Book Length Responses to Love Wins

John Starke has a helpful round-up of book-length responses to Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. He notes that the one by Francis Chan is probably the highly anticipated of the bunch. He also observes the following:

“These books are being published very quickly after the Bell’s book began mailing and hitting shelves. The obvious reason for this was how much the blogs dominated this discussion. Most of the notable reviews occurred within a few days of the book’s publication date. Subsequent reviews seemed dated and almost had to interact with others reviews as much as the book itself. So the speed of these publications says something of the speed of how quickly a discussion heightens and then passes.”

I think Starke is right about this. It does seem like the height of the discussion has already passed. This is just a part of the new reality that we live in. For better or for worse, reviews of significant books are not going to wait on a traditional publishing schedule—neither that of a publishing house nor that of a scholarly journal.

It may be that the moment has already come and gone. Nevertheless, these books look to be helpful contributions to the conversation. Read Starke’s discussion here.