shakatany | More Books (Reply)

I have finally encountered a book I could not comprehend. It's called Hagarism: The Making of the Moslem World by Patrica Crone and Michael Cook which posits that Islam grew out of the diverse Jewish sects of the 7th century. It's truly written for scholars as it is full of references to the various sects, historical personages and uses the vocabulary of religious referents that is basically unknown to me. After reading the first few chapters and finding I needed to use the dictionary practically every page I skimmed the rest of the book hoping that it would get easier but unfortunately it didn't. I feel sure this theory might be pivotal in understanding the origins of Islam but reader beware.

Another book I just finished (I tend to rotate as different books require different attention spans) is Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem where the author explained his theory that current afflictions like diabetes, anemia and high cholesterol among others may have actually helped our ancestors to survive things like the minor Ice Ages and the Black Death. It's a fascinating book which I intend to buy once it comes out in paperback.

On a lighter note I read Deliverer by C.J. Cherryh, the third volume in the third trilogy of her Foreigner series which deals with relationships between the descendents of humans stranded on an alien planet and their native hosts. I rarely read SF these days (after 40 years I'm sort of jaded) but Cherryh is one of the few writers I will read and I truly like what she's doing in this series so I'm looking forward to the next trilogy. I also read All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris which is set in an AU where vampires have come out of the closet. I don't read too many professionally published vampire novels as I get my best vampfixes from fanlit but I do like her stuff. HBO is turning the Sookie Stackhouse books into a TV series starring Anna Paquin. Seems like only yesterday that she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1994 for her role in "The Piano" when she was 11.

I meant to post this on Wednesday but just as I was finishing the computer went dead and the lights and everything else - we had a 48 minute blackout. I tried again yesterday but as I was closing one window the computer thought I wanted ALL the windows closed and there went my second attempt. They say the third times a charm so here goes *fingers crossed*