October 2009 Archives

On his blog this morning, Mark Batterson expresses why, as an author, he thinks You Cannot Give Away Too Many Books. In talking about his first book, he says, "Those hundreds of copies given away translated into thousands of books purchased..."

From the reader perspective, I wholly agree. If an author is confident enough about his book to give some away and it's a good book, people will recommend the book. From the reader side of things I try to do the same thing within my limited budget. If I find a book that I think will help people I'll certainly recommend it, but I try to go a step farther and give it to them. Currently I have a stack of "multiple copy books." That I intend to give away as I come across people that would benefit from reading them. Publishers, E-bay, Amazon and other sites often make it easy to buy multiple copies fairly cheap.

Of course, there's a push back in me as well. I've noticed that our culture has a tendency to devalue things that are free - the assumption is that there is no value in it. Batterson could be taking a huge loss with no benefit when he begins giving away copies of his next book. The books I give away thinking they could add great value to a life could wind up under the couch. But, that's a risk that I'm willing to take.

Have you ever done a book review?

Tons of people have given their opinions about books they've read and added them to the publisher's site, Amazon, or any number of other sites. And, from time to time, you may come across sites that will offer to send you a book for free if you'll promise to review it. While many things on the internet have a catch, these sites generally do not. They may be the author or the publisher trying to drum up publicity for a new book. In fact, I'd venture to say that sending books to the general public if hopes of a review on a blog or Amazon has become pretty common practice.

Enter the FTC. The FTC has ruled that it is going to attempt to regulate blogs. The FTC website says:

The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.

While I understand the idea is to prevent consumers from being misled by false positive reviews, I still think it's overreaching and basically unmanageable. It shows that the FTC is unaware of how the publishing industry gives away books in exchange for reviews and come close to (or maybe clearly breaches) free speech laws. Publishers don't give bloggers books in exchange for positive reviews - they just want publicity of any kind...and if you don't blog about the book, that's fine too.

Further, who is reading a bloggers review of a book and not double checking other reviews? If you're buying a book because Bob says it's good, even if Bob is famous, and it turns out to be a horrible book, I really don't think that Bob is to blame. If you are not already predisposed to making a purchase, do your research. If you are, don't blame anyone else when you product isn't what you expected.

I thought that this topic would get a bit more fanfare, but other than this New York Times editorial, I didn't find much else. Perhaps everyone is okay with this feeling bloggers simply have to add an "I received this book from Nelson Publishing" at the bottom of their review, what's the problem? The problem I have isn't so much the disclosure, I can certainly add that statement to my reviews...but what about my tweets? What about when I tell someone in one of my classes or at my church about the book I enjoyed? I think it's rather silly that the FTC wants to consider Joe Schmoe who happens to get a free book from a publisher a "word of mouth marketer."

I suppose it's time to figure out how to suggest a book and add "I originally received this book from Random House" in less than 140 characters in case I want to suggest a free book to a friend.

One of the biggest things that I've learned in the last two years at seminary is how our view of scripture is influenced by the things in our lives. As a middle-class white male living in the suburbs of a large U.S. city, the gospel means something completely different to me than it does to a young African girl that has to walk five miles a day for just to retrieve fresh water for her family. Our scriptures may have the same words but the messages we receive are different. This is the subject matter of Scouting the Divine: my search for God in wine, wool, and wild honey.

Margaret Feinberg, a speaker at this year's Catalyst Conference as well as recent CreationFest and YouthSpecialties event, spoke about her journey into the lives of a shepherd, a beekeeper and a vintner and how those people have forever changed the way that she reads scripture. The author of Organic God and The Sacred Echo gave each attendee of Catalyst a copy of her book and I'd like to offer it to one of our readers.

To celebrate the launch of her new book, she's organizing a 100-stop blog tour and I would like this Bookworm site to be one of those stops. Sadly, I won't have time to read the book until after classes which means I would miss the cutoff date of November 20. So, if you can read quickly (it's only around 200 pages) and will agree to post a review here (you may cross-post elsewhere) by November 20th (though I would prefer the 13th) leave a creative comment that will let me know who you are and what flair you would bring and I'll pick a winner on October 20th. I'll go for what I think will be best for the blog, but in the case of a runoff, I'll choose randomly between the best comments.

Good Luck!

As a semi-veteran (if there is even such a thing) in Children's ministry, I'm excited that there is a huge push towards family ministry that is sweeping through the churches in America. It hasn't been that long since the church began segregating the families and taking over the spiritual responsibilities and I'm glad that the church of the information age is seeing the error of the church of the industrial age.

That said, I also enjoyed hearing a somewhat new voice on coming on the scene in the form of Shift, by Brian Haynes. Brian is the Associate Pastor overseeing spiritual formation at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, TX and has been given a great vision of leading families through the spiritual pathways of life. I stumbled on their Spiritual Milestones website a few months ago and learned a great deal of how their ministry helps families grow in Christ together. It's akin to the idea of Raising a Modern Day Knight. While Raising a Modern Day Knight focuses on marking points along a boy's journey into manhood in order to help them understand the importance of those milestones, Kingsland does the same for families by marking 7 key points in the journey of a family's spiritual life: Birth/Dedication, Coming to Christ, Preparing for Adolescence, Purity Commitment, Adulthood, Graduation, and Continuing Life in Christ.

As a children's pastor how is moving his church toward a family ministry paradigm, I found the book lacking. I think that Children and Family Pastors are the target audience, but the book does little more than give a brief overview of the ministry model of Kingsland Baptist. The theory and thought behind the milestones are presented in brief toward the end of the book and are valuable to thinking through how you may do something similar in your ministry. (Props to Brain for pointing out that this is a way that works in their context and to make sure you do what God is leading you to do in yours.) Having already looked through their website I didn't think there was much to glean from reading Shift.

However, that is not to say that the book is not valuable - it is, very much so. While I didn't think that the "meat & potatoes" were there, I did think it was a very choice appetizer. I think that passing on this book to your Senior Pastor (or whatever visionary guides your church) would be an excellent way to get them to begin thinking of bringing families together rather than always keeping them apart. I'd even say that going through the book as a church (senior) staff would be a great idea to shift your focus toward equipping parents - I think I may grab a few more copies and suggest that to our staff.
In short: Get it, read it, mark & highlight it, and pass it on to your supervisor along with your ideas of family ministry in your setting. But don't expect to use it as a resource for how to do family ministry or even how to implement Spiritual Milestones in your church.

This weekend is the annual book sale by the friends of the Wauconda Area Library. It's one of the primary means of raising funds for the FOTL which supports improvements for the Library.

Today Teri and I helped sort though a ton of book to get ready for the sale this weekend. The sale will begin Friday, October 9 and continue through Sunday. There's a special preview sale at 7pm on Thursday for those that are current Friends of the Library. The prices drop each day and by Sunday it's $5 a bag...but by Sunday there's not much left.

If you're in the Chicago area it's well worth checking out, I think it's one of the most popular ones in the area.

Today Kevin started reading the "Andrew Lost" series. He went through two this afternoon, "With the Dinosaurs" and "In Time." They're chapter books that are suitable for readers beginning the transition from Easy Readers. While they are fiction, they have the added bonus of teaching science. Each book deals with a specific topic from underwater life to life in the jungle.

They seem to be a perfect fit for boys who enjoy reading in that they touch on some of the "grosser" side of science, like bugs, garbage, or life on a dog. In addition each book ends with True Stuff, additional facts that the author wanted to convey but may not have been able to put in the story or explanations of terms that may not be known, such as quicksand. True Stuff is followed with Where to Find More True Stuff, a bibliography of sorts encouraging children into non-fiction science books.

Kevin enjoyed that it was a series and says that he is looking forward to reading all of them. Specifically he liked that there was a time machine and how they were put into dinosaur times (side note: he's really enjoyed historical fiction lately). Overall, he rated the books: "Really good."

When I asked him if he learned anything, he said that In Time taught him that you should "Listen to your parents and show them respect, cause listening to your parents is respect."

Other things that he noticed about the series overall was that the beginning of each book is the same, so you can skip those pages and if you forget where you are there's a table of contents.

I enjoyed that the second book Kevin read sparked a discussion about what happens at the death of a star as well as the beginning of stars. It wasn't an in depth conversation, but it is an inroad into teaching more about astronomy. On the flip side, I'm disappointed that the author presents the Big Bang and Old Earth theories as absolutes. While she presents various information on dinosaurs as "We're not absolutely sure..." or "No one knows for sure..." information about the beginning of everything is presented as "Scientists have figured out..."

All in all, I would recommend this series for your young reader. The discussions that could result if you are engaged with what your children are reading are extremely valuable and easily dwarf the issue of presenting theory as fact. Of course, I would always advocate knowing what your children are reading about so that you can help guide them through issues that are presented in both their fiction and non-fiction reading.