A Family of Bibliophiles

What are you reading?

2010-01-27T03:30:12Z

More than a few years ago I set a goal of reading at least 10 books each year. I've not had any problems making this goal - in fact, this year I'm already half way to that goal.
I don't plan on expanding that goal nor do I plan stopping once I reach it but I thought I would change things a little this year by formalizing a reading list. Last year I realized, in December, that I hadn't read any fiction and a lack of variety can lead to burn out foe me - so a reading list may help. Here's what I plan to read this year:

Books Related to Ministry or Leadership: Think Orange: Imagine the Impact When Church and Family Collide...; The Principle of the Path: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be; The Power of Team Leadership: Achieving Success Through Shared Responsibility (Barna Reports); Leadership Essentials for Children's Ministry: Passion, Attitude, Teamwork, Honor
Parenting: Covering Home: Lessons on the Art of Fathering from the Game of Baseball; Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God
Theology: Theology for the Community of God; How to Think Theologically, 2nd Edition; The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
Biography: Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables; The Church of 80% Sincerity
Fiction: Angel of Wrath: A Novel (The Voice of God series); Blown Coverage (Riley Covington Thriller Series #2); Act of Treason

same lake, different boat

2010-01-19T19:17:52Z

I just finished reading same lake, different boat and enjoyed it more than I initially thought I would. Honestly, I didn't think I would enjoy it - it addresses a subject that is out of my comfort zone, ministering to people with disabilities. It's not that I do not like people with disabilities or think that they should be ministered to by someone else - indeed, some of my best moments in ministry have come while serving along side people and parents of people who have a disability.

I suppose that my discomfort stems from two things, both of which are addressed in Stephanie Hubach's writing. First, disabilities are not thought of as mainstream, even though they are all around us. And secondly, I live in a fallen world and struggle with sinful attitudes and the desire to put myself first.

Stephanie, who writes of her struggles, fears, and joys of raising Timmy, her youngest son who was born with Down Syndrome points out the churches strengths and weaknesses in addressing people with disabilities. Same Lake, Different Boat is not a "how to minister to people with disabilities" book rather a "questions you need to ask as you minister to all people" book. She points out how our churches can be strengthened and draw closer to God as we minister to those who are disabled but is honest in the struggles it brings...but rightly points out that when we abandon "the lame, the blind, and the sick" that our ministry moves from a place of life saving to a social club.

For me, her prominent point is how the Fall changed our creativity and productivity.

"Instead of operating from a God-centered, relationship based hub of creative and productive activity, we now struggle with an agenda-centered focus that reveals our underlying lust for personal control. We want our lives to be organized around our individual goals, while relationships to God and neighbor remain secondary - or, even worse, nonexistent. The problem with an agenda is not necessarily the content of the agenda, though that can be an issue, but it is the context of the agenda."

This brought to mind an interview with Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales. You can see the whole interview, but specifically of relevance is the wrap up beginning at 4:09.

have a little faith

2009-12-07T02:14:50Z

At Catalyst this year I had the opportunity to hear Mitch Albom talk about his new book, "have a little faith." He spoke of getting to know Reb, his rabbi, after the strange request to speak at the rabbi's funeral. He also shared a parallel story about getting to know a minister in Detroit that had a strange path to the pastorate. After hearing Mitch speak, I knew it was a book that I would enjoy and indeed it was.

Albom's writing is very easy to follow and greatly helps you appreciate the people that he is writing about. One of my favorite stories was from Reb's past of him driving his son and a few of his young friends back to New Jersey from Philadelphia. "As they approach the toll booth, he asks if the boys have their passports.
'Passports?' they say.
'You mean you don't have your passports - and you expect to get into New Jersey?' he cries. 'Quick! Hide under that blanket! Don't breathe! Don't make a sound!'
In this, Albom relays how another family memory is forged.

Albom moves easily between Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, rich and poor and helps the reader grab a picture of a meaning full life and believing in something bigger than themselves.

Giving Books Away

2009-10-27T14:11:52Z

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.

How Far is to Far?

2009-10-19T02:42:24Z

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.

And yes, a free book in return for a review is considered a payment in-kind.

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.

Free Book: Scouting the Divine

2009-10-16T03:36:07Z

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!

Shift: What it takes to finally reach families today (A review)

2009-10-09T12:32:39Z

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.

Book Sale

2009-10-05T23:15:12Z

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.

Review of Andrew Lost Series

2009-10-04T22:35:09Z

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.

Stopping By the Bookstore

2009-09-16T02:10:47Z

After lunch today Kevin and I stopped by Barnes & Noble. I planned to let him browse the children's section for about an hour while I did some work. As it turned out, we were there less than 30 minutes. In that time, Kevin read 10 books, then one more as he was putting the books away.
It was interesting to watch his eyes move over the page as he read. A few times I thought he skipped pages, I stopped him to ask what those pages contained and he was able to tell me. Maybe he'll post his thoughts on a few of the books.

Say "Please!":
A Book About
Manners
(Backyardigans)

Race to the
Tower of Power
(Backyardigans)

Night at the
Museum:
Battle of the
Smithsonian:
The Quest for
the Golden Tablet

Iron Man
Armored
Adventures

Just Grandma
and Me
(Pictureback(R))

Curious George's
Dinosaur Discovery

Charlie and Lola:
I Want to Be
Much More Bigger
Like You

Transformers
Animated:
Clash of the
Constructicons

Mr. Noisy's
Wild Safari
(Mr. Men and
Little Miss)

The Dark Knight:
Batman Saves
the Day

Ninja Showdown!
(G.I. Joe the
Rise of Cobra)

Zamba

2009-09-05T21:07:26Z

I've always had an interest in "Big Cats." When I was younger I often wondered what it would be like to have a tiger as a pet and when I am at the zoo I rarely leave without a visit to the lions, tigers, and other assorted cats. So, when I was at the library a while back, Zamba: The True Story of the Greatest Lion That Ever Lived, boasting a large lion and a small girl on the cover was hard not to notice.

I carried it down stairs while the boys played and flipped through, reading through chapter 17 first - I was hooked. I took the book home and flew though the pages, finishing the book in 3 days. By far, this is the best book that I have read this year and one of the best books that I have ever read.

The writing is down to earth and very conversational, which may turn some people off. Zamba is also about doing something no one should ever do - have an exotic animal for a pet; so that may turn off some readers as well. However, if you can get past those two minor hurdles, you're in for a treat. I laughed, I cried, and I couldn't get the story out of my mind.

Author Ralph Helfer was the first person to use affection based training on Hollywood animals and in doing, revolutionized the industry. The level of trust that developed between him and Zamba makes the story almost unbelievable. The love and the care that they show one another as they face floods, Africa, and the movie industry pulls you into the story, encouraging you to root for, fear for, and care for Zamba even though you have never met.

Rarely does a book pull as much emotion from me as this. Twice, I cried - once almost uncontrollably sobbing as I worked my way through the pages seeking a happy outcome. At times, I was angry or disappointed at the turn of events but remembered that this is a true story and not every subplot will have a happy ending. As I think about how this book spoke to me, I realize that I will be tempted to ramble, so let me close this review with a question. After Zamba loses his sight, Henry wonders why animals are so accepting of their circumstance:

Why is it that animals have attained such perfection in their existence, while man has never known anything even approaching such tranquility? I have always believed that animals listen to one perfect voice - nature's voice - and do as it bids them. We, on the other hand, listen only to ourselves, and we do as we please. Our ego, our pride, is our instructor, and that force is so powerful that it can make us ignore the reality presented to us by our intellects, and by common sense. It forces us to live superficially, driven by personality, not character.

Kevin at the Library

2009-09-02T18:48:22Z

I really like books.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the library with Mommy and Alex. I picked out lots of books. I picked out sneaky books, funny books and an elephant book. Our library has tons of books. I think I have almost read the whole kid's section.

At bedtime mommy read A Birthday for Cow! One of the funny parts is when a duck says, "A Turnip" because he wants to do everything with a turnip. Like when they use a spoon to stir, he wants to use a turnip. This was a really good and funny book.

After stories and prayers I am allowed to read stories until I am tired. Last night I read 30 books!

Organizing Your Personal Library

2009-08-31T03:41:00Z

When we moved into our new home we decided it was time to add some organization to our gaggle of books. We set aside some space to get many of our books in the same room and give them some order. Teri wanted to organize by the Dewey Decimal system and, while I thought that was a bit much, I saw no reason not to do it.

As it turns out, we have over 500 books and probably near that many children's books. Finding all of those dewey numbers meant opening the cover of each one and hoping that the publisher's page had the number. If not, we could check Amazon or our library for a copy, and failing that maybe we'd make our own. For several hundred books, this would take a massive amount of time - especially with two early elementary children running around.

Along comes LibraryThing.com. Entering your book on LibraryThing is like adding it to your own personal card catalog which you can then search by title, author, or other data...and you can make your collection available for others to browse as well. There's a number of things other things you can do as well that we have yet to take advantage of like tagging, reviews, or rating your books.

LibraryThing uses the power of community to pull even more information about your books. You can access what others have said, participate in forums or meet others with similar libraries. Additionally, LibraryThing knows about book stores in your area.

Best of all, it's Free - with limitations. The free version is limited to 200 books, so we opted for the lifetime membership at $25.

While entering ISBNs could have been a pain, they also point you in the right direction to get a cheap barcode reader which made entry a cinch.

Getting all our books labeled and ordered became easy:

Scan ISBNs into LibrayThing account (in multiples of 20)
Export our catalog and import into Excel
Check for missing call numbers our authors
Mail Merge into Word
Print using Avery 5428 Labels (20 labels per sheet)
Apply in same order they were scanned
Shelf books in order

The whole thing, including scanner, labels and account cost less than $45 and took only a few hours to accomplish. The hardest part was lugging the books up and down the steps and trying to keep everything on shelves so the kids could have the floor space for playing.

It seemed pretty "geeky" at first to set up a home library by dewey, but it is SO much easier to find the books that I'm looking for. I imagine that as time goes on, it will also save us money. In fact, in church today we were talking about a book and I pulled up our library on my phone to discover we had a copy on our shelves at home...that'll be handy in the bookstore.