Musings of a Snickerdoodle

I knew a little about the famous Israeli rescue of hostages held in Entebbe but didn't know a lot.  'Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, The Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History' by Saul David was an interesting way to learn about it.  David takes you through each day, in 'real time', as it were, bringing you back and forth from the hostages and terrorists to Israeli diplomats and military men, international political leaders and others,   continually switching locations to give you a perspective of what was going on in these significant places and among the various significant people throughout each of these 8 days of tension.   It was quite interesting,   and very informative.   I did not know that hijackings were such a common thing in the late 60s into the early 70s.   And that they were mainly to make demands of Israel! Nor did I know that there were Japanese terrorists fighting for the Pal...

In my opinion, this book is worth having just for the convection oven information at the beginning. It explains, not only how different convection ovens work, but also how to adapt recipes designed to be cooked in conventional ones. It has several recipes, organized into sections like, "Breakfast and Brunch", "Appetizers and Snacks", "Poultry", "Breads" and so on. Each recipe gives a brief description of the food, at times even explaining how the convection oven cooks it to perfection, and also lists which types of Convection Ovens the recipe works best with, Full-Size, Countertop, Halogen…etc. And which setting to use, BAKE or ROAST. The one thing I think that this cookbook could be improved by is having pictures of each recipe.  But many of the titles and descriptions of the foods sound tasty just to read about, so it's not too important. There are many (in my opinion) easy to follow recipes, like  Juicy-Oven-Grilled Bacon ...

The CSB kids Bible is a pretty nice Bible. As to its physical characteristics of this Bible, it is a very colorful hardcover which kids will probably like.  Even the edges of the pages are colored.  I do want to note that on the inside of the front and back cover has an orange crinkly pattern, at first I thought that the pages were damaged, but on closer examination I realized that it was just a picture.   It has some colorful pages scattered at wide intervals through the Bible.   Many of them have summaries of what each book of the Bible contains.   They give descriptions like, "Matthew was originally written for the Jews and shows Jesus as the Messiah and King, in whom the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled." Many of them give pretty good descriptions but I didn't like all of their summaries as some seem to be leaning toward a "Christocentric" hermeneutic instead of a literal, grammatical, historical one. Some pages have maps, and othe...

Want to learn some history in about an hour?   This book series is a good way to do it. In60Learning produces books that are designed to be read in an hour's time.   Thus providing a quick learning experience.   Upon being offered the chance to try out their material, I chose Alexander the Great: Student of Aristotle, Descendant of Heroes, a part of their BiographyIn60 series.   I did not know much about him though I have noticed many references to him in some of my other reading and felt a curiosity to learn more about him.   Alexander's life is summed up in thirty pages.   A skilled military leader, who conquered a great deal of territory, building on his father, Philip's, strong start.   He could be quite ruthless in taking cities, but I was surprised at how many times he exercised mercy and allowed the peoples of the towns he conquered to live.   It gives a high level   overview of Alexander's life, relationships with hi...