Adam Shields

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

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GoldfingerSummary: An over the top villain tarnishes an otherwise decent Bond novel.

James Bond is one of those cultural items that everyone ‘needs’ to know.  We know that Bond gets the girl(s), that he likes his vodka martini’s shaken not stirred (usually with a lemon twist).  He always wins, he has cool gagets, cool cars, looks good in a tuxedo, always seems to be undercover, but still uses his regular name, etc.

Last year I read my first James Bond book, Dr No.  It was more like the movie than I expected but I still basically liked the book.  I am a fan of spy book, but more the John le Carré, Jason Borne, and Milo Weaver variety.

In the books, James Bond is racist, sexist and usually is against comic book style villains instead of other spies.  In the movie, Goldfinger gathers together all of the mob bosses in the US so that he can get the man power to knockover Fort Knox.  In the book it is similar but even more similar to a group of super villains from a kids cartoon.

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The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

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The Stainless Steel RatSummary: There is no one better the catch a crook than another crook.

When I was a kid I read a good bit.  A lot of it was fairly worthless pulp science fiction.  I have never been that snobbish about poorly written books.  I like Twilight, Harry Potter and a host of other books that many people complain about.  While I really do appreciate a well written phrase, there is more to writing in my mind than perfect writing.  A story needs to be told.  The reader needs to be engaged.

The Stainless Steel Rat was a series that I know I read in or around middle school.  But I had absolutely no memory of the series.  I noticed that the first book was available at my library on audiobook and I picked it up out of pure nostalgia.

The story is not all that original (or at least it does not feel original now).  In a future world, crime has almost entirely been stopped.  Those few criminals that exist are captured and  ‘re-educated’.

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Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views

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Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views (Spectrum Multiview Books)Summary: Five different perspectives on how we seek out meaning in scripture.

Over the past two years I have spent a fair amount of time coming to terms with how to read and understand scripture. Mostly this time has been confirming a couple of ideas. 1) The bible is not a magical answer books. 2) Christians (Evangelicals in particular) spend more time arguing about the bible than reading it (myself included.) 3) We think that everyone else ignores their cultural pre-suppositions, but that we have it right. 4) Understanding of scripture should be primarily a community, not individual activity.

Biblical Hermeneutics (how to to understand scripture) takes five authors with five different perspectives and shows how those different perspectives affect the way that we understand scripture.

The best part of the book is that they took a particular passage then used their perspective to explore how they would get meaning from the text. The book uses Matthew 2:13-15 (which is partially quoting Hosea 11:1) as their test case. This allows for both direct look at the meaning of Matt 2 and a look at how to use New Testament passages that refer to the Old Testament.

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A Kindle for Christmas?

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Amazon PaperwhiteIf you are thinking about giving a kindle for Christmas your options are going to be limited.  First, the Kindle Paperwhite (Bookwi.se Review) is backordered and current orders are not expected to ship until Dec 21st.  Cutting it very close for Christmas.  That is the expected shipping date for both the 3G and the wifi only models.

The basic $69 Kindle and the $139 Kindle with Keyboard are currently available and are both very good options.  But when arguably your best kindle is three generations old, the Kindle with Keyboard, it shows how slow the evolution of the Kindle has been.

If you are thinking about the Kindle Tablets things are a bit better.  The basic Kindle Fire ($159) and the Fire HD ($199) are read to ship right now.  Of course both are competing against the Nexus 7 and the iPad Mini.  Amazon wins with content against the Nexus 7 and with price against the iPad Mini.  But it is not a slam dunk decision.

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The Stephanies by Lexi and Kevin Hendricks

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The Stephanies: Color-Your-Own VersionSummary: A cute early reader books about two girls that do not like one another because both of them are named Stephanie.

One of the things I have most enjoyed about book blogging is getting to know authors (at least on line) over time.

Kevin Hendricks and I met online after I read his book Addition by Adoption. Over the past couple years I helped format two of his books for ebook release (Open Our Eyes and Outspoken: Conversations about Church Communication)

This summer Kevin and his 6 year old daughter wrote a book together.  Kevin used a Kickstarter Campaign to get the book published and yesterday the book officially launched.

The Stephanies is a early reader book about two girls that do not like one another because they both have the same name.  Over time they figure out how to be friends.  I picked up the kindle version, but I think I am also going to buy the Color Your Own version so I can read it with my nieces and let them color it as well.

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Nearing Home: Life, Faith and Finishing Well by Billy Graham

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Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

Takeaway: Old age is hard, but part of life, and part of God’s plan.

Billy Graham has a distinctive clear style of writing and his latest book (published at 93 years old) is still the same.  As with every one of his books, there is a clear presentation of the plan of salvation.  But this book is written for a particular audience, and at 38, I am not it.

Nearing Home is written primarily for those that are 50 or 60 years old and above.  Some of it is basic advice as for those that are aging (have a will, make plans for your health care, talk to your heirs about your wishes, etc.).  Much of the book is spiritual and relational advice.

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Bookwi.se Reviewed Books on Disagreement Among Christians

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Since Bookwi.se now has more than 600 book reviews, I felt it was time to start making the back catalogue a bit more useful.  I will continue to add to these topical indexes as trends arise and I have time. Links are the the longer book review.

Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World

So far in my reading about how to appropriately disagree among Christians, the best book I have read is Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World by Richard Mouw.  His basic point is that we should start with our own sinfulness in mind and not ‘the wrongness’ of the other.  This book is more about holding to a standard of decency when dealing with non-Christians.  But it is relevant to Christians as well.  One of the important thoughts in this book is that we need to be clear about not only what we are for, but the methods of how we communicate what we are for.

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