A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

Usually when you get into the third of anything, things start to wane a little bit. And that's true with this book. Although you don't have to read the Chicken Soup books in any particular order, this is considered the third book.

Chicken Soup for the Soul books are filled with stories that are meant to inspire and bring a tear or a smile to your day, depending on the section you are in. There are stories about coping with death, overcoming obstacles and a myriad of other themes that follow the same line of thinking. Some, like "Appointment with Love" are about relationships made over long distances and to never lose sight that it's what's on the inside that counts and not the outside. Others, like "The Flower In Her Hair" teach you not to judge someone without knowing the whole story.

Since these are short stories you aren't in with characters/people for the long haul. But there is a relatively diverse group of people that these stories are written about. Children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, you get the picture. And I can't say that any of them really had a story that resonated with me. There were none that I related to and thought, wow, their life is like mine. Sure they were all nice people (you wouldn't make it into one of these books if you weren't), but there was just something lackluster about this group.

Or maybe it was just the stories themselves that were lackluster. I'm used to them being nicey-nice. That's part of the appeal of this book. With all the violence and everything else out there this is one of those books where you just read and breathe. But aside from duplicating some of the stories in other editions of Chicken Soup (or rather they probably duplicated this one) there were also problems with the stories themselves in that they just weren't as interesting as the ones in the first book. There were a lot of religion-heavy stories in this one too, and although this is a Christian publication, they usually don't force feed it as much as they do in this one.

Just an average collection of stories. If you're a die-hard fan of the Chicken Soup books you may enjoy it, but at this stage in the game, it may just be better to branch out into the theme books of Chicken Soup.

A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1996
331 pages