{"id":484,"date":"2008-02-06T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=484"},"modified":"2009-01-14T23:16:51","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T03:16:51","slug":"recent-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=484","title":{"rendered":"Recent Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&apos;t reviewed many books lately, but that isn&apos;t because I               haven&apos;t been reading. I read quite a bit, if not as much as I often               wish I had time for. If I don&apos;t review a book here, it&apos;s generally               for one of these reasons:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Reviewing books is difficult to do well, and my time\/energy                 is committed to other things;<\/li>\n<li>The books I read are sometimes so vanishingly narrow in interest                 that I doubt anyone would care what I thought of them;<\/li>\n<li>The books are so-so and I can&apos;t bring myself to spend time describing                 them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This third point is the most interesting of the three. A really               bad book I might mention to save you time and money. But what about               a so-so book? Is it worth any effort at all?<\/p>\n<p>This applies to wine as well as books. I try a lot of wine and               like only some of it. The things I like I mention here, especially               if they&apos;re unconventional. (Generally this means not dry.) I&apos;ve               mentioned a few wines that I loathe, like the unfathomably awful               Sweet Walter from the incomprehensible Bully Hill Vineyards in upstate               New York. But something like Taylor Sauterne is difficult to describe,               as it has so little character I&apos;m not sure what to say. It&apos;s not               quite tasteless\u2014just mostly tasteless. (It&apos;s certainly nothing               like the other sauternes I&apos;ve had in the past. But then again, it&apos;s               an $8 twist-cap wine.)<\/p>\n<p>So today I&apos;m going to mention a few of the books I&apos;ve read recently,               including the odd things that I expect no one among my readership               to be interested in. I won&apos;t spend a lot of space on any of them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>The Thunderbolt Kid<\/i> by Bill Bryson. (2006) Probably the                 best of the current batch, it is nonetheless <i>extremely<\/i>                 uneven. Gut-splitting hilarious in places, it also has long runs                 of very boring stuff, and occasional departures that suggest anger                 that the author can&apos;t quite express. Misses more than it hits.                 Borrow it maybe, and when things get boring, skip to the next                 chapter.<\/li>\n<li><i>Ghosts and Poltergeists<\/i> by Herbert Thurston, S. J. (1954,                 and now out of copyright) A deadpan description of, well, ghosts                 and poltergeists from around the world and across centuries of                 time. Competently written but dry; if you want a diverting read                 in similar turf, try Colin Wilson&apos;s <i>Poltergeist<\/i>.<\/li>\n<li><i>The Polish National Catholic Church<\/i> by Paul Fox (undated,                 probably 1957ish) A self-description of the PNCC for prospective                 converts. Nice little book, with some interior color. Includes                 church history, its constitution, liturgy, and directory of parishes.                 Best concise description of the church at its peak that I&apos;ve seen.<\/li>\n<li><i>Who Really Cares?<\/i> by Arthur C. Brooks (2007) Reviewing                 this book will only get me beaten up, but it reads well and provides                 loads of research that I&apos;m not entirely sure I understand the                 same way that the author does. His conclusion: Political conservatives                 are less selfish than liberals, who are in turn less selfish than                 independents. My conclusion: It&apos;s down in the noise. Try again,                 dood.<\/li>\n<li><i>The Fall of the Dynasties<\/i> by Edmond Taylor. (1963; may                 be out of copyright) 300-level European history text that I read                 to try and understand WWI. Eye-crossingly dense, but he covers                 all the bases and I think I now have a grip on what destroyed                 Europe in 1914: Itself. What Europe is best at. Surprise!<\/li>\n<li><i>Huck&apos;s Raft: A History of American Childhood<\/i> by Steven                 Mintz. (2004) Almost worth a review, and not a total waste of                 time, but the author describes more than he explains, and I put                 the book down having gained a great deal of information but not                 a lot of insight.<\/li>\n<li><i>Every Knee Shall Bow: The Case for Christian Universalism<\/i>                 by Thomas Allin and Mark T. Chamberlain. (2005) Covers ground                 well-covered in other books on this topic, and doesn&apos;t add much                 that I haven&apos;t seen. Confines itself to scriptural argument, and                 doesn&apos;t go after more gnarly philosophical questions like, How                 can eternal punishment for finite transgression be just?<\/li>\n<li><i>Original Blessing<\/i> by Matthew Fox. (1983) A muddy-headed                 challenge to the Augustinian heresy that changed original sin                 to original guilt. Fox makes me nuts sometimes, but here and there                 he goes places nobody else wants to go. He&apos;s willing to condemn                 Augustine of Hippo, something no one else (except me) is willing                 to do. I honestly don&apos;t know what to think about this book, which                 will be incomprehensible to anyone without a fair grounding in                 Christian theology.<\/li>\n<li><i>Complexification<\/i> by John L. Casti. (1994) Awful, but                 not so awful I wanted to waste the energy required to throw it                 at the wall. Maybe a smarter guy could grasp what&apos;s there. Or                 maybe there&apos;s nothing there to grasp. Pass.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note also that I cruise a lot of computer books, but I haven&apos;t               sat down to read one cover-to-cover in years. I haven&apos;t mentioned               any of those here, good or bad. I also occasionally pull out books               I&apos;ve already read and reread a few chapters to clarify some question               that&apos;s been haunting my mind. I haven&apos;t mentioned those here either,               but that&apos;s actually a growing slice of my reading time, and an interesting               phenomenon all by itself that I should take up again at some point.<\/p>\n<p>That will have to do for now. I know I&apos;ve read a few other things               in the last couple of months, but they made such a light impression               I don&apos;t recall what they were, which says something right there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&apos;t reviewed many books lately, but that isn&apos;t because I haven&apos;t been reading. I read quite a bit, if not as much as I often wish I had time for. If I don&apos;t review a book here, it&apos;s generally for one of these reasons: Reviewing books is difficult to do well, and my time\/energy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}