This is my weekly post on free ebooks that are readable on the Kindle. Most of the books from last week’s post are still available for free. If you want to see all free books as they come out you should follow Books on the Knob on their RSS or Twitter Feed.
Non-Fiction
The Joy of Pregnancy: The Complete, Candid, and Reassuring Companion for Parents-to-Be by Tori Kropp Are you expecting… mystery, sensuality, wonder, and delight? If you are pregnant, you should be! Pregnancy isn’t all about nausea and medical tests; it’s also a time of excitement, anticipation, and above all, joy. You don t need to adopt a strict diet, adhere to a demanding exercise regimen, or spend your time worrying about planning the perfect birth. Rather, you can trust your instincts and your body to guide you through the amazing, magical process of pregnancy and childbirth. That’s the wise, expert counsel of Tori Kropp, perinatal nurse and founder of both a popular childbirth-education program and a website for new parents. In The Joy of Pregnancy, Tori tells you what you need to know how the baby is developing, how your body is changing, and how to prepare for the birth and baby without overwhelming you. She has organized the book month by month, so you can learn at your leisure as you progress through pregnancy. Also included are Q&As, fun facts, and sections just for Dad. With Tori’s help, both of you can enjoy and celebrate this very special season of your lives. (By the way this is not a hint to anyone, my wife and I are not pregnant.)
Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus by Michael B Slaughter 121 pages Clearly, something is not working. Despite the church’s place of prominence in American culture and the ubiquity of the church in every American town, misconceptions about the faith of Jesus Christ run rampant today. Christians are known more for exclusivity than for love, more for pot lucks than for solving world hunger.
It’s time for churches to get over the cruise-ship mentality of being a program-provider, and reconnect with the true message and mission of Jesus: to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed. The church is called to be a mission outpost, living out Christ’s ideals in today’s world.
Slaughter presents seven choices pastors must make as they consider the future of their congregations. Will you focus on building disciples or tallying decisions? Will you multiply your impact or expand your facilities? Will you step out in courage or comply with the status quo? Your answers to these and other questions determine how your church will focus its time, its energy, and its budget to work for real change in a hurting world.
The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig (Not from Amazon, choose the Kindle/Mobi format if you have a kindle). Is the Internet evolving into a controlled environment? Should it be completely free from intellectual property rights? Lessig (Stanford Law Sch.; Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace) argues that as the Internet faces the challenges of intellectual property laws, it should not become so controlled that it discourages innovation and creativity in the digital world. He explains the historical context. (This books is free under creative commons.)
Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig (Not from Amazon, choose the Kindle/Mobi format if you have a kindle). In Free Culture, Lessig widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they’re inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.
All creative works—books, movies, records, software, and so on—are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible—technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the First Congress in 1790 was 14 years, renewable once. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we’ve forgotten?
Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can’t do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What’s at stake is our freedom—freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.
Science Fiction
All the Star Wars books are really novella length.
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #1: Precipice by JOHN JACKSON MILLER Don’t miss STAR WARS: LOST TRIBE OF THE SITH: PRECIPICE a FREE original e-book short story, the first in a series that tell the untold story of the FATE OF THE JEDI’s forgotten Sith castaways, their battle to survive, and their quest to re-conquer the galaxy! PRECIPICE includes an exclusive excerpt from STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI: OMEN (Del Rey Hardcover, available June 23rd) and offers a unique look into the backstory of events that will begin to unfold in OMEN. SURVIVAL—NOT SURRENDER For the ruthless Sith Order, failure is not an option. It is an offense punishable by death—and a fate to which Commander Yaru Korsin will not succumb. But on a crucial run to deliver troops and precious crystals to a combat hotspot in the Sith’s war against the Republic, Korsin and the crew of the mining ship Omen are ambushed by a Jedi starfighter. And when the Sith craft crash-lands, torn and crippled, on a desolate alien planet, the hard-bitten captain finds himself at odds with desperate survivors on the brink of mutiny—and his own vengeful half brother, who’s bent on seizing command. No matter the cost, Korsin vows that it will not be his blood and bones left behind on this unknown world. For the way of the Sith leaves little room for compromise—and none for mercy.
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #2: Skyborn by JOHN JACKSON MILLER
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #3: Paragon by JOHN JACKSON MILLER
Other Fiction
The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske Prometheus the strongman winds up behind bars and it falls to ringmaster and master conjuror Cornelius Quaint, ably assisted by his Eskimo valet Butter, to investigate the killings and to clear his name. But Quaint, an irresistable mix of Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini, soon finds that these seemingly random killings are actually linked to dark secrets from his own past. Secrets that he may not be prepared to face. The Equivoque Principle is a fantastic adventure inspired by the penny dreadfuls and newspaper serials of the Victorian age and the first in a great new series. – 352 pages
