Peculiar Pages

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Read it today! It’s another good one!

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Dallas Robbins reviewed The Fob Bible in the fall issue of Dialogue last year. Which issue of Dialogue has been hanging around the office waiting for someone not only to appreciate the article, but to actually review the review here. As you can see, we have been a little slow on that point. What with it being fall of this year, now.

Anyway, the review bears certain similarities to another review he wrote for AML though much more in depth and including additional quotations from additional pieces.

The article is “Re-Creating the Bible” (206-211) and, after reminding the reader of the Bible’s central position in Western Literature, begins by admiring The Fob Bible‘s opening pages, including the family tree and title page and the book’s general design. (When a reviewer can even admire the title page, surely we have done something right.)

The book, Robbins claims, has “too many stories to cover in this review, and each one could be discussed in depth” (209). Naturally, that was impossible in the space allotted, but he did find room to compare “How to Get Over It” to The New Yorker‘s “Shouts & Murmers,” thus near-fulfilling a teenage dream for its author. He then moves on to discuss other humorous pieces (“Ezra’s Inbox” by Eric W Jepson and “The Love Song of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar” by Danny Nelson”), before moving into an extended quotation from “Blood-Red Fruit,” co-written by those two.

Which “story is just one of the many beautiful parts of this collection” which “present challenging experiments that remind the reader of what makes the Bible unique. While much religious fiction based on biblical stories tries to water down the inherent strangeness of the Old Testament for the sake of a commercial audience, The Fob Bible foregrounds the strangeness. By juxtaposing the strangeness with various literary forms and contemporary approaches, it creates  type of meta-scripture, in which literary truth is exalted over doctrinal correctness” (210-1).

Needless to say, we are honored to have The Fob Bible lauded as having literary merit in any way comparable to that of the single most important literary work in Western history (however! although we agree with his hope that reading our book will send readers back the the Bible Bible, we hope that it will also lead to many copies being purchased for friends and family this coming Christmas).

While Fire in the Pasture and Monsters & Mormons are both about to be released, don’t miss this reminder to remember The Fob Bible, the book without which there would be no Peculiar Pages.

And — also worth remembering! — Plain and Precious Parts of the Fob Bible is still available for free download.

Read Plain and Precious Parts of the Fob Bible online or download an e-book file below.

EPUB (free!)
HTML(free!)
IMP(free!)
LIT (free!)
LRF (free!)
PDF (free!)
PRC (free!)
KINDLE (99¢) (blame Amazon)

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Long has it been since I reminded the world they can read selected portions of The Fob Bible free either here or as an e-book file (EPUB, HTML, IMP, LIT, LRF, PDF, PRC).

Amazon will also sell you  a copy for your Kindle if you have 99¢.

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In the new issue of Dialogue, Dallas Robbins has reviewed The Fob Bible in an article titled “Re-Creating the Bible”; we have ordered a copy and will report as soon as we read the article. Robbins previously wrote a shorter review of TFB for AMV (link) of which we are quite fond.

In this same issue of Dialogue, Fob Bible poet Ryan McIlvain has a piece titled “The Canyon That is Not a Canyon” which we suspect is an essay or possibly a short story. Guess we’ll find out when it arrives in the mail.

In the meantime, why wait for us to tell you what to think? Pick up a copy today!

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The Association of Mormon Letters announced the winners of the Irreantum Fiction Contest and the Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest. Among the honorees are James Goldberg whose work appears in Out of the Mount and Eric W Jepson, coeditor of The Fob Bible and Monsters & Mormons. Goldberg won third place in the fiction contest and second in the essay; Jepson received an honorable mention for fiction. Congratulations, gentlemen!

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Just a reminder, eighteen works from The Fob Bible are available here at Peculiar Pages.

Also, in addition to the hardback and paperback version, we are working to bring forth electronic copies. Because of the beauty of the book, this is somewhat complex, but for starters, we have a pdf. You can find all three versions available for purchase here.

Finally, since we have not listed the available reviews of The Fob Bible for some time, here’s the list to date. Reviews and commendations we have not previously posted are followed by an asterisk:

A Motley Vision (part one)

A Motley Vision (part two)

C. L. Hanson

Dallas Robbins for AML*

Feminist Mormon Housewives*

Galen Dara*

Finally, two additional excerpts from The Fob Bible have appeared online which are not part of Plain and Precious Parts: “The Changing of the God” by B.G. Christensen and “Sustain-Abel” by Danny Nelson.

Enjoy!

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Purchased directly though us at B10 you’re only out $15.99. So this is the budget-conscious option for paperlovers. (Ebook options coming soon, and don’t forget the free Plain and Precious downloads to your right.)

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The Fob Bible has started pulling up reviews and they are laudatory. The first three:

1. Re: The Fob Family Bible (Part I) By Tyler Chadwick on A Motley Vision
2. Re: The Fob Family Bible, Part II By Tyler Chadwick on A Motley Vision
3. A Great Riff on “The Good (??!) Book”: The FOB Bible by C.L. Hanson on Letters from a Broad

Stories from The Fob Bible have often been the source of online discussion. Following Chadwick’s reviews, Motley Vision had a lengthy discussion on B.G. Christensen’s “Abraham’s Purgatory.” Main Street Plaza‘s discussion on Christensen’s “Changing of the God” was DOA, but it’s not to late to start it yourself!

Speaking of things it is not too late for, have you considered purchasing a Fob Bible? All the cool kids are doing it.

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Tyler Chadwick of A Motley Vision has published part one of his review here.

And feel free to purchase the book. The link to our parent site is working marvelously, so you can happily buy!buy!buy! and enjoy!enjoy!enjoy!.

And of course Plain and Precious Parts is still available for download there in the sidebar.

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The Fob Bible is now available for prepurchase. Foolish virgins will not order till next month, but by then, well, you know the story.