Adam Shields

Offsite: 10 Books About Pope Francis

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Anyone who has read more than 2 posts at Bookwi.se knows that I am a big fan of digital publishing.  The only time I consistently reading paper books is when I fly.  But today’s new post at Englewood Review of Books is a good example that not everything about Digital Publishing is good.  Already there are 10 … Read more

The Human Division (Episodes 4-10) by John Scalzi

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A Voice in the Wilderness: The Human Division, Episode 4 | [John Scalzi]Summary: A 13 episode series of connected short stories set in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe.

I have long been in favor of authors and publishers experimenting to find new methods of writing and distributing books.  Now that I have experienced a real episodic serial I am not sure that I am a fan.

First of all it feels like it is more expensive.  I don’t think it actually is, the first episode was free, the 2nd to 5th episodes I bought at the standard Audible member discount price of $0.69.  Then episodes 6 to 13 I bought during the Spring Cleaning sale for $0.51 a piece.  There was a note on my purchase that said I will be charged individually for the episodes that have not yet been released.  So Audible is going to charge me $0.51 per week for the next four weeks.  Incurring individual processing fees instead of bundling the costs together (since I bought them all at once.)

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Kindle Paperwhite Software Update

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Amazon announced an update (5.3.4) to the Paperwhite software.  If you have a Paperwhite you can make sure it is connected to wifi and it will likely update itself eventually.  If you want to force it to update, you can manually download and update the Kindle. From what I can tell, no one has figured out … Read more

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

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For the past several years, Amazon has had a Breakthrough Novel Award contest.  This year, Amazon has included multiple categories and has changed the awards to a publishing contract directly with Amazon, since Amazon is now a publishing company as well as a retailer.  The winner will receive a $50,000 advance and four others will get a … Read more

Tales of the Dim Knight by Andrea and Adam Graham

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Summary: Good idea. The world biggest comic book fan becomes a superhero.

In general I read a lot of Christian non-fiction and very little Christian fiction. Part of that is choice, most of the fiction I read is spy, young adult, science fiction or fantasy. All of which are pretty rare on the Christian fiction market. Part my lack of reading Christian fiction is that there is so little that I have been really excited about in the past.

But I like to experiment. So when Tales of the Dim Knight was offered for free on kindle books I picked it up. When I noticed that there was an audiobook that was discounted to $1.99 on Audible because I had already ‘purchased’ the free kindle book, I bought it.

I listened to it all in three days. I really did want to find out what was going to happend and I liked it enough that I will probably read the second book in the series.

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Wool – Books 1-3 by Hugh Howey

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Summary:  Creative post-apocalyptic independent novel.

Whenever I hear about the death of publishing I tend to 1) dismiss the claim, 2) remind the person of the enormous number of books being published every year (too many, not too few) and 3) point out that what is being disrupted is not book writing or reading, but the late 20th century model of publishing.

Wool by Hugh Howey is a good example of this.  Wool started as a 58 page short story/novella released on Amazon just in kindle format in 2011.  Response from readers lead to the next four books (each getting a bit longer), until the Omnibus edition was released with all five stories.  In total the Omnibus edition is 550 pages (but the individual books together add up to over 700 pages, not sure the difference.)

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Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI

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Summary: First of a trilogy of books about Jesus written by Pope Benedict XVI written after he became Pope.

I have heard repeatedly and from various people how good the Pope’s trilogy on Jesus is.  Since he was stepping down, I figured I should try reading one of his books.  I did not finish it before he stepped down, but I did finish it before the next Pope had been chosen (barely).

This is clearly a book worth reading for people looking for theological content about Jesus.  Benedict is focused on teaching about Jesus as God and Savior.  While he acknowledges the importance of research into historical Jesus and the culture of the 1st Century and other methods of exploring Jesus, primarily, this is an exploration of Jesus as a theological teaching tool.  Primarily he is using the Gospels as his starting point.

Part of what is impressive to me is that it is clear that he has academic chops, but this is a very readable book.  A lot of academics have important things to say.  But we need others to interpret and popularize their content so that the average person can understand.

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