Readers of this blog know I read a lot and consequently write a lot of book reviews (around 48 per year). Figuring out how to archive and present them all has been an ongoing challenge.

A couple years ago, I created a new page for reviews that brought a lot of order to the site… but it quickly became a bit clunky and time-consuming to update. Everything—and I do mean everything—had to be added to a table manually and after a while, I just couldn’t keep up. I needed something that could be more or less left alone (beyond some initial category updating) but keep everything up-to-date.

After much searching, I finally found a plugin for WordPress that lets me do what I want, and voila!

A screen shot of the new book reviews page

The new page features nine titles per screen of clickable (and mobile friendly!) images showing you every book review on the site, starting with the most recent. Simply click the image and you’re set!

The new version of the reviews page is still a work in progress, but I’d love your feedback. What works? What doesn’t? Is there anything you’d like to see done differently?

In the meantime, head on over to the new book review page and start reading!

Several months ago, I bought an iPad. While we are, in general, Apple aficionados in the Armstrong house, this wasn’t a random gadget purchase. For a while Emily and I have wondered, “What if you don’t have your laptop available to you—what’s your backup?”

Well, last week my laptop became unavailable after an unexpected fall that left it more or less a fancy paperweight. So since Thursday morning I’ve been using my iPad for everything.

All my updates on the blog. All my correspondence. Even my work for my day job (when I’ve not been busy recuperating from a nasty cold.

So far, the experience has been interesting. There are a lot of positives and a few drawbacks as well. Here are a few of the strengths and weaknesses I’ve found so far:

Strength: Great apps keep you from missing a step.

I love Pages for the iPad for word processing. It’s got terrific functionality and a very clean interface. Whenever I’ve been working in it, generally I’ve been a happy camper. However, there are a few things it can’t do, like read annotations made with Word’s reviewing tools. That’s where CloudOn comes in. This app gives you all the features you need when collaborating with Word users, allowing you to accept changes, respond to their comments and more—which worked out well for me on Friday when I needed to work on a very important project.

Weakness: WordPress’ dashboard interface isn’t tablet-friendly enough (yet).

I love WordPress as a content management system and blogging platform. They’ve made some wonderful improvements in getting the dashboard mobile friendly and having an app that’s pretty decent.

However, many of the functions available are painful to try and use on an iPad. Accessing your media library or formatting text, come readily to mind. Personally, I’ve found that it’s not worth the hassle to try to add an image at this point. I’m sure there are some major improvements on the way with WordPress 3.5 and beyond, but for now, it’s left me a bit cold.

Weakness: You’re going to need accessories.

The iPad’s on-screen keyboard is great for short tasks like writing an email or a Facebook or Twitter update, but for anything more intensive, you’re going to need some additional hardware. My iPad’s case includes a very thin keyboard—so thin that it’s practically a touchscreen itself—which is really nice for travelling or taking notes in a meeting, but when I’m settled somewhere, my larger wireless keyboard is a better option. (Also there’s something comforting about the clackity-clack of keys when you’re typing, I don’t know what it is.)

Strength: The iPad forces you to focus.

You can really only do one thing at a time with an iPad, which is a wonderful gift to those of us who are easily distracted. Distraction kills productivity and destroys excellence in our work. It’s why we’re seeing new apps show up for our laptops and desktop computers and plug-ins for our browsers to keep us away from Facebook or other sites when we should be working…

This has probably been my favorite thing about working on the iPad full-time over the last few days. I’m only doing one thing, and it’s taking me less time to do it (or rather, it’s taking me the same amount of time without the distractions).

Strength: The iPad forces you to adapt.

Because there’s no mouse and no trackpad for the iPad, you are forced to adapt. Admittedly this has been the most difficult part for me of the whole experience. There are some things that are just easier to do with a cursor, at least for now. Probably my biggest struggle has been with correcting spelling and not accidentally copying in a block of text that’s on my clipboard (this happened at least three times during the writing of this article, by the way).

But it’s fun to figure out the mechanics of how to work on a totally different set-up and find out that, with some minor tweaking, you can do most of what you need to do without too much fuss.

Would I go full-time permanently?

I’ve wondered about this for a while. In theory, I could probably do it, after getting used to a few things and making sure I’ve got all the right apps and accessories. But there are some things I can’t do (or at least, I’ve not figured out how to yet).

I like doing the occasional bit of design work for the blog or for an eBook, but there aren’t a lot of good tools out there for the iPad—and maybe there shouldn’t be. I might change my mind, but for now, the thing I appreciate the most about the iPad is its simplicity. I can write a significant amount of text easily and effectively. I can store it and distribute it with ease. Used strictly as a writing tool, it’s wonderful. But for the rest, maybe it’s better to leave those to other tools. In a pinch, though, I’m more than happy to work on an iPad.

Late in 2011, I broke down and purchased my first Kindle, and at the beginning of 2012, wrote about what I loved so far and what I didn’t love so much. In March, while in Nashville, I upgraded my Kindle to the Touch (Emily is now enjoying my original Kindle) and that pretty much took care of most of my complaints about the Kindle experience. Then, a few months later, I did something crazy:

I bought an iPad.

(This is really only crazy from my perspective–I usually don’t go on a huge tech binge like I’ve done this year.)

This summer gave me the opportunity to try a lot of different kinds of digital reading experiences, from the Kindle for iPad app, the Kindle itself and a dipping a toe into iBooks as well. How’d I like them? Here’s my take:

Kindle Touch

I love touch-screen interfaces. This was, pretty much, the biggest frustration I had with my original Kindle (that and it being useless for note taking). The on-screen keyboard, while a little clunky, is super-easy to use and I’m so glad they upgraded the highlighting function to cross pages when necessary. Grabbing highlights from personal documents is easy (just connect to a computer and open the text file), sharing is no problem, text is sharp… all in all, the Kindle Touch offers a terrific reading experience. In fact, it’s my primary reading device when I’m at home. When I’m out, though, that’s another story.

Kindle for iPad

As much as I love the Kindle Touch reading experience, I don’t like always travelling with multiple devices. It’s a bit awkward to be carrying around the Kindle and a laptop and an iPad, y’know? So when I’m out and about during the day, I take my iPad with me. What I love about the Kindle for iPad app is it keeps track of progress across devices (when connected to WiFi), has decent highlighting and note taking tools, and sharing quotes is still a snap. Whenever I’m reading a book purchased from Amazon, my highlights are stored online at kindle.amazon.com, which is helpful.

The one thing I’ve not done (yet) is read a personal document on it. Honestly, I’m kind of afraid to. The concern I have there is that I won’t be able to access any highlights or notes I make (I’m not sure if they come across to the primary Kindle device or not—I know they’re not stored online, though). And because I do so much reading for review purposes, I really need those. (If a reader knows how to do this and can tell me, I will be in his or her debt.)

The one thing I really loved reading on the iPad was a graphic novel. This summer, I was challenged to read some “fun” books as I am a giant nerd. So, I bought a Superman graphic novel and read that, which was awesome. The colors were vibrant, the images were clear… It was definitely something I’d be happy to do again sometime.

But this year I didn’t limit myself to just the Kindle and the Kindle app. I tried one more, with less than favorable results.

iBooks

I’m an Apple geek. We have multiple iDevices kicking about our home and that’s likely not going to change anytime soon. However, iBooks is by far the worst reading app I’ve used so far. While, visually, it’s nice and clear, but that’s pretty much it if you’re not reading an ePub book. If you’re reading a PDF, you’ve got nothing but the little bookmark thing and that’s it. While I’ve not given up on the app entirely, it’s definitely not been a favorite of mine so far.

Although I’m not 100 percent sold on any one type of digital reading experience (I’ve not tried the Kobo app yet and haven’t really gotten into some of the others that are out there), the Kindle and Kindle app are definitely my favorites at this stage, if for no other reason than I have so many Kindle books. I suspect they’ll continue to be my top choices for the foreseeable future.

Are you a digital reader? What’s your preference for device/app?

Last year, I took a few weeks off from the blog during August. It was terrific to unplug, unwind and read some really great content from a number of different voices. In fact, it was such a great experience, I’m doing it again!

If you’ve got something you think needs to be shared with the world I’d like to provide a platform for some other bloggers with 10-15 posts in the month of August. If you’d like to submit something, here are a few details you need to know:

1. You should have an active blog (although if you don’t, it’s not the end of the world)
2. You need to be familiar with the flavor of Blogging Theologically and be willing to write material that will be in line thematically
3. Your content needs to be encouraging to God’s people and glorifying to God
4. Your guest posts must be submitted to me by July 18

Think you’re up for it? Send me an email, tell me what you want to write about and we’ll talk about what collaborating looks like.

Looking forward to your responses!

Let’s take a trip back in time to see the top ten posts in March:

1. Everyday Theology: God Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle (July 2009)
2. Everyday Theology: God helps those who help themselves (July 2009)
3. John Piper on Mark Driscoll & John MacArthur (May 2009)
4. The Dos and Don’ts of Book Reviews (or at least how I do them) (January 2011)
5. Book Review: Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll (December 2011)
6. His Name was Smeagol (April 2010)
7. Book Review: Love Wins by Rob Bell (March 2011)
8. 3 Reasons Why I’m Hopeful About the A29 Leadership Change (March 2012)
9. #Kindle Deals for the Christian Reader (March 2012)
10. Should Christians “Name Names”? (March 2012)

And just for fun, here’s the next ten:

1. Lessons from Nehemiah (Page)
2. Notes from #TheGospelProject Webcast (March 2012)
3. Everyday Theology: Preach the Gospel always, if necessary use words (July 2009)
4. Solomon’s Advice for Bloggers (March 2012)
5. Book Reviews (Page)
6. Everyday Theology (Page)
7. Book Review: How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens by Michael Williams (March 2012)
8. Meet Hudson (March 2012)
9. Where Is Jesus In The Old Testament? (June 2011)
10. Book Review: From the Resurrection to His Return by D.A. Carson (March 2012)

If you haven’t had a chance to read any of these posts, I hope you’ll take a few minutes today to check them out.