Adam Shields

Summary: The conclusion of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series.

This is a good example of a books that was given away free on kindle, I liked the books and I have read all of the rest of the series (and paid for them).  I have also encouraged others to buy and read them.  Free, done right, can be a good business model for authors.

This is a young adult series that was very uneven, but I really wanted to love.  It has two twin teens that find themselves in the midst of a magical battle, realize they have latent magical powers themselves and realize that the world they thought of as boring and dull was actually full of history and magic.

Read more

Note: Fifty Shades Darker is a sexually explicit book. Please be aware of that before purchase

Summary: The conclusion of the trilogy, with a little suspense thrown in for good measure.

I finished this almost a week ago now.  But I did not have a chance to write the review until now.  Now that I have some distance I am going to try to write up a response to the whole trilogy as well as the final book.

It is not possible to separate the book from the sex that is contained inside the book.  Even last night, the book came up, and the only topic was the sex contained inside the book, and whether it was just porn for women.

I briefly talked about why I thought it was not porn in the review for Fifty Shades of Grey, but I will mention one other point.  As a Christian, I believe that the only appropriate place for sex is within marriage.  Anything that detracts from sex within marriage is detrimental, and in many cases, should be considered a sin.

Read more

Takeaway: History is important.

I do not need to be convinced that history is important.  It is a lesson that I have understood well and in spite of the fact that personally I don’t always learn from my history, I do want to pay attention to our national history.

It is amazing to me how often that not only average people get history wrong, and therefore base ideas or actions on incorrect data, but how often influential and powerful people get many of the same issues wrong.  People that if they don’t know better themselves, should have someone around them that can correct their ignorance.

Read more

Note: Fifty Shades Darker is a sexually explicit book. Please be aware of that before purchase

Summary: Christian Grey and Ana Steele separated at the end of the last book.  They are in love, but can they be together?

I know am stepping out on a limb talking about the Fifty Shades series as a Christian.  I know there are many that will (and should) stay away from the books.  Here is a good blog post about why this blogger will not read them (I don’t entirely agree, but she raises some good points.)

(Note some plot spoilers if you have not read the first book.)  At the end of the first book, Ana decided that she could not deal with Christian’s anger and emotional hostility that he exhibited through BDSM and she left him.  I am sure it is not surprising that fairly quickly into the second book they reunite.

Read more

Note: Fifty Shades of Grey is a sexually explicit book.  Please be aware of that before purchase

Takeaway: In spite of the explicit sex, this relatively traditional romance novel is surprisingly insightful into human behavior.

Fifty Shades of Grey (and the following two books) are a publishing wonder. Originally published by a small press last year, it was a word of mouth and mostly illegal digital copies that lead to the books being re-released by a larger publisher in April.  In the last six weeks, the books have sold over 10 million copies in the US.  That puts with other books like Catch-22, Lovely Bones, and Wrinkle in Time.

The difference is that Fifty Shades of Grey is very sexually explicit and includes graphic descriptions of bondage and S&M.  There is a line of thought that suggests that romance novels are the female version of porn.  I do not agree with that line of thought but the popularity of Fifty Shades will likely rekindle that discussion, especially among Christians.

Read more

Over the last couple months, I have been reading much more fiction than I have in recent years.  I am not sure if I am just burned out with non-fiction or I have may internal changes in my approach to reading or something else.  But the result is that I have expanded my reach into previously unexplored areas of fiction.

While I traditionally like young adult literature, I have read virtually no Christian young adult fiction outside of a few classics.  A friend of mine recommended this to me a while ago and I finally got around to reading over the weekend.

Read more

Takeaway: The Bible was written to people very distant from us.  

Last year I undertook a project of reading about how to understand, interpret and think about scripture.  I read a number of books.  (Here is a summary post.)  However, this little book, just under 70 pages, suggests many of the same ideas that the hundreds of pages that I read last year did.

If you want to think about how to understand scripture, how to read it on your own and how think about translation and culture issues, this is a good introduction.  It is not perfect, I don’t agree with every word, but it has a lot of good advice and clearly presents many of the issues.

David Ker is a bible teacher in a seminary in Mozambique and a bible translator with Wycliffe Bible Translators.  He has the background.  This book is an edited form of a group of blog posts. So there is a number of topics, but they are dealt with in relatively short sections.  This is a book you can easily read in 60 to 90 minutes.

Read more