Travis Seitler: Web Designer

Wilson covers all the major concerns of shaping boys into real men: laziness, sex, secret sin, courtship, girls, friends, fights, school work, and sports to name a few. Each section is written with that ’serrated edge’ he is known for, so you need to read with a smile and not take offense if you are to gain from many of his good insights. —Paul W. Martin @ kerux noemata

Interestingly, Wilson notes that the abandonment of the Psalms in worship means that the church has discarded a songbook, that is throughly masculine in its lyrics, in favour of the effeminate hymns of the 19th and 20th century. The result being that the church is dominated by females as men are put off attending divine worship. The author also has lots of helpful advice on how parents should instruct their boys with regard to work, sports, education, friendship, sex, courtship, fighting, bearing firearms and the use of money; which, all in all, makes for a very stimulating read. —Daniel Ritchie @ Reformed Covenanter

This is a book on raising boys? Wow, I think I came away from reading Future Men with more instruction on raising myself! Not that it was necessarily Wilson’s aim, but his lessons are of the sort that I need to put them into practice myself before I can raise my own boy in them. This one is so insightful that I need to read it again; there’s just too much to soak up in the first reading!

There is much in this book that is edifying. It helped me understand Mark Driscoll and showed how he grew a megachurch in a largely unchurched city in only eight years. He is clearly a passionate, focused man who is genuinely seeking hard after God. He has much to offer the church. I wonder, though, how long his message will be heard as long as it is wrapped in a sometimes vulgar, always sarcastic, package. It may endear him to some, but it will surely alienate him from far more. —Tim Challies @ Challies.com

Driscoll seems very reflective on the way his church runs. He writes about his epiphanies he has and how things in the church needs to change. He certainly is dynamic, not in his writing, probably in his speech, but more so in the way he kicks the church into movement. —Kevin @ Tension Treatises

After the firestorm that erupted among Godbloggers last year over some of the contents of this book, I’ve been following Mark Driscoll (and listening to his sermons via podcast). The guy who I used to know only as “Mark the Cussing Pastor” (thanks to Blue Like Jazz) is quite a character, but this book showed me just how much he’s gone through. This ain’t no spring chicken on the church growth scene; he’s perhaps been through fiercer battles than most small-town preachers will ever see. In and through all of that, he’s being forged into a pillar of the Church, mark my words.

And that’s what this book is all about: it’s an autobiographical take on Mark’s work with Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA. He walks us through the good an bad times he’s experienced during his tenure there. I’d say not only is this book great for pastors looking for some inspiration or encouragement, but church members would do well to read this and understand just how rough it can be to pastor a church.

Some people have complained about how Driscoll talks about some things in the book, but honestly? I consider the transparency in here a breath of fresh air—it’s a level of authenticity rarely reached by clergy, who all too often seem to prefer erring on the side of hypocrisy. I mean, the way I see it discretion is just plain way overdone among pastors these days. (It’s worse than the upper management in large corporations, where every little statement has to be scrutinized by a team of lawyers before it’s released to the public.) Driscoll just isn’t afraid of the potential backlash for telling it like it really is, and I respect him for that.

I came home from work this evening and checked our mailbox… and what should I find inside but a lovely hardcover copy of Seth Godin’s Small Is the New Big?

Nicole snagged this when she saw it become available on BookMooch a few days ago. (She’s so sweet!) Right now the kids are both asleep and she’s meeting with the other ladies in our care group, so I’m here splitting my time between web stuff (IconBuffet gets more addictive each week) and reading some of the mini-chapters in this book (apparently small chapters are the new big, too).

You know what I think would be really cool? If I were able to implement a few of Godin’s ideas at Gemstone. But I can only do so much marketing as an Art Director. If I were to venture such a thing, I would have to find a way to be über-creative… and perhaps a bit sneaky, too.

My best book of 2006 dates clear back to April: THE BOOK OF STORY BEGINNINGS by Kristin Kladstrup. Nothing else has come close since then. —Mary Lee @ A Year of Reading

Like Inkheart and Inkspell, it delves into questions of self-determination and whether characters have lives independent of their creators, although it’s lighter than that series. —Sheila Ruth @ Wands and Worlds

It seems many childrens’ books these days are written about books. In other words, it’s as if writers are trying a last-ditch effort to revitalize reading among youngsters by writing books that are all about how wonderful books are. Tales like the aforementioned Inkheart, specifically, focus on the “magical” way that books “come to life” by having books within the tale literally do so. Such is the main theme of The Book of Story Beginnings, but unlike Cornelia Funke’s trilogy this book takes a theme that is nearly bursting with potential and downgrades it to a simplistic plot device. What could have led the reader to ponder our ability to “create” and to what degree a creator can claim ownership over his creation… was used merely as the rabbit hole for Alice to fall down.

And while I’ve read Lewis, Tolkien and Rowling, I’m not a big fan of sorcery and magic, so some of the key story elements in the book made me a bit uncomfortable. Reminiscent of the final pages of Blue Balliet’s Chasing Vermeer (and unlike the Harry Potter series), Kladstrup’s tale treats elements of sorcery and witchcraft as real—which is to say, characters employ them exactly as sorcerers and witches “in the real world” would. Because of that, while I enjoyed the story as a story, I would have trouble recommending it to the younger audience it was intended for.

(This is the first of many posts intended to replace Squidoo lenses I’ve created… so if it looks familiar to you, that’s probably why.)

Over the past six months, Squidoo has been overrun by multi-level marketing and “get rich quick” schemers. Now those sorts of folks have been there pretty much the whole time, but there’s been an explosion of that sort of thing on the site of late. And even though efforts have been made recently to boot the primary offenders, Squidoo is still (intended or not) designed specifically for these sorts of leeches.

Then there’s the time involved in maintenance. I just really don’t have the time to make the constant tweaks and updates that I would need to do for my lenses to be considered worthy of a decent LensRank. Because of that, my ranking gets lower and lower, which means my lenses get less and less visible.

On top of that, there’s the whole “why bother?” factor. Everything I’ve seen at Squidoo reinforces my assumption that there’s nothing available over there that I couldn’t do just as well (or better) myself right here on this blog. Basically, what it boils down to is that I’m letting Squidoo profit from my work — for no good reason whatsoever. (Now granted, I have more potential eyeballs over there than I do here, but that goes back to the whole time thing: if I had more time to focus here, I could build a larger audience.)

So over the next few days, I’m going to cull some of my lens contents and turn them into posts here. Not sure whether I’ll actually delete my stuff over there, or just let it slowly stagnate. What do you think?