Free Book (Kindle) -On Earth as It Is in Heaven

[koland]

Free in the Kindle store:

On Earth as It Is in Heaven: How the Lord's Prayer Teaches Us to Pray More Effectively by Warren Wiersbe

Book Description
Just as babies slowly learn to communicate in more and more complex ways, so the new believer should move from simply crying out to God to a developed prayer life. The basic elements of prayer found in the Lord's Prayer are a helpful guide to Christians hoping to enrich their prayers. In On Earth as It Is in Heaven, beloved teacher and writer Warren W. Wiersbe explains and applies the elements of the Lord's Prayer to everyday prayer so readers get excited about maturing in their personal prayer ministries. Any reader wanting to experience a more satisfying and effective prayer life will cherish this thoughtful book.

Experience more satisfying and effective prayer Do you feel like your prayer life is stagnant? Like you're saying the same things to God that you did when you first started praying? Just as young children slowly learn to communicate in more and more complex ways, so Christians should move from simply crying out to God to a mature, developed prayer life. The basic elements found in the Lord's Prayer are a helpful guide to believers hoping to enrich their prayers. In On Earth as It Is in Heaven, beloved teacher and writer Warren W. Wiersbe explains and applies the elements of the Lord's Prayer so you can reach new levels of maturity in your own personal prayer life. Warren W. Wiersbe has served as a pastor, seminary instructor, radio Bible teacher, and conference speaker. He has authored or edited more than 150 books, including 50 People Every Christian Should Know, On Being a Servant of God, and The Dynamics of Preaching. Today his primary ministry is writing.

[JSWolf]

Can we have a forum section for free Christian eBooks so it can easily be ignored in the list of new posts?

[Lemurion]

I don't think they need a separate section, but maybe a tag that says Christian. That way those who are interested can see them easily, and those who aren't can avoid them.

I'm not interested in free Romance books, but that doesn't mean I want them moved elsewhere. They're usually tagged or otherwise identified and that's good enough for me. Besides, I know people who read all sorts of books, and it's better for them to have them all in one place.

[koland]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can we have a forum section for free Christian eBooks so it can easily be ignored in the list of new posts?

Then there would need to be a section for romance, one for horror, one for scifi/fantasy and definitely one for "smut" (erotica, pornmance, etc ... of course, whether one fit there or not would be entirely subjective and no doubt another source of argument). All of these have been objected to in the past (as in: why are there so many XYZ books; I can't find the ones I want for all the XYZ). For all those who are offended by a posting that a religiously oriented book is available, there are just as many who are offended by one with racy content (unless, of course, it is a christian racy romance novel, it seems). If the forums are divided by genre, not only will we have to check many places to find them, someone will have to decide where a book gets to reside -- is this one "urban fantasy" or "paranormal fantasy" or "erotic romance".... Often a publisher has both "christian fiction" and more mainstream titles, so that isn't a criteria in all cases, nor are the tags in the Kindle store always reliable (often, neither is the classification made by the publisher, as that is often a decision made to try to game the bestseller lists, it seems).

Seems to me that it takes about 1 second to click a title and perhaps two more (at most) to see you are not interested and click on ctrl-w to close the tab and move on. Or, for those that read the title, I'd have thought you could have determined from it that it was not likely to be of interest to you.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by koland

Then there would need to be a section for romance, one for horror, one for scifi/fantasy and definitely one for "smut" (erotica, pornmance, etc ... of course, whether one fit there or not would be entirely subjective and no doubt another source of argument).

I would support an infinite variety of tags so that I could avoid looking at titles of books that in which I have no interest.

In addition to John's suggestion, I would also embrace subforums for [insert device name, e.g., Kindle]-only offerings with the proviso that if a book subsequently became available for more than just one device, the post could be moved to a multidevice subforum.

And if neither is going to fly (which is what I suspect), then I'd ask for a rule that requires the thread title to include the information or at least that the information be listed in bullet form at the very beginning of the message, before description/title information.

As to your suggestion about discerning it from the title, On Earth As It is In Heaven could be apocalyptic vampire novel with greek gods tormenting satanists, as easily as it is a christian novel.

[arcadata]

Originally Posted by rhadin

As to your suggestion about discerning it from the title, On Earth As It is In Heaven could be apocalyptic vampire novel with greek gods tormenting satanists, as easily as it is a christian novel.

LoL - I'd actually read that hypothetical apocalyptic vampire novel!

[cheerio6414]

are vampire novels hypothetical?? lol

[koland]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I would support an infinite variety of tags so that I could avoid looking at titles of books that in which I have no interest.

In addition to John's suggestion, I would also embrace subforums for [insert device name, e.g., Kindle]-only offerings with the proviso that if a book subsequently became available for more than just one device, the post could be moved to a multidevice subforum.

And if neither is going to fly (which is what I suspect), then I'd ask for a rule that requires the thread title to include the information or at least that the information be listed in bullet form at the very beginning of the message, before description/title information.

As to your suggestion about discerning it from the title, On Earth As It is In Heaven could be apocalyptic vampire novel with greek gods tormenting satanists, as easily as it is a christian novel.

I'd definitely read the latter (and won't read this one, myself). From the first line of the post, though, it's about the lord's prayer, so I'd guess at that point that it's not for me. Why post it? I know that it IS for a number of others, just as I know that Dr. Drib probably won't read the romance I posted .. and it is one that I would have some trouble classifying .. it's a historical romance and God is mentioned in the description, but not as a major theme and there are no tags or publisher classifications that would place it firmly into christian fiction. And without reading a number of these actual books, it is sometimes difficult to assign a tag (especially at the point of posting), even if adding "christian fiction historical romance M/F" wouldn't push the title into being so long that no one could see that it was Kindle only (which ticks just as many people off, even if they can get it free, read it on nearly any hardware and liberate it, if so desired), let alone see the title. What if it were, in fact, Jewish fiction and I made a mistake (sure, it's euro centered and mentioned God, but that doesn't mean that is exclusively "christian" in nature, even if the odds are stacked that way). Do we then start labeling "muslim fiction" (does Amsterdam 2012 fit this? Or only radical propaganda describing the afterlife for it's followers?) What about a label for the non-christian fiction? Does that only include the books where no religion is ever mentioned? How do we label the wide category of urban fantasy, some of which has it's own religious leanings? Anti-Christian fiction? Will "christian fiction" include only books with proselytizing? If so, who is appointed to read them and determine this? Someone who likes it (and might not even see it) or someone who does not (and is overly sensitive and labels the historical romance where a priest occurs as such)? Some of the "christian fiction" I've seen tagged only has no bad words or pre-marital sex (or are practically harlequin books and faith is almost not mentioned), while others are sermons thinly disguised (and often poorly written).

I am firmly against subforums, unless you can log into the main forum and see ALL the posts at one time (which, from what I've seen here, you can't).

I don't feel duped to open a thread and discover it's a sports book, horror, a memoir or any number of other genres I am not interested in (including Christian fiction). I simply close the thread and move on.

[Lemurion]

I do like tagging or otherwise indicating what a book's about, but I don't want to get into a froth of nerdly rage about it.

I'd be more worried by separation because sometimes a book of a type I wouldn't normally read will catch my eye, and I'd miss it if it were stuck in a ghetto that's 99% books I have no interest in.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I'd be more worried by separation because sometimes a book of a type I wouldn't normally read will catch my eye, and I'd miss it if it were stuck in a ghetto that's 99% books I have no interest in.

I admit this is a problem. I never would have read Shayne Parkinson's Promises to Keep quartet if it had been labeled as historical fiction. Yet, I did download the first ebook (Sentence of Marriage) and shortly bought the other 3 titles because I found the writing to be absolutely world-class.

OTOH, I suspect that there are certain categories of books that we avoid because we know that no matter how well-written we can't get past certain prejudices. Included in that for me are vampire and horror books -- I've tried them numerous times and never was able to complete them.

As regards books labeled christian and that are fiction, if they are so labeled, my experience is that the author is preaching in the guise of a story (an allegory?). For the most part, this is what is expected by readers, I think, who see soemthing labeled as christian fiction. I'm not interested. However, a book labeled as christian that is nonfiction could interest me because the perspective and information are different.

I would add that the category/genre of christian fiction is a fairly well-defined standard category. I've not seen the same -- or at least not with the same frequency -- usage with other religious affiliations; christian stands out uniquely, perhaps because of its evangelicalism.

I'm not sure what the best answer is to the problem. Probably what I do now: open the thread and as soon as I discover what genre(s) the book falls into, I either read on or close the thread.

[laitsabr]

+1 for tagging, or a simple parenthesis in the header to indicate genre.

I agree with Lemurion that aggressive filtering could have the unfortunate effect of preventing me from viewing content I could learn to appreciate given a chance. I have my literary lines drawn, but no fences need to be up.