shakatany | Books and More Books (Reply)

I've just finished reading a whole bunch of books (I tend to rotate as different books require different attention spans).

First off was a fast read by J.A. Jance, one of the few mystery writers I'm still reading. It's called Web of Evil and is a sequel to her Edge of Evil. I like the heroine Ali Reynolds and the use of her blog resonates with me however she does get into one or two situations that are unbelievably foolhardy like accompanying the cops when they go to arrest the head villain (and would the cops really let a civilian tag along?) that I think an ordinary person would rather avoid no matter the motivation.

Next up is Even a Daughter is Better Than Nothing by Mykel Board about a man who always yearned to travel to Mongolia and finally got his chance to teach English there for a year. Parts of it were amusing but the author has such an aggravating personality that I felt bad that the Mongolians had to put up with him. A much better book is In the Empire of Genghis Khan by Stanley Stewart about his travels in Mongolia.

I guess I'm on a Mongolia kick as I've also read The Blue Wolf by Frederic Dion (translated from the French) about Genghis Khan. Boy I must say I'm glad I didn't live in those times (or if I did I don't remember) as they were bloody and cruel though to be honest there are parts of our world that are just as bad today *sigh*.

I've also finished Atheism edited by S.T. Joshi. Included is a fascinating chapter written in 1889 titled Humanity's Gain from Unbelief by Charles Bradlaugh. It never really sunk in until I read this how many churches, contrary to modern belief, actively supported slavery because it was in the Bible!!

Last, but not least, there's Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman which describes current the textual criticism of the Bible; how it is difficult to believe it can be the inerrant word of god as we do not possess the word of god - we merely have copies of copies of copies of the original texts and how over the centuries, as the texts were laboriously handcopied by scribes, changes occured in the text either from human error or deliberately introduced to mirror the scribes POV.