milestogofromhere.com | Jeff Miles's personal blog | Faith, Family, Fitness, and Fun

Year: 2012

  • Book Review: Salvaged – Stefne Miller

    salvagedI was given Salvaged as a gift from a family member because they knew I would read it and provide a review. I devoured the book, but because of how crazy things were at that point I did not post a review right after I read it. I’m remedying that situation right now. This book deserves better than that.. In an age where young minds are learning what true love is from books like the Twilight Saga, it is nice to see a wholesome love story like Salvaged.

    In Salvaged, Miller deals with a lot of weighty issues like loss, fear, romance, and what faith looks like when you are truly at the bottom. At the beginning of the book we meet Attie after she has lost her best friend and her mom in a car crash and goes to live with the family of the best friend she lost. The story details her journey back to wholeness and the bumps and bruises along the way. I love Miller’s writing style, she writes in a way that is very easy to read and lends itself to you getting through the book rather quickly. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who would be drawn to the Twilight Saga. It is also a good read for guys like me who are fathers of little girls because it gives you a window into their world in a way that you may not get in other places.

    I currently have Miller’s two other books Rise (the sequel to Salvaged) and Collision in my stack to read/review so look for them in the future.

  • Book Review: Behemoth by Jonathan C. Leicht

    behemothI wouldn’t say that I am necessarily a believer in young earth theory, there are certain aspects that make sense to me. As you obviously know, I am a believer and definitely a creationist so when I saw this book available I thought it might be a really good read. Before I get into the rest of the review, I want to point out that the author makes it very clear in what he is writing what his beliefs are and he definitely attacks the scientific community and their narrow minded views in this book so be warned if you are prone to get offended by this, this is not the book for you. That being said, I thought this was an extremely well written book

    and would recommend it to any fiction fan. The author has definitely done his research and presents a very compelling story about the search for the lost Behemoth. The story follows two characters and their search

    for what they believe are real live dinosaurs that are living in Africa and have remained hidden for centuries, one is Jim Thompson who runs the Masai Mara Game preserve in Kenya who starts his investigation when several of his elephants are gored to death. The second is Professor Stephen Gregory who after making known that he believes dinosaurs could still exist is relieved of his research position and given the opportunity to prove his theories are true.

    As I said, I thought the book was a good read, even if it was a bit preachy at times. If you are looking for a little brain fodder on the creation/evolution debate you should definitely pick up Behemoth.

  • Book Review: The Coming Revolution – Dr. Richard G. Lee

    Given the current political climate in our country, especially at the begining of an election year, I thought it would be prudent to start sharpening my political focus, so I picked up The Coming Revolution: Signs from America’s Past that Signal Our Nation’s Future as my next book to review and make my readers aware of.

    Lee has a very Republican/Conservative/anti-Obama viewpoint, so to many of my liberal friends he will be very hard to swallow. However, my conservative/Tea Party friends will find a lot of common ground with him.

    One of the things I greatly appreciated about this book was how much historical perspective on our country was given. As we move

    into the election season, I think this is a must read for conservatives who are not happy with the way our country is heading because I think he gives a lot of advice from history as to how to get where we need to be. One thing he makes extremely clear is that the founding fathers assumed the country woukd be run by men and women of faith, they knew that a republic/democracy would not survive if there were not men and women of faith to run it…human nature is just too selfish. Overall, I would definitely recommend The Coming Revolution to anyone who is not

    happy with the current political environment or anyone who wants to read about how the faith of the nation’s founders affected how they structured our country.

  • Book Review: Heart of Ice – A Triple Threat Novel by Liz Wiehl & April Henry

    _225_350_Book.555.coverIn this book the Triple Threat club of Allison, Nic, & Cassidy are on the case of a very cunning killer with absolutely no moral conviction whatsoever.

    Crime dramas like Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, NCIS, & CSI are some of my favorite types of TV shows so when it came time to pick another book to review Heart of Ice

    was very appealing. I liked the idea of three friends who were in 3 different fields related to crime solving all working together to help solve a crime, Allison is a Federal Prosecutor, Nic is an FBI agent, & Cassidy is a crime reporter for a local TV station. I thought the authors did an excellent job laying out who the characters were and what their motivations were. The story wove together really nicely as well. I hope I can go back and read the two previous novels by these two authors because they were a great pair on this novel.

    I also took a new approach for this book in that it is the first book I have ever read completely digitally. I read the book entirely on my phone using the Amazon Kindle app. I am happy to say that I really liked it, for my ongoing book reviews for Thomas Nelson, I will continue to download them to my phone (or if I get a tablet in the future, my tablet).

  • Book Review: The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook – Slaying the Living Dead Within – Jeff Kinley

    christian zombie killers handbookWhen I decided to read The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook by Jeff Kinley I didn’t know what I was getting into. The author takes an interesting path on how he wrote the book. This book is both fiction and non-fiction.

    The author first writes a chapter that tells a story of the life after the zombie apocalypse has begun, then follows it up with a chapter explaining how the chapter before relates to our Christian walk. While reading the book, I felt like it was too disjointed but after reflecting on the experience I realize that the author has a great talent tying together a story that he has made up with the ultimate story into a cohesive unit.  I actually finished this book quite a while ago, but have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what review to write. After considering, I have to say that the author has written a pretty good book. Like I said, it seemed disjointed at the time, but after reflecting, I realized how good of a book it really was. If you are into zombie fiction at all or how it can relate to your Christian walk, you should definitely pick up this book.