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    Me of Little Faith
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    Me of Little Faith
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    Me of Little Faith
    Audiobook5 hours

    Me of Little Faith

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the hilariously mad-as-hell Daily Show regular and New York Times- bestselling author comes a ferociously funny exploration of religion and faith.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 3, 2008
    ISBN9781436228039
    Unavailable
    Me of Little Faith

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    Reviews for Me of Little Faith

    3.5/5

    157 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5

      Lewis Black is a comedian of the Stand-Up variety. He is also a non-practicing Jew. This is the second book of his I've read in the past two weeks.

      He's intelligent, astute, and has an eye for the obvious. I find it difficult to argue with his observations when they are based on the truth and not-so-common "common-sense".

      In this book he turns his attention to Religion....he's funny, laugh-out-loud funny. The only things I didn't like about his book were the last two chapters....

      *********QUOTES***********

      "But I have to admit, I love the concept of Jesus. Once you have Judaism with all of its rules, then it makes sense that a guy like Jesus-----who was himself a Jew---comes along and says: 'Okay God gave us the rules and we are supposed to follow, so here's what I am going to do. I am actually going to follow them to the letter of the law.' What then? You got the beginning of christianity is what you got. Practice what you preach if you will. (Without Judaism, there is no christianity--much like, on the earthly level of political stupidity, if there is no Bill Clinton, there is no George W. Bush. It takes a minor idiot to show us what a real idiot is. Then again, if everyone was Christlike, there would be no need for politicians at all.)

      "It's what makes this country rich. It sis also what undermines America. In a land that should take great joy in the differences in its people----and in the knowledge that those differences are what makes us strong----we generally chose to fear diversity while wallowing in our own stupidity. For a country where so many believe in some sort of God, we seem, as a whole, to have more faith in our ignorance. We seem to find a shared comfort in our fear of those who don't share our beliefs."


      "Besides, this is God we're talking about, not the Dallas Cowboys, and you just can't claim ownership of God. If you think you can, you're an idiot. He's not property--and if he is, then he has been illegally subdivided. Religious rule of thumb: You do not possess God. God owns your tired ass."
    • 4/5
      Parts of this book were hysterically funny, and much of it was very perceptive, skewering the more bizarre aspects of organized religion while maintaining a light tone. There are a few chapters (particularly the play at the end of the book) that could have been left out, but for the most part this was very enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      Not a great book, but certainly a quick and fun read if you are a fan of Black. I'm not actually sure what the message was. I'm not actually sure if that matters.
    • 4/5
      This is a 4.5 star book. IF you listen to it on audio. And IF you forgo the dated, early-career, unsophisticated, 80s-centric, totally mis-placed play at the end. We all know that Black is 30% brilliant wit, 69% delivery and 1% twitching (you can almost see it, in the audio version).. There are great essays on a lot of topics, including cultists, tel-Evangelists, mediation, astrologers, Mormons, Amish etc. (but not Islamists - discretion is the better part of valor). The first couple chapters on Catholics and Jews, are priceless.
    • 5/5
      Remarkably insightful and reasoned presentation of arguments for religious tolerance and open mindedness, couched in the authors own voice.
    • 3/5
      Fairly amusing, occasionally insightful, and a couple laugh-out-loud places. Can hardly ask more from a comedian's book than that.
    • 2/5
      What can you say about a joke but that, "it's all in the delivery"?

      I love Lewis Black in performance, but his words in print don't have the same kick as his on-stage persona. As the title of this book implies, its focus is on Black's thoughts on religion, and they don't really pack much punch. So Mr. Black doesn't have a high opinion of institutionalized religion and thinks "born-again Christians" are a bunch of yahoos. That's hardly cutting-edge. And targeting self-proclaimed gurus and TV evangelists is shooting fish in a barrel. His remarks on these subjects might be funny on stage, filtered through his perfected ranting style. But on the page? Meh.

      He also takes some time to write semi-seriously about his a couple of his experiences, including the death of his brother and his encounters with a psychic, but I doubt many of his fans would buy this book to hear Mr. Black speak seriously.

      The book ends with the script of a play Mr. Black wrote back during the Reagan administration (!). Not only does it feel like padding, but the play is truly awful.

      There is only funny bit: the characterization of hell as a modern airline terminal, complete with cancelled flights and delays on the tarmac. In it, I could hear the rant. More of this would have made a great book.
    • 4/5
      I finished this book on the day after George Carlin died, and there was an overwhelming sense of the torch being passed to the next comic with a relentlessly cynical take on religion. I don't think Lewis Black is the equal of Carlin--there never will be anyone like Carlin again--but it felt good knowing that the style of his comedy will live on after his death. (That there's a quote from George about how much he likes Lewis's style of comedy on the back of the jacket just makes the identification even stronger.)Me of Little Faith isn't the one-two, one-two series of comic jabs that I might have imagined based on Black's boiling-rage stand-up routines. It's harder to shout on the page, even with all-caps. We get a bit of the "Lewis Black--playwright" here, as well as the "shaggy dog" philosopher. Despite the title, Black isn't devoid of faith in some spiritual power (and that's where he and I would disagree), but he certainly pulls no punches when it comes to any organized form of religion or spirituality. Most of the books consists of essays, ranging from a few paragraphs (such as "Islam, All I'm Saying Is, I've Got Nothing to Say") to many pages ("In the Land of Seagulls and Gingham," about Mormonism) on the topic of belief systems in the world and how supremely strange/silly/reprehensible he finds them. He draws on personal experience much of the time, which is why he seems to get into the groove when discussing Judaism, his own background. However, the book really hits its high point when he goes after televangelists. Yes, easy targets, but perfectly suited for Black's treatment--and it's been a long time since a contemporary comedian targeted Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Orel Roberts. I'm glad to see the old staples of '80s humor can still get some gut laughs from me.Black sometimes dips into genuine sentiment, and when discussing his brother's death and a strange epiphany he has while playing the perfect game of golf with a friend he manages some real non-comedic magic. I can't take at face value his professed feeling that there might be some real psychics out there--this just doesn't sound like Lewis Black, and I hope his editor Hank Gallo inserted this bit--but when he talks about the beauty of that day on the golf course, well, I've been there too. It wasn't a golf course, but I know what you mean, Lewis.The book has one large fault, however, and that's the appended forty-page play that Black and Mark Linn-Baker wrote and performed in New York in the early '80s. Sorry to say, but The Laundry Hour didn't strike me as funny at all. Perhaps you had to see it live; on the page it falls flat.
    • 4/5
      "Me of Little Faith" was a sarcastic and satirical walk down author Lewis Black's religious life experiences. I found it funny and touching at different times throughout. Though at times he hit my funny bone, particularly with his commentary on televangelists, Born-again Christians and the far religious right, at other times he provided a window onto what it meant to grow-up Jewish in America. I very much enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who can appreciate satire directed at religion, even when it is making fun of their own.
    • 3/5
      This book did not turn out as I expected: I expected a critique of religion and defense of humanism. I got that, but I also got a hodge-podge of stories about Black's spiritual experiences (not all of them drug-induced). He includes a ludicrous story in which he is flabbergasted that an astrology book pinpoints people who share his ex-wife's birthday as particularly incompatible with him. He falsely declares that the odds of this are enormous (no; they're only 1 in 30, since he was already looking at a book about HER SIGN, which only contains 30 birthdays!). Anyway, if you enjoy Black's screaming style, the book is mostly consistent with that. I could have done without the final CD, which seems to pad the book by tacking on a reproduction of a show he did some years back.
    • 3/5
      Readers already familiar with Black as a loud-mouthed regular on The Daily Show will be delighted to find he rants just as well on the page as he does in person. Here, he homes in on religion, which he thinks is taken too seriously and therefore is open to ridicule. Black may not care a whit about propriety, but he's serious about waxing comedic about every religion-related angle he can dig up. No one is safe from his dark humor—the Catholic Church, Mormons, people who commit suicide in the name of faith, Jews, and of course Jesus and God are popular topics. Black's essays consistently deliver zingers, like his speculation in The Rapture about how, If Jesus returns to earth... he better have one hell of a website, since he'd have to compete with all the drug-addled young starlets—not to mention online porn. For those not easily offended, who can stomach the F-word every other paragraph or so, Black's irreverence is laugh-out-loud funny. The chapters are short, some extremely so, and perfect for a good laugh—before bedtime prayers, of course. Black’s humor is much more in evidence in this book than his "Is Nothing Sacred?". While his discourse of religion might not provoke much thought, his development and his beliefs are interesting to follow. Not the best showcase for his humor but an entertaining read.
    • 4/5
      Angry comedian Lewis Black shares his experiences with and opinions about religion. Despite the title, Lewis is sort of a believer, in that vague, non-denominational (although in this case Jewish-flavored) way that people usually mean when they say things like, "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious." So he's actually less critical of and cynical about religious faith in general than I'd expected. (In fact, if you ask me he's entirely too uncritical on certain subjects, particularly psychics and astrology.) Still, readers should definitely heed the warning he offers in the preface about not reading on if religious mockery isn't something you have a sense of humor about. "I think [religion] takes itself too seriously," he says, "and anything that takes itself too seriously is open to ridicule." He does get pretty acerbic towards various aspects of organized religion, and he skewers a few particular (and in my opinion deserving) targets pretty good, including a brilliantly scathing and utterly inspired tirade against Pat Robertson and his televangelist ilk. That one rather awe-inspiring chapter aside, the book as a whole is reasonably amusing -- I chuckled out loud several times -- but I admit that I found it mildly disappointing. It's not exactly full of insights, comedic or otherwise, and it turns out that Black's rants are generally much funnier on video than in print.
    • 3/5
      If you thought you were going to get the usual frothing Lewis Black, this book may disappoint. He gets in a few hits on the low-hanging fruit of the religious community, that is, Jerry Falwell, Mormons, and the like, but is surprisingly gentle with most other religious topics. In fact, as the book wears on, he actually starts to get, uh, preachy, on some pretty specious viewpoints. Yeah, Lewis, comedy IS just like religion...I guess?I didn't bother reading most of the fifty pages of his old play that he threw in to give the book a little more heft, either.
    • 2/5
      This was my subway commuting book for a couple of weeks - short chapters or collections of short stories work well for that. Black is at his best when skewering the idiocies of organized religion and televangelists. His rage at hypocrisy is palpable. He warns people in his preface that if they are religious and can't laugh about their religion they SHOULD NOT READ THE GD (expletive deleted) BOOK. EVER. And he's right. Profoundly religious people will find this book offensive.However, the title is Me of Little Faith not Me of No Faith, so militant atheists should also beware. Black explores his positive experiences with a psychic and his sincere belief that his beloved dead brother looks out for him and his career. Astrology comes in for a little more lightheartedness, but is treated more seriously than it deserves. Black engages is some bogus math to "prove" the fact that his wife being born on one of two days in July is "more than dumb luck." "What are the odds?" he asks. "2 in 31," I answer or about "1 in 15," if you prefer. Not bad odds.Altogether, I found this a mixed read. Several essays tickled my funny bone. Some, including the play "The Laundry Hour" (and I enjoy reading plays), I found lacking.
    • 3/5
      n "Me of Little Faith," comedian and social critic Lewis Black searches for humor in organized religion - and he finds plenty. Black is an equal opportunity offender and by the end of the book he has given the reader his take on every major religion in the world - although he treads lightly when it comes to Islam.In the tiny piece titled "Islam. All I'm saying is, I got nothing to say," he states "I'll get back to you later, when things have settled down." He does follow this short piece with one called "When Bobby Goes Boom," in which he skewers "religious suicide bombers" and another called "The Suicide Bomber's Prayer" that is written in the voice of a Muslim bomber (although Black jokingly substitutes "Holy One" for "Allah"), but Black's refusal to treat Islam in the same brash manner he treats every other religion weakens the impact of the book - and seems out of character for someone like Lewis Black who has an image of not fearing any backlash his comedy might create.Black has particular fun with the multi-millionaire televangelists out there that still manage to scam their way to riches. He revisits the heydays of Jim and Tammy Baker, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart and others, and finds much humor in the personal failings and absurdities of each of them. Swaggart is obviously Black's pick of the litter (he admits to having been fascinated by the man's television shows), and he devotes several pages to explaining the great success of the ministry (basically, "he's used-car salesman sexy").One of the funniest parts of the book is Black's take on athletes who use entire post-game interviews to thank Jesus for their success on the playing field. He wonders why, if God gets all the credit for carrying the successful athlete, the day's losers don't say something like, "Yeah, we were in the game...until Jesus made me fumble. He hates our team. Jesus hates us." You know, I've often wondered the same thing."Me of Little Faith" is really about Lewis Black, how he was raised as a non-practicing Jew, what religious experiences he has had over the years, and what he believes today. It is a comic-biography, if you will, and it is sharp and funny in places, but a bit uneven. Black made the mistake of ending the book with a 38-page play he co-wrote in 1981, a play that he admits was largely panned by the critics who bothered to see it. He did not understand then why it was not more of a success and he still doesn't seem to get it. Simply put, it is not funny - and its inclusion in "Me of Little Faith" is a mistake, especially so near the very end of the book where it seems to drag down all the really funny stuff that preceded it.Rated at: 2.5
    • 4/5
      I've loved what I've seen of Lewis Black's comedy. He does the Angry (well, no longer young) Man well, and his use of the f-word less offensive than usual because it fits so well into that persona. In this, his second book, he takes on religion. His trademark comedy is there, but it is actually surprising the religious experiences he has had. Through hallucinogenic drugs, for example, he had profound experiences of the interconnectedness of everything and everyone. He has also had amazing experiences with one particular psychic and after the death of his brother. But he has little use for organized religions, and his trademark humor points up much of the absurdity of them. I'm rather surprised he doesn't seem to know anything about paganism - I'm sure Wiccans and other pagans have educated him by now. Somebody also needs o tell him that there already exist comedy religions, such as Discordianism, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the Church of Elvis.Excellent book if you like Black's style of humor, though the play at the end was not as funny as Black would like to think.
    • 3/5
      I normally find Lewis Black insightful and funny. Either his style doesn't translate well to the page or this just isn't a very good book because I found very little of it insightful or funny.