David's Bucket

While away on vacation, I got the opportunity to read several books. For me, reading is probably one of the most relaxing activities I do. Because I’m personally wired to be a bit spontaneous in my thinking and sometimes struggle to maintain my attention on particular tasks, losing myself in a book really calms me and relaxes me in a way that I cannot quite describe. I love getting lost in a book.

So Sabbath time is a great time for me to read. Here’s where I got lost the past few weeks.

Daniel Silva’s The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, and Moscow Rules

Sorry to disappoint those who thought I spent all of my time lost in some work of classic Christian literature. My guilty pleasure is spy novels, and for me, there is no greater writer in this genre than Daniel Silva. The Mark of the Assassin and The Marching Season are the second and third books written by Silva and include a short two-part series about an American CIA agent and his battle with one of the best assassins in the world. Moscow Rules is book #8 of the series that Silva started next whose central character is a man named Gabriel Allon, an Israeli intelligence officer. If you love spy novels, you have to check out Daniel Silva!

The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan [more info]

A bit of a left turn here… During the second week of our time away, My wife and I got the chance to attend a retreat sponsored by the Pastor’s Retreat Network in East Texas. We spend five days at a Bed & Breakfast with six other clergy couples with no kids, no cell phones, no computers, and no TV’s. Just peace, quiet and rest. During that time, I read Mark Buchanan’s book which focuses on the practice of Sabbath and every pastor’s need to honor and protect their Sabbath time. This book, along with Abraham Joshua Heschel’s classic work, The Sabbath, are two of the best books I have ever read on Sabbath and I would highly recommend both of them to anyone seeking to find balance in their lives.

Liars and Thieves by Stephen Coonts [more info]

This was the first book I have read from Coonts, and I found it enjoyable. It doesn’t come close to Silva in terms of the suspense and a majority of the book is written from the first person perspective of one of the characters [which tends to distract me] but it was pretty good. When you’ve read everything Silva has written, I guess you could give Coonts a try.

The Last Jihad by Rosenberg [more info]

This book was a little weird… but really good as far as a suspense novel goes. It’s set in modern America is basically a fictional story about America’s War on Terror. The story opens with a terrorist using a plane to attack a presidential motorcade. The majority of the book was written before 9/11 but prior to publishing the book, Rosenberg rewrote the story to be set in the time following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What’s really “eerie” about the book is that the antagonist in the book is a “nuclear” Iraq led by Saddam Hussein [this was published prior to the War on Iraq].

In this fictitious story, both of Saddam’s sons have been killed, he has prostate cancer, and so he basically decides he has nothing left to lose and tries to launch a nuclear missile at Israel and the U.S. It’s the basic story line that eventually led up to the actual war in Iraq… the notion of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iraqi dictator… which as we all know, ended up to not be the case. I’m not trying to make social commentary here… Just saying that story line gave me a weird feeling while reading. What really bothered me about the book was the ending… but I don’t want to spoil it…

Now you tell me. What’s the best book you’ve read this summer?

Last week I purchased an Amazon Kindle after taking a test drive with one that a friend let me borrow. I’ve been intrigued by this product since Amazon released it several years ago, but was never quite sure it was right for me. I do love the feel of a good book, but I’ve recently just become overwhelmed with them. I always thought I wanted to have a big pastor’s office with tons and tons of books, but here is what I’ve discovered. A big library is a big hassle, and I already have way too many books. So the idea of being able to carry with me an entire library [as well as newspaper/magazine subscriptions] with one device had great appeal.

All that being said, I don’t think I would have purchased one without first having the chance to experience it. I think that’s a real drawback for Amazon without a storefront to stock it and an opportunity for the customer to experience it. I finished my first book in two days, and I’m really loving the product. Here’s my evaluation of the Kindle’s plusses and minuses.

What I love…

The Screen
The first thing you notice about the Kindle is how fabulous the screen looks and how closely it resembles plain text on a page while reading. There is really no eye strain involved in reading the Kindle and you also have the advantage of changing the font size which is something I wish you could do with some books when they are not laid out very well. The screen does flash with every page turn [this is when the screen is resetting the electronic ink on the page] which can be a bit distracting, but it is not a time issue. It takes less time that it does to turn the page and you get used to the speed so you know when to hit the button to make it almost seamless. This was my biggest concern was that the screen would wear your eyes out, but I’ve read it for hours with no problem. In fact, so far it seems to strain my eyes less than a normal book especially given the fact that I can change the font size if I want to relax my eyes a bit.

Notes/Highlights/Search Feature
After using my friend’s Kindle, this was the big selling point for me. When I read a book, I make a ton of notes, lines, stars, etc so that I can go back [or my lovely wife has done this for me in the past] and type up the quotes and thoughts that I thought were most relevant to me. Basically I like to condense books into the bit sized pieces that I either thought were the most important or sections that I wanted to use later in sermon prep and planning. It’s an incredibly cumbersome process especially if you take the next step to type everything up in a text file. With the Kindle, it does all of that for me. I highlight and annotate as I need to and at the end of the book, I drop the “My Clippings” text file on my computer. I’m done! Amazing.

[I should note that there is a limit to the amount of content you can "clip" which is basically a protection against you clipping the whole book and putting the text file on your computer. With my first book, Sex God by Rob Bell, I clipped 119 sections and the final nine were over my clip limit. Still, I only have to type up nine quotes, not 119.]

Built-in Dictionary
This is a pretty cool feature. Basically you move your cursor to any word on the page and at the bottom it brings up the definition of the word. If you want more, thesaurus, wikipedia, etc, you can hit return and those options pop up. I don’t know about you but I will often just skip past a word I’m not familiar with and play the context clues game to figure it out. [That's how I survived seminary] With this feature, I can actually be more clear on what the author is seeking to convey. It’s a nice tool.

Samples of all Books
With every book available for the Kindle, you can download a sample of the book first [so far it looks like you always get the introduction and most of the first chapter] before you purchase. I find this really helpful because I can usually tell within those few pages whether this book is for me.

Newspapers/Magazines/Blogs
The ability to subsribe to newspapers, magazines and blogs is also a pretty neat feature. You do have to pay for all of those [including blog feeds] and depending on what you’re interested in, it could be a little expensive [i.e. Full New York Times for $14] For me, I usually don’t do a lot of global/national news following so this is pretty handy addition. Rather than subscribing to the full paper, I think I’m going to get the AP latest news blog feed, Reuters and NY Times. [around $6 a month rather than $14 for just the Times] I know what you’re thinking… Why would I pay for that when I can get it online for free through my feed reader. I asked the same question. I think the idea is this. With a general feed reader like Google Reader, all you are going to get is the headline and a very brief excerpt of the article if that. [Companies do this so you have to click around their site which increases their ad revenue.] On the Kindle, you get everything delivered straight to your device. Basically, you’re paying a couple of bucks a month to avoid the hassle and subsidize their ad revenue. I personally think it’s worth it.

What I don’t love so much…

Interface [Keyboards & Buttons]
The interface isn’t great. You navigate around the Kindle using a button called the “five-way” which move you up and down, left and right, click to select. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t the most comfortable or efficient way possible. The keyboard is really bad and if I was doing anything besides putting in short notes for books, I would be fairly annoyed with it. It could be dramatically improved, but again with the limited need for typing it’s really not terrible. You would not want to type up a paper on it though. The page turning buttons are nice and makes the Kindle fit in your hand nicely during reading. They definitely got that right.

Still not sure…

Text to Speech
The Kindle also offers a text-to-speech option. This works just like any computer voice program that reads text for you. it’s a bit choppy, but if you jump in the car and want to have the paper read to you, the Kindle can do it. Since I’m not a really big audiobook fan [I don't think I learn real well that way] I’m not sure how much I will use this though for some this might be a game changer.

That’s all I got for now. If you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to try to answer those. Again, I wouldn’t have made this leap without buddy and I’m glad to help if you’re interested in joining the Kindle club.