Pulling the Paperwhite Out From Under the Bus

Back in September of 2012 I said some mean things about the Kindle Paperwhite. Actually, I said some nice things, too. I suppose this post is my way of taking back all the mean things I said.

RIP Old Friend
(2009-2013)

About a month ago, I was returning from The Gospel Coalition when I went to use my 4 year old Kindle 2 and found that the screen had totally freaked out. A simple call to Amazon's troubleshooters confirmed that it was dead in the water. My four year old friend had been with me through the thick and thin. Altogether I'd probably read 100 or more books on it and used its text-to-speech feature for long road trips more times than I could count. If it hadn't died, I never would have upgraded. I initially tried to find a Kindle 2 that still had the text-to-speech feature, but I couldn't find one for sale in my area on Craigslist and Amazon doesn't have a used Kindle section on their website.

When I contacted Amazon initially to troubleshoot, they did tell me that if I wanted to, I could send my old one in and they would sell me a refurbished Paperwhite wi-fi for $40 below the new price. This meant that I could replace my old friend for $80. And so, despite the mean things I said about the Kindle Paperwhite, and despite the fact that Amazon ripped my favorite feature (text-to-speech) out of their e-reader, I ordered it.

Here's the thing: I love it. And what's more, even if it had
text-to-speech it would no longer be my favorite feature of the device. There are six major things that stand out about the Paperwhite, making it heads and shoulders above my old Kindle 2:

1) The higher resolution screen is a beauty to look at. No discernible pixels in the text means that the reading experience is that much better.

2) Faster page turning. The processor in this new one is better, and that means more responsive page turning. It's a small thing, but when you turn the page on your device thousands of times, it makes you realize just how sluggish your old Kindle 2 actually was.

3) Adjustable fonts and margins. It may seem like a small thing, but it's one more way to make the experience all your own. Also, reading my ESV Study Bible on the Paperwhite is nicer and easier when you make the line of text as narrow as possible.

4) The touch screen is "okay." I'm not thrilled about it, but it is very useful for highlighting (it's very responsive and extremely easy to do) and for picking a single word to see the definition of. You could already do both of these things with the little directional clicker, but it's 10x better using the touch screen to do it now. [My one complaint about the touch screen: in the table of contents for the ESV Study Bible, if you click on the name of the book you want to read, it will think you're clicking the book above it. You have to compensate for that bizarre little fact when you click on a book of the bible to read it. I'm guessing this happens with a lot of different tables of contents in other books too.]

Fits in my hand

5) The smaller size. It's smaller! No keyboard! It's overall design is fantastic, and that leather case that Amazon sells might cost $40, sure, but I can't imagine it ever getting busted in a fall while it's snug and secure inside of that beautiful case. It also has that fancy cover that puts the device to sleep when it closes and wakes it up when it opens, ala the iPad Smartcover.

6) The Backlight. Okay, Amazon is careful to say this is not a traditional backlight. Whereas an ordinary LCD projects light directly out towards the user's face, this is an indirect sort of lighting. It has the effect of making the pages look plain white in daylight and pleasantly readable in the dark. I had forgotten how many times I've stopped reading my Kindle 2 because it had just gotten too dark and I didn't want to turn the lights in my room on.

Yes, the text-to-speech is gone. No, I still cannot think of a good reason for them to take this feature away. But I have two thoughts in this regard:

a) I wasn't using the text-to-speech as much as I used to. Truthfully I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually employed it.

b) As a substitute, you can upload your non-DRM ebooks to Zamzar and they will convert them into MP3s. This way you can still make audiobooks out of them and listen on your iPod. Since I use text-to-speech mostly on road trips, I just plan ahead a bit now and make sure and have Zamzar make the audiobook that I want to listen to while I'm driving. And lets face it, you were having trouble running on the treadmill with that bulky Kindle 2 anyway, weren't you?

Just tonight I was sitting on my darkened patio, reading Psalm 98, and thanking God that I had this pleasant reading device that allowed me to sit in the dark, read God's Word, and stare out at the starry sky without turning on the light and drawing all the bugs around me. It was then that I decided to write this post and publicly apologize to the Paperwhite. I'm sorry, baby. I said those mean things because I didn't really know you.

Black Friday Kindle Special on Beeke's A Puritan Theology

If you're like me, you love the idea of reading Joel Beeke & Mark Jones' impressive new book A Puritan Theology, but you also find it pretty inconvenient to carry a book of 1000+ pages with you on the go.  Ordinarily, you could just tear out the pages you want to read and then glue them back in later, but lets face it - that's not a great idea.  One option is to get the book on Amazon Kindle. Ordinarily, the book is an unpleasant $30 on Kindle (and $60 in print), but for the weekend until Monday the book is on sale for $9.99 at Amazon. Even if you have the book in print, it's probably worth it to get it in this portable format. Although our readers are probably familiar with this book, I want to mention the very first paragraph in the book from the foreword written by Sinclair Ferguson:

The one thousand pages and more than half a million words you now hold in your hand constitute the largest and most comprehensive exposition to date on the theology of the English Puritans. It is a remarkable achievement, the fruit of many combined decades of reading, research, and reflection on the part of its authors.

I did leap on this deal immediately, and while I love print books, this is definitely the kind of book to take with you wherever you go, since it is as devotional as it is systematic.  You can fine it here.

Westminster Standards eBook

One of our readers has just finished working on an edition of the Westminster Standards in Amazon Kindle format.  While there are many copies of the Standards available for the Kindle, this version stands out because of several included documents:

• The Confession of Faith
• The Shorter Catechism
• The Larger Catechism
• The Psalms of David in Metre
• To the Christian Reader, Especially Heads of Families
• Mr Manton's Epistle to the Reader
• Sum of Saving Knowledge
• National Covenant
• Solemn League and Covenant
• Directory for the Publick Worship of God
• Directory for Family-Worship
• Form of Presbyterial Church-Government

There are three primary features which make this version superior:

1. As you can see, this isn't just the Confession and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.  It also includes a variety of other documents either relevant to or also produced by the Assembly.
2. The book comes with an initial table of contents that takes the reader to any of the above listed documents.  Within each document is its own relevant Table of Contents. So if you go to the Confession, you get a listing of chapters to navigate to.
3. The most important feature is that the Standards all come with the Assembly's scripture proofs in hyperlinked format. They don't interfere with your reading, but if you want the proofs, you need only click on the footnote to be taken to them, typed out in the King James text.

All that to say, this is the best version of the Westminster Standards available so far in Kindle format. There are many copies of this document available, but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. It isn't free, but it is worth it.  You can find it here.

Trusting God by Jerry Bridges Free Today for Kindle

Jerry Bridges' masterful book Trusting God: Even When It Hurts is available today for free on the Kindle.  You can get it by clicking here.

This is actually my favorite of all Jerry Bridges' books.  That might be because it's the only one I've actually read, however. One of my favorite things about Trusting God is his extensive and thoroughly convincing discussion of God's sovereignty over all things - even the evils which befall us as His children.  It's a good book for everyone, because even if you aren't hurting right now, the Bible guarantees that you will at some point.

Once again, the book is available by clicking here.

Free Jerry Bridges eBook for Kindle

True Community: The Biblical Practice of Koinonia by Jerry Bridges has gone free, temporarily at Amazon.  This is a fairly new book that only just came out in August.  I haven't read it yet, but this is from the publisher's description:

Fellowship among believers is more than just talking over coffee after church service. Biblical fellowship in New Testament times—or koinonia—had rich and varied meanings, including covenant relationship, partnership in the gospel, communion with God and others, and the sharing of earthly possessions.
In True Community, best-selling author Jerry Bridges guides you through koinonia and its implications for today’s church. With discussion questions at the end of each chapter, this book will help you dig deeper into what Christian community in the twenty-first century should look like. You will come away with a new appreciation for fellowship, the church, and what God intended the body of Christ to be.

Grab it over at Amazon while you can.

eBook Special: Bruce on the Lord's Supper

Carl Trueman has already shared this, but since our readers find it relevant I thought I'd pass this along.  Robert Bruce (the successor of John Knox) preached a series of sermons on the Lord's Supper in 1589, and Christian Focus' republication of those sermons has been out of print for awhile.  I had the privilege of putting together the eBook of these sermons for them, and now Christian Focus has made this out-of-print book available in Kindle format.  For the next two weeks it's being sold at a special reduced price.

I can't recommend a book more highly.  These sermons on the Lord's Supper are well worth your time.  According to Trueman, they are "some of the most helpful ever preached on the topic."  You can get the book here.

Amazon Kindle Fail

Amazon has announced its new line of Kindles, which will release on October 1st.  Among them are the new Kindle Fire, the Kindle Fire HD, and the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" (which is a horrible name).  I have absolutely no interest in any of the Kindle Fire family.  Go buy an iPad.

What does interest me, however, is the new Kindle Paperwhite.  Evidently, the screen is higher resolution and has a special backlight technology that is way less obnoxious than LED or LCD, which bounce light back into the space surrounding the screen.  It also has 2GB of memory and the ability to change spacing and font size in your eBooks.  BUT...

There's a huge but.  BUT Amazon has also announced that none of their future Kindles will support text to speech.  They supposedly tout this new line as upgrades.  Yes, they have a slightly larger memory.  Yes, they have the ability to change fonts.  And yet they have still not given me a reason to ever update my three year old Kindle 2 3G.  In fact, now I am clutching it tighter!  It still runs like a top, it still holds its battery charge for weeks. It holds all my books, and reads to me when I can't give it the attention it deserves.  Because Amazon has still not given me a reason to abandon my Kindle 2, I declare the new line of Kindles a complete and epic fail.

Why would you come out with a new line of Kindles and actually remove features that were there before?  It just makes no sense - it borders on stupidity, from a business perspective.  Without the text-to-speech, there is honestly no differentiating the Kindle from the Barnes & Noble Nook or any of the other e-Readers out there.

Christian Apologetics Kindle Deal

The price on Douglas Groothius' Christian Apologetics for the Kindle is pretty extraordinary.  Right now, you can buy the book for $17 off the price of the hardback.  That means you can get it for $4.08 over at Amazon right now.  Why is it $4.08?  I have no idea why the cost is so precise.

The book is a real monster, weighing in at over 700 pages (the book itself is a classical argument for the existence of eBooks!).  It has endorsements from William Dembski, Sean McDowell, J.P. Moreland, Paul Copan, and William Lane Craig.  You can tell from this list that this is your sort of book if you're into Classical Apologetics.  I'm more of a Van Til man myself, but far be it from me to scare someone off from a good deal because of my own prejudices.

Get the Kindle version here.

Has the Era of the eBook Officially Arrived?

Look at these citations from footnotes 10 and 11 in Jonathan Edwards and Justification, edited by Josh Moody.  The Kindle has been out since 2007, but this is the first time since it was released five years ago that I have seen a Kindle edition actually cited in a book.  You can buy the book from Westminster Bookstore, but let's admit - it's becoming more scholarly now to buy the Kindle version.

Kindle Deal - Today Only

Rumor has it, Amazon will be unveiling the new Amazon Kindles next week.  As a consequence, our readers may be interested to know that today's Gold Box deal is the Amazon Kindle DX - a piece of equipment I would absolutely adore owning.  Rumor has it there may be a 10" Kindle Fire coming.  I have no love for or interest in the Kindle Fire - I'm an iPad man myself.  But if you ever had you eye on a Kindle DX, this may end up being your last chance to get one.  The word is they're being phased out in favor of whatever update is coming.  Amazon is selling them at a $110 discount, making it more affordable than ever.  Check out today's Gold Box Deals.  They're all Kindle-related.

Is Jesus God? Edited by B.B. Warfield for $0.99

Another project of mine more recently was preparing an eBook of Is Jesus God? which is edited by B.B. Warfield, who also wrote the book's brief introduction. It was actually written by students of Princeton Seminary and published in 1912. The book is succinct and helpful on an important topic. It is now available at the Kindle Store.

The Christian Ministry by Charles Bridges for $0.99

My first book on the Amazon Kindle Store is now available for purchase. Charles Bridges' classic work on the pastoral ministry, The Christian Ministry has been a help to many ministers, and I have personally been greatly affected by Bridges' exhortations and charges to those who would minister to Christ's church. Containing the insights of a seasoned and tested pastor, this is a book that should have been available for the Kindle a long time ago.

I would request that those of you who have a chance to read the book and look over the edition I prepared write reviews so that curious readers will know that the edition I've created for the Kindle is top-notch quality. At $0.99 it is my hope that every pastor or prospective pastor would read this affordable and important work. I hope you'll also agree I have prepared easily the most attractive cover that Amazon has ever seen.

[PS: If there are any enterprising readers of BTB who can help with a better cover for the book, I'd be happy to thank them with a free copy of the book.]

Free Puritan Kindle Books, Volume 7

Thomas Boston - An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion (Volume 1, Volume 2)
You may not have heard of this book, but it is Thomas Boston's wonderful exposition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. HIGHLY recommended! He has a brilliant discussion of union with Christ as the ground of justification as well.

Thomas Cartwright - Treatise of the Christian Religion

Thomas Watson - Puritan Gems
Basically an anthology of amazing Thomas Watson quotes.

Andrew Bonar - Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne
True, M'Cheyne was not a Puritan, but anyone who loves the Puritans will still want to read this book.

Thomas Watson - The Beatitudes

Thomas Watson - The Mischief of Sin

Thomas Watson - The Saint's Spiritual Delight
Watson shows himself here to be a proto-Piper.

Peter Martyr Vermigli - To the Duke of Somerset
A letter from the Italian Reformer in ye olde english.

Free Loraine Boettner eBook

The fellows at Monergism have made available Loraine Boettner's book The Reformed Faith in eBook format and also in Kindle format (.mobi). Follow the link, and they provide instructions for transferring the book over to your Kindle. The nice thing is, you can still get the book - whether you have a Kindle or not.

Incidentally, they also have his book The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination. It is in HTML format. Although it is not in an immediately Kindle-friendly format, you could make your own Kindle version by following directions which I previously shared awhile back. Happy reading!

Miscellanies: eBook Citations, and Paul Haggis On Leaving Scientology

1. This article addresses a problem I have thought about many times before. How does one properly cite an e-book in a scholarly work? It turns out, there are different answers to this question. My gut has always been to treat the e-book being cited as a single file without citing page numbers, since they change depending on the device. It turns out, that is only one of the opinions that exist in this matter.

2. The second item is a profoundly interesting story in The New Yorker titled "The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology" which profiles film director Paul Haggis (the writer/director of Crash and writer of Million Dollar Baby) and his struggle to break free of the Church of Scientology, which he was evidently was a member of for around three decades. Having been a part of Scientology for so long, Haggis discusses what it was like being an OT III (the highest thetan level possible) in this cult and his struggle to find meaning in the aftermath of it all. The article is also a very helpful primer on Scientology if you really know nothing about it. My only warning is that it is literally a book-length article. It will take a lot of time to finish reading it.

I do have some favorite snippets, however, which have given me a lot to think about:

• “Father Rick is a lot like me—a cynical optimist,” Haggis told me. He also said of himself, “I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.”

• “I had a little apartment with a kitchen I could write in,” he recalls. “There was a feeling of camaraderie that was something I’d never experienced—all these atheists looking for something to believe in, and all these loners looking for a club to join.”

• “The process of induction is so long and slow that you really do convince yourself of the truth of some of these things that don’t make sense,” Haggis told me. Although he refused to specify the contents of O.T. materials, on the ground that it offended Scientologists, he said, “If they’d sprung this stuff on me when I first walked in the door, I just would have laughed and left right away.”

The Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts

A friend pointed me to this incredible resource for guys like me who are looking for texts of old classic Protestant theological works (of course, with the end in mind of converting the files into Amazon Kindle format). It's The Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts. They sort the texts by theological schools, differentiating between Anglican, Puritan, Lutheran, Arminian, Unitarian, Quaker, and Reformed/Calvinist.

It appears that the texts are converted from nearly illegible PDFs and painstakingly converted into text format. As an example of the source materials which they create these wonderful text files from, simply look at this page from a William Perkins book which they converted into readable English text. The fact that these are originals also means that it's a wonderful site if you read Ecclesiastical Latin. The only books I've been able to read on the site were the works by the Puritans. They have many texts which I've never seen anywhere else in any readable format. For example:

• A Golden Chain, by William Perkins
• A Body of Divinity, by James Usher
• Cases of Conscience, by William Perkins
• The Covenant of Life Opened, by Samuel Rutherford
• A Letter to the Duke of Somerset, by Peter Martyr Vermigli (one of his few English writings)
• An exposition of the Apostles' Creed, by William Perkins

If you speak Latin, they also have Peter Martyr's masterpiece Loci Communes. I found the Perkins writings most delightful because it's so hard to find any websites where Perkins' writings are not being posted in text format, but for excerpts, such as you find at A Puritan's Mind.

With Great 'Text-To-Speech' Comes Great Responsibility

Yes, your Kindle is a small miracle. Yes, the robots now read to you. Yes, it's incredible. But with great power comes great responsibility, and that means knowing when to say no to your newfound powers. This month is my one-year anniversary with my Kindle, and I've learned that there are pitfalls when it comes to using the text-to-speech function.

The text-to-speech (TTS) function is acceptable for relaying narratives such as biographies, histories, and even fictional story-telling. However, there are exceptions to this. For example, something is lost in having Dickens read to you. I'm sorry, but it's true. On the flipside, having the new Dexter novel read aloud to you probably makes the terrible prose more digestible.

On the other end of things, there are some things which just do not benefit from text-to-speech. For example, using TTS to read the Puritans for the most part is not advisable. This is because there are just some books which we're supposed to read slowly and think about as we're reading it. Reading Thomas Watson's The Saint's Spiritual Delight is a wonderful experience. But you miss out on so many opportunities for profound reflection when you just let the text fly by you. I could give more examples of this in action, but I think we all know some books that you just shouldn't let fly past you.

So today's lesson: just because you can... doesn't mean you should.

All the Books I Read in 2010

I started keeping track of all the books that I read this year. Since this is a book-themed blog, I thought it might be worth sharing. Notice how much fluff is in the list. That's because fluff books are easy to finish. All of the worthwhile books (such as Vos' Biblical Theology and Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics) never did get finished. I'm still working on the books that really matter.

1. Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island*
2. Dennis Lehane - Mystic River*
3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet*
4. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles*
5. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four*
6. Bryan Burrough - Public Enemies*
7. Ron Paul - End the Fed*
8. Erik Larson - The Devil in the White City*
9. L.E. Fletcher & E. Stover - The Guantánamo Effect*
10. George Orwell - 1984*
11. Jeff Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark*
12. Jeff Lindsay - Dearly Devoted Dexter*
13. Alister McGrath - The Dawkins Delusion
14. Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
15. Peter Demant - Islam vs Islamism
16. Dennis Lehane - A Drink Before the War*
17. Collin Hansen - Young, Restless, and Reformed*
18. John Owen - The Mortification of Sin in Believers*
19. Mark Driscoll - Pastor Dad*
20. H.G. Wells - When the Sleeper Wakes*
21. Craig R. Koester - Revelation and the End of All Things
22. N.T. Wright - Simply Christian*
23. Tom Farley, Jr. - The Chris Farley Show*
24. George Marsden - Jonathan Edwards: A Life*
25. Philip Pullman - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ*
26. G.K. Chesterton - Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox*
27. Paul Johnson - Churchill*
28. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan - The Strain*
29. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan - The Fall*
30. John Piper - Don't Waste Your Life*
31. Washington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow*
32. St Anselm - Cur Deus Homo (God Became Man)*
33. R.C. Sproul - Can I Be Sure I'm Saved?*
34. Mark Noll - The Civil War as a Theological Crisis*
35. Mosab Hassan Yousef - Son of Hamas*
36. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*

*Denotes the books I read on the Kindle. In other words, pretty much all of them.

In Christ Alone by Sinclair Ferguson Free on Kindle Today

Thank God for Reformation Trust. They keep making their books available for free on the Kindle, and that is a great ministry to Christ's church, in my opinion. It is also a great reason to get a Kindle. Today only, they have made available Sinclair Ferguson's book In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life. It is available by clicking here.

Noted theologian, pastor, and educator Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson explores aspects of the person and work of Jesus in his latest book, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life. This collection of articles, published earlier in Tabletalk magazine and Eternity Magazine, is designed to help believers gain a better understanding of their Savior and the Christian faith, and to live out that faith in their day-to-day lives. In fifty short chapters arranged in six sections, Dr. Ferguson shows that Christ, who is fully God, took on humanity that He might be the Great High Priest of His people as well as the once-for-all sacrifice; that He now ministers to His people through His Spirit, crowning them with great and precious blessings; and that believers are called to duty, from cultivating contentment to mortifying sin. In Christ Alone is packed full of nuggets of Scriptural truth that will spark and fan the flames of the believer s love for the Savior who is so beautiful in His person and so faithful in His work on behalf of His beloved sheep.

One of the big advantages of this book is that is is composed of 50 short chapters which read well for use in devotions. With chapters such as "Union with Christ," "Playing the Second Fiddle Well," and "The Practice of Mortification," I am very excited to dig into Ferguson's book.

Free Richard D. Phillips Book for Kindle

Reformation Trust has - for today only - made What's So Great About The Doctrines of Grace? by Richard D. Phillips free in the Kindle store.

In What's So Great About the Doctrines of Grace?, the Rev. Richard D. Rick Phillips shows that the doctrines of grace, those theological tenets more popularly known as the five points of Calvinism, are comforting, faith-strengthening, and humbling teachings. In six short chapters, Rev. Phillips demonstrates conclusively from Scripture that this view of salvation exalts God and makes plain His great love for man, which drove Him to do all that was necessary to redeem a people for Himself. In his opening chapter, Rev. Phillips cites the calling of Isaiah the prophet to show that a proper understanding of the sovereignty of God leads to a willingness to serve, a humble obedience to God s commands, a holy boldness, and a firm reliance on sovereign, saving grace. Then, over the next five chapters, he deals with the five doctrines of grace one by one-total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints providing thorough explanations, answering objections, and showing how the doctrines advance Christian living. What's So Great About the Doctrines of Grace? is a compact, highly readable treasure chest of scriptural wisdom.