Adam Shields

FTC's double standard

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The FTC has announced guidelines (PDF) that will lead to officials rules concerning disclosure requirements for bloggers.  These rules as I understand them mean that anyone that reviews a product must disclose any relationship to the producer of the product.  Now I basically agree with the intent of the rules.  I participate in Thomas Nelson’s Blogger program which … Read more

Simple Church Group Blogging Project

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I am participating in another group blogging project.  This time we are discussing  “œSimple Church” by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. We hope you’ll join us on our individual blogs as we discuss individual chapters. Here’s the lineup that will start on October 5th. Andy Darnell ““ Chapter 1 ““ 10/5 – posted Anthony Prince … Read more

The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

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This is an unusual book.  First of all, the in the US there is a pretty clear anti-drinking message by the church, so anything that merges drinking and God is usually suspect.  The first chapter of this book does a good job giving a history of beer, civilization and the church.  I think it makes a … Read more

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and Blue Like Jazz: The story of a story

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  When I started reading “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” I had never read a book by Donald Miller (or at least I didn’t think I had. When I was looking at Donald Miller’s Wikipedia page I realized I had read his first book “Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance“.) Many, many … Read more

Watch on the Rhine by John Ringo

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Here is the good part, Baen is a great publisher and believes in DRM-free books.  They sell their books at reasonable prices and give a lot of them away free. What is the bad part?  This book is very predictable and not worth reading. I wish Ringo had skipped a few of these books and made … Read more

Sacred Marriage

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This is one of the books that my wife and I have used for an read together before we go to bed book. This is not a standard Christian marriage book. In fact, this is as unique a Christian marriage book as I have read. There are some parts I have issues with, but the … Read more

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

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Fledgling: A NovelSummary: A very different vampire story than the recent Twilight/True Blood variety.

Do you get tired of me saying, “This is an author that I have been wanting to read for a while”?  Because I am a bit tired of writing it.  But it is true.  Butler was a unique writer. She was an African American female science fiction/fantasy author. She wrote African American characters into Science Fiction and Fantasy.  She was also the first (only?) science fiction author to receive a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant.

Fledgling was Octavia Butler’s last book.  Butler died at the age of 58 in 2006 (of a stroke), a year after this book was published.

Fledgling is a vampire book.  Not like Twilight or True Blood, but still very much vampire.

In this world of vampires, you do not become a vampire.  You are born a vampire.  Vampires, (they call themselves Ina), are a different species from humans.

The Ina need humans for blood and form a symbiotic relationship.  The humans willingly form a community around a particular Ina and in exchange the Ina venom helps humans heal and live longer.  A human ‘symbiant’, can live to 200 or so years old.  While the Ina often live to 500-600 years old.

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