Last week I spent a day in Grand Rapids and most of that day was taken up with meetings at the head office for Zondervan. As you probably know, Zondervan will be publishing my next couple of books, so we had a series of meetings to discuss, among other things, marketing plans (that’s right–we met…
Summer is over and publishers are now preparing to roll out a whole new season of books. Many publishers wait until the fall to release their best books, hoping that the coming Christmas season will lead to increased sales. In the general publishing world this means that we will see new titles by Tom Clancy,…
It is time for another of these irregular roundups of books that I didn’t review. It’s not necessarily that these are bad books or ones I purposely chose not to read and review. It’s just that, life being what it is, I cannot read them all. So here are a few that came in this…
Yesterday I gave you 5 Reasons Books Are Better Than E-Books. Today I want to follow that up with 5 ways in which e-books are superior to their printed counterparts. I suspect you will note some lack of passion in my attempt to do so. I truly do love books and I suppose I give…
Centuries ago the Puritan preacher Richard Baxter penned some wisdom on the subject of reading. His concern was for people to become better, more discerning readers. His advice seems as timely today as it must have been for the men and women of the seventeenth century. It may be it is even more important today…
In my recent review of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy I mentioned that it might just make it onto my top ten list of favorite biographies. A couple of people subsequently asked if I’d write out such a list. It took some thinking and some rummaging around my bookcases, but eventually I got one together.…
Last week I encouraged you to Read More and Read Better. Then I got both busy and distracted and didn’t give you the second part. So let me do that today. Let me tell you how I read a book. Overview Before I do anything else, I want to get an overview of the book.…
Here we are at another Friday. This is a significant one around these parts because it’s the last day of school for our kids before they get a week off for March Break. This means that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are heading for the airports and, from there, to southern climes. And who can…
With a new Friday comes a new edition of Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is ChristianAudio, a company you must know by now for their monthly free downloads. If you visit their site just once per month and you’ll be well on your way to building a solid library of audio books. This week…
Every year, sometime in December, I begin to think about all the books I read that year, trying to determine which ones I liked the best and always wondering just how many I actually read. Every year I’m disappointed to find that I haven’t kept very good records so I really do not know how…
This week’s sponsor of Free Stuff Fridays is Shepherd Press. Shepherd Press is a ministry dedicated to publishing solid, biblical books and material. They are likely best-known for publishing material by Ted Tripp (including Shepherding a Child’s Heart) but they also publish material by a variety of other authors. I have yet to find a…
If you were one of the four million people to read the bestselling book Freakonomics, you will pretty well know what to expect from the long-awaited sequel SuperFreakonomics. It has five chapters, each of which stands on its own and each of which ties varied economic data into some kind of a cohesive whole. It…
While I write many book reviews, the majority of these reviews cover titles that are written on a popular level. Rarely do I look at reference material or commentaries. Yet I do receive many such books and today I want to mention some of the more notable ones that have come across my desk recently.…
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately–an near-obnoxious amount, really. Quite a few of the books have just not been that interesting, but there have been a few exceptions. Here are reviews of three of the more notable books I’ve read. Each of these titles is currently on the New York Times list of…
Here is a great (and famous) quote from Mortimer Adler’s classic How To Read a Book. There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the…
You’ll have to bear with me today as I ramble a little bit on the subject of book reviews. Because reviews are such an important part of what I do here, I thought it would be worth covering just a little bit of how and why I do reviews. I generally try to review at…
Free Stuff Fridays is an opportunity to give away some great resources and today I’ve got some I think you’ll love. This week’s sponsor is Moody Publishers. Moody has offered up five prizes, each of which will contain three brand new books: Words From the Fire by Al Mohler, The Reason for Sports by Ted…
It’s time for another Free Stuff Friday. This week’s sponsor is Evangelical Press. As you may well know, Evangelical Press is a non-profit mission organization based in the UK but with an increasing presence on this side of the pond. It’s mission is to place sound Christian books and sound biblical teaching within reach of…
Here is (yet) another list of books I read that will not be receiving extensive reviews. Shakedown by Ezra Levant. Unless you are Canadian, you have probably not heard of Ezra Levant. Let me fill you in. Several years ago he was publisher of Western Standard magazine and made the decision to print the infamous…
My vacation is over. But as luck would have it, my first day back is a holiday, so I guess that extends things by one day. Today is Canada’s annual Civic Holiday. I don’t think anyone really knows why this holiday exists except as an excuse to enjoy a day off in what is usually…