Jason Boyett’s books were recommended to me by a friend who knows that I find the snarky and sarcastic hysterical. That said, I wasn’t convinced that I would want to read what sounded like mini-reference books. When I saw the cover art I figured anything that resembles The Urban Dictionary (the greatest reference book of all time) must be worth a read. I was right.

If you survived high school on Cliff’s Notes, Boyett’s books are for you. His Pocket Guides to the Bible, Sainthood, and the Afterlife boil down reams of information into little volumes that may not actually fit in your pocket, but at least come close.

The Pocket Guide to Sainthood lists important saints, explains who’s patron of what and why, and even explains how saints become saints to begin with. As a former Catholic, I would of loved having this one to get me through all those years of Catechism – an appendix on the Pope would have been helpful too. The Pocket Guide to the Bible presents all the key people and events from the Bible in condensed form. It also offers an informative history of how the books of the Bible were canonized and a series of notes on translations of the Bible. The Pocket Guide to the Afterlife doesn’t stop with Christianity, it includes discussion of the afterlife beliefs of Islam, Mormonism, and other world religions.

Not only are the Pocket Guides informative, they’re entertaining. Boyett clearly doesn’t take himself to seriously, writing in a lighthearted style that makes these books easy to digest. Don’t be surprised if you are laughing while you learn.

So, it you’ve ever wondered when St. Boniface’s feast day is or if somebody has dropped the word “metempsychosis” and you wondered what it meant then the The Pocket Guides are for you.

Q&A With Jason Boyett

The “Pocket Guides” are accessible and informative. Who was your target audience for these books – church folks, non-believers, new believers? All of the above?

Yes — all of the above. My overall goal in writing the Pocket Guides is to educate and entertain all at once. For instance, I’ve found that believers — starting with me — are woefully ignorant of what’s in the Bible. We tend to be pretty familiar with the Psalms and the Gospels and a few of Paul’s letters, but ask any Christian to summarize the book of Amos and you’ll get a blank, horrified stare. For a people whose faith is built upon the Old and New Testaments, we don’t know them nearly as well as we should. But the same goes for non-believers, too. The Bible is undeniably the most influential book in Western culture, yet what we know about it, as individuals, is marked by these big, gaping educational holes. We just don’t know as much as we should. So I wanted to write a short book about the Bible that filled in some of those holes but in as painless and fun a way as possible.

Same goes with the subjects of sainthood and the afterlife, too.

What was your purpose in writing the “Pocket Guides”?

I guess I just answered that in the previous question. I think with these three subjects (along with the apocalypse, my previous Pocket Guide book), they are so huge and complex and unwieldy it can be intimidating to try to dig into them and become better educated about them. My hope with the Pocket Guide books is that I can break a big subject into enough small, enjoyable pieces that readers can get a decent overview without feeling like they’ve just endured a whole semester of History of Christianity 101.

You deal with spiritual subjects in a witty fashion in these books. What kind of feedback have you gotten about your approach?

It’s mixed. Either people absolutely love it or, um, they’re not entirely comfortable with humor being applied to the subject of religion. People take their faith very seriously — myself included — but I’m a firm believer that anything worth taking seriously is worth joking about. If we can’t do that, then what are we supposed to make fun of? Things that are meaningless to us? I think a lot of the time we can get far too pious and stiff-necked about our faith. Comedy is like a microscope, in which it allows us to look at something familiar, but from a different perspective. As Christians I think that’s highly valuable. Sometimes it’s helpful to look at ourselves and our beliefs from outside the bubble. This strengthens how we look at the important stuff and helps us see the strange stuff for what it is. You know, it really is pretty funny that Balaam gets into an argument with a talking donkey…and loses. Anyone who doesn’t see the humor in that is bewildering to me.

But mostly the feedback has been positive. People who are comfortable thinking about matters of faith within the context of humor have definitely let me know how much they’ve enjoyed the books, and how refreshing the approach is. I know of some churches who have bought Pocket Guide to the Bible in bulk and give it out to visitors or new members, as an introduction to the Bible. I love that.

The Pocket Guide to the Afterlife includes material on a variety of world religions. What inspired you to branch out beyond Christianity?

When it comes to what we think happens after death, the world’s history of religious ideas is so rich that I couldn’t bring myself to narrow it down to just Christianity. So many cultures had these incredibly imaginative, elaborate scenarios of the afterlife that parts of the book practically wrote themselves. The entertainment value is there already. For instance, the Viking paradise, Valhalla. It involves an eternity of woundless combat between warriors, after which they get drunk on mead, fall asleep, and then wake up the next morning for another round of battle. And one of the chambers in the Tenth Court of Diyu — the hell of Chinese mythology — is called the Chamber of Dismemberment by Sawing. Dismemberment by sawing! It’s intended for evil people who kidnap women and force them into prostitution. Who’s not fascinated by this stuff? It’s pefect for the Pocket Guide treatment.

These books contain a lot of information. What was it like doing all the research for the “Pocket Guides”? What did you learn?

That’s by far the hardest thing about writing these books. It’s not the actual writing, but the research that has to occur first. One of the surprises is that so many ancient cultures envisioned some sort of punishment-related afterlife for bad people. In other words, there are a lot of “hells” in world mythology. There’s Diyu (Chinese mythology), Tartarus (Greek mythology), Irkalla (Sumerian mythology), Niflheim (Norse mythology), Jahannam (Islam), Naraka (Hinduism), etc. But there’s not really a hell in the Jewish tradition. The ancient Hebrews believed that everyone who died — righteous or unrighteous — went to a netherworld called Sheol, commonly translated “the grave” in modern translations. That was pretty new to me, the idea that the Christian doctrine of hell hasn’t been around forever. Eventually, it developed out of Judaism a few centuries prior to Christ. But a realm of eternal punishment after death would have been a foreign concept to the patriarchs.

I also learned that St. Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of both airline pilots AND mentally handicapped people, which is sort of disconcerting.

If you could be on any TV reality show which would it be?

Definitely the Amazing Race, which is one of my favorite shows and one I’ve actually applied for in the past. I think I could do pretty well on it, from handling the chaos and stress of travel to performing well in some of the challenges. I’ve also been told before that I’d be good at Survivor, but I’m not sure that’s a compliment. But if I had the opportunity? I’d totally agree to either of those — whether they were on TV or not.

What word or phrase to you most over use?

Probably brilliant. If I like something and I’m describing it via the written word, my go-to word is brilliant. I just searched for “brilliant” on my blog and got, like, 35 hits over the past year. That’s ridiculous. I never say it verbally, though, which is weird. It feels too British to speak it. It sounds like something an older Harry Potter would say.

Who is the most overrated super hero?

Batman. No contest. The only reason Batman is a superhero is because he can afford super gadgets. Everyone knows superheroes should become superheroes because of special abilities they possess –  due to being from another planet or having been bitten by a radioactive spider — not because they could afford the latest belt technology. Batman may look cooler than other superheroes, but he’s far less super.

What is your greatest achievement?

Wow. What an uncomfortable question to answer. How do you answer this with any kind of humility? You can’t, so I’m going to embrace my ego and toss my inhibitions aside for a moment. I’m torn between two potentially great achievements. One: my wife and I have two kids who are smart, polite, thoughtful, and beloved by most adults (at least so far). They are completely awesome. I think that’s a pretty great parenting achievement, but it’s one I can’t claim by myself. So I guess a better answer is Two: the fact that I have been able to get several books published. In today’s publishing culture, it’s so hard to get your foot in the door. There are so many writers who have better ideas and better talent than I have, yet struggle so much to get their work into the hands of agents or publishers. It’s a tough, tough market. That I was able to break into the industry a few years ago and have some modest success at it — at least, enough success that I can continue to write books — is indeed an achievement. It’s the product of good luck and fortuitous timing more than anything else, but it’s an achievement all the same, I guess.

What is your life verse?

I wouldn’t describe it as a “life verse,” but my favorite verse in the Bible is Luke 15:20, which occurs midway through the parable of the Prodigal Son: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

You can check Jason out on his blog, on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter.

Want your own Pocket Guide? You can purchase them from Amazon here.

You can also leave a comment below and you will be entered to win one of the three books. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, October 21st.