Family Christian Stores Buys Itself

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Christianity Today is reporting that the largest chain of Christian retail stores has purchased itself from its previous private equity owners.  Family Christian Stores has had a rough patch.  There are still nearly 300 stores (for comparison Lifeway has 163 stores). In 1993 Zondervan publisher and the stores separated ownership.  Family Christian Stores grew primarily through acquiring … Read more

Offsite Review: Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims and a City on a Hill

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Books and Culture magazine is one of the best magazines for longer form book reviews, seriously articles on history, science and philosophy and in-depth interviews.  It and Englewood Review of Books are the only two physical magazines I read. (Although I primarily read the web editions of both.) Mark Noll was one of the founding … Read more

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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