A book lacking a table of contents

· Tactical Typos


Below are the actual chapter titles by chapter number for the book Welcome to Manhood by Noah Herrin. (I'll edit this with page numbers as/if I get through it.)

  1. a warning: 11
  2. be a finisher: 14
  3. chase the right goals: 17
  4. don’t waste your life: 21
  5. friends
  6. own your spiritual growth
  7. your phone lies
  8. selfishness
  9. stop playing it safe
  10. stop following your heart
  11. lust
  12. servants > leaders
  13. dating
  14. relationship or religion?
  15. the bible
  16. comparison
  17. clarity or trust
  18. ask bigger
  19. a critical spirit
  20. financial stewardship
  21. tithing
  22. accountability
  23. the church
  24. the more-monster
  25. anxiety
  26. cycle of sin
  27. opinions
  28. finding a good wife
  29. singleness
  30. gratitude
  31. the holy spirit
  32. pride vs. humility
  33. forgiveness
  34. demons
  35. influence
  36. “little sin”
  37. radical obedience
  38. do hard things
  39. commit to community
  40. investing
  41. pace
  42. learn from everyone
  43. holiness
  44. college
  45. closed doors
  46. king chasing > dream chasing
  47. bounce back
  48. disagreeing well
  49. how to be great
  50. value
  51. grow there
  52. when God seems far away

I bought this book the day that I learned from my wife that we're gonna divorce. Feeling adrift and like I really, truly only have my faith to cling to - which I'd already started to cling to amidst the trials of our relationship - I thought it might be interesting or helpful to browse the book rack at the Hobby Lobby next to Five Below, my usual go-to for distractions from boredom or frustration. And that's where I found this book and some others (others which are just kind of through-and-through good and, ironically, don't need to be written about as a result of their goodness).

The book Welcome to Manhood is aimed at Christian men who are younger than I am at this point (those not much older than high school graduates), but it nonetheless sounded like a decent source of information about how I might live more purposefully in my faith (the cover literally says "Moving from Potential to Purpose").

The printed book, at least, lacks a table of contents, which I think is pretty frickin' weird. The lack of a ToC makes returning to wherever you left off really difficult and doesn't let you jump to a chapter that sounds like it might speak more to your current situation/needs. (Not to mention that if you're in the store and unsure of whether to buy it, it's one less important source of information as to whether you should buy it.)

I suspect that the lack of a ToC is somewhat by design for this book, as it provides a program of messages to think about and work on each week for an entire year (hence the 52 chapters). They might be trying to prevent people from skipping ahead and to encourage them to just de-stress and adhere to the simple program. But it still feels nonetheless lame to not include a ToC.

In the ePub version of the book, the generated table of contents isn't much better, just providing chapter numbers.

Posting this here for now since I don't want to bother with updating my wiki site right now.

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