The Skin Map - Bright Empires #1

Kit Livingstone happens to find a portal, that can and will take him to many different places, it is here that he meets up with his grandfather who tells him about it, and how others can do it as well. He is told of a map that is tattooed on someone who traveled all over the different portals. It is a map that is missing at the moment (as the person it is tattooed on is dead) and everyone is searching for it and the thing that he must try to find.

Personally i like this book, with all the twists and turns and will likely be getting the second book in the series.






Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. All opinions expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.



Book Description

"I need your help with a project. It will be the adventure of a lifetime—of several lifetimes. But it will change you forever."

Kit Livingston's great-grandfather appears in a deserted alley during a tumultuous storm. He reveals an unbelievable story: ley lines throughout Britain are not merely the stuff of legend or the weekend hobby of deluded cranks—they're pathways to other worlds. To those who know how to use them, ley lines grant the ability to travel the multi-layered universe of which we ordinarily inhabit only a tiny part.

One explorer knew more than most. Braving every danger, he toured both time and space on voyages of heroic discovery. Ever on his guard, and fearful of becoming lost in the cosmos, he developed an intricate code—a roadmap of symbols—that he tattooed onto his own body. This Skin Map has since been lost in time. Now the race is on to recover all the pieces and discover its secrets.

The Bright Empires series is a unique blend of epic treasure hunt, ancient history, alternate realities, cutting-edge physics, philosophy, and mystery.

No Place Like Holmes

I have to say that the first couple paragraphs in the prologue didn't draw me in like a lot of other books do, made me wonder for a bit if i was going to be bored reading this book in entirety, but the next few drew me in pretty well.

Griffin is a genius but is humble, not something you usually hear about in the same sentence. He has a photographic memory. In the beginning of book he is alone in a tiny train compartment as he is headed to London, to stay with his uncle for the summer. He is doing so because he wasn't invited to go to camp with his schoolmates. He doesn’t know who Sherlock Holmes is, so the ticket guy on train gives him a paper to read about Sherlock (whom he now thinks may be his uncle as he lives in the same place he is going to).

He finds out who his uncle is and he isn't Sherlock and is disappointed. His mother had sent him and the uncle didn't even know (he hadn't opened the first letter as he thought it was a bill collector). I personally would be very mad at that mother, since she didn't receive a reply from the uncle.

He finds a lady while in a cab on the way to church who wants to see Sherlock, so he asks the cabbie to take them back. Sherlock wasn't home so he got his uncle. The woman let his uncle Rupert take the case on the condition that Griffin was involved with the investigation.

I enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed reading Nancy Drew books when i was younger. With the way it ended I sure hope to be able to find more of these books on the booksneeze site. If not i will be sure to keep my eyes out in stores.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. All opinions expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.

Book Description
The new resident in 221A Baker Street is about to give Sherlock Holmes a run for his magnifying glass!

When Griffin is sent to stay with his detective uncle at 221A Baker Street for the summer, he is certain that his uncle must be the great Sherlock Holmes! But Griffin is disappointed to discover that Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street and his uncle lives unit 221A. His uncle is a detective, just not a very good one. But when Griffin meets a woman with a case that Holmes has turned away for being too ridiculous, he and his uncle team up to help her. Along the way, Griffin shows his uncle just what it means to have true faith in God, even when the case challenges that. The woman claims that her husband was eaten by the Loch Ness Monster, but monsters aren’t real—or are they?

The Promise of an Angel (Heaven On Earth #1)

Book starts out with Judith getting ready to tell a story, and the children are picking names to go in the story and pick hers and Andrew (which makes Judith blush, and who is Levi's cousin). Her sister Martha shows off in front of the guys a little (by sashaying) and laughs with Levi, which in turn makes Judith mad, saying (in her head) that since she is turning 19 tomorrow, it should be she exchanging pleasantries with him, not Martha.

He’d talked about courting Judith as soon as she turned nineteen, and here were her sister and him making playful gestures at the table while the preacher was praying, before the meal. Her younger brother get hurt, and that is when she first sees the angel.

Much more happens in the book, but i can't continue too much without giving away very key details about what is going on, I loved this book and finished it in under a day as I didn't want to stop reading. Will be glad to read the second book in series when it comes out.

When i got to the ending i had tears in my eyes, but still a smile as well.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. All opinions expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.


Book Description

In Mescota County, Michigan, an angelic visitor's words inspire Judith to a future she never imagined. After a barn raising accident, Judith Fischer’s convinced she’s met an angel. However, her attempts to convince others end up frustrating her Old-Order Amish community. Only Andrew Lapp believes her, but the rest, including Levi Plank, the man’s she’s waited to marry, demand she forget the nonsense. Meanwhile, her younger sister Martha has taken a fancy to Levi and sees her sister's controversy as a perfect distraction for turning Levi's head.

In a dream, the angel tells Judith she must choose her path. As her faith continues to grow, so do her feelings for Andrew. Will she continue to place her hope in the angel’s message, even if it means losing all she knows and loves?

Some translations from book
abvoahra: serve
ach: oh
aemen: amen
aenti: aunt
bloh: blue
boppli: baby
daed: dad
denki: thank you
drauwa: trust
Englischer: a non-Amish person
es: is
fasavvahra samling: sour the gathering
fashprecha: promise
fraa: wife
gayl: yellow
geh: go
greeya fatt: get away
guder mariye: good morning
guder nacht: good night
gut: good
haus: house
himlish-engel: heavenly angel
Ich: I
Ich veiklich: I truly
jah: yes
kaffi: coffee
kapp: a prayer covering
kumm: come
kumm mitt mich: come with me
leddich: unmarried
mamm: mom
mammi: grandmother
maydel: girl
meidung: shunning
meiya: tomorrow
mich: me
muscht: must
nacht: night
nau: now
nay: no
nett: not
onkle: uncle
Ordnung: the written and unwritten rules of the Amish
Pennsylvania Deitsch: the language most commonly used by the Amish
redd-up: clean up
rumschpringe: running-around period that begins when the person turns sixteen years old and ends when the young person is baptized into the Amish faith.
saund: sound in doctrine
shiklich: appropriate, suitable, proper
shul: school
vass: what
veiklich: truly
vinsha: wish
wedder: weather
wundebaar: wonderful

KFC STYLE GRAVY

INGREDIENTS:

4 tbsp. butter or shortening
5 tbsp. flour
1/4 tsp. sage - OPTIONAL
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 beef boullion cube
1 chicken boullion cube
2 cups water



Directions:

Boil the water and add bouillon cubes; stir until dissolved. Set aside.

Add flour, sage, garlic powder and black pepper in small bowl. Mix and set aside.

Add butter in saucepan over low heat; heat until butter is melted, stirring as needed.

Add flour mixture to melted butter, stirring constantly.

Cook until it takes on a golden brown color.

Slowly pour the bouillon water to the flour/butter mixture. Stir or whisk constantly to prevent lumps.

Turn the heat up to medium and continue cooking until you have a creamy, pourable gravy sauce.

Serve while hot.

Nick of Time

This book was the first time i have ever read a Bug Man novel. It starts off as Nick and Alena go into a shop called "WEDDINGS 'N' SUCH: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO MAKE YOU SPECIAL DAY UNFORGETTABLE", he is very uncomfortable in this ship. He also finds out the woman he is marrying has thought of this day since she was a child and even has some pictures of what she wants the cake to look like and the place she wants to go on their honeymoon. This book is definitely a page turner and I couldn't put it down, will definitely be looking into getting more books about the bug man.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. All opinions expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.



Official Book Description
Tying the knot may be the toughest thing Nick Polchak has ever tried to do.

Nick Polchak is comfortable with bugs. Their world is orderly. He knows where he stands and exactly how to interpret the signs they give him. But a fiancée and an upcoming wedding? Not so much.

That's why—a mere four days before the nuptials—Nick finds himself driving to Philadelphia for the monthly meeting of the Vidocq society. Being among a group of forensic professionals consulting on cold cases will surely allow him to feel useful and normal.

But while there he discovers that a close friend has been murdered . . . and in classic Nick style, begins to follow the trail of evidence rather than returning to his fiancée. Fearing that his one-track mind won't lead him home by Saturday, Alena and three of her dogs go to track him down.

When she finally finds him, nothing is as Alena expected . . . because the twists in this case will surprise even the most dedicated Bug Man fans.

iPhone Battery's Die Fast! Here's The Fix!

This is the apple info
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

Got this info from facebook but also from this site (but wanted to copy it here for myself to not forget)
http://www.payetteforward.com/why-does-my-iphone-battery-die-so-fast-heres-the-real-fix/

1. Push Mail

When your mail is set to push, it means that every second, your iPhone is connecting to the server and asking, “Is there mail? Is there mail? Is there mail? Is there mail? etc…” This constant flow of data drains your battery very quickly, and it makes sense if you think about it. The problem seems to be compounded for those of us who have Exchange servers set up on our phones.

The fix: Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> and turn off Push. Scroll down to change Fetch to Every 15 Minutes and set each individual account to Fetch. The Mail app will still check for new mail every time it’s opened and send your messages right away.

If you have an Exchange server set up on your phone, get ready to jump for joy!



2. Location Services

There are a few services that you probably don’t know about that can constantly drain your battery. Go to Privacy -> Location Services -> and scroll all the way down to the last item, System Services. Tap on System Services to open that folder. Here’s what I suggest: Turn off Setting Time Zone if you don’t do a lot of travel, turn off Location-based iAds if you find Apple’s tracking your location to deliver you personalized ad content unnecessary, and turn off Diagnostics and Usage if you don’t think Apple needs to know exactly how you use your phone.

New in iOS 7 (and this is important), tap Frequent Locations at the bottom of the list. Yes, your phone has been tracking you everywhere you go. I personally don’t see a need for this feature and it uses a lot of battery because it is always tracking your whereabouts, so I’d suggest you turn it off.

After you’ve taken care of those pesky hidden services, make sure you turn on the location icon so you know when your location is being tracked. Not all apps are created equal. When an app uses location services, it drains the battery quickly, no matter how well the program was written. For example, I used to use Inrix Traffic, but stopped after I noticed it never stops using location services, even when it was in the background.

The other piece of location services that Apple has still not gotten correct is location-based reminders. The long and short of it is, don’t use them. There is no way to make your battery last a long time if you do. This is one of those features that Apple released, but I’ve never seen anyone be able to get through a whole day on battery power when they were using that feature. It’s a cool idea, but it doesn’t work if your phone is completely dead.



3. Diagnostics And Usage

Do yourself a favor and head to Settings -> General -> About -> and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Open up Diagnostics & Usage and turn off the automatic stream of data that is always sent to Apple.



4. Close Out Your Apps

Once every couple days, make sure you close out your apps. If you have iOS 6, double tap the home button, press and hold on any one of the apps until they all start to wiggle, and then hit the red circles to close out all of your apps. If you’ve upgraded to iOS 7, double tap the home button and swipe up on each app to flick it off the top of the screen. This doesn’t delete your apps, it just clears them from the application memory. Apple’s official line on this is that apps have 10 seconds after you close them to go into a dormant mode, where they live happily until they are retrieved. In actuality, especially since all apps are not created equal, very often a battery issue is the result of an app crashing in the background. The app should have closed, but it didn’t.

Is your phone getting hot? That’s because the CPU is running at 100% all day long. It’s not designed to do that, and it’s not a hardware problem–it’s just software glitch in out in the background. Apple doesn’t like to admit that could happen, but it always does. Need proof? Go back to Settings, General, About, Diagnostics and Usage, and take a look at all of the crashing apps on your phone. It shouldn’t be hard for you to see where the problem lies.



5. Turn Off Your Phone Once A Week (The Right Way)Turn off your phone once a week. An iPhone is a little computer that we carry around with us everywhere we go. Just by holding the top power button for a few seconds, sliding to power off, and turning it back on, many of the processes that you don’t see running on your phone stop running and start fresh again. Apple designed the iPhone with ease of use in mind, and they would never tell you to do that, but imagine if you left your PC running for a month. It would slow down, and so does the iPhone.

Whatever you do, don’t hold down the power button on the top and the home button on the front together for several seconds to do a hard reset, if you can avoid it. That’s basically the same as unplugging your desktop computer from the wall while it’s turned on. It causes all sorts of software glitches and could be contributing to the problem. Don’t do it. But just to be clear, pressing down the power button and the home button together for just a moment takes a screen shot, and that’s absolutely OK to do!



6. Choose Which Apps Can Run In The Background

Lots of little programs are always running on your iPhone to keep things running smoothly. I like to think of them like the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that did all the background work so that Willy Wonka could present a delicious product to the product. One of these iPhone Oompa-Loompas is always ready to interrupt what you’re doing if a phone call comes in. Another Oompa-Loompa keeps the music playing in the background even when you leave the Music app. The iPhone Oompa-Loompas all need to be fed, however, and they eat battery life. I admit it: There aren’t actually Oompa-Loompas that feed on battery and live inside your phone, but there are background processes, and they do much the same thing.

In addition to the little background programs that are required to make your iPhone work correctly, apps that you download from the App Store can bring their own Oompa-Loompas along that do little tasks in the background. These background programs need to be fed as well, so I’d recommend going through this list and turning off the apps that don’t need to refresh when you’re not using them. You’ll probably want to leave some of these on, but even turning off a few can some significant battery life.



7. Turn Off Auto-Brightness

Right above the earpiece of your iPhone, there’s an ambient light sensor that Apple uses to adjust the brightness of your display to the amount of light all around you. Head to Settings -> Wallpaper & Brightness and turn off Auto-Brightness. So why does turning off Auto-Brightness save battery life? Whenever you use your phone, you’ve got a little sensor asking, “How bright is it now? How bright is it now? How about now?”, etc., and not surprisingly, that drains your battery.

Turning off the Auto-Brightness feature used to be bit of a hassle until Apple released iOS 7, because you had to go back to Settings every time you wanted to adjust the brightness of your phone. Now, it’s easy. Swipe up from the bottom of your screen to reveal Command Center, and you’ll see a brightness slider right below the top row of icons – it’s the slider with the sun icons on either side. Give it a try – you might be surprised by just how bright or dark your display can actually go!

I’m going to be honest: I leave Auto-Brightness turned on on my personal iPhone. Since I’ve implemented the battery saving tips above, my battery has been just fine and I haven’t seen the need to turn Auto-Brightness off. If you’re having trouble getting a full day of battery life out of your phone, try turning it off. Some people actually like having Auto-Brightness turned off so they can adjust the brightness of their display whenever they want to just the way they like it. The ambient light sensor is good, but it’s never as good as you setting the brightness of your phone yourself.



8. Don’t Restore From An iTunes Backup – Use iCloud Instead!

So you’ve exhausted all of your options, and it’s time to restore your phone. Whatever you do, don’t restore from an iTunes backup. Very often, the same glitch that your phone is experiencing right now gets backed up to iTunes, So after you restore your phone the same problem comes back. You think you have to broken phone, but what you’ve done is simply restore the same problem you started with. How to avoid this?

Use iCloud Backup! (And Restore from iCloud Backup)

After you plug your phone into your computer to restore and it reboots, unplug it from the computer as soon as you see the welcome screen where you can choose the language. Then, use the menus on your phone to connect to Wi-Fi and restore from an iCloud backup. iCloud backup is different because it only backs up your little bits of user information and downloads all of your apps fresh from the App Store. When you use iTunes, it makes one big bundle of your phone, puts it on your computer, and then puts it all back just the way it was. It doesn’t fix anything.

If you don’t have enough space on iCloud to backup your phone, copy all your photos from your phone to your computer and delete everything in your camera roll. Alternatively, or after you’ve already done this, go into iCloud backup settings and turn off Camera Roll from your backup. The only thing that takes up space in iCloud is the camera roll – Everything else is very insignificant. Trust me, an iCloud restore is worth it.



9. Last Ditch Effort – Restore Your Phone Again And Set It Up As New

It’s okay to turn on iCloud and redownload your contacts, calendars, reminders, bookmarks, etc., but if the glitch is too deep and it’s in all the backups, sometimes you just have to start fresh. And let’s be honest here–if you’re going to go to the Apple Store to have a technician take a look at it, do all of these steps first, because if you don’t, they’ll send you home to do them anyway. Apple techs are trained to never believe a battery issue is actually a battery issue. In truth, they rarely are battery issues

Outcasts - The Safe Lands Series

By Jill Williamson
Published by Zondervan

Average Blogger Rating: 5 Stars

I was happy to receive this second book in the series of three. The first book told of how a village was taken into the Safe lands so that they can produce babies that are uninfected by the thin plague.

This book continues to tell you their story, they also find out that since they got their women out of the harem, that Jackson's Peak was invaded and they captured some men and women (that weren't killed in the fight).

We find out that they always try for the female to have more than one baby. We find out how many babies that Shaylinn (Shay) and who the father is, with the help of Mason's digging. This is a very inventive story set in the future and I believe a lot of people will enjoy reading this.








Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. All opinions expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.








Book Description

Uncovering the truth could cost them their lives.

Since entering the Safe Lands, Mason has focused on two things: finding a way to free his village from captivity, and finding a cure for the disease that ravages many within the walls of the Safe Lands. After immune-suppressive drugs go missing in the clinic, Mason discovers his coworker, Ciddah, may know more about the Safe Lands than imagined ... and may have an agenda of her own. At the same time, Mason’s brother Levi is focused on a way to free the remaining Glenrock captives, while Mason’s younger brother Omar decides to take the rebellion against the Safe Lands into his own hands as a vigilante.

Soon all three brothers are being watched closely - and when Mason stumbles onto a shocking secret about the Safe Lands meds, his investigation just might get those closest to him liberated.