"Why Are You Atheists So Angry" is a very well-argued book, but not a particularly well-written one. This is frustrating, because it diminishes the impact of Greta Christina's arguments.

Greta is a talented blogger, but too much of the "blogger" style comes through in the book. The tone jumps quickly from dispassionate logic to angry indignation, from professional to conversational. Weird spurts of sarcasm and humor pepper otherwise intellectual paragraphs. Greta also constantly goes on tangents and rants, devoting completely disproportionate amounts of text to certain things deserving of less.

The most irritating thing about the writing is that it's overdramatized and repetitive. Long strings of sentences which repeat every word except one, sentences in paragraphs all alone for impact. This kind of thing doesn't make me think of Richard Dawkins's intellectual tomes, it makes me think of a cranky teenager's myspace page.

Like I said, this is a shame because the actual substance of what Greta has to say is largely excellent. Many, many times during the book I found myself stopping and putting it down just to think through what she said. The book contains lots of new arguments and lots of new angles for existing arguments, it's very thought-provoking and for that reason alone I recommend it. I particularly liked her argument that the "religion as comfort" concept is inherently flaws, as it makes people complacent with social injustice.

Unfortunately, I can only recommend it to nonbelievers. The book is structured so that it would be extremely valuable for believers to read it; half of the chapters start with straw-men quotes from believers to which Greta then responds. I'd love to give my in-laws this book to read sometime for this reason. Sadly, the book contains enough off-topic ranting that it makes me hesitant to do so. Frequenly Greta pulls her very progressive politics into the mix, even when it has nothing to do with religion. As a result, giving the book to a conservative christian would be an assault not only on their religious identity, but their political one, which makes a reader more likely to reject its content.

Overall, the book is thought-provoking and insightful, but suffers from feeling overly padded and casual. It's worth a read for nonbelievers, because it adds lots of tools to ones argumentation toolbox, but aside from that I can't help but hope someone takes the best of this book and puts it into another.