Maybe its photography over the past 20 years that has made me over sensitive to our cultural demands for productivity, which in turn has given way to our two worst developed habits in search of better productivity, multi-tasking and skimming text. I am probably the worst at putting aside distractions but photography is one of those art forms that takes time, sometimes, a lot of time, and has helped me immensely over the years. Photography takes time just sitting there doing nothing, waiting, waiting on the right moment (hunters will appreciate this too). This one shot of the bird above took me at least an hour to capture last night, and it wasn’t a multitasking hour, it was a setup and wait hour, something almost unheard of anymore outside of photography, hunting, and maybe a few other tasks like actual Christian meditation or prayer.
I am trying to walk (not run) my way through Tim Challies new book, “The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion” where he talks about these very issues. In one section on learning to live without distractions (because we live in a world of constant and continuous distractions) Challies points out that when we turn to the bible we see very little demand for constant productivity, especially in ways we measure today. What we do see is a constant effort by Jesus to slow the pace of life, making time for meditation, prayer, and communion with the Father and His friends. Challies puts it like this:
What is unique in our time is that skimming has now become the dominant form of reading… The danger for Christians is apparent. If we grow so accustomed to skimming words, to passing quickly over texts, we will eventually impose this practice on the words of God… The danger today, in an era of skimming and fragmentation, is that we will fragment the Bible into small bits and have no time or ability to craft unity from the parts.
Being Productive is Not Our Higher Calling in Life
Productivity is one of those things that came out of our big factories decades ago, something that has never diminished, and has only gotten more and more intense as the years go by. Brought on by an insatiable need for being productive (in anything) we multitask and skim. In fact, if you have actually read this far, you are a rare breed among readers today. Most of us just skim text, especially text on the Internet, in approximately 2-3 seconds, and then move on.
According to Challies research, when we “multitask” we really aren’t multitasking as much as we are just jumping from task to task, paying little attention to either. In fact his research showed that it takes us 50% longer to complete each task than if we had done the one task and then moved on, and when we have completed each task the overall quality was greatly reduced as well. It forces us to give partial attention to the task or person right in front of us.
We Can No Longer Give People Our Full Attention
One of the most annoying traits I run across today is that very few people are actually capable of giving me their full attention. I rarely have a conversation with someone without them constantly looking at their cell phone, checking their email, sending text messages, or whatever. Face to face may be more rare today, but even when we do give someone our time, we don’t get but a part of that person in return. I will often just stop talking and wait for them to finish what they are doing, but many times the person won’t notice at all (something Deborah has done to me for years as well).
The point to all this is that, at least in part, is that we as Christians are in a faith that requires us to learn. And one of God’s biggest chosen methods is text, completed paragraphs of thought, made into full letters and books. Thoughts that flow from one book to another and are all connected from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible isn’t full of bullet points, it’s full of completed thoughts. The more we multitask, the more we demand productivity, the less ability we have to sit and read full blocks of text.
It’s like a drug. The less we sit in one place working on one single task, whether that’s reading, photography, or work, without regards to productivity, the less we can. Over two years ago I wrote a blog post called The Internet is The Church’s New Drug of Choice and it’s quite fascinating to see how much father down the road of distraction, multitasking, and skimming text, we have come in only two years.
Thoughts About the Constant Search for Productivity
Because I know for a fact that almost no one is going to read the above 775 words, I give you the bulleted version. In case you didn’t guess by now, I am far less concerned with the productivity factor in life than I am in developing a history of quality. I personally want to be able to do a few things well, never a lot of things in a mediocre fashion.
Photography has been one of those grounding things for me, because it takes time to perfect. There are no shortcuts to learning how to be a good photographer, it takes time no matter what equipment you buy (even if it’s a cell phone). As the time I spent shooting went down in 2009 and 2010 I had forgotten the value of time spent doing just one task at a time, until I got to this point. Since then I have taken more shots (spent more time) in the first 4 months of 2011 than I did all last year, and it’s a good reminder that productivity isn’t the most important thing in life.
- Productivity is not what we are called to achieve in life
- Multitasking is just doing several things at once, poorly
- Multitasking leads us to ignore people standing in front of us
- Skimming leads us away from thinking and ultimately knowledge
- Skimming text is detrimental to our ability to read completed thoughts
- The bible rarely calls us to hurry up and be more productive
- The bible is not a book we can skim, we have to actually read it
- There is a difference between taking your time and being lazy
- The more we live a distracted life the more we need it
- Embrace tasks that can only be done by themselves
There you have it, my ten bullet point thoughts from this post. Better stop now, 1,138 words is certainly WAY longer than any successful blog post is supposed to be, next time I’ll try to shoot for the standard 250 words… but don’t count on it.
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I love having this conversation with my paper book loving friends, maybe because I am always in the minority when it comes to eBooks over paper books with the IRL friends. Even if you don’t read my post below, go read this comical view of the debate from TheNextWeb called Product Review: Will ‘Paper’ Replace E-Readers?. This is a great look at the debate, which is sure to rage on for years, but digital is gaining ground every day. Amazon even announced last year that Kindle eBooks started outselling paper books, but that’s old news now (see also What Amazon Didn’t Say About eBooks by CNET). I even wrote this: Amazon Kindle 2 iPhone App and the Future of Books? almost two years ago now when the Kindle 2 came out, it’s interesting to see how eBooks have changed since that post.
I do think that the physical paper printing of books will always be with us as long as we have trees left to use. There is value in each platform, but it is hard to deny the future of books is in a digital form, just like analog LP’s made way for MP3′s. There are many today who still swear by vinyl records, saying the sound quality surpasses a Compact Disc (which from what I understand, it does), but LP’s are now a niche in the digital world of music.
The history of an LP is far far less in time than the historical life span of the printed book by some two thousand years or so, so it may take a long long time before we see paper books reduced to the level of vinyl records. Good or bad though, it seems inevitable at some future date that eBooks will far outsell and be the preferred platform to read a book. This two lists below is an extremely small snapshot, it could easily have been a list of 20 plus, but for sake of being long-winded, here are a few.
The Pros About eBook and eReaders
- Price :: It’s almost always cheaper
- Weight :: No matter how many books, they all weigh the same
- Features :: instant searching, highlights, bookmarks, notes, and more
It is almost always the case that eBooks are cheaper than paper copies, sometimes drastically cheaper. This is just the realities of the manufacturing process. Paper is expensive, uses natural resources, and you are taking a digital original (I am guessing no author writes by hand, but all use a computer to write) making it into paper. An eBook you don’t have that conversion.
There are still publishers that just don’t get it, or are overly greedy. I would love to see one give a side by side comparison of profit margins for an eBook over a paper copy that has to make its way into the distribution network. An eBook is overwhelmingly cheaper to produce and distribute than a paper copy, so “most” publishers pass that savings along to their customers. If the eBook is close to the same price, it shouldn’t be. DRM is always trying to rear its ugly head as well.
I can carry 10 books, or 100 books on my iPad 2 and their combined weight is still going to be 1.33 pounds (601 g). This is a bigger deal, at least to me, than it sounds. If I am going on a trip, especially on a plane, I can literally take as many books as I can possibly read, that just isn’t physically possible with paper.
This in an incredible feature of owning an eBook. You have instant access to search all aspects of the book, your notes, highlights, and you even have instant access to a dictionary, Wikipedia search, or even a google search on a selected area (try searching the bible for one single word or phrase by paper). Amazon takes this one step farther and offers all highlights, notes, and bookmarks for each book on your Amazon account at http://kindle.amazon.com/. From there you can access everything associated with each kindle book.
The Pros About Paper Books
- The Physical Smell and Feel of Paper?
- Paper is Art :: it is created only when reading is complete
- Comfort Factor
This seems to be the biggest hang up with those who love paper books, you can’t get that musty smell of the paper and ink with an iPad. I know this smell well. Deb and I owned our own book business for several years (see We are No Longer Selling Books as Amazon Marketplace Sellers) and we had a house filled to the brim with tens of thousands of books. It is a smell that lingers with you for a long time. Personally, I love the smell of solder and computer boards in the morning, but it’s true, you don’t get that connection with nature without the paper.
I understand this one too, but I would think a hand written copy by a scribe would be more art than a bulk made printing press, but yes, you the reader make the book into art as you read the book. If you highlight, underline, scribble, you are free range on the book and when the book is finished, you have a new “work of art” unlike anyone else. Of course if you are one who never highlights or makes notes (and if you are, I don’t get that either), then the book is not art, but just the same book that still sits on a Barnes & Noble shelf.
For some it’s just the comfort, like that of an old slipper. A book, by definition, is paper. If it’s digital, call it an eBook, not a book. Some say it just isn’t the same to curl up with your iPad eBook in front of a warm fire and drift off into the greater beyond of reading. I will say on this point that there is a distraction factor with a digital device that is totally removed by a paper book. Your paper book won’t pop up with a Tweet or news alert while you are in the middle of a deep chapter, and this adds to the comfort level.
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I remember when we use to marvel at the power we had at the tip of our fingers on those big clunky desktop computers. You always use to hear things like this computer is more powerful than the one that was used to launch the Apollo rockets, and it was, but today, in the world of tablets (Android or iPad), it truly is amazing how much power we have at our fingertips. Combine an iPad with a wireless bluetooth keyboard and you have something that is mightier than both the sword and the pen.
I understand, realize, and recognize, this isn’t for everyone. I know some don’t even have Internet access and don’t miss it, which is perfectly fine. Those who have chosen to use the technology that comes with being alive in 2011 know that what you are starting to be able to do with tablets is amazing. The lines between being tied to even a laptop have diminished with every passing month, and I equate it to what it must have been like when the car was invented and suddenly people could travel far greater distances than they ever could before.
This is not an Apple thing or an Android thing, this is a means to communicate, to reach and connect with other people, and in many cases a means to change the world. Some may think that is a stretch, so, ok, today, it is a means to read Paul’s words in the book of Acts, and my Friday Feet.
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Yes, for the first time ever, I (and Deborah) actually stood in line for an Apple product release. We weren’t even planning to do so but yesterday on a strange set of circumstances, I sold both my iPad and Deborah’s iPad within a few minutes and couldn’t give them to the new owners until we picked up the new one. I have a host of reasons for upgrading this particular device at this particular time but I will save those for an actual iPad 2 review in a later post.
In short, the iPad really is a revolutionary device that has changed computing for good (and for the good). The time I spend on my computer gets less and less all the time because of the iPad, which is great, but the number of books I have read over the last year more than paid for the iPad (books which cost $14.99 to buy at the store cost $1.99 on the Amazon Kindle app). Those are just two reasons among many, I’ll follow that up with a review some day.
All in all in our little town there were about 60 or so people in line for the 15 iPad’s Apple decided Best Buy should have. We got to talk to and get to know several people over a few hours, and take a break from our normal routine, which was nice. All of the consumerism issues aside, I have addressed those many times before, like Apple and AT&T Set Another Round of Innovation in iPhone 4, it was a fun afternoon, and today, is my Friday Feet.
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I recently purchased a copy of John Shaw’s eBook called John Shaw’s Digital Processing, A Personal Workflow using Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 (a great book if you are a photographer looking for some insight into post-processing and the digital workflow process, well worth he $25) hoping I would be able to convert it to an ePub file and read it in iBooks on my iPad. I was able to convert his previous eBook, John Shaw’s Photoshop Field Guide, but have just about given up on his new one, the structure of the PDF looks to be just too complicated to convert, but I am going to use his two eBooks as the example since one will convert and one won’t.
I have searched long and hard for a how-to on converting PDF files to ePub files so you can read them in iBooks or a variety of eBook readers, and have found almost no consolidated information, so here it is. There are several reasons why converting PDF files to an ePub file is not the easiest thing to do, and they often seem to error out or format improperly. This how-to guide is written for the intention of taking a PDF eBook (or any PDF file) for loading it into iBooks in iTunes for use on your iPad, but the same process can be used for most all eBook readers.
Some Basic PDF Info
All PDF’s are not made the same. They all have different formatting, some have images, some are just plain text, some are print screen save-as files, you can basically take anything you can see or print on the Internet and turn it into a PDF. The reason is most everyone everywhere can read a PDF, and most have the free version Adobe PDF reader (at this writing the current version is Adobe Reader 9.3.2).
Because these files can be created by almost any means, often they do not make the greatest, prettiest looking, eBooks, and it is not an exact science to get a PDF to an ePub file, even harder to get it to look nice on your eBook reader. Your final outcome is going to depend on how the file was created in the first place, not something you have control over most of the time. Some PDF files because of their structure will never be able to be converted to an ePub file and you will have to look at alternatives like a good PDF reader like Goodreader on the iPad.
Ways to Convert PDF’s to ePub Using ePub2Go or Stanza
Once you have your PDF file you want to convert, you can try the quickest and easiest PDF to ePub converter first, and if that doesn’t work, then move on to the next alternative. First thing to try is a site called ePub2Go. This is basically the ONLY online PDF to ePub conversion tool you can access for free and without downloading another stand alone app or program.
Step 1 :: ePub2Go The process is pretty simple, just click the link the pdf is on my computer then let them convert the file. Once it’s finished just click on view or save it on my computer and your done.
If you get finished with the conversion and you get an error message you pretty much have to move on at this point. You can get a variety of errors like the screen shot below. That is just one of the error message you could get, but once you get that, you won’t be able to convert the file using ePub2Go.
Step 2 :: Stanza The next thing to try would be to download a free copy of Stanza by Lexcycle (download available for Windows or Mac), a great generic type eBook reader, and convert the file using the desktop app or program. Stanza has moved their main product line to the mobile eBook reader but they have a great conversion tool in the desktop app.
After you download and install the program it will prompt you to open a file. Just open your preferred PDF file. You will probably need to adjust the number of columns and on larger screens, depending on how the PDF is created, it may or may not look formatted properly, but this will be similar to your final ePub output file.
Next just go to the file menu and choose –> file –> export book as –> ePub. You can also see there are a host of options available to convert the PDF to a Kindle file and many others. If that works, great, if it doesn’t, you are quickly running out of options. Stanza also has a tutorial on how to convert files as well that is very helpful.
Step 3 :: Adobe Acrobat / HTML / Word / Plain Text If step 1 or 2 doesn’t work then you are left with trying to manipulate the file into behaving properly enough to do a conversion, but even that may not work at this point, this is the last ditch effort before you have to just stick with reading the PDF.
If you have Adobe Acrobat (not the free reader but the full version of Acrobat) you can export the PDF as a variety of file types (but not an ePub). Many times you can export a file as an HTML file and fix the issues the PDF had that caused the conversion to ePub error and then try step 1 or step 2 above after you have corrected the problem. Explaining how to correct the file in HTML is beyond the scope of this article but it’s often easy to see where the conversion is getting hung.
In the case of my above issues with Shaw’s newest eBook, I tried to export it as a Word Doc, RTF, HTML, and Plain Text and due to the complexity of the PDF it just wasn’t feasible to convert the file in a readable format. In that case, I am going to just pull it over to my iPad using Goodreader and read it as a PDF.
I was surprised how few PDF to ePub file converters were really available. I did leave off several paid for programs that convert these file types but most of them just use the same process as step 1 and 2 above and I really wouldn’t pay for the programs myself. You can get a PDF to ePub Converter trial from CNET, PDFtoEPUB from DNAML Software, or PDF to ePub from DONGSOFT, but all are pricy alternatives after the trial runs out.
Coming up I will finish this article with taking the new ePub file you have created (or the PDF that you couldn’t get converted) and showing how to load it into iBooks using iTunes. How do you convert your PDF’s?
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Being the technology type, I had been looking at the Kindle 2 since it was announced and found it very intriguing. Most everyone that looks at the Kindle, 1st or 2nd generation, balks at the price of the device but being a photographer and traditionally having to spend $1,000′s on one single lens, spending $360 on a device that will save me money on the price of books didn’t seem like that much to try it out.
Not that $360 isn’t a lot to spend on the Kindle 2, but I just sold a few lenses out of my camera bag that weren’t used to much and a few days later the Kindle 2 arrived. After using the Kindle 2 for a while I felt like a review of this new piece of technology would be appropriate, but it didn’t end the way I had anticipated.
I will say right off, it is the best, most sophisticated ebook reader (that displays eink as it’s called) and theoretically it can digitize your book collection or library much like the iPod has done for music. If you just want the conclusion, scan down to that section and I will sum it all up for you. Some of you may know that I have a Kindle Screen that was damaged (see Damaged or Defective Kindle 2 Screen) so this was after the replacement had been sent by Amazon.
The Kindle 2 Graded
If you want the short of it, here are my grades for the Kindle 2 on different variables in no particular order.
- Price – [B]
- Size, Weight, Shape – [B]
- Screen – [C-]
- Keyboard – [D]
- Software – [C-]
- Ease of Reading [A-]
- Ease of Searching books [D]
- Availability of Books for the Kindle [B+]
- Price of Books [B-]
- Price of Periodicals [C-]
- Durability [C-]
- Customer Support [A]
- Portability [A]
- Practicality [C]
- Internet Browser / Browsing [F]
- Multi-use Portable Technology Device, i.e. it is a reader, only [D-]
- Highlighting and Taking Notes [C-]
- Compared to Other eBook Devices [A]
- Saving Trees [A+]
- Creating a Digital Library [A]
- Ability to Mimic Reading a Paper Book [D-]
All the point above are not weighted equally of course, but overall, I give the Kindle 2 (not having ever used the Kindle 1 but having used most modern portable decives on the market) a total grade of a “C”.
1. Price at $359 – About Right to Me
This is one of the biggest complaints of the Kindle 2. It costs $359 and since it is only sold by Amazon you can’t really find it for less than that anywhere. You can find a few used on eBay, but none of the Kindle 2 and Amazon only has a few Kindle 1 in the new/used category.
To me, the price is about right for what it does and the competition it has right now. When the iPod first came out it was (and still is) about that price and people couldn’t buy them fast enough. Of course the difference is the Kindle 2 requires that you actually read something. The iPod since it deals with music has a much larger appeal to the 18-28 age range, and they will usually plunk down $350 for just about anything if they want it bad enough.
I would not or do not expect Amazon to lower the price any time soon until the Kindle 3 comes out, and why should they. Amazon is probably making bundles on these Kindles with them priced at $359, and I think the price is about right.
2. Overall Size & Weight – OK, But Could be Bigger
The new Kindle 2 is light years ahead of the Kindle 1 in size and weight. It is about the size in total of a paper back book (not the screen size, the entire device). It is light and thin, but if I was wanting to ready a long book I could have used the Kindle 2 even larger than it is. The thickness is about right but I would love to see one about the size of a piece of paper.
3. The Screen – Can You Say, Touch, Color, and Backlit?
The screen is a 16 color grayscale, matte screen. To me, this was one of the bigger disappointments of the Kindle 2. The screen was to small, it was not in color, it was not a touch screen, and the biggest for me, the screen is not backlit.
Although the font size can be changed, the screen was too small to really be able to read a full page (on paper) on the Kindle 2. I would like to see one page on the Kindle equal one page on the corresponding paper book. Maybe I am jaded by using an iPhone for more than a year now. I want to be able to touch the screen and have it do what I want, not move some cursor around like I’m in DOS and in the same respect, a color screen is pretty much standard on everything today and it just looked old school. The last biggie on the screen was the fact that it wasn’t backlit. I would have preferred to be able to sit in a dark room and read without the need for a reading light.
One last bit on the screen. All of the images are all converted to gray, which in itself is fine, but it lost detail and did not show what I am use to in a high res screen that shows great detail in black and white.
I understand all those things go to battery life, but I would sacrifice a 2 week battery for one that lasts a few days for the above changes on the screen.
4. Keyboard – Needs Some Help
I know I keep going back to the iPhone, but that I the current device I am use to using. The keyboard on the Kindle 2 is a full keyboard, but it works like the crackberry qwerty keyboard’s of old. This is because the keys are very small. I would have liked to see them closer together and much much larger than the small round dots. They were hard for me to use, but it was a full-ish keyboard. All special characters were like a comma, or punctuation, were all on the shift end, which was a pain.
I did like the fact that you could type out comments and notes, but they were hard to get right and easy to mess up.
5. Software Interface – Good, But Not Very Sophisticated
The interface where you actually read the books is good for what it is intended for, but it lacks much of the functionality of today’s handheld devices. It has wireless through Sprint’s 3G network, and I seemed to get a signal everywhere, even where I don’t on my iPhone (which isn’t really saying much). Books downloaded quickly and the newspaper subscriptions were always on the Kindle 2 the next morning when I went to read them (I did the trial for the USA Today).
Reading on the eyes is good, probably because of the grayscale I didn’t like, and you can change the font size so it suits your needs. Taking notes and highlighting on the Kindle 2 is ok, but no where close to perfect. It saves all the notes into one .txt file and to extract the information you have to parse through all the different notes from the other books. It doesn’t separate out notes for specific books but puts everything all in one file. I would have much preferred the file attach to the actual piece I was reading.
Flipping from book to book is a little slow but works well. If you are trying to get back to a specific place in a book it is a little hard to do unless you bookmark the spot. Moving around in the books from place to place is much harder than flipping through the book.
Conclusion
In the title I said the “not-so-normal” review, because in the end, I returned my Kindle to Amazon, twice. I have never been accused of being old school. I will embrace technology and new developments before they are even released, but I still buy all my music on physical CD’s (to burn to my iPhone, iTunes, iPod etc) because there is something you can’t get from a download, the art the artist put into the album. The design of the artwork, the stories they still include in the booklet, silk screening on the CD itself, back cover artwork, and of course the ability to burn without digital rights management crap.
After using the Kindle 2 for about a week, I took it on a trip to South Carolina and while I was on the trip, the screen became damaged or something, but it wasn’t working correctly (see Damaged or Defective Kindle 2 Screen // Photos). After receiving a new one from Amazon, I continued to use the Kindle for a while and finally came to the conclusion that I did not like the Kindle 2 enough to actually keep it.
In the end, it came down to something I totally didn’t expect. I found out that you can not (at least not easily) replicate the actual reading of a book on paper. You smell the pages, you can flip through pages, write in the margins, underline passages and as you do so, you become part of the book. Each book is different. The covers are different, the font size changes, the thickness of the paper, all which is very hard to duplicate in the electronic world and you end up reading all these different books and they all look and feel the same.
As a friend would tell me, it’s not art. The art of reading, and a lot of the time, it is the art of reading in the way the author intended. This says nothing about the Kindle 2 device because it can’t replicate the actual flipping of the pages like you can when you physically hold that book.
If you want to read a book straight through from beginning to end, page after page, the Kindle may be right for you. I want to get lost in time, lost in the pages of paper, ink, and verse, and at least for now, I will stick with the printed book.
5 Great Thought Provoking Daily Devotionals for the New Year
I started looking around for a new daily devotional for 2012, and I ended up coming across too many. I came across some really good ones I haven’t read yet, but now have always had all intentions to read. This list, to some, may be a little too high church for them, but the wisdom put forth into these devotionals is pretty amazing, written by some pretty amazingly committed Believers.
I will state the obvious that none of these below will take the place of reading the inspired Word, the wisdom placed into God’s own book far outweighs any of the books below, so if there is only time in the day to read one book, for only a short period of time, make it the Bible instead of any of these books below, and I’m sure each of the authors below would agree with that. With that said, the best online Bible reading plans are located on YouVersion, so check those out as well.
The list below is all linked over to the Kindle version on Amazon, but each has a corresponding paper version. I just gave up on trying to have books shipped, the availability, and usually lower cost, of Kindle books just far outweighs the hassle of paper now, to me, for the most part anyway (see Printed Books vs iPad or Kindle eBooks and the Future of Books from back in March, or this I wrote back in 2009).
I decided to choose the “updated version” of this classical devotion since it is better annotated on the Kindle version at this point than the “traditional” version (first published in 1935). I think there is a lot of value in the original language of the traditional version, but having read neither in full, I decided to go with one that has a little easier language to start. Oswald Chambers was gifted with extracting the essence of biblical principles and condensing them into potent, thought-provoking, and life-changing devotions.
They don’t take a lot of time to read, but they can infuse you with the timeless truths of the Bible. In this edition of My Utmost for His Highest, you get updated-language daily devotionals that have become an enduring favorite because Oswald Chambers used his spiritual gifts so wisely and generously. Compiled from lectures given at the Bible Training College in London, to nightly talks in an Egyptian YMCA during World War I, My Utmost for His Highest will lend a powerful spiritual dimension to your walk with God. (some excerpts via Amazon)
The Upper Room is a publication that is, in part, produced by the United Methodist Church. The Upper Room is a global ministry, which is technically interdenominational, dedicated to supporting the spiritual formation of Christians seeking to know and experience God more fully. While they now produce far more than The Upper Room devotional, this devotional publication has stood the test of time more so than many other devotionals. For more information about their ministry you can visit them at upperroom.org.
This devotional is a fascinating find to me. It is a publication that C.S. Lewis never put together himself, but editors have taken pieces of his writings to place them in one daily reader. This book of daily readings, culled from C.S. Lewis’s major nonfiction writings like The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, Miracles and A Grief Observed, might be called the thinking Christian’s devotional: it is deeper and meatier than most other devotionals on the market.
With 366 entries (including one for Leap Year) that are typically one or two paragraphs each, Klein has managed to distill some of the most memorable passages from Lewis’s famous corpus. Interestingly, she includes a bit of Lewis trivia for each day of the year, and often pairs the reading with the biographical information: for example, we learn that on March 21, 1957, Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, and the entry for that day is about their marriage. Three separate indices list the sources by book, by day and by selection title or theme. (some excerpts via Amazon)
This is the classical Bonhoeffer daily reader. Bonhoeffer put together this set of devotionals upon the closing of his seminary, Finkenwalde, when it was declared illegal and closed by the German Gestapo. The treatise contains Bonhoeffer’s thoughts about the nature of Christian community based on the common life that he and his seminarians experienced at the seminary and in the “Brother’s House” there. Bonhoeffer completed the writing of Life Together in 1938. Prayerbook of the Bible is a classic of Christian spirituality. In this theological interpretation of the Psalms, Bonhoeffer describes the moods of an individual’s relationship with God and also the turns of love and heartbreak, of joy and sorrow, that are themselves the Christian community’s path to God. (some excerpts above are from Amazon)
This collection of inspirational writings from Dietrich Bonhoeffer is drawn from his many works and presented here as a series of daily meditations to last throughout the year. Organized under monthly themes, these prayers, sermons, meditations, letters, and notes offer readers a new glimpse at how Bonhoeffer understood the meaning of faith and discipleship. Featuring selections from classic works such as The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison, this set of writings follows the church year, making it ideal for year-long devotional use by readers seeking to be challenged and enlightened by Bonhoeffer’s call to find God at the center of their lives. (some excerpts via Amazon)
I guess this is where it gets really high church, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of value in this book. This book, especially this highly annotated copy on Kindle, provides everything from daily prayers to events on the Christian calendar. The Kindle TOC (table of contents) in this book is so extensive, making it quite an impressive Kindle book, and it’s price can’t be beat at only $2.99.
This is the Episcopal version of the Catholic Missal (which is absent on Amazon Kindle in the same version as above), and the book that the Episcopal Church uses in its services. I have only recently been introduced to this book, and it has an amazing amount of wisdom. This Kindle version contains both versions from 1979 and 1789, which contains The Book of Common Prayer, Administration of the Sacraments, Other Rites, Ceremonies of the Church, and The Psalter or Psalms of David. Worth the read no matter what your denomination.
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