{"title":"Greg Boyd","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"is-god-to-blame-book-greg-boyd-9781842911778","title":"Is God to Blame?","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49544635875601,"sku":"GOR002138888","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49994834444561,"sku":"GOR002431441","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51395660054801,"sku":"GOR003422741","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1842911775.jpg?v=1750866329"},{"product_id":"seven-essentials-for-intimacy-with-god-book-greg-boyd-9781500437947","title":"Seven Essentials for Intimacy With God","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49606897697041,"sku":"GOR013755942","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031128015121,"sku":"NIN9781500437947","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1500437948.jpg?v=1751054198"},{"product_id":"modern-love-and-other-tall-tales-book-greg-boyd-9781888996227","title":"MODERN LOVE AND OTHER TALL TALES","description":"A review of Modern Love and Other Tall Tales:                           With prose as clean as Hemingway’s and a Kafka-esque sense of the absurd, Greg Boyd delivers a memorable book in Modern Love and Other Tall Tales. But these tales are not quite so “tall” as the title might suggest; in fact, their distinction lies in the way they negotiate a fine line between veracity and the farcical.                        Each narrator seems to fancy himself “the rational one” while elaborating the most bizarre situation with little or no comment. Boyd exploits this irony by mingling a crushing sense of isolation with a host of eccentric, straight-faced characters whose predicaments become the reader’s source of stupefaction and endless mirth. In “Horny,” a man walks around town carrying a heavy wood cross on his back, convinced that suffering will erase his primal instincts; “listen” is a one-sided conversation in which the narrator formulates a sad and defensive logic that falls on dead ears or—as one might imagine—no ears at all; and “The Further Adventures of Tom, Huck, and Jim” transports Twain’s classic characters to Southern California and brings us hilariously up to date.                          But Modern Love isn’t just one laugh after another. Though Boyd makes light of unfortunate circumstances, there is an underlying feeling of loneliness and sadness throughout, as if his characters’ idiosyncrasies were born from an acute sense of helplessness or an inability to participate in or relate to typical activities. The characters themselves seem real but flimsy, as if they will at any moment be blown off the page by a Kafkan ill wind, as if they were all once, as in “Unglued,” “shy and sickly, largely ignored by the other children.”                          Boyd’s writing, like his characters, is straightforward and descriptive. There’s no need for verbal trickery here because the author’s imagination provides us with more than enough to digest. In Modern Love it’s quite possible to become so engrossed in a story that you forget you’re actually reading at all.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51055266791697,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055269216529,"sku":"NIN9781888996227","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52676011557137,"sku":"NLS9781888996227","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1888996226.jpg?v=1751124126"},{"product_id":"brotherton-s-travels-book-greg-boyd-9781587750540","title":"Brotherton's Travels","description":"\u003cp\u003eEqual parts travelogue, cultural study, and picaresque autobiography, \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eBrotherton's Travels\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e is a probing and insightful book that challenges conventional perceptions. Having lived and worked in the United States, France, Ecuador, and Spain, Greg Boyd brings a border-crossing sensibility to his memoirs. Raised and educated in upstate New York during the early 1960s, then in the free-wheeling culture of 70s Southern California, Boyd's upbringing resulted in a highly developed sense of irony. Whether telling the story of his mysterious Brotherton ancestors or describing his experiences in small press publishing, teaching, and the arts, Boyd pulls back the curtain to reveal the absurdity hiding in plain sight. Having left Paradise, California prior to the conflagration that wiped it off the map, he remembers a town that no longer exists. Having grown up near the site of a series of nuclear accidents at the Santa Susana Research Laboratory in the city of Los Angeles, he now lives in the Spanish town on which the U.S. Air Force once dropped a handful of nuclear warheads. Whether describing conversations with a wandering peddler of psychedelics, a body-piercing expert, or a victim of serial alien abductions, or describing what it's like to catch a wave as a surfer, teach classes in Taekwondo, or be an expat, Boyd's memoirs are full of the inventiveness and explosiveness critics have praised in his fiction. The book concludes with Planet\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHazmat, an alternative autobiographical narrative that examines the effects of environmental and cultural toxicity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52751579578641,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52751579775249,"sku":"NIN9781587750540","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781587750540.jpg?v=1763558153"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-greg-boyd.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}