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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Why Be Catholic by Richard Rohr

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Why Be Catholic?: Understanding Our Experience and TraditionSummary: A series of lectures on the state of the Catholic Church that was later turned into a book.

Over the past several months I have been reading about Catholicism (see below for other reviews).  Many of the book have been written by Evangelicals that have converted to Catholicism.  I chose several of them precisely because I knew that they would write with language that I as an Evangelical would mostly understand.

But it is time to start reading more widely and I want to start reading more books written by Catholics to other Catholics.  I picked this audiobook up on a whim from Audible because I had a couple dollars of promotional credit and it was on sale.

It is not actually a book.  It is a series of lectures that was later turned into a book.  It is not new either.  The lectures were given in 1985 during lent.  It sounds like they were given in a church basement to a small group of people that are concerned about their church (although the audio of Rohr is very clear).  On the whole this does not feel all that dated.  There are a few things that let you know that these are almost 30 years old.  But most of the issues are probably pretty similar.

What I always find most encouraging is that many of the poor assumptions about Catholics that Evangelicals have disappear quickly when you actually listen to people like Rohr.  This is a man that is in love with Christ, that wants to see the world evangelized that is charitable in his opinions of other Christians and has a real heart for the church.  He opens each lecture with a prayer, prayers that would be very comfortable and familiar to Evangelicals.

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Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior

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Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

I love books.  I love people that love books.  I love books about books by people that love books.

Karen Swallow Prior is an English Professor, writer, and essayist.  She has written a memoir highlighting the books (and poems) that have changed her life and made her who she is today.

Each chapter highlight a book and then uses that book to help tell the story of her life.  Sometimes the book helps her to learn, sometimes the book helps her to explain.  But in each case, it is her as a reader that comes through.

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Small Rant About Ebook Formatting

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Third generation Amazon Kindle, showing text f...

If you have read many ebooks (no matter the format) you have probably run across a badly formated book, random spacing, blank pages, page number or titles in the middle of a page, missing pages, a footnote or endnote that accidentally is in the middle of a page, illegible images.  And the high rates of misspellings because of bad Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is just unacceptable.

At one point bad formatting might have been excused because it was a new technology.  But ebooks are no longer cutting edge.  Ebooks now sell more copies than hardcovers, not just at Amazon but total.  And not just more copies, but more total revenue as well.

It is time for publishers to make ebook formatting a higher priority.  I have formatted four books for people that I know.  Each case took me about 8 or so hours and I did it for free because I was trying to help someone out.  It is not rocket science, but it does take work.

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Most Read Reviews in Oct 2012

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Below are the most read reviews (by on site pageview, it is different by the RSS feed, which is approximately equal to on site pageviews). Earthen Vessels: Why Our Body Matters by Matthew Lee Anderson (A Read Again Review) – and most read review of the last quarter Amazon Paperwhite Kindle Review (not a book … Read more