ends up congratulating himself for turning away from alternative ideas about God. This is not "grappling with the paradoxes of faith" - as one review claims - but running from them.
His style of earnest self-confession is gratingly adolescent, but it strikes met that the kind of religion the author describes is designed to keep people in a permanent adolescence.
Rating: 
Summary: Luke Warm Reading
Review: Peculiar, charming, theologically ridiculous, frank, derivative (Salinger), interesting, foppish, and a sliver of that thin movement of the genuinely insincere. "No, no, Alphonse, actually I am more authentic than you." The race to be hip AND faithful is on and this text makes the reading list. The book often lags. Happily, the most tiring pages turn themselves. It is disturbing that social status looms in the mind of the faithful at all and surely this is western church's new intellectual implosion, or was that I burp I heard? The issue for me remaining about the book, for the record, is how it passes itself off as genuine, yet reveals itself by terrifically controlled expression - there is evidence everywhere that Miller knows that the modern church chews through pop books by the fistful, and who the competition is, and what it is he is trying to sell. Then again, it may be that it is a real thing worth ten bucks and an eveing to read. Sometimes, many miles later, what are taken as danger signs turn out to have been directions after all.
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