Bookwi.se

Takeaway: There was a woman in Roman 16:7 that Paul says was one of the apostles.  Many Christians do not know this.

Junia is Not Alone is short. Frankly, it would be better as a long free article than a short paid kindle book. I read it in about 20 minutes or so.  I do not believe it is listed as a Kindle Short, but it should be.

I want to be fair to Scot McKnight, many people do not know the history of Junia and that is the point of this short little booklet. Junia is mentioned as an apostle in Rom 16:7. For much of Christian history she has been referred to as a man, and even with good Christian language scholars it is only recently that the best greek manuscripts have admitted that Junia is a woman.

Read more

Summary: Artemis may have found his father, and he is suspected to be smuggling human goods (and weapons) to Faire.

The second book in a series makes or breaks the series in my mind.  It can either set up the series to be able to go further (usually giving some good background and character development) or it just tells the same story as the previous book.  Colfer does a good job of keeping the action and the good parts of Artemis and the other characters from the first book, but developing them enough that you want to keep going.

Read more

Takeaway: Innovation occurs at the intersection of different fields of study.

My wife originally told me about this book.  She saw the author speak at last year’s Chick-Fil-A Leadercast.  It is an interesting book. If you like random facts and good stories and enjoy the writing of Malcom Gladwell or Chris Anderson, you will like Medici Effect.

The basic thesis is that we need to encourage innovation by encouraging people of different backgrounds and fields of study to work together.  So an architect in Africa created a new system for cooling a building because he knew he could not rely on the electricity intensive standard air conditioning system. So he found out about how giant termite mounds keep precise temperatures and incorporated those insights into the build’s design and was able to cool the building with less than 10 percent of the energy costs of a regular air conditioning system.

Here is a video I saw today that is not in the book, but is a great example of innovation.  Using soda bottles to provide light in impoverished communities.

Read more

Summary: Real evil isn’t the villains, it is the accountants/consultants behind the villains

About 6 or 7 years ago I was listening to a lot of independent fiction that was read by the authors.  This started with Cory Doctorow but then I found other independent authors that were doing similar things through podiobooks or other sites.

One of the books I remember enjoying was How to Succeed in Evil.  But it seemed to be more of a short story/novella than a fully developed book.  And I remember looking for the next chapter because it seemed like it just ended.  Evidentially, it did just end and McLean or someone else just stopped recording the rest of the book.  As I was scrolling through books that were available to borrow on Lendle, I found a kindle version of How to Succeed in Evil.  I enjoyed it before, I thought I would figure out how the book ended.

Read more