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Jayne Chase Loseke

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Jayne Chase Losekehttps://jaynechaseloseke.wordpress.com

Book Review of CHRISTMAS! By Sheila Deeth

November 20, 2013 by Jayne Chase Loseke

Christmas! by Sheila Deeth is a 31 page book, written for families. Christmas!_Genesis_t_Cover_for_Kindle

Have you ever owned an Advent calendar and not been quite sure how to best enjoy it?  Ms. Deeth’s book may be the answer you are looking for.  Each page has about 100 words, which walk the reader through the books of the bible chronologically.  Page 1 tells the story of creation from Genesis.  The story of baby Jesus birth is on page 25.  A family could read one page from Christmas! each night before opening a door on their Advent calendar.  Deeth’s writing style is family-friendly.  She uses humor and dialog to illumine aspects of biblical stories which interest children.

Christmas! is available on-line at http://sheiladeeth.weebly.com/, as well as at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Kobo and Goodreads.

http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Genesis-Revelation-100-words/dp/1478149132/  Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Genesis-Revelation-words-Bible-ebook/dp/B00AKSL35S/ Amazon kindle
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day-sheila-deeth/1112663681?ean=9781478149132 Barnes and Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day-sheila-deeth/1112219753?ean=2940044703674 Barnes and Noble nook
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/179427 smashwords ebook
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day kobo
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6277300-christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day Goodreads

The book review of Christmas! by Sheila Deeth originally appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on November 20, 2013.

Book Reviews Advent CalendarAmazonAmazon KindleBarnesBarnes & NobleChildren's booksChristmasfamily booksGoodreadsSheila DeethSmashwords Leave a comment

Ten Things you may not know about Sheila Deeth.

November 11, 2013 by Jayne Chase Loseke

Today I am hosting my author friend, Sheila Deeth.

Sheila Deeth is an author who writes children’s Christian books and adult contemporary novels.  She has enjoyed writing since childhood, and decided to write professionally about ten years ago.  Sheila has a clever way of combining math concepts in her books, such as Divide by Zero.  She also has written a number of Christian children’s books which are largely available through Cape Arago press.  Sheila has been a wonderful inspiration to me in my writing journey.  I appreciate her friendly encouragement and her charming British accent.  I encourage you to discover the charm of Sheila’s children and Young Adult books.  What follows is a short primer to answer the question:  “Who is Sheila Deeth?”  Enjoy.

 Ten Things you may not know about Sheila Deeth.

Ten is such a good number isn’t it? Ten fingers; Ten Commandments; two digits; ten favorite children’s books; ten best… whatever?  I had to write a blogpost recently listing “seven things you may not know about me.” But I’ve looked around the internet, and “ten things” seems much more common. So here’s my attempt to tell a fellow author ten things about me.

  1. I lived in the States for ten years (see, I said it’s a good number!) before I was allowed to become a citizen.
  2. The judge who welcomed me made a wonderful speech. I can’t remember if it had ten points, but I do recall him reminding us our diversity is something to be proud of, a vital part of what makes America strong, so I’m proud to say I’m an English American.
  3. I grew up Catholic but my Mum is Methodist. My husband grew up in the Church of England. My uncle served a term as President of Gideons in England. My brother’s a priest, and I’m an ordained, but inactive, elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), so I’m proud to say I’m a Catholic Protestant, or better still, a mongrel Christian. (I do love those sweetly unique, intriguingly different, and ridiculously healthy mongrel puppies! And I wonder what life would be like with ten dogs!)
  4. I earned my BA in mathematics as from Cambridge University in England. Then I specialized in mathematical astronomy during my post-grad year, so I’m proud to say I’m a mathematician and a scientist.
  5. I have loved reading and writing ever since the day I learned to hold a book and a pencil. Sadly it took a while for me to reach that stage as I was an eager teller of stories but a slow learner.
  6. I learned to call myself a writer when I met the author Jane Kirkpatrick—technically I won her in a raffle, or won an hour (plus significantly more than ten minutes) of her time. She assured me that if I loved writing and actually wrote words, then I fulfilled the definition.
  7. I learned to call myself an author when I received my first royalty check and had to declare it on my taxes.
  8. I have three sons, all of whom did way too much math in high school, and all of whom were excited when their ages moved into double figures. The one who’s nearer thirty now seems less pleased by his advancing years, and I feel old.
  9. My youngest son writes wonderful stories and plays, which I hope you might get to read sometime.
  10. And ten years ago (what a wonderful number) I started seriously trying to get my work published. Since then I’ve found or been found by four different publishers—and I’ve got to admit, four’s a pretty good number too!

So, that’s me. And this is my latest book, sixth in a series, written for parents, grandparents and kids, mathematicians, scientists, readers of the Bible, lovers of historical fiction, and any other devotees of short tales.

Bethlehem’s Baby:

Meet the Emperor Augustus’s advisors, the quiet research student helping wise men study stars, the shepherd whose granddad keeps complaining, an Egyptian fisherboy, a Roman soldier, and more in this set of forty 5-minute read-aloud stories based around the events of the Christ Child’s birth in Bethlehem.

Purchase links:

Amazon kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EY172MA/

Barnes and Noble nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bethlehems-baby-sheila-deeth/1116985949

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/bethlehem-s-baby

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/357261

Find out more about the Five-Minute Bible StoryTM Series on the publisher’s website: http://capearagopress.com/Five-Minute.html

Connect with Sheila at:

Sheila Deeth: http://about.me/SheilaDeeth

Blog: http://sheiladeeth.blogspot.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sheila.deeth

Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/SheilaDeethAuthor

Twitter: http://twitter.com/sheiladeeth

Goodreads: http://http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2853735.Sheila_Deeth

The author interview of Sheila Deeth first appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on November 11, 2013.

Author Blog Tour Uncategorized AugustusBethlehemChild JesusChildren's literatureChurch of EnglandreadingSheilaSheila Deeth 4 Comments

Book Review of WHO IS THIS MAN? by John Ortberg

September 11, 2013 by Jayne Chase Loseke

 (Zondervan:  Grand Rapids, MI) 2012.  202 pages of text.  17 pages of references.  Forward by Condoleeza Rice.

 

I enjoyed Who Is This Man?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus
It is an overview of the areas of life today affected by the life of Jesus Christ.  The areas Pastor Ortberg considers are the value of children, women’s rights, slavery, education, leadership, forgiveness, health care, separation of church and state, marriage and art.  The undergirding concept is that Jesus lived 2000 years ago in a small town in Israel.  He worked for three years in the region of Galilee as an itinerant rabbi who travelled from town to town, teaching and performing miraculous healings and displaying signs and wonders.  He was revolutionary in his time.  He caused people to think about God, themselves, their religion and others in new ways.  Two thousand years later we are still trying to understand his teachings.

John Ortberg includes quite a few quotes from Aristotle, Winston Churchill, St Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Eugene Peterson, William Shakespeare, Origen, Pliney the Younger, the bible, Plato, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, G.K. Chesterton, ancient Roman laws, Dallas Willard, Tertullian, Tacitus, Plutarch, Caesar Augustus, Thomas Cahill, and many others.  I enjoyed the quotes from famous people.  The author compares quotes of famous people, which were popular concepts in their day, to Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus’ teachings are still relevant and challenging to us today.

The author also includes interesting statistics.  I had not heard before that so many girl babies were abandoned at birth, that the biblical population was affected.  Pastor Ortberg claims that during the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry there were 1.4 million men and 1 million women alive.  Why were there 400,000 more men?  Because baby boys were preferred over girl babies at that time, too often new parents would leave girl babies outside to die of exposure.  Eventually the population ratio reflected that value of the time.

Forgiveness is another topic Pastor Ortberg discusses.  He quotes Aristotle’s “great-souled man,” among other contemporary Greek and Roman sources, to point out that forgiveness was not valued in the Greco-Roman world.  Forgiveness was seen as a sign of weakness.  People in those days valued strength, military might, power, wealth and beauty.  John the Baptist taught the ministry of repentence.  Jesus taught the ministry of reconciliation and the necessity of forgiveness.  These were radical concepts in their day.

My favorite quotes from this book are:

1)      “Aristotle’s ‘”great-souled man” is extremely proud.  He despises honors offered by the common people…He indulges in conspicuous consumption, for “he likes to own beautiful and useless things, since they are better marks of his independence.”  Incidentally, he walks, slowly, has a deep voice, and a deliberate mode of utterance.’”  (page 74)

2)      “In Bath, England, at the hot springs that formed a combination spa/Roman worship center 2000 years ago, scores of prayers have been excavated that ancients paid to have written down and offered there.  They are called “curse tablets” because by far the most common kind of prayer was a curse.  People would give the name of someone who hurt them, tell what their crime was, then specify how they wanted the gods to harm them.  ‘Docimedus has lost 2 gloves.  He asks that the person who has stolen them should lose his mind and his eyes in the temple at the place where the goddess appoints.’  No matter how much you love your gloves, this seems a tad harsh.”  (page 87)

None of the 2000 prayer tablets asked Zeus or Bacchus to bless their enemies and forgive them.  People didn’t pray for forgiveness for enemies to Zeus.

3)       “Leadership, says Harvard’s Ron Heifetz, is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.”  (page 102)

4)        “To that world, the movement of these followers of Jesus was ‘like Churchill’s description of Russia:  ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’  Christians were actually called atheists by Romans because of their neglect of the gods.”  (page 130)

5)       “Luther in turn deeply influenced composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who would begin each work by writing “J.J.”—Jesu, Jusa, “Jesus help me” –on his manuscript.  (It is a universal prayer for all writers, but often they wait until they are desperate.  I’m praying it right now.) at the end of a piece, he would write three letters—S.D.G. (Soli Deo Gloria)—that meant “To the glory of God” on all his music.  (page 158)

I recommend this book.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars.  It took me about a total of 5 hours to read. 

I would like to read more of John Ortberg’s books.  His books include:

Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them

If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat

Know Doubt: The Importance of Embracing Uncertainty in Your Faith

The Life You’ve Always Wanted

The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You

Teaching the Heart of the Old Testament: Communicating Life-Changing Truths from Genesis to Malachi (Truth for Today: From the Old Testament)

When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box

The book review of Who Is this Man? originally appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on September 11, 2013.

Book Reviews ChristianChristian livingfamily booksfamous quotesforgivenessJesus ChristJesus' affect on cultureJohn Ortbergleadership Leave a comment

Be Nice. Invite Friends. Have Fun.

September 11, 2013 by Jayne Chase Loseke

My neighborhood has a garage sale every summer.  It’s fun.  It’s work.  I don’t sell much.  This summer, after six hours of sales, I made $3.00.  My daughter, however, made $96.00.  Last summer I made $40.00.  My son made $130.00.  Possibly they sell more than me because they have better stuff.  Possibly they sell more than me because they are more fun.   My son visits all the neighbors’ garage sales.  He talks to everyone.  He is happy and healthy.  My daughter was almost 9 months pregnant this year.  She glowed.  She was happy and healthy and people were drawn to her.  I’m an introvert who enjoys reading books.  My sparkle is on the inside and harder to see.

I want to learn from my children:  people enjoy fun, good health and attractiveness.  I want to employ those concepts in my blog.  I want my blog to be fun, attractive, happy and busy.  So here are the rules:  be nice, invite friends, and have fun.  Please keep in mind, should you choose to leave a comment, that children may visit this site.  Please keep your word choice clean and your attitude positive.  I will follow those rules, as well.  And I will try to bring my inside sparkle outside, so I might have a healthy, happy glow, too.

Play nice,

I am Everymom

Be Nice.  Invite friends.  Have fun. originally appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on September 11, 2013.

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Jayne Chase Loseke

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