10 things...

I appreciate about sports:
(in no particular order)
1. The attention to detail given to tracking stats. I mean, where else do you find out how many yards the top 4 running backs covered in any 3 year span.
2. Someone's ( I say someone because I do not know the hero of which I speak) amazing ability to get stains out of clothes.
3. Uniforms. I'm all for uniforms.
4. I little cheat-sheet thing some football players wear on their forearms. I could use one of those on days I need to be on my A-game.
5. The camaraderie an athletic event demands. In what other moment can you gather people from so many races, financial brackets, education, height & weight?
6. The small, yet very precise and clear, little camera that zooms atop the football (and soccer too, maybe?) field.
7. That writing about sports fields makes me practice the elementary grammar rule: i before e except after c. I will always need to practice that rule. I do not like the word "field" for some reason.
8. The level of commitment that teammates have to one another and their coach, typically. I like that. It's not seen in many other areas of life.
9. The commercials.
10. The headsets. Headsets that tell you what to do, when to do, who to have help you....all at the very second you need it. I could use a headset like that. Please?

Book Review: Night, Night Blessings (ebook version) good story

This was my first e-book download....and to my surprise, I really liked it. Last week, I downloaded a copy of Night, Night Blessings by Amy Parker onto my IPad. I was a little hesitant. I have maintained my membership in the real-paper&ink-book-in-hand club, but I was pleasantly surprised. 

Parker did a great job with her poetic, thankful blessings to be read before bed. My girls loved it and loved swiping through the pages on my IPad. Additionally, her pictures were  sweet and gentle. (Can a picture be gentle? I think so. Anyway....) 

Great story. Get it digitally. Read it to your kids. 

Thanks BookSneeze for a free book download in exchange for an honest review.  

Book Review: Faith & Culture: buy 2 copies- one for yourself and one for someone else

Faith & Culture (by Kelly Kullburg) is another great resource to add to your booklist and bookshelf. This book was a collection of 15 weeks worth of devotional readings which cover weekly themes in the areas of literature, art, history, science, pop culture, etc. The writing was tight and thought provoking. At the end of the page or two for each reading, questions were provided for further thought. 

I feel this text would best be accepted by younger adults and college students...or anyone with heart for or similar to them. 

I loved that within weeks of reading the book, I found myself coming in contact with people or topics mentioned in the readings. This isn’t some dusty relic hoping to be rediscovered. This is fresh, current, and real stuff. 

Grab a copy for yourself and another young person you know.  

Zondervan provided a free copy for me in exchange for an honest and real review. Thanks Zondervan. You can pick up your own copy here. 

By the way, I also love the old and dusty relics! 

Book Review: Surprised By Oxford....a keeper

She belonged to the group before she believed anything they said. He lived a life worthy of noticing, in front of anyone wanting to watch. Wonderful and amazing things happened because of it all. Carolynn’s story is normal and exciting, typical and captivating all at the same time. In her memoir Surprised by Oxford, Carolynn tells her own story of the year she spent studying at one of the oldest universities in the world. She shares about the friends she meets, the culture she comes to love, the professors that challenge her and her family back home in the states that are puzzled by what she finds in a far away place. 

I found myself feeling like I was Carolynn’s friend too, sitting right next to her, experiencing all she was experiencing along with her. I quickly read the 440 pages in just a few days. 

Carolynn writes on page 138, “I began to worry that perhaps I was getting in over my head here. It was occurring to me that believing in the Bible was an all-or-nothing affair. Either you believe it is the revealed Word of God, or you don’t. It’s like being pregnant. Impossible. Either you are in or you are out. Having eliminated lunatic, given the unavoidable seriousness warranted of my attention, was it now liar or Lord? I was still not sure. Yet why did reading this text give me goose bumps- literal goose bumps- more consistently than anything else I had ever read? Why did my life and how it related to the lives of others hitherto now make more sense, and yet more than ever, in and of itself, not seem enough?” 

Grab a copy. Here!

I would recommend this book to any student or adult. I would also recommend this book to anyone interested in getting into the mind of someone who grew up “around” Christianity, but really has no idea what this whole Bible-thing is all about. This puts words to something that I feel is really confusing to many trusting people. 

Thomas Nelson provided a free copy of Surprised by Oxford, by Carolynn Weber in exchange for an honest review. Thanks TNP!