Official Book Thread - What You're Reading & Everything Book Related (merged)

#552
#552
Getting ready to start "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr. Subject concerns how the internet has altered the way we learn. We have begun to scan internet pages for information rather than consuming literary stories and reflecting on what we have read.
 
#555
#555
Just finished Sunset Limited. Very good. Reading Blood Meridian.
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#556
#556
I really enjoyed The Shack, so I recently read a book about The Shack. Sounds weird, but it was a book written by a theologian, and the whole thing was just picking out what was biblically correct and inconsistent with The Bible.

I also recently finished The Hunger Games trilogy, just because I had read the first one. The first was good, but then it gets into a futuristic teen type love story thing. The second two were awful.

Right now I'm reading 1984 for the first time.
 
#557
#557
bout to order "Radical" by David Platt. he lets you read the first chapter for free. i've heard many good things about this book
 
#561
#561
Vol Mania 21 said:
did the book make you want to change the way you were
Click to expand...

Yes and no.

Yes to the degree that I realized that I've fallen into the American Dream mindset and that, well, quite honestly it doesn't necessarily go in tune with the Bible.

No, because thankfully I go to a church that doesn't necessarily many of the typical American church characteristics.

It is a book I do plan on rereading in 2011.
 
#566
#566
Currently reading Stephen M. Barr's Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.

Don't know how I missed this. As i have traced a lot of Similar works, therioes and speculation back to this 2001 book. The seeker and searcher in me finds it awe inspiring.
 
#568
#568
I recently finished the Stieg Larsson series "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl That Played with Fire" and "The Girl That Kicked the Hornet's Next". Excellent books, although the first half of the first book is a bit of a slow read.

Currently reading "Matterhorn" by Karl Marlantes. It's a fictional story of Marines in Vietnam. So far it is excellent.
 
#569
#569
Picked up a used copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a buck today. Been wanting to read this for awhile.
 
#572
#572
The Path I trod by Robert Earl Cantrell.


Imagine reading a book with your mothers, 2 uncles, a grandfather and numerous 2nd and 3rd cousins once or twice removed names mention. Along with stories about them in there youth and in a region that you are intimately familiar with. I went to School with my aunt at the old school described in this book when I was 4 and 5 years old for a month at a time in the fall of the years of 1963 & 64. The years he described was from the fall of 49 to 53. Amazing feeling. Brings back memories I thought were gone or forgotten forever. I wish everyone could experience the uniqueness of what I am experiencing.
 
#573
#573
Just finished Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Here's my review:


Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5-Stars

Wow!

Upon picking up Crime and Punishment I am not exactly sure what I expected. I had listened to half of Anna Karenina on Audiobook a few years prior and I remember enjoying the way in which Tolstoy created vivid scenes through a brilliant combination of dialogue and narrative. I figured that since Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were both contemporaries in Russia, in the mid-1800s, they probably wrote in the same manner (Yes, I know this is ridiculous logic...yet, it seems to have worked in this case; so, to all those people who do not enjoy stereotypes and mass generalization, I say, "Ehh???").

I had also come across a handful of references to Crime and Punishment in multiple philosophical essays. Most of the time, these essays criticized Dostoevsky's viewpoint, expressed through C&P, that the ends justifies the means. Of course, seeing myself as one who would ideally like to see Kantian morality embraced throughout the entire world, I was also hoping to identify this and take issue with it.

Having just finished C&P, I can state that from a literary and artistic viewpoint I was blown away. I would describe Dostoevsky as the perfect mix of Dickens and Austen. He narrates as good or better than Dickens and his dialogue is even better than the dialogue of Pride and Prejudice. Reading C&P is a complete sensory experience, that keeps one entertained, intrigued, and thinking throughout the whole of the story.

Ostensibly, the story is about a man named Rodion Romanych, who goes by the name Raskolnikov, who kills an old lady and her sister in order to steal a few thousand roubles. However, as much as one always feels this storyline and Raskolnikov's guilt haunting every page, the story is much more: almost a compendium of stories describing what it was like to live in Russia in the 1800s. Everyone's story is told, whether that person is a merchant, a prostitute, an official, a student, an old widow, etc. etc. Through these stories, the philosophy of Raskolnikov is also put on display.

I say the philosophy of Raskolnikov, as opposed to the philosophy of Dostoevsky, because even though Raskolnikov is the protagonist; even though the reader finds themselves sympathizing and suffering with Raskolnikov; even though the reader finds themselves despising those persons whom Raskolnikov despises, Raskolnikov is not a good person. He is never set up by Dostoevsky to be a good person; he kills an old lady in cold blood, with the blunt end of an axe at the beginning of the story, then splits her sister's head open with the working side of the axe blade. Raskolnikov is not the vehicle one would use to express their own moral philosophy; yet, he might be the vehicle one would use to simply expose a popular moral philosophy of the time.

Other philosophers are right to identify that philosophy as an "ends justifies the means" take on morality; yet, this is not difficult because Dostoevsky does nothing to obscure Raskolnikov's ideology. Instead, he very clearly states it multiple times, as such in this paragraph:

"I merely suggested that an 'extraordinary' man has the right...that is, not an official right, but his own right, to allow his conscience to...step over certain obstacles, and then only in the event that the fulfillment of his idea--sometimes perhaps salutary for the whole of mankind calls for it...In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would be his duty...to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind."

I do not want to spoil this story in any manner, as I believe that anyone who has yet to read C&P, should immediately take up the task and treat themselves to some of the finest literature they will ever read.

For more book reviews and suggestions, please visit My Blog
 
#574
#574
I have had C&P on my Nook for a little while. I think I'll read it now.
 
#575
#575
You will not be disappointed. I also plan to read, since I've only listened to it on audiobook, Anna Karennina, War and Peace, and The Brothers Kazimov over the next couple of months.

The way Dostoevsky writes is impressive to say the least. Let me know what you think after reading it.
 
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