Donald Miller opens his new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, with a little note about why we wouldn’t find a story about a man who dreams about - and eventually gets - a Volvo, all that interesting. Why not? It doesn’t speak to the deepest longings of human beings, that’s why. And yet, Miller wonders, why is that we don’t apply that same understanding to the stories we write into our lives? Why do we pursue material goods, or status, or whatever, and think that’s going to be any more entertaining – or sustaining – than a bad movie about a guy longing for a Volvo? This is the basic topic of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, addressed by Miller in his unique, little-vignettes-strung-together-into-profundity kind of way.

I won’t pull any punches: I really like this book. Sometimes, if a book is pretty good, I’ll get around to saying so somewhere in the conclusion. If a book is topically timely, but not all that entertaining, I’ll probably just say so, without saying I don’t really like it all that much. And then there’s a book like this one. Here you just want to come out and say it. “Buy this book. You will like it.” Personally (and I know this is saying a lot) I preferred this book even to Miller’s most famous, blockbuster of a novel, Blue Like Jazz.

Speaking of which, this book really gets cooking around the time in Miller’s life when a couple of guys contact him about the prospect of turning Blue Like Jazz into a big screen feature. What Miller is surprised to learn is that what works in a book, doesn’t necessarily translate too well on screen. So while these guys love the book, they also recognize – and help Miller to recognize – that some “tweaks” need to be made. After all, as they point out to Miller, characters in movies don’t have narrators describing their feelings (not usually anyway). No, in movies, characters need to broadcast their emotions by what they do.

But of course, as one can imagine, this was a bit of a strange process for Miller. After all, this was his life they were trying to – shall we say – spice up? And this got him on the track of considering life stories – and what makes them exciting, and compelling, or not? And Miller came to the conclusion that his life wasn’t nearly interesting enough. And he decided, through the course of this process, to start living into a better story.

In many ways this book is a bit of a coming-of-age story. It feels like Miller grows up in this book. He moves beyond the incessant navel-gazing (as entertaining as that was in previous books) and gets on to thinking about the kind of story God is trying to write into Creation. And Miller decides to get in on that narrative, by finding ways to live into that reality.

Now, many of us who’ve been on a similar journey have come to that same realization at some point; at least, I hope we have! For many of us it was in getting married and having children that we began to see the bigger picture, coming to the conclusion: Hallelujah, we are not the center of the universe! Since Miller is neither married nor a parent, it took a glance back at his own story through the eyes of these filmmakers to get the point. But get it he does. And that’s the crux of the book; watching Don catch on to this larger, more profound narrative of redemptive living.

Of course, while many of us have been through a similar process, few of us can write about it like Miller does. Miller’s writing is strikingly to the point, strikingly efficient, and strikingly good. Midway through the book (which I read cover to cover in a day and a half!), I started thinking about what makes Miller such a good writer. The following thoughts emerged:

1.) Miller speaks in an uncensored manner about his own insecurities.
2.) Miller is honest about his own dishonesty with himself and others.
3.) Miller uses only as many words as are necessary to convey the emotive power of a scene. He is not wordy. He loves story - rather than words. That can be rare among writers - even good ones; especially in non-fiction.
4.) Miller is able to connect the dots in laying out a series of scenes that provide to the reader a sense of flow and purpose; even if the scenes, individually, seem almost hilarious because they are so random. In that sense, his writing is like a good wine, beer, or cup of coffee; good at first, and even better moments later.
5.) Also, as someone almost exactly Don's age, I'd say he speaks on behalf of my generation. His questions are our questions. His context is our context. His journey, for many of us, mirrors our own.

I think that’s a big reason why I like this book so much. It’s almost like a mirror into my own life, my own process. I feel like I’ve been growing up with Don – along with all my other mid-to-late-thirty-something compadres. And I guess the point is this: we’re getting somewhere. Life is making more, not less, sense. And not only does it make more sense, but the story is actually growing in depth and richness. And for all the talk one used to hear about how cynical, lackadaisical, and directionless the Gen-Xers apparently were, that’s saying something. And, in my book, there’s no better person to say something like that – and say it well – than Mr. Miller of the Rose City. So go buy the book. Read about Don’s reinvented journey. Think about your own. It’ll be worth it, trust me. Way more worthy than dreaming about Volvos… or, in may case, Volkswagens.