Tuesday, May 3, 2011

To Be Perfectly Honest: One Man's Year of Almost Living Truthfully Could Change Your Life. No Lie by Phil Callaway

To Be Perfectly Honest: One Man's Year of Almost Living Truthfully Could Change Your Life. No Lie.To Be Perfectly Honest: One Man's Year of Almost Living Truthfully Could Change Your Life. No Lie. by Phil Callaway

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Goodreads: Would I Lie to You? Not This Year.

Veteran author and speaker Phil Callaway is no stranger to daunting challenges. He has been laughed at—repeatedly—by large crowds of people from Halifax to Hong Kong. He fathered three children in three years, spent much of last year on airplanes built by the lowest bidder, and flipped an out-of-control ATV, which doesn’t mean he sold it for a profit. So who better than Phil Callaway to boldly accept a challenge that would make the average person run and hide?

Phil promised to tell the truth for an entire year, and he wasn’t joking. Twelve months later, his journal was crammed with successes, near-successes, and outright failures. During his year-long experiment with veracity, he made a disastrous financial investment, fielded hundreds of intrusive questions from friends and strangers, attended a thirty-year class reunion, and waded into possibly the most revealing—and hilarious—situations he has ever documented.

Find out what happens when a follower of Jesus does his level best to always tell the truth. There is no doubt you’ll be entertained. But don’t be surprised if you are left with a question: how might your life be changed if you sold out to the truth—with no exceptions?

My take: I found this book a lot of fun, although not exactly lie-free. The man is absolutely hilarious and I have no doubt he put forth a really good effort to try to live without lying. The book provides many stories of how he chose to twist the truth without lying or choosing the truth in an effort to be brutally honest which was painful. For him.

I enjoyed the honesty of his sins. He struggles with lust, coveting, and a number of others I am surprised he admitted to in print where his wife could see. Kudos to Ramona for her sense of humor. Although I expected the book to read more like "A Year of Living Biblically," it was more like an inconcise journal. Expect laughs for certain. Expect honesty in doses. I will read Phil Callaway again and again. I will watch him in a comedy show. He is clean, fresh, fun but still a liar.

Dude. What's up with the anti-Mormon sentiments?  Don't you know that Mormons are the most honest, wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, spiritually in tuned and sexy of all the religions? No lie. Except me. I'm exempt from that statement.

Except the sexy part.

Pants on fire.

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