Thursday, July 21, 2005
The Written Word
Categories: Books • Life • Religion • Technology
In the beginning was the Word.
Evan passed the baton off to me on a book meme and I suddenly felt compelled to write an entry.
Strange that…
Books on my shelf:
Do I have to count them? I’ll make a rough guess and say 50 or so. If I counted all of the books I own that are in a box somewhere I wouldn’t want to try. I’m pack-rat when it comes to one thing only, books.
Some of the more recent ones to make it on the shelf that haven’t been started yet include, A Cry of Stone, and A Thread of Grace.
Some of the ones that are on and off the shelf since I’m the process of reading them include, The Green and the Grey, Quicksilver, Learning PHP 5, and Simon of Space.
Simon of Space isn’t technically a book; its a blognovel. However, if it were a book I would have trouble putting it down.
The last 5 books I have actually had time to finish:
Christian-Muslim Dialogue - One of my friends at work is Muslim. We talk about religious topics at times. He has a number of small books regarding Muslim beliefs and he let me borrow them (I’ll give them back eventually Nabil, I swear). The one that immediatly caught my eye was Christian-Muslim Dialogue the link leads to the full text of the book. It was short and presented in a conversational manner. It was also disappointing though I was expecting the book to be what it turned out to be. The Christian side of the dialogue is carried out by a man with limited experience and knowledge of Theological matters from a Christian perspective. The Muslim man in the dialogue runs circles around Christian who sounds like he is reciting his Parochial School Bible lessons. Ultimately, the Christian is left with little to do other than acquiesce to the Muslim that his obviously ill conceived notions about God and Jesus as his son were wrong. I would have been much more interested in a fair Dialogue but it did leave me with a better idea of how Muslims view Christianity and Jesus. It certainly didn’t change my mind about anything. However, it did give me better understanding which is, in my mind, a very valuable thing.
A Secret Atlas - Very easy and quick read. The book was very entertaining but I can’t really say it was great. I will say that the last two chapters threw me for a loop.
The Long Tomorrow - Old Science-Fiction novel (no longer in print) that I picked up off the paperback trading shelf while at the Library in Sitka Alaska. Never got around to reading it until a few days ago. It is a post apocalyptic novel based in the US. The premise being that after the war cities and technology are outlawed. A town may only grow to a certain size, and technology can not go above what the Amish allow themselves. Consequently there are a lot of Amish people. I like the book. And it had some interesting ideas. Most notably I was impressed that the author recognized and acknowledged that Science can become its own God.
Eclipse of the Sun - End Times novel from a Catholic perspective. Entertaining and very well written (the book is a work of true art compared to the Left Behind series of books), it wasn’t as deep as some of the previous novels I’ve read by the same author. Also not something to read if you are easily offended/upset by the Catholic faith especially regarding its views on abortion and euthanasia (euthanasia and physician assisted suicide being different in a very fundamental way; namely the person having a conscious choice in the matter).
HTML & XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets - Yeah so this is two books. They go hand in hand though and I really did read them from start to finish (if you don’t count the appendices). The part of the CSS book on using multiple selectors was a light-bulb moment for me in regards to truly taking advantage of CSS.
Next Victims:
Posted by Jamie at 04:41 PM
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