Adam Shields

So Asimov is supposed to be the best science fiction author out there. I have never read anything by him other than this and the previous book in the series. They are solid, but not especially noteworthy. I guess I like my sci fi focused more on something else. I will have to read the third in the series to be sure.

I like the concept of this book, introduce a saint to modern Christians through story and not just biography. Saint Francis, was a transitional Christian and is very relevant to today's Christians, maybe especially to evangelicals.

The weakness is that it isn't great literature. At one point it talks about the purpose of great art to be the great art and not propaganda and occasionally this seems to dip to propaganda instead of focusing on the art.

The positive is that it does what I perceive as its purpose, it makes you reconsider your understanding of the church, your role as a Christian, Christ and especially Francis.

I would recommend it. I have been reading a lot of heavier works on the spiritual disciplines and this was a good contribution as well as balance.

http://bookwi.se/chasing-francis-by-ian-morgan-cron/

This is a book on prayer that is oriented toward teens. It tries to be cool and young, but isn't. The info is good. And I think it is a good book for people to read. But it isn't good at being cool.

I am about half way though this book. I have been reading in little chunks because I need to think about it as I am going. Scot is putting into word many things that I have thought about scripture and reading scripture. He is just explaining it much better and more thoroughly than I could.

—

After having read it I think that this is a book that almost all Christians should read this book. No matter what you think of his examples of how he works out reading scripture, the idea that you should think deeply about how you read scripture is very important.

This was originally was serialized in the Boy's Life (boy scout magazine) in the 1950s. It was intended as a young teen story. It is a bit dated, but isn't bad.

My wife and I read this over a year. And while there were many good devotionals about half of them had very little to do with the scripture that they were attached to. Several of the devotionals were actually saying the opposite of the scripture passage that they were attached to.

The was clearly a devotional that was pulled together primarily from previously written material and not written expressly for this bible. I wish it was better. This could have been a good devotional.

This is a good and helpful book. I think that we, as Christians, need to make Sabbath and healthy care of ourselves. This, taken inappropriately, could lead to too much self interest. But that is not the intent of the author. What kept me from five stars is that he spent a lot of time encouraging healthy behavior, but not enough describing what he did and alternatives. That is what I would like to see more of for it to be a great book for me.

Good spy thriller. It is set up for a new book at the end. It is in the vain of the best of the Bourne books (I only read the originals not the new ones). I listened to this as an audiobook off of Audible.com and the narration was very good.

This was good. It is a cyber punk book so you don't really know what is going on for a long while until the threads start pulling together. There is some disjointedness around the time progression but I just gave up trying to figure it out.

The two books of his just kind of ended. There wasn't a great resolution. I think he is doing it on purpose but I would be nice to have some resolution. It was a good ride though.

This is an unpublished draft of Twilight told from Edward's perspective. I like to read (experience things) from a perspective other than the original. The draft is only partially finished equivelent of Twilight. It stops just before Edward and Bella go on their first “date” to the clearing. I would recommend the book (especially if you have an ebook reader like I do).

Stephenie Meyer is giving this book away on her website as PDF file. I emailed it to Amazon to convert for me. It wasn't great formating on the Kindle but easily readable. I read it in a day.

This is a trilogy that does not have a real completion between books, so I can't really say too much about the book. It has been good so far.

I also went to University of Chicago (where the author was during the main of this book), so I am well aware of the neighborhoods and issues he is talking about. I have never really had any dealings with gangs, but I worked at a homeless shelter (often with lots of gang or former gang members), a drug rehab program and with an after school program in a different public housing complex. This is a really good book about the myriad of issues that face the poor in the US. Poverty, especially concentrated urban poverty, is not a simple issue. It can't be solved by better government or better public policy by itself. It can't be just a pull yourself up by your bootstraps. There are not a lot of answers in this book but there are a lot of description of the issues. It is the way that real stories should be told. This should be required reading for any one that wants to look deeper in to the issues of poverty in the US.

A longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/gang-leader-for-a-day-a-rouge-sociologist-takes-to-the-streets-by-sudhir-alladi-venkatesh/

There isn't a lot of new info in this book, but instead it is written by two guys that actually seem to live it out. That is what makes it worth the read. Reading prayer books always encourages me to pray more.

Good post cyber punk book. As with many cyber punk books there is an underlying them of spirituality. But this is clearly not a Christian view of spirituality. The book is good and the ideas are thought provoking, but if you are easily offended by books that attack the core tenants of Christianity then you want to avoid this book.

I have heard about it and virtually everyone understands the big brother references. It is worth reading to really understand the reference. It is oddly remincent of the movie the Matrix. (I know that 1984 was written long before the Matrix, but I saw the Matrix long before I read 1984.)

Clearly there is a undercurrent about the meaning of truth and postmoderism going on in the book. What is odd is how dated the book feels in regard to socialism. Capitalism is pretty much not mentioned, but the socialism of the book is gone and has been for a long time now. I would be interested to have someone write a capitalist focused 1984.

I just re-read this after a couple decades. I am sure I didn't get it quite the way it was intended when I was reading it in middle school, but I am not sure that there was all that much I was missing.

Short review: One of the best short books on what it means to be a Christian along with the basic theology of Christianity.

Full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/simply-christian-wright/

I thought this was a very important book. As with some other articles of his that I have read, he tends to over play his argument a bit, but in summary he thinks that we spend too much time thinking about heaven and not enough time living on earth. He posits (and I think there is a good bit of support for) the fact that there will be a new Heaven and Earth and that the resurrection will have us on the new Earth living and working for Christ without sin, as God originally intended. He suggests that the work we do now is actually practice for the future work and that we in a real and spiritual way will impact the new Earth by our work in this earth. This isn't a “works” issue, it is a following Christ's commandments because we love him issue. From what I have seen people often really like the theology at the beginning or the practical examples at the end, but often not both.

I liked it enough that have I bought three other copies to give to friends.

This is one of the best books I have read last year. It really shows that one person (with help) really can make a difference in the world.

I read this in the mid 90s at some point and really want to re-read it again.

Summary: Both an introduction to female heroes and an exploration of selfless values.

My four year old son has started discovering Marvel superheroes. A couple days ago we were using some of his left over birthday money to pick out a few new kid's oriented Marvel books. I picked out this one at the same time, both because I want my son to know that Superheroes are not all male and for my daughter to have female superheroes as role models. It is important that both my son and my daughter see women as potential superheroes.

I do not often post about the books I read with my kids, but I am both encouraged and a little bit angry about this book. The book itself is great. It has a 2 page introduction to 14 different ‘heroes'. Each introduction has enough to sort of introduce who the character is (some really need more introduction) and something about the value that the character holds. The values focus on selflessness, fighting for the weak and powerless, being innovative (for the greater good), working together, supporting others, etc.

All of these values are good and I want to encourage them. But the combination of stretching really far to get 14 heroes to profile (Pepper Potts, Peggy Carter and Mantis are not really super heroes) and the fact that I have never seen a book oriented toward boys that emphasizes similar values does make me a bit angry. There are a few other heroes that I think could have been chosen instead, but not that many. The under-representation of female and minority heroes that are not comic sidekicks does matter. As my daughter was asking who different people were, in almost every case, my first thoughts were about how they were related to a male in the story. She is Black Panther's sister, she is Iron Man's girl friend, she is Captain America's girl friend, etc. Even when there are cases that some of these have story lines of their own, they were developed as side characters not as independent heroes.

And it isn't that I am upset at a book like this is focused on good values that place community, responsibility, service toward others, empowering those around you, etc. at the fore, I am upset that both this is the first book I get for my daughter and that I haven't seen an equivalent for my son. I want my daughter to have these values. But I also want them for my son. And I want my son to have fun with superhero stories, but I want that for my daughter as well.

I know that we are in a time where more effort is being put into diversifying book shelves and giving women and minorities of all sorts more representation. But the fact that we are doing this now does matter. And it also matters that even with the fairly low level of representation that is coming up, there is still backlash.

originally posted on my blog at http://bookwi.se/what-makes-a-hero/

This was a pretty good book. Fairly academic, but worth reading. I read about half of it before I had to return it to the library.

I am going to mark some of the books I have read and enjoyed with my kids with undated reviews.

Beautiful oops is a good book to show that trying will result in mistakes. The mistakes are essential to learning how to do things. I do think that some of the point is lost when the accidents become something else beautiful. Some mistakes will be ugly and that is okay.

But the point is trying to find beauty in the mistake is not a bad one, it just isn't possible in every case.

I am going to read a number of these with my kids. They are 4 and 5. The four year old is not completely engaged in the first one, but the 5 year old paid attention throughout.

We started out of order because we couldn't find the first. We will do the first next.

Simple story, just over 60 pages. Think these are decent at showing that cultures exist, but still White noramtivity throughout.

Short review: I love Eugene Peterson. I think he is a voice to this generation that is unmatched in its sense of understanding of scripture of a story that is intended to speak to the average person. This is his memoir of how he became a pastor and what he learned about being a pastor. He was a pastor of one church that he started for 29 years before he retired to work full time on the Message Bible. I have read a lot of books about being a pastor, my whole family is basically pastors, but this is the best book on being a pastor. If we could recover pastor as a role in the way that Peterson writes about it, the church would be very different.

full review at my new blog site http://bookwi.se/the-pastor-a-memoir-by-eugene-peterson/

I have read it a second time on audiobook. The second review is http://bookwi.se/pastor-peterson-audiobook/

My third reading review http://bookwi.se/the-pastor-a-memoir-by-eugene-peterson-2/