Caleb Woodbridge's Blog, page 4

Review: What Makes Us Human? by Mark Meynell

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review.

The latest in the Questions Christians Ask series, Mark Meynell sketches out a solid introduction to basic Christian beliefs about humanity. Its brevity is both it’s biggest strength and weakness. It is accessible and easily digested in an hour or two. It’s probably most helpful for younger or newer Christians – more established Christians might find it a bit basic, and it assumes a lot that a non-Christian...

Ereader sales may have stalled, but ebooks aren’t going anywhere

Waterstones’ has reported that their sales of Kindle devices were down this Christmas, while the rest of their sales were up 5%, which has been widely reported along the following lines:

Coffin For a Kindle: The eBook Market is Dying in the UK

Kindle loses ground as demand for physical books grows

Kindle sales have ‘disappeared’, says UK’s largest book retailer

Are ebooks declining? No. These misleading headlines all show either a lack of comprehension or an anti-ebook agenda. If a market is d...

“For heroes, life is a weapon”

“Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly”

I’ve just finished reading Empire of Bones by N D Wilson, the third and probably the best yet in the Ashtown Burials series. The series is a children’s contemporary fantasy of high adventure and drama, drawing on myth and history in a contemporary America, with echoes of Indiana Jones, Harry Potter and C S...

8 Ways to Avoid Legalism in Your New Year’s Resolutions

The beginning of a New Year: time to take stock, reflect on the year that’s just gone, and put away the mince pies in favour of gym shoes.

But is it really worth making New Year’s Resolutions, especially for Christians in light of the Gospel? Are New Year’s Resolutions just legalism, or can we use them to help us become more like Jesus?

Here are eight ways to make the most of New Year’s Resolutions…

1. Don’t make resolutions out of obligation

There’s nothing in the Bible that mentions New Year’s...

Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens Trailer Breakdown and Reactions

New Star Wars trailer! My head says “it’s only a trailer”, but the rest of me is running around making light sabre noises . Zzzziwwwww! Whooosh!

(deep breath)

Let’s just take this calmly, one shot at a time, shall we?

It takes 10 seconds into the trailer to fade up. 10 SECONDS. You could have fitted in an extra shot of things exploding there, guys.

Sand! The chances are good that we’re back on Tattooine, connecting it directly to the locations of the original films.

“There has been an awakening” –...

Book apps, digital reading and the future of our culture

An interesting debate over the value of book apps has bubbled up, sparked by comments from Nicolette Jones at the Bookseller Children’s Conference. She was critical of book apps, suggesting that interactivity got in the way of the story, and that reading a book with a child is a hug, whereas an app is leaving them to their own devices.

While there are many bad examples of interactivity in book apps, I think that’s a feature of digital storytelling and reading being relatively young. Publishers...

Threads: We are all worshippers

I’ve got a new article up on the threads website on how we’re all worshippers, whether religious or not. Check it out!

>> We are all worshippers – threadsuk.com

I predicted Neil Gaiman’s Doctor Who script 5 years ahead

Well, part of it anyway… Going through some old computer files, I found an outline I wrote back in 2006 for what I’d like to see in the next series of Doctor Who. It’s quite fun seeing how many of my wishes have been granted on the show, such as:

The Master as the main villain of series 3
Killer snowmen in the Christmas special
A swashbuckling pirate episode
A romance between the companions (rather than with the Doctor and his companion)
Time-travelling love interest for the Doctor

All of them fair...

10 years & 10 ways life has changed since I was a fresher

Astonishingly (to me at least!), it’s 10 years since I started this blog, just as I was setting off to start at Cardiff University. A lot has changed in that time: both the freshers’ experience, and my lifepersonally…

1. Wifi

One of the first thing any student does on arriving at university is get registered for the uni wifi network. But 2004 was the last academic year in my halls before it got Internet. I had to go over to the Engineering or Maths building to use one of the university computer...

The pleasures of new bookshelves

If you’re a bookworm like myself, then books pose two major problems: time and space.

Firstly, finding the time to read all those books that are just waiting for you to immerse yourself in them. And secondly, having the physical space in which to store, display and care for all the books.

There is one obvious solution to this problem, and that’s this:

A library that’s bigger on the inside than the out, and as much time to read as I wanted through the wonders of time travel? Yes please.

Of course,...