Every week or so I update our family members on their Kindle books. We each keep our own Kindle, but we share an Amazon account together. I keep track of who buys what. The cool part is that we can share the books with one another. Not only does it save us money, but it gives us something to enjoy with one another. Here is this week's email.
Dear Dad, Jillian, Tim, Jessica, Dave, Jennifer, Mike, Nancy, Patty, Cheryl and Grayden (Jon):
After almost a full year of saving money, my grandson Grayden finally bought his own Kindle! Many family members - mostly members of this club - have been "helping" over this past year, slipping a dollar or two to Grayden whenever they got the chance. Just about the time when he had enough saved to buy the $139 Kindle 3, Amazon came out with the new models and simultaneously dropped the price to $79 for the least expensive model.
I was present with my son, Jonathan, and grandson when they went to Target to pick out the Kindle. Jonathan was rooting for Grayden to pick out the $99 Kindle Touch, but Grayden liked the buttons on the bottom. And he liked that extra 20 bucks for buying books! He's a boy after his grandfather's heart!!!
Here's one more "Grayden Kindle Story" that will warm your hearts. At church we have been promoting the YouVersion Bible app with Bible stickers that our church members can put on the back of all their electronic Bibles. The first thing Grayden did was put a YouVersion Bible sticker on the back of his new Kindle. The other night I was over at his house with my own Kindle Flame. Right away Grayden noticed that I didn't have a Bible app sticker on the back of my Kindle. "Why not Grandpa?" Yep, he's a boy after his grandfather's heart!
Ten New Books - Our newest club member, Cheryl has been a busy girl these past two weeks picking out seven of the ten books added since my last message to you. I love some of the books she has added, including Children's picture books that look great on the Kindle Flame or the iPad. Grandparents will love showing off these books to their youngest grandkids! Tim picked up a classic cheese making how-to. Dad added a history book on the Scots-Irish culture. And I added one middle-grader book for Grayden's new Kindle. All the new books are listed in detail below. This brings our total ebooks in our Kindle Family Bookclub to 897 book titless, not including 112 Audible books, also available on your Kindles.
Two New Members - We have two new members joining our bookclub in the next week or so. I have been sworn to secrecy because of the Santa Surprise factor. But suffice to say, I've been a very busy little elf lately making it possible for two new members to join our merry band!
Kindle 3 Software Update - Make sure your Kindle has the most up-to-date software. Click Home-Menu-Settings and then look at the bottom right hand side of your screen. It should say "Version: Kindle 3.3." If it doesn't just turn on your Wifi and connect to an available Wi-fi network. Then click Menu and select "Sync and Check for Items." More information about version 3.3, what's new, and how to update can be found here.
New Titles - Here's the new books added to our account in the last two weeks.
Experiencing Grief by H. Norman Wright
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $3.39
Nonfiction, Christian
At one time or another, we will all find ourselves facing a dark journey—the passage through grief. Experiencing Grief is written for a person who is in the wake of despair grief leaves. This brief but powerful book will help lead readers out of their grief experience through five stages of grief. At the end of the journey is peace and a seasoned, more mature faith.
Confessions of a Grieving Christian by Zig Ziglar
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $8.99
Nonfiction, Christian
On May 13, 1995, God called Zig Ziglar’s oldest daughter, Suzan, home after a prolonged illness. Journeying through his own grief, Ziglar realized many things about himself, his family, his priorities, and God. In this comforting book, he uses his experience to encourage readers to deal with the reality of loss and learn to take up the threads of life again as they find consolation and inspiration in the Giver of all Peace.
The Magical Dragon's Three Gifts by Rachel Yu
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $0.00
Children's Picture Book
Purchased by Mark for Grayden
Price $3.99
Children's Fiction
Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll
Purchased by Tim
Price $8.99
Nonfiction, Cheese and Dairy
The classic home cheese making primer has been updated and revised to reflect the increased interest in artisanal-quality cheeses and the availability of cheese making supplies and equipment. Here are 85 recipes for cheeses and other dairy products that require basic cheese making techniques and the freshest of ingredients, offering the satisfaction of turning out a coveted delicacy. Among the step-by-step tested recipes for cheese varieties are farmhouse cheddar, gouda, fromage blanc, queso blanco, marscarpone, ricotta, and 30-minute mozzarella. Recipes for dairy products include crFme frafche, sour cream, yogurt, keifer, buttermilk, and clotted cream. There are also 60 recipes for cooking with cheese, including such treats as Ricotta Pancakes with Banana Pecan Syrup, Cream Cheese Muffins, Broiled Pears and Vermont Shepherd Cheese, Prosciutto and Cheese Calzones, and Grilled Vegetable Stacks with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce. Profiles of home cheese makers and artisan cheese makers scattered throughout the text share the stories of people who love to make and eat good cheese. Plus information on how to enjoy homemade cheeses, how to serve a cheese course at home, cheese tips, lore, quotes, cheese making glossary, and more.
Cougar Cub Tales: Lost and Alone by Sharon Cramer
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $0.00
Children's Picture Book
Lost and Alone, is about two sibling cougar cubs who live alone after losing their mother. The cubs are at odds one day, as siblings will be, and they decide to go their separate ways. The adventure becomes lonely and the cubs discover that the single most important thing is to find one another. Unusual circumstances come into play as the cubs are wonderfully reunited, never again to be separated. The story deals with the everyday childhood issues of friend or sibling rivalry and spats and conflict resolution. It communicates to a child in a wonderful, nonsensical rhyme, and the eighteen watercolors are an exquisite representation of this timeless story.
Cougar Cub Tales: I'm Just Like You by Sharon Cramer
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $0.00
Children's Picture Book
Cougar Cub Tales: I’m Just Like You is about a cougar cub brother and sister who, one day, encounter a creature very unlike themselves. They have ungrounded apprehension about whether or not the blind bobcat is “a REAL cougar cub”. By the end of the tale, they realize that they really ARE the same, overlooking their physical differences as they embrace their new friend. It is a timeless story that deals with the everyday issue of intolerance, especially regarding physical difference and disability. It is written in a wonderful nonsensical rhyme, and the eighteen watercolors are an exquisite representation of this charming tale.
O Little Town by Don Reed
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $0.00 (Price now back to $9.99!)
Christian Fiction
In a small town at Christmas, three families find themselves muddling their way through the challenges of life: marriage, illness, bad decisions, friendship, faith, forgiveness and a fifty-year-old mystery. If you like the music of The Statler Brothers or the fiction of Debbie Macomber, you'll be excited that with O LITTLE TOWN, Statler Brother Don Reid has made his first foray into fiction. The Grammy Award-winning songwriter sets his seasonal tale in the fictional town of Mt. Jefferson (modeled after his hometown of Staunton, Virginia).
The Touch by Randall Wallace
Purchased by Cheryl
Price $2.99
Christian Fiction
Andrew Jones was once one of the few surgeons in the world to have that rare, God-given ability called The Touch. But after failing to save his young fiancée, Faith, at the scene of a car accident, Jones abandons his gift and shuns the operating room.
Lara Blair owns a Chicago-based biomedical engineering company developing a surgical tool that will duplicate precisely the movement of a surgeon’s hands, reducing or eliminating failed surgical procedures. Lara has pursued the best surgeons in the world to test this surgical tool, and all of them have failed. Lara pursues Jones’s skill for her project, Jones’s stubborn resistance cracks, and he begins to open up to her about the wounds that still haunt him. But when Jones discovers the urgency behind Lara’s work, he must choose to move beyond his past. As each is forced to surrender secret fears, they are bonded together through the lives of the people Jones serves and by the healing secret that Faith left behind.
Born Fighting by James Webb
Purchased by Walt
Price $11.99
Nonfiction, History
In telling the story of the Scots-Irish in America as a robust and passionate tale, novelist Webb writes straightforward, no-nonsense, readable history that clips right along while it is also very personal and highly idiosyncratic about a people who, he claims, are largely invisible--taken for granted--to the general public and who, seldom thinking of themselves in ethnic identity terms, mostly don't know their culture. Webb maintains that Scots-Irish attitudes form the bedrock of American society, especially among the working class. Scots-Irish culture has produced American presidents from Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton, soldiers from Ulysses S. Grant to George Patton, pioneers, preachers, and others whose most common characteristics may be described as fierce individualism, persistent egalitarianism, and a strong sense of personal honor. Perhaps the most visible examples of broad and ongoing Scots-Irish legacy are the fundamentalist Christianity (a potent combination of Scottish Calvinism and headstrong populism) of America's Bible Belt and country music. Webb begins the Scots-Irish saga in Scotland, where, he says, the Scots-Irish character was formed, moves on to the Ulster Scots of what is now Northern Ireland, and follows them to the Appalachians and points beyond as well as through the American Revolution, the Civil War, and up to the present day. Popular history at its finest.
