2014 Read Your Freebies! Reading Challenge

Duration: 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014

Host: The Book Vixen
Challenge Rules and Sign-Up Page

The Challenge: Read at least twelve (12) free ebooks.

My Android came equipped with an Amazon Kindle app already installed on it. I never really used it much until I stumbled on One Hundred Free Books, a multiple-times-a-day update of free ebooks listed on Amazon.  Plus, my wife's friend has a website Couponing with Rachel where she also regularly posts free Kindle books (as well as other coupon and money-saving links and posts).

As a result, I have slowly accumulated a digital stack of free books that I haven't really gotten around to reading yet. This challenge will help me clear that cache out a bit (probably only to make room for more as the year goes on).

My Level: Coupon Clipper (Read > 12 books)

1. Unnatural Disasters by Daniel Pyle (Editor) [23 January 2014]
2. Ant Apocalypse by Will Swardstrom [25 January 2014]
3. Haunted by Willow Cross [14 February 2014]
4. Through a Tangled Wood by Jamie Campbell [12 March 2014]
5. Murder at Volcano House by Chip Hughes [5 September 2014]
6. Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection by Michael R. Licona [22 September 2014]
7. Wild Born by Brandon Mull [21 October 2014]
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10.  
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Wrap-Up:

Well, I didn't quite make it. I'm still trying to get the hang of fitting reading into my daily routine. I shall try again next year, though.

Nonfiction Reading Challenge 2014

Duration: 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014

Host: The Introverted Reader
Challenge Rules and Sign-Up Page

The Challenge: Read any non-fiction book(s), adult or young adult.

Two of my favorite comedians, Tim Conway and Billy Crystal, released autobiographies recently, and I asked my wife pointedly for them as Christmas gifts. She delivered. Since that already set me up with two nonfiction books I'd certainly be reading this year, I figured it would be worthwhile to try applying them to a reading challenge. 

I thought I'd start out small, so I'm attempting the lowest level of the challenge.

My Level: Dilettante (Read 1-5 non-fiction books)

1. What's So Funny? by Tim Conway with Jane Scovell [1-18-14]
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4.  
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Wrap-Up:

Wow, a spectacular failure for this reading challenge this year--even after receiving autobiographies for Christmas 2013 (and having a couple setting around). I might try this again for 2015, but for now, just bask in the dismal glory of the amazing laziness that is my reading life. 

My Amazon Store

Check out my new aStore through Amazon. I'm currently loading in some of my favorite books, CDs and more for you to peruse and possibly buy at your leisure. I also have a special section for items that I have mentioned or reviewed on the blog. I will also provide a link to anything I review in case you want to check them out yourself.

This of course is not a plead for any kind of money, but if you were planning on buying something at Amazon anyway, you might as well do it through my aStore and help out the blog at the same time.  Everything you purchase from my aStore provides me with a small affiliate payment which actually comes out of Amazon's profit but does not cost you anything extra.

I also have a little widget in the left margin that features some of the things I've added.  Be sure to check it out!

Bible in a Year 2014

Bible in a Year


With a fresh year ahead of me, I pray that this will be the year I read the Bible all the way through and hope to grow closer to God and learn more about Him and my role in His kingdom in the process.  Using a plan from BibleGateway, I am once again going to attempt to read the Bible in a year (BiaY). The link above goes to the plan I've attempted in the past that remains an easy-to-follow and much used plan for many.

Two years ago I started out really well until I started missing a day here and there and trying to catch myself up before missing a few days.  Before long I had missed whole books and then abandoned the effort entirely, going right back to where I started. Then last year my Bible app which had an automatic reading plan tracking stopped working and I lost track of where I left off for a long time; then my phone died and I had to replace it. Excuses, excuses . . . .

At the top of my sidebar on top of the rest of my reading challenges this year is my tracker for the BiaY.  I am tracking it by number of chapters read (out of a total of 1189 chapters in the King James Version).  Fortunately the ubiquity of the Bible in many places makes missing a reading difficult to accomplish: I have used my pocket Bible, BibleGateway, the Bible reading plan website, and smartphone app to catch up on my reading in the past.  So, admittedly, I have no excuse to not do this.

Feel free to join in with me, too.  I need the extra accountability and support.

Law
Genesis
50 / 50 chapters. 100% finished!
Exodus
40 / 40 chapters. 100% finished!
Leviticus
27 / 27 chapters. 100% finished!
Numbers
36 / 36 chapters. 100% finished!
Deuteronomy
34 / 34 chapters. 100% finished!

History
Joshua
24 / 24 chapters. 100% finished!
Judges
21 / 21 chapters. 100% finished!
Ruth
4 / 4 chapters. 100% finished!
I Samuel
16 / 31 chapters. 51.6% finished!
II Samuel
0 / 24 chapters. 0% finished!
I Kings
0 / 22 chapters. 0% finished!
II Kings
0 / 25 chapters. 0% finished!
I Chronicles
0 / 29 chapters. 0% finished!
II Chronicles
0 / 36 chapters. 0% finished!
Ezra
0 / 10 chapters. 0% finished!
Nehemiah
0 / 13 chapters. 0% finished!
Esther
0 / 10 chapters. 0% finished!

Poetry
Job
0 / 42 chapters. 0% finished!
Psalms
0 / 150 chapters. 0% finished!
Proverbs
0 / 31 chapters. 0% finished!
Ecclesiastes
0 / 12 chapters. 0% finished!
Song of Solomon
0 / 8 chapters. 0% finished!

Major Prophets
Isaiah
0 / 66 chapters. 0% finished!
Jeremiah
0 / 52 chapters. 0% finished!
Lamentations
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
Ezekiel
0 / 48 chapters. 0% finished!
Daniel
0 / 12 chapters. 0% finished!

Minor Prophets
Hosea
0 / 14 chapters. 0% finished!
Joel
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Amos
0 / 9 chapters. 0% finished!
Obadiah
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!
Jonah
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
Micah
0 / 7 chapters. 0% finished!
Nahum
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Habakkuk
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Zephaniah
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Haggai
0 / 2 chapters. 0% finished!
Zechariah
0 / 14 chapters. 0% finished!
Malachi
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!

Gospels
Matthew
28 / 28 chapters. 100% finished!
Mark
16 / 16 chapters. 100% finished!
Luke
9 / 24 chapters. 37.5% finished!
John
0 / 21 chapters. 0% finished!
Acts
0 / 28 chapters. 0% finished!

Pauline Epistles
Romans
0 / 16 chapters. 0% finished!
I Corinthians
0 / 16 chapters. 0% finished!
II Corinthians
0 / 13 chapters. 0% finished!
Galatians
0 / 6 chapters. 0% finished!
Ephesians
0 / 6 chapters. 0% finished!
Philippians
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
Colossians
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
I Thessalonians
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
II Thessalonians
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
I Timothy
0 / 6 chapters. 0% finished!
II Timothy
0 / 4 chapters. 0% finished!
Titus
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
Philemon
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!

General Epistles
Hebrews
0 / 13 chapters. 0% finished!
James
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
I Peter
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
II Peter
0 / 3 chapters. 0% finished!
I John
0 / 5 chapters. 0% finished!
0II John
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!
III John
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!
Jude
0 / 1 chapter. 0% finished!

Apocalypse
Revelation
0 / 22 chapters. 0% finished!

Entire Bible
305 / 1189 chapters. 25.7% finished!

Wrap-Up:

I did not complete the whole Bible again this year, but I'm going to keep trying. I may have the Pentateuch memorized whenever I actually accomplish this, but I'll be better for it in the long run.

Reviews

In an attempt to increase my reading comprehension and enjoyment of the books I am reading, I plan on reviewing the books I read. Then, I shall post my reviews and recommendations here to share my enjoyment with you.

I'm building a basic format for the reviews that will probably evolve over time as I get a little more used to the whole process. For now, the format is as such:

• An image of the item I am reviewing either
• a scan of the actual item in hand or
• a stock photo provided by an online store.
• Basic information of the item, including
• Title
• Author/Artist
• Publisher/Producer
• Release Date
• ISBN
• Format
• Length
• Genre
• Time it took for me to read it (estimated reading time)
• Source (where I obtained it)
• aStore Link (see the book in my Amazon Store)
• Rating based on a Likert-type scale (see Rating System page)
• Synopsis/Summary
• Review
• Where to find more information on this book
• Official website of the book (if available)
• A link to the book on Amazon (with an affiliate referral code)
• A link for the book on GoodReads

Each of the affiliate links to Amazon in my reviews rewards me with a small compensation from every purchase made. This does not affect the price on any of the items. Amazon just appoints a portion of its profits gained from selling my referred books to the affiliate code I provide in the URL for the links I provide.

Restarting This Blog

Well, another year has come and gone. It's finally 2014. By May, I will have been out of college for 10 years. August will be our son's fourth birthday. October will mark my seventh year of working for my employer. In November my wife and I will have been married for six years.

Time is so fleeting and fast.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to take a few paragraphs to explain what you see on this blog: LeviSamJuno Reads.

I started this particular blog to separate all of my reading-related posts from my everyday stuff (the latter of which are located on my original blog that also has not been updated for many months). I wanted to have a place where I could sign up for and track reading challenges and book reviews in an uncluttered fashion.

Unfortunately with all the many things going on (the bulk of which is marriage and parenthood), I never really followed through with a lot of that. So I have decided to revamp the whole blog atmosphere. I was never really satisfied with the formats I had for my reviews, and some weird things happened with the formatting when I tried to copy them over here. Part of the revamp involves fixing those formatting errors.

As a result, you can probably see that things are bare here. That's not to indicate there was nothing ever here; it's just that I'm trying to make them better. In the coming weeks some of the book reviews I had will begin popping back up in all their newly reformatted splendor, at which time this particular post will be a bit confusing, I guess.

With this new attempt, here's to the hope of a bigger list of books I have read, challenges I have completed, reviews I have written, and fun stuff accomplished.

Book Review: Micro by Michael Crichton

Micro: A Novel
by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

Publisher: Harper Publishing
Release Date: 2011
ISBN: 9780060873028
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 448
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: Library
Time to read: 1 day
aStore Link (Real Book): Micro: A Novel
aStore Link (Kindle Book): Micro: A Novel

Summary (from Amazon.com)

In a locked Honolulu office building, three men are found dead with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye.

In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting. Trillions of microorganisms, tens of thousands of bacteria species, are being discovered; they are feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up. Nanigen MicroTechnologies dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii, where they are promised access to tools that will open a whole new scientific frontier. 

But once in the Oahu rain forest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals profound and surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power. To survive, they must harness the inherent forces of nature itself. 

An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Crichton fashion. Completed by visionary science writer Richard Preston, this boundary-pushing thriller melds scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction to create yet another masterpiece of sophisticated, cutting-edge entertainment.

My Reaction

Since having to read endless pages of technical and theoretical textbooks for grad school, I've found it extremely difficult to get myself back into reading for fun. Add to that having an extra hour per day to drive to and from work along with a 2.5 year old son, working that into my schedule has become even more complex.  It seems that it took the author who pretty much started my love of reading as a young adult to get my back in the swing.

Michael Crichton's The Lost World was the first adult book I remember reading, ordering it from Scholastic in 9th grade because of my fanaticism with the movie Jurassic Park. It wasn't long before I read all of his books up to that point.

Last week, I took a long overdue visit to our local library and found the newest and posthumously published book from Crichton and borrowed it on impulse.  For the first time in probably a decade I read a book cover to cover within a day, staying up until past midnight to finish.  I couldn't put it down.

I'm not sure if the story was lighter on background information than most of Crichton's other books or if I could breeze through it faster being familiar with the biology of the book's protagonists of nature: insects and creatures of the forest floor. Either way, because I wasn't trying to absorb all the facts and details I was able to get through chapter after chapter like I was reading a Goosebumps book.  It was a very refreshing feeling.

The introduction, which typically lasts a couple dozen pages in a Crichton novel, ended abruptly in the middle of the third page with "Michael Crichton, unfinished," which immediately made me sad that my favorite author would no longer be producing new works. Then, the book featured a layout map of the site of the main action of the book and (uncharacteristically of his novels) a cast of characters. I referred back to these several times while reading just to get my bearings and remember which character I was just following.

The novel was completed by Richard Preston, whose work I have never read.  Though I don't know his writing style, I do know Crichton's.  So a little beyond halfway through the book, it almost felt like I walked through a door that led out of Crichton's head and into a different writer's. It was distracting enough to make me aware that the narrative had changed, with some character statements and actions that did not seem Crichton-esque.  This and some rather one-dimensional characters are the main reasons I did not give this a ranking higher than 4.

I would certainly read this book again, especially if I go back and do a Michael Crichton anthology reading marathon, like I used to do in high school.

For more information on this book:

Official Site of Michael Crichton: Micro

Amazon  |  Kindle