I bought a Kindle 2 about a month ago. I’ve been using it just about everyday. I love it. People have asked me if they should get one, so I figured I’d review it with a few thoughts:

- If you don’t already read, you won’t read more just because you have a Kindle 2, but if you love to read, you will read more, because in my opinion, it makes reading more convenient, quicker, and easier to stay organized, especially if you are reading multiple books.

- I have only had 2 books that I want to read, not be available for the Kindle 2

- Purchasing content is cheaper than buying traditional books

- Making clips and exporting them, is changing the way I retain information from what I read. You can highlight, take notes etc just like a real book. It creates a text file that you can then export to your computer. Now I’ll have cliff notes for every book I read. Great for book reviews on blogs or later reference.

- It’s not perfect. It does a lot of things really well around it’s core purpose (e-book reader). I don’t love it for reference because while it has great search features, it’s a few steps to switch books. It’s not a show stopper if you want to use it for reference, but to me it could be better. I don’t enjoy reading periodicals on it. I tried the USA Today for free for a week. I stopped after that. It works fine, I just don’t think that’s what I bought it for.

- It’s a small package. I had 5 books with me in a package that’s about the thickness of a pencil and about the size of your normal Moleskin notebook.

- I wish the keyboard had a slightly different feel to it. The layout and size is good. I just find I mis-type things (e.g. miss a letter) due to the type of tactile feedback it provides.

- The battery lasts forever with the wireless turned off.

- The Kindle 2 will also read to you with a ‘Text to Speech’ feature. It’s fine if you have to keep getting through something but are unable to read for a period of time. But in the end, the voice is a little annoying. Those who argue that this feature will replace audio books are dead wrong. I can’t imagine an audio book fan trading their Audible account for this feature. The voice provides no emotion and does mispronounce words from time to time. I couldn’t listen to a whole book with this functionality. (FYI, you can load MP3s and Audible books onto the device and listen to those)

- My favorite part is one handed reading. I can do something else (e.g. feed L.J.) and read at the same time.

- The ability to share books is a missing feature. I think you should be able to loan or gift a copy of a book to another Kindle user, with your notes. I often share or gift books that I enjoy and I think a lot of other readers do too. That is a part of the reading community that the Kindle 2 doesn’t have a solution for yet.

- I think I’m done with old-fashioned books. Right now, I don’t see a need for them. I wish Amazon would have accepted a trade-in of my old paper books for credit towards Kindle content. Might be a good incentive if anyone at Amazon ever happens to read this.

Obviously, this isn’t a full technical review. There are plenty of those online to read (I think I read them all before I ordered mine). If you are considering a Kindle 2 and have other questions just send me a comment. If you’re in the area, I’ll let you check it out. I was upset that it can only be purchased online from Amazon making it impossible to see before buying.

p.s. – the first book I read on my Kindle 2 was Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley. Look for a book review on The Faction in the near future, using the clip feature on the Kindle 2.

Vacation is great. I read. A lot. The last book I finished is called ‘It’ by Craig Groeschel. If you don’t know about Craig, he is the pastor of LifeChurch.tv. From their website: LifeChurch.tv is a group of people from all walks of life who are being transformed by Jesus Christ. Every week, we join together around the world to worship God and to experience a relevant and powerful message, which teaches truths from the Bible. Through satellite broadcasts that enable all of our twelve locations to be connected as one, LifeChurch.tv is a multi-site church that transcends metropolitan regions. To learn about the work he and his team are doing, or to attend a service click here: LifeChurch.tv.

‘It’, is really an easy read. You can really hear Craig’s voice coming through as you read it. He’s as direct and bold in the book as he is in his messages. There’s some really great one-liners too. I love Craig and this book because he is so honest, real and normal (e.g. there is a story that ends with him desiring to punch a lady in the mouth. He didn’t, but it added great color to the story). I would describe ‘It’ as part ‘how-to’ for ministry and part ‘leadership principles for church leaders’. The central theme of ‘It’ is ‘it’. So what is ‘it’? Well, Craig can’t even define it. But he insists that it’s obvious when a church has it and it’s obvious when they lose it. In my limited experience, I’d have to agree. Sometimes you visit a church and ‘it’ is there. Though he can’t define ‘it’ he does a good job of teaching how to get ‘it’ and how to keep ‘it’, primarily through his own experiences with ‘it’ and without ‘it’. Trust me, it’s good.

Besides the principles that he discusses, there are profiles throughout of different, significant pastors that represent the principle that is being covered. The profiles were really effective at substantiating the principles and were great, because they added credibility to the book because it wasn’t all about Craig or LifeChurch.tv. For me, the best part was the last 2 chapters.

I would recomend this for anyone at any level of church leadership (including volunteers). Overall, I don’t know how well the leadership principles transcend the church so it’s not a good leadership read for non-church leaders, but then again, it’s not pretending to be that either. So here’s your excerpts:

- You can find ‘it’ in all types of churches.
- When a ministry has ‘it’, most things the leaders try seem to work.
- When a church has ‘it’, lives are changing, and everyone around knows it.
- Many people misinterpret it by observing a growing church with outward signs of success (videos, buildings, fancy kids’ rooms etc).
- You can’t copy ‘it’. You could try to fake ‘it’, but people would be able to tell.

So a new book has entered my top 3 favorites of all time. That book is The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. The Alchemist is a fictional story of a shepherd boy who is trying to fulfill his own “Personal Legend” and along that path he encounters many different people that help him learn important principles to follow his dreams. I know that sounds so simple, but the content is profound. It’s page after page of ‘kingdom principles’ in story form. On Christmas Eve, I went to Starbucks and five hours later, the book was finished. I literally didn’t put it down. And I gifted it twice. Really, it’s that good. Here’s your excerpts:

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting” – Santiago

“Dreams are the language of God” – the old gypsy woman

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.” – Paulo Coehlo

“The world’s greatest lie is that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.” – Melchizedek

“We’re all afraid of losing what we have. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.” – the camel driver

“If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And if you can improve upon the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves His children.”- the seer

And probably one of my favorites is a dialog between Santiago and the alchemist:

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer.” – Santiago
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of it’s dreams because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God.” – The Alchemist