Adam Shields

Back on Murder by J Mark Bertrand (Roland March Mysteries #1)

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Back on Murder by J Mark BertrandSummary: A police detective that has been off his game finds his way back.

I don’t read a lot of mysteries or police procedurals.  But Back on Murder has been well reviewed by several people I know.  And even more important, it has been used as an example of the potential and failure of Christian Fiction.  Mark Bertrand is the author of a trilogy of police procedural Christian Fiction books.  But he has publicly walked away from his book publisher (Bethany House) because they do not know how to market his books.

Christian fiction is known for Historical and Amish Romance, not dirty cops and murder investigations.  So I do not completely blame Bethany House, I mostly blame Christian Fiction readers for not exploring different genres.

Back On Murder has been well reviewed by a variety of Christian and secular reviewers.  It is clearly a Christian novel, but it is not a ‘hit you over the head’ with the gospel novel.

Roland March is a police detective.  He is not a Christian, if anything he is mad at God.  A personal tragedy several years before (not revealed to near the end of the book), affected him and his wife and threw his career for a loop.  He would have been fired long ago except for the fact that he used to be such a good cop.

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Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle

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Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'EngleTakeaway: I am glad that we have moved past the point where children’s books have to be completely wholesome and teach morals.  Because they can be a bit boring.

Over the last few years I have been trying to read more old books.  Originally published in 1960, Meet the Austins gets counted as an old book because it was published before I was born.

I have read more of L’Engle’s books than just the Wrinkle in Time series as a child, but I had not read Meet the Austins.  Meet the Austins feels like a mid 20th century children’s book.

L’Engle’s Camilia and And Both Were Young were written before this book, but were much more young adult than children’s and they did not feel as dated.

There is just not much that happens in this book.  The Austins are a happy family.  There are four children, John, Vicky, Suzy and Rob.  Wally (the father) is a rural country doctor.  Victoria is the mother.

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Digital Parenting With Pressgram

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aPressgram was released yesterday for iphone (android coming later).  I have been using the alpha and beta test versions since they were released and I am very pleased with the final product. Below is the post that I wrote about Pressgram during the Kickstarter campaign in April.  

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Now that we have publicly announced that my wife and I are going to have a child in the fall, I have been thinking more about digital parenting.  I have thought about this more than a lot of first time fathers because I have also been a full time nanny for five years.  In that time I have seen an enormous change in the way we share our children’s lives.

When my oldest niece was first born I created a static Web site for her.  A few months later I changed to a Blogger blog.  Once my second niece was born I primarily turned the blogs over to their mother and I started sharing pictures and happenings through twitter, Facebook, and eventually Instagram.

My nieces (sisterly love)

But over the past 18 months my love of social media sites is waning.  Not because I don’t love the communities there, but because I am increasingly concerned with how Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are using my information (picture, stories, timeline) to make money and how I am losing control of my own data. And more importantly how I may be losing control of my nieces data.

My friend John Saddington announced a solution that I have been looking forward to since before we publicly announced our upcoming child.  Pressgr.am is a way to use the filters and photo tools of Instagram and other photo apps while keeping your photos on your own site or choosing when and where to share them.

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An eInk Case for Your Galaxy S4

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I am a fan of eInk technology.  It is low power, low eye-strain, good for lots of reading conditions.  So I am interested in the variety of ways that it is used. PocketBook has released a new eInk case for your Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. The Galaxy S4 is in a case, the connector works … Read more

Redshirts by John Scalzi

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Reposting the review of Redshirts because it won the 2013 Hugo Award on Sept 1.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three CodasSummary: The Redshirts realize they keep dying.

If you are a fan of science fiction, you probably get the joke about redshirts. In the original Star Trek whenever there was an away team that visited another planet or ship, there was usually one extra person (that was wearing a redshirt). The extra person was supposed to be just a general crew member, but it was almost always that person that got killed or hurt.

In this book, Scalzi takes the idea of the Star Trek meme and writes a world where the redshirts are aware of the problem and try to avoid the captain and upper officers as much as possible.

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Philosophy: A Student’s Guide by David Naugle

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Philosophy: A Student's Guide by David NaugleTakeaway: Content may be king, but organization is important to communicate the message.

I read because I love to read.  But one of the biggest reasons that I love to read is because I am curious.  I want to know more about the world.  I want to hear great stories that help me to experience what has been or might have been or could be.  The more you know the more you know you don’t know.

I picked up Philosophy: A Student’s Guide when it was on sale from Crossway a couple weeks ago.  While I have a pretty good background in theology and bible, my philosophy background is weak.  So this seemed a good place to bone up on a weakness.

Philosophy: A Student’s Guide is a short (130 pages) introduction to Christian Philosophy.  The basic question is ‘in light of canonical Trinitarian Theism, how do we approach…’.  There is a chapter on Metaphysics, Anthropology, Ethics, Epistemology and Aesthetics.  These chapters were fairly helpful at looking at a particular way to approach Philosophy as a Christian.

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