Category: reading

Update on Reading

In the lase few days I’ve quickly gone through a few classic science fiction books that I just wanted to write a little bit about here. The books I’ve just finished are Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. I really enjoyed Foundation, Clarke’s book was good, at least I enjoyed the writing, but the story involves race memory unhinged from time and a dualism that I find distasteful in hard sci-fi. Why am I reading these books now? Well I found a list, and both of these books were on the list. I would have eventually read Foundation, as it is often heralded as the best sci-fi book ever written, which I don’t know enough about to confirm or deny… I do know though that if you know anything of late Roman history and early European history you know how this book is going to go, and while it’s good the actual history is much more fascinating and detailed then Asimov’s work ever could be, and Asimov is really rushing things along, it took quite a bit more than 100 odd years for the Roman empire to collapse and for European states to form and the era of Merchant Princes to develop. I know why he had to rush the history along, but it still irks…

Anyway I started to reading James Clemens a.k.a James Rollins a.k.a. Jim Czajkowski’s first fantasy novel Wit’ch Fire, the link is over there to the right if you want to check it out. Without a doubt I think this first effort is better than his first mystery/thriller, Subterranean which somehow manages to have a 4 star rating at Amazon.com, maybe I shouldn’t be using them as my link source, Subterranean is the most ridiculous book I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some really crazy shit (like the original planet of the apes novel and some of Burroughs odder adventures). It has sentient monotremes/marsupials living in caves underneath Antarctica, who talk psychically with Australian aborigines. Yup, you heard that right, psychic underground kangaroo/platypi… Sigh, I sure hope the man has gotten better, I don’t know how his first book ever sold. Anyway… So far, while Wit’ch Fire hasn’t been terribly original, okay the story is the same one you’ve read over and over again, so far it is enjoyable. It is part of a series though and I don’t want to get bogged down in reading three or four 400 page books just to get a story out of the way…

Finished the second Earth Chronicles book

You have to feel sorry for Zecharia Sitchin. I choose to do so at least, because if the man is not overly earnest than he is a charlatan. I’m trying to be optimistic right now so, I’m going with earnest, naive, and uneducated. This is generous on my part, as the man has been uneducated for over 30 years and shows no signs of wanting to correct himself, or reading any of the formal criticism he has received from academics in the fields of linguistics, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, physics, astro-physics, I’m not going to keep listing them, it goes on for a while. It took me less than 2 minutes to find Mr. Sitchin’s site and several other sites that debunk his work. I looked at some of them and they have raised real issues that if Sitchin is serious about his work and critical of it he should be answering, of course this isn’t going to happen, as the man is most likely a snake oil salesmen… Wow, it took me only a couple of sentences to get from being sorry for a naive man to cursing the lying scumbag. I’m just like every politician in the entire world, I’ve flip-flopped on an issue, unlike them though I’ve admitted it!

I was skeptical from the beginning, I’d just like to know why the man tried to pass it off as factual, it’d make for great fiction all he had to do was some character development… Maybe it’s either to fleece people when you pretend you’re the keeper of a great secret. What bugs me the most is that his 12 planet was suppose to cross the Earth’s orbit in May of 2003… I don’t recall seeing that in the sky, or the news, or anywhere. Oh, and no advanced aliens either… No comment from him or any of his supporters, hmmmmm….. strange, I’m sure he has some fancy reason why to and that he’ll continue to market his books and ill formed ideas… *le sigh*

I bought books!

So I had twelve dollars of credit at one of the local book dealers here in town, Bogey’s Books. This isn’t the best used bookstore in town. The owner doesn’t know where anything really is and he isn’t the nicest guy, definitely needs to work on his customer support skills. Diana and I (Hi, Diana!) recently found another local bookstore in town, right next to the Co-Op. Sweet Briar books, was a nice little bookstore, the proprietor of the store was friendly and helpful, she was able to help with all of our questions. The only trouble we had was with some dick customer who felt that he could say whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. I wanted to use a brick on his head, Diana, always the wiser, dissuaded me. We bought a couple of cook books and then moved on…

Back to Bogey’s, I had 12 dollars of credit and I wanted to get as many books as possible. I originally had planned to pick up a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged but they only had a mass market copy that I wasn’t willing to pay 4.80 for. I ended up in their sci-fi/fantasy section, where I found a number of the books that are on my immensely long list of books to read, one of which I got for 50 cents! Score! I grabbed Foundation, Rendezvous with Rama, Wit’ch Fire, and Childhood’s End. I took them up to the register and he totaled me up, it came to 12 dollars and 70 odd cents. I had about 12 dollars and 60 odd cents in credit. He looked at me, I looked at him and he said good enough. I don’t know why I’m so excited about getting these books, my backlog only continues to grow. That list to the right, the one that lists maybe 7 or 8 books, is only the beginning of a very long list that has no real end in sight…

In other news, there is no other news for now! Of course things are happening but I’m not going to post them until something happens.

Finishing Biblically Thinking…

I finished A.J. Jacobs soon to be released book, The Year of Living Biblically. It wasn’t a bad read, it was easy and Jacob’s prose flows quite nicely. You can pick up the book read a quick 10 pages and set it back down, without ever losing the flow of the narrative. Most importantly I think for the book, considering it’s topic how Jacob’s approaches religion both with respect and skepticism, and a little humor. This keeps the whole text from getting bogged down in some of the bizarre religious beliefs he shares.

A little about the book, is in order. Jacob’s writes for Esquire magazine. His previous book was The Know-It-All, about reading the entire encyclopedia Britannica in a year. This book is about him following every law in the bible, both old and new testaments. The book is his attempt to live them all and how it effects his and his family’s lives. He also makes a number of trips to meet religious figures, who are mostly, off the map. People like snake handlers, his crazy orthodox Jewish, former uncle in Israel, etc…

I enjoyed reading the book, my problem with it though is its lack of any conclusion. After A year of living the bible as faithfully as possible, interacting with devout people of various faiths. He gives the literary equivalent of a shoulder shrug. It was good and I feel good about myself, and I feel but nothing really has changed. I have a feeling he is being disingenuous here. He has to stay light, funny, and somewhat edgy, lest he loses his cred and job at Esquire magazine. Nor can he come down and say religion is hogwash, for fear of insulting the people who helped him throughout the year, and the majority of his readers. So he gives a non-committal answer and quickly wraps the book up.

Unsatisfying.

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