This Week at the Library (10/6)

Posted on June 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Gump & Co, Winston Groom
  • The Quiet Game, Greg Iles
  • The Faith Club; Ranya Indiliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
  • Buddha, Karen Armstrong
  • Asimov on Astronomy, Isaac Asimov
I came upon Gump & Co accidentally: it happened to be on display in the fiction area of my library, and I spotted it while headed for The Hobbit a couple of weeks ago. It is a sequel to the 1995 book Forrest Gump, which was somewhat different than the movie it inspired. Although the book is described as “satire”, I read it more as a straight humorous novel that uses Gump’s interaction with elements of the 1980s and 1990s as its fodder. The book begins sometime after the conclusion of the first book and movie, but things have changed. Gump is completely broke and sweeping floors in a strip joint when the book begins, although he will soon be spotted by an old schoolmate and asked to play for the New Orleans Saints. From there, Gump will stumble his way through the 1980s and early 90s, with humorously awkward results — Gump accidentally invents New Coke, covers an entire town in pig poo, and crashes the Exxon-Valdez, for starters.The book is written from Gump’s point of view and in a crude, colloquial way.
I read a recommendation next. Greg Iles’ The Quiet Game was described as being somewhat like John Grisham. The description is somewhat apt in that part of this book is a legal thriller involving political corruption at the highest levels of US government influencing jurisprudence in a small town in Mississippi. This legal story ties in a number of other stories — main character Penn Gage’s struggle to come to terms with his wife’s death, his father being blackmailed, the return of his first love (who will play a greater role in the book than simply “love interest”), and a few others. There’s a lot going on in this book, and it makes for an incredibly riveting story.
Following a growing interest in comparative religion, I decided to read The Faith Club: a memoir written by three women who met on a regular basis over the course of several years to discuss their faith. You might think this an unenjoyable book for a secular person such as myself, and I did as well — but I was surprised by the book. It is less a book about religion and more a book about three women exploring what spirituality means to them within the context of the traditions they were brought up in. I found the book enjoyable and touching in ways.
Next I read a sharply written biography of Buddha, titled aptly Buddha. Karen Armstrong does a good job of introducing the world that Siddhartha Gautama was born into and telling his story within that greater context. She explains his struggle to find freedom from suffering, his realization of the noble truths, and the development and early attitudes of his first disciples. I would recommend it to anyone interested in either Buddha or Buddhism.
Lastly, I enjoyed a little science with Isaac Asimov’s Asimov on Astronomy. The book is a collection of essays on various topics within the general theme of astronomy. Some are straightforward explanations of questions people might ask (how the moon manages to rotate but only presents one face to Earth), but most are his playing with questions he asks himself — like how a planet in a two-star solar system might see those two suns, and how those two suns might influence the development of mythology and science. Set within the text of the essays are brief profiles of astronomical phenomena or astronomers.
Quotation of the Week: “God, I’m trapped in a Southern gothic novel!” – character Caitlin Masters on page 205 of The Quiet Game.
Pick of the Week: The Quiet Game, far and away.
Next Week:
  • The Third Degree, Greg Iles
  • God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer, Bart Ehrman
  • The Third Jesus, Deepak Chopra (No, this isn’t a joke. I know he has a reputation, but I’d like to read him for myself and this looked to be fairly benign.)
  • The Journey of Man, Spencer Wells.
  • Further Along the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck.
Posted in Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

Asimov on Astronomy

Posted on June 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Asimov on Astronomy

© 1975 Isaac Asimov
271 pages
Although in the back of my mind I knew the existence of Charon was a relatively recent discovery, I did not realize how recent until I read this book and realized Asimov was oblivious as to its existence. As it turns out, Pluto’s humble satellite — or perhaps co-plutoid would more accurate — was discovered three years after Asimov published this book of essays in 1975. In an essay on the hypothetical tenth planet, Asimov muses that “Charon” might be a good name for a moon. As mentioned, this is a book of essays written on various topics within astronomy and published in various magazines (and other essay collections) before appearing here. As I would expect from Asimov, he combines scientific explanations with humor and talks directly to the reader, sometimes making jokes. Few of the essays are directly explanatory: they tend to be the result of Asimov being curious about a topic and playing with it. Such is the case of my favorite essay in this selection, “The Planet with Two Suns”, in which he writes on how Greek mythology and science might have looked if our Sun had a companion star. In other essays, he does stick with a standard explanation of the topic — such is the case with “Time and Tides”, where he writes on the way the moon and sun cause Earth’s sides. Aside from a few minor things, the essays hold up well against the test of time. Enjoyable as ever.
Posted in Reviews, science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Buddha

Posted on June 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Buddha

© 2001 Karen Armstrong
205 pages
Karen Armstrong’s Buddha is a concise biography of Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as (the) Buddha. The book, divided into five key sections, begins with Armstrong introducing the texts she uses as her sources — vouching for or admitting potential weaknesses in them. Because Gautama is known solely as a religious figure, the book is written about that figure and the chapter titles reflect that. Armstrong begins by writing on the Brahmin religion and the beginnings of the Axial Age in the region that Gautama grew up in, writing on the communities of monks who had “gone forth”, abandoning their homes to live in the forests or to travel through the land looking for spiritual teachers. Although she wrote of this in The Great Transformation, it’s so different from the reality I know that it still strikes me. According to Armstrong, these people were not looking for bliss or contentment — they were looking for freedom from the cycle of life. What I didn’t know was that they believed even the gods yearned to be free from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth — that the gods themselves wanted to achieve Nibanna/Nirvana. Nothing save freedom from the cycle was worthwhile.
The book records Gautama’s call go “go forth” and his journey — exploring the various traditions of the teachers he meets. According to Armstrong, he realizes early on that if he is to find Nibanna, he must find a way that is demonstrably true: accepting things on faith will not do. Eventually he realizes the way of Nibanna and the book switches to the growth of his Sangha as depicted in the Buddhist scriptures, even mentioning an attempt to seize power by one of his disciples. The book ends with his death.
Buddha was a tidy and helpful biography. Armstrong establishes the context, fits Buddha’s story within it, and tells that story well, sometimes examining controversial subjects like misogyny in some of the Buddhist texts. Although most of the information in here I’ve gleaned from other source, I think its presentation here is sharp and reccommend it for someone curious about Buddha.
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Last Olympian

Posted on June 9, 2009 by smellincoffee
The Last Olympian
© 2009 Rick Riordian
394 pages
During the late winter or early spring (depending on when you call which which), I began reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series on the recommendation of a friend. The recommendation stemmed from (I assume) my interest in Greek mythology, as the setting for this series is an Earth in which the Greek gods exist — and true to the old Greek myths, they spend much of their time feuding with one another and romancing mortals. The conclusion of the first book hinted that a battle between the Olympians and the Titans — the Olympians’ predecessors, who have been stuffed into volcanoes and such for many thousands of years and who are quite grumpy about it – is brewing. An ancient prophecy hints that Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, will play a key role in the final battle: the fate of the universe hangs on his decision.
This is quite a load for a lad of fifteen, and when The Last Olympian begins, he is with his mortal semi-girlfriend, resting up after five books’ worth of fighting monsters and going on quests that feed into Kronos‘ steady rise, while dreading his sixteenth birthday. According to the prophecy, he will make this choice upon reaching sixteen. This respite ends when a Pegasus lands on his stepfather’s car and informs him that the Titan army is on the move: the final battle is at hand.
There are no quests to go on, no magic relics to fetch, no magic landscapes to invade: this book is about the Battle for Olympus. As the titan Typhon makes his way from his former home (Mount St. Helens) to New York, destroying everything he can in his wake (an unnecessary expenditure of energy, I would think) while nearly all of the Olympians struggle to stop him, Poseidon is fighting a losing battle with the titan Oceanus and Mount Olympus itself is guarded only by Hestia. Percy is informed that it is up to him and his fellow demigods to protect Olympus (which is, by the way, at the of the Empire State Building: Manhattan is thus Percy’s battleground). To make matters worse, the children of Ares are refusing to fight (their honor having been besmirched by the children of Apollo) and Hades and his army are refusing to cooperate. Hades has never been popular among the rest of the Olympians, and he has decided to return spite for spite.
Percy, Annabeth, Nico, Thalia, and the other demigods have their work cut out for them. More interesting than the battles themselves (at least to me) is the interpersonal drama and the prophecy-driven plot. What kind of choice will Percy be forced to make? What will happen? Who will die? The series and book end well, I think. In his afterword, Riordian referred to the series as the “first” Camp Half-Blood series, hinting that perhaps he will return to them. I hope so. Although this was a series written for kids, I enjoyed it and I think Riordian distinguishes himself in at least one particular way: unlike other authors, he doesn’t have his main character(s) do all of the work. Based on the interstory quests they’ve gone on and the work they do in the novels, it seems at least two of the supporting characters could have their own book series.
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Faith Club

Posted on June 6, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Faith Club: A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew — Three Women Search for Understanding

© 2006 Ranya Indliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
396 pages, including discussion guide and resources for starting similar groups.
The book begins on September 11. When Ranya Indilby — a Palestinian-American who remains sensitive about her minority position — hears of the attacks, she prays and asks that it not be Muslims who are behind them. In the post-9/11 world, she grows increasingly sensitive about her identidy, but finds solace in a story about Muhammed that seems to identify Islam as a religion that embraces other traditions. Inspired by this and prompted by her children’s questions about their culture, she decides to write a children’s book on the similarities between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. A Christian friend of hers — Suzanne Oliver — quickly jumps on board, and the two call a local Jewish children’s author (Priscella) to ask if she’s interested in the project.
They join together and begin to discussion their traditions’ common beginning with Abraham and begin the work of selecting stories from their texts to compile together, but quickly run into trouble when Suzanne and Priscella disagree on the meaning of Jesus’ execution. Suzanne sees it as crucial to understanding Jesus’ resurrection — which she sees as a vitally important part of her worldview. Tensions begin to rise, and the three women realize that a different approach is needed — so they begin talking about what their faiths mean to them. They work through a number of issues (Israel, stereotypes, prayer, and so on) through a number of years. The book is a (self-described) memoir written by three people in the voice of the first person. While their meetings are initially structured around writing the children’s book, it becomes more of a retreat for the three women, and the book itself becomes less about the relationship between three religions and more about the developing friendship between the three women — and the relationships they have with their respective senses of spirituality. Each of their faiths undergoes a transformation in the three or so years that the memoir covers.
I had expected to grow weary of what I expected to be the book’s limited focus (the Abrahamic religions), but the book quickly became more about their personal quests to find meaning — actively reinterpreting their beliefs and making them fit to their lives. The book ends with the chapter “Awakening”, in which the three describe coming to peace with their paths. After the last bits of the memoir, there is added material: an interview with the authors and information helpful to starting a “faith club”, including a list of things to keep in mind — that everyone will bring stereotypes, that secrets corrupt, that everyone can be a peacemaker, that sort of thing. It ends with information about the three Abrahamic religions. Helpfully, all of this information — from the interview to the religious information — is rendered in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Turning the page to see Hebrew and then Arabic script was surprising, but interesting.
The book was surprisingly…enjoyable. It reminded me a bit of Spong’s Here I Stand, and the theme — humans standing up to amd owning religion rather than being dominated by them — is one I like.
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Quiet Game

Posted on June 4, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Quiet Game
© 1999 Greg Iles
576 pages

Caitlin Masters: “God, I’m trapped in a Southern gothic novel!” (p. 204)

Wow. I have rarely been as transfixed by a book as I have in the past two days while reading The Quiet Game. The book is my sister’s, and she recommended and lent it to me, describing it as somewhat similar to John Grisham. Her more extended description matched that: she told me that it was the story of a lawyer turned novelist who returned to his hometown — the small but storied town of Natchez, Mississippi — and found himself involved in a mystery of sorts that required him to become a servant of the law once more.

We’re introduced to Penn Gage as he stands in line in Disneyworld, trying not to cry in public because his four-year-old claims that she just saw her recently deceased mother in the crowd. Gage loved his wife, and her memory haunts him. “Haunting” is a word that can be applied to much of the book’s plot and atmosphere. Gage decides to return to his parents’ home so that he and his daughter Annie can adjust to life without their beloved Sarah, only to find that his father is being blackmailed by a thug. Thomas Gage, Penn’s father, is far too good of a man to be humiliated like this, and Penn decides to take action — not knowing that this issue, as important as it seems to him and the reader for the first hundred pages, is going to be rendered trivial. A casual remark to the town’s newest reporter — Caitlin Masters, whose wealthy daddy has just purchased the local newspaper and who is anxious to make a name for herself in investigative journalism — dredges up a murder from 1968: the murder of Del Payton, a local civil rights leader whose killers were never found. Or…were they?

Masters promptly publishes the remark, and Payton’s family comes forth. In a town with deep-seated but devotedly ignored racial tensions, the Gages are the rare white family that seems to give a damn about Natchez’s marginalized black population. They ask Penn Gage to find out what happened to Del, to give his spirit rest. He regretfully declines them at first, but when more ghosts arise he finds himself drawn toward the case when the name of “Judge” Leo Marston, a powerful politician who has the town and apparently much of the state in his pocket, is somehow connected to the crime. Marston’s elegant daughter – Livy Marston, an extraordinarily fantastic creature — was Penn Gage’s first and greatest love, and the Judge ruined that relationship and nearly destroyed Gage’s father when Martson pursued a dramatic lawsuit against him. At first, Gage seeks to destroy Marston to get him back for ruining his and his father’s life — but as the plot develops, he will rediscover the passion for justice he lost when he removed himself from the law and the passion for life he lost when his wife passed away.

This is one book with a lot of layers: we have the plot-driving mutual hatred between the Marston and Gages, a romantic story that develops when Livy Martson returns to town and throws Gage into the past and the what-could-have-been (further agitating him against her father), the action element (which kept my attention even though I tend to scan over action sequences, pausing only if a character gets hurt), almost a dozen secondary characters struggling with personal demons that all relate to the plot, and the legal battle that ties everything together and ends lastly. All this is tied together gorgeously: I could not leave the book be, I had to keep reading it, and when it finally ended and I saw the last period I was hit with the feeling of hearing the echo of a symphony that just finished.

What is so appealing about this book? The plot and story are very well-done, I think: to say it kept my attention is an understatement. Not only is it tightly-weaved, but it’s deep. When something happens, it will effect at least three of the plot elements or subplots, and what will happen can’t be predicted. There were a lot of plot twists: the last one was the most dramatic. It was if part of a song was there, but very subtle, and then toward the end it builds up and then that part of the song just guides the ending. I was also entranced by the format of the southern gothic, which is not a genre I am familiar with, except in that it left a bad taste in my mouth when I first encountered it in English 102. I didn’t know what was meant by it, but I had vague impressions that it was romantic in the cultural sense — not in the Cupid’s Arrow sense. That is true of this novel, especially with the character of Livy Marson. Despite my aversion to romanticism, I was able to enjoy this book — to be enthralled about it. Gage and the other characters gripped me right from the start , and they never let go.

I am pleased that my local library has other books by Greg Iles. I will be reading more of this guy, although I suspect that this book has set the bar so high that I will be disappointed by any other books I read.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gump & Co.

Posted on June 3, 2009 by smellincoffee

Gump & Co.
© 1995 Winston Groom
242 pages

“Mr. Gump, I want you to meet Tom Hanks,” [the hostess] says.
“Pleased to meet you,” I say, an introduce him to little Forrest.
“I’ve seen you,” little Forrest says, “on television.”
“You an actor?” I ast.
“Sure am,” Tom Hanks says. “What about you?”
So I tole him a little bit about my checkered career, an after he listened for a while, Tom Hanks says, “Well, Mr. Gump, you sure are a curious feller. Sounds like somebody ought to make a movie of your life’s story.”
“Nah,” I said, “ain’t nobody be interested in somethin stupid like that.”
“You never know,” says Tom Hanks. “‘Life is like a box of chocolates.'”

Winston Groom’s novel Forrest Gump made the rounds in my high-school class during my senior year after one of the football players read it and began raving about it. Gump & Co. is a sequel to that novel, and I spotted it on display at my local library. As said, it is a sequel to the novel — not the movie. It’s been years since I read the novel, so I don’t remember all of the story — only that it was so popular among my high school class because the novel’s story was “dirtier” than the movie, and being basically kids, we were attracted to that. Although the sequel begins with Jenny alive, Groom quickly connects it with the book by killing her off. Forrest’ situation is different from the movie ending, however: at the start of Gump & Co., the shrimp company has gone bankrupt and Forrest is reduced to sweeping the floors in a strip joint.

The book is written from the first-person point of view and in a very…colloquial fashion. At first I was bothered by the fact that all of the characters seemed to speak in the same voice, but then I realized that Groom was portraying Gump doing what most people do: when repeating the words of others, we generally repeat their meaning in our own words. Although the book’s story does have a beginning, something resembling a climax, and an ending, the plot isn’t all that developed. After one of his former fellow Crimson Tide football players spots him in the strip joint, Forrest is introduced to the world of professional football (playing for the New Orleans “Ain’ts“) and from there has one adventure after another, most ending hilariously and poorly for Forrest. Just as in the original book, his antics will thrust him into history’s march: he will invent New Coke, destroy Jimmy Bakker’s religious theme park, sink the Exxon-Valdez, help Oliver North escape the Iran-Contras situation, accidentally topple Communism, and invade Kuwait, finally coming back to where he started from, but united with his son and committed to thinking more.

I would recommend this book to two types of readers: those who enjoyed Forrest Gump and those who enjoy a humorous story that obliquely makes fun of American society in the 1980s and -90s.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

This Week at the Library (3/6)

Posted on June 3, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Sarek, A,C, Crispin
  • The Hobbit, J.R. Tolkien
  • The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong
  • The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck
  • A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking

I began this week with a little Star Trek literature. The novel Sarek is about the titular character, better known as Spock’s father — played by Mark Lenard in every Star Trek production except the most recent movie. The book is set immediately after The Undiscovered Country, and it will build on plot elements of the movie as well as connect itself to almost every preceding Trek movie. When the book begins, Ambassador Sarek is investigating a conspiracy to set the Federation and the Klingon Empire at war with one another. Relatedly, Peter Kirk — Jim Kirk’s nephew — is about to graduate Starfleet Academy when he accidentally gets caught up in a xenophobic Earth group called the “Keep Earth Human League“, who intend to evict all non-terrans from Earth and drive Vulcan out of the Federation, allowing it to be wholly driven by the needs and wants of humans. Sarek’s conspirators and Kirk’s rabble-rousers are connected — something larger is in the works, but Sarek will have to hurry if he wants to save the Alpha and Beta quadrants from interstellar war, and he’ll have to do it while his wife dies. The story is done well: it connects to much of the canon while giving Vulcan, Sarek, and the rest of Spock’s family more depth.

Next I read Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which needs no real introduction. I attempted to read the book several times as a child but could never maintain interest in it. Perhaps growing older has given me a less capricious attention span, as I did finish this time. The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo Baggins, who is drafted by Gandalf (a wizard) to help some dwarves slay a dragon and reclaim their ancestral home in the “Lonely Mountain” — and recover their wealth, which the dragon is currently sleeping on. The book serves to introduce the reader to a magical world while forcing poor Baggins to realize that yes, he can face a dragon without running away. (So long as he has a magic ring that makes him invisible, anyway.) I found the book enjoyable, although I’m still not sure that I will read the much-lauded Lord of the Ring trilogy.

I looked forward to Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation, and she did not disappoint. The book deals with both comparative religion and history, examining the development of four centers of religious and philosophical traditions: Confucianism and Taoism in China, Buddhism and Hinduism in China, transcendental monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Armstrong begins with Mesopotamian civilization and religion and moves north into Iran before shifting to India and beginning the book proper — which is organized into a number of themes (Knowledge, Suffering, Ritual, etc) that encapsulate the developing traditions. I found Armstrong’s narrative to be both informative and tightly woven: despite how much information Armstrong had to deal with, she worked it well into the overall book while connecting ideas for greater clarity.

Although some of Armstrong’s writing dealt with the importance of reason, the old religion’s approach to spirituality seems to be more mystical than not. M. Scott Peck takes a different approach, taking on spirituality from a psychological point of view in The Road Less Traveled. He begins it with “Life is difficult”, and the title seems to come from the fact that pursuing Peck-style spirituality takes much discipline — so much so that Discipline constitutes his first section of the book. He also writes on Love — what it is, and what it isn’t. Among what it isn’t: romance, emotional investment, or dependence. He next examines the role of religion and God. His criticism of both surprised me, given that he promoted deity-based ethics in A World Waiting to be Discovered. The last section, “Grace”, does not seem to tie into the book as well and I did not find it engaging in the least. Overall, I found the book to be challenging and interesting.

Lastly, I read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, which is a short popular science book about black holes, time, the big bang, quantum physics, and various other and related topics. Although Hawking was informative, I think he expects the reader to know part of the information ahead of time: he didn’t explain the concepts he worked with in detail before building on.

Pick of the Week: The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong

Next Week:

  • The Quiet Game, Greg Iles. A recommendation.
  • Gump & Co, Winston Groom. The sequel to the novel Forrest Gump, which I read in high school.
  • Buddha, Karen Armstrong
  • The Faith Club: A Christian, a Muslim, a Jew — Three Women Search for Understanding; Ranya Idliby, Suzaane Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
  • Asimov on Astronomy, Isaac Asimov.
  • The Last Olympian, Rick Riordian. This is the last book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and was just released in May.
Posted in Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

In the Beginning

Posted on June 3, 2009 by smellincoffee

In the Beginning
© 1981 Isaac Asimov
496 pages

Please note that my copy of In the Beginning was in large print, so the page count is very much inflated. Adjusted for fontsize, the actual size of the book should be about 240 pages. (Courtesy of Amazon.)

I’m growing perilously close to exhausting my local library’s Isaac Asimov holdings, but I shall keep the flame aglow for as long as I can. Asimov wrote in his Asimov’s Guide to the Bible that he had enjoyed writing in-depth commentaries on the first books of the Bible and would have gleefully continued to do so had he the time and his publisher the faith that there were enough people willing to buy them — but the two had neither, and so Asimov settled for writing his bigger guide and leaving only a few books of the Judeo-Christian bible with extended commentary. In the Beginning is one such book, and it concerns (as you may guess) the book of Genesis. More specifically, it concerns the first eleven chapters of Genesis — from “In the beginning” to Yahweh telling Abraham, “Hey, go over there.”

The book offers verse-by-verse commentary, although Asimov will often group verses together for the sake of readability. It was slow reading at first, as he slowly dissected every word of the first verse, examining the scientific account of the beginnings of the universe and comparing it to the words of Genesis. The first parts of the book offer a lot of comparison between the opening verses of Genesis and the scientific account of cosmological development and biological development. Asimov’s information is a little dated twenty or so years in the future, but perfectly up to date for his time — or so I would imagine.

Once Earth is created, the book got a lot more interesting for me, as Asimov spends more time writing on comparative myth, legends, primitive histories, language, comparative symbolism, and all sorts of things of interest to a student of the social sciences like myself.The flood prompts more scientific comparison, but not as much as I’d expected. Although I’ve read Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, there was much more detail here and I did learn quite a bit. (Asimov’s explanation for why Creation took six days was particularly helpful: he delves into the history of the standard “week” and its introduction into Hebrew culture.) I don’t know that the writing style itself is worth commenting on: it’s Asimov — of course it was enjoyable. Even so, I will say on or two things. I found Asimov’s approach to be fairly professional: he writes well, and he keeps judgments to a minimum — enough to make an orthodox student think, perhaps, but not enough to offend him or her to the point of closing their mind further. Here is an example of some commentary (with intersource comparison).

9. These are the generations of Noah: (200) Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. […].

200. Here we have a new introduction, which might better be translated, “Following is the story of Noah.” The reason for the introduction is that we now switch to the P-document which carries on the tale from the end of Chapter 5. In fact, the story of the Flood, which follows, is to be found in both the P-document and the J-document, each telling it characteristically. The P-document is full of numbers and details, while the J-document concentrates on drama. The Biblical editors, finding the tale in both documents, included both, interweaving the P-document and the J-document in an attempt to tell a single story. Actually, they managed to introduce repetitions and self-contradictions.*

This is worth the read if you can find it.

* page 326, large-print edition

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A Brief History of Time

Posted on June 3, 2009 by smellincoffee

A Brief History of Time from the Big Bang to Black Holes
© 1988 Stephen Hawking
198

Our minds can play tricks on us: my experience with this book is a case in point. I remember vividly being at a big chain bookstore and perusing the science section for something seditious. In my memory, I note with amusement a massive book called A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I know there’s no way I can reach such a tome, so I look at the book next to it, called A Briefer History of Time. I buy neither, going with Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything instead.

And yet, here sitting upon my freezer is a small book titled A Brief History of Time. It is not the tome I remember. Clearly, my memory is in error — I shall keep that in mind (if I can) as a practical lesson. The book itself is very straightforward: it’s a brief popular science book. I think its ideal (if not intended) audience is college-educated and curious about the object. It doesn’t seem that accessible to new students: I would recommend Hawking’s own Universe in a Nutshell or a few others as an introduction to general relativity and quantum physics. Those are two of the subjects covered, by the way, along with black holes, the big bang, the nature of space and time, and a few other sundry topics. Although Hawking’s writing in this book is easy to follow, it didn’t seem to me as if he explained the topics in detail enough — my take is that he expects the readers to know a little something ahead of time. I do, somewhat, although in the year or so it’s been since I’ve read about physics, my knowledge of this particular area has faded.

Related Books:

* I’ve not finished this one yet, but the first few chapters allowed me to understand concepts I’d never understood before, like why we think space is curved.

Posted in Reviews, science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment