Books

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett

It has all the parts of philosophy a normal person wants to aid our own thought processes and cut through falsehoods, which is pretty much what philosophy does best

but it is easy to read and in small pieces, just full of good ideas, explains how various people solved various problems and makes it simple to do the same ourselves.

I've got a couple of Christian books on the go at the moment:

o Worshipping Trinity by Robin Parry
o Judas Iscariot: revisited and restored by Ivan Rogers

I'm also reading through Shakespeare's Sonnets. Slowly.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan by Alan Partridge (if audio books count)

Complete works of HP Lovecraft on my Kindle.

Always in the mood to read about some unnameable lurking shambling horror.

At work where I can't concentrate in the lunch room, when weather is bad I read bits of Buddhist Boot Camp by Timber Hawkeye.

It has a multitude of wise and helpful quotes between the bits he's written, today I read: 'if you keep doing the same things you will keep being the same person'

It isn't complex but it is useful and deep. One complaint I've heard is basically that it isn't for coping with really big tragedies in life but rather for avoiding them.

I'm having a very rough time right now but following the wisdom in the book is making a difference.

i am not reading I am writing. In follow-up to my 'Sabbath to Sukkot:Rest to Restoration' my next work (so far all 10,000 words of it) will be titled, 'To Stand... Apart: Pharisees and Religious Movements of the New Testament Period. an introduction'.


Steve

savedbygrace05 said:

What books (apart from the bible) are you reading just now? I have just finished The Racketeer by John Grisham. I am also currently reading Faith Like Potatoes by Angus Buchan.

As a Christian, I tend to limit what I read and find that Grisham (a fellow Christian), not only writes excellent books, but also does so without the use of sex, bad language etc

Click to expand...

Re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole.

The Magicians- Lev Grossman.

King Mob said:

Re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole.

Click to expand...

I may have to dig that out and re-read it myself now.

savedbygrace05 said:

What books (apart from the bible) are you reading just now? I have just finished The Racketeer by John Grisham. I am also currently reading Faith Like Potatoes by Angus Buchan.

As a Christian, I tend to limit what I read and find that Grisham (a fellow Christian), not only writes excellent books, but also does so without the use of sex, bad language etc

Click to expand...

I have a kindle app on my phone and was ploughing through a range of free ebooks.

These were the ones that I was really impressed with:

Son of Man series by Charles W Johnson

OffWorld by Robin Parrish

There were many more but they've come off the phone and I can't remember them to list them.

I'm not as impressed with

Pentecost by J F Penn

and

Where is Heaven by Phil Bowie

But it could just be that I'm tired and so fall asleep too quickly.

Lotuspetal_uk said:

I have a kindle app on my phone and was ploughing through a range of free ebooks.

These were the ones that I was really impressed with:

Son of Man series by Charles W Johnson

OffWorld by Robin Parrish

There were many more but they've come off the phone and I can't remember them to list them.

I'm not as impressed with

Pentecost by J F Penn

and

Where is Heaven by Phil Bowie

But it could just be that I'm tired and so fall asleep too quickly.

Click to expand...

At this page there loads of free e-books in kindle format, just scroll down past the PDF ones. A lot of them are pretty heavy theology but there's also some helpful pastoral stuff

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/free-ebooks.html

theFijian said:

At this page there loads of free e-books in kindle format, just scroll down past the PDF ones. A lot of them are pretty heavy theology but there's also some helpful pastoral stuff

FREE EBOOKS : Reformed, Christian eBooks

Click to expand...

Cheers for this Fijian, will check it out.

The best book I've read in a long time is The Prodigal God by Tim Keller. I'd recommend it to anyone.

12 Ordinary Men - J MacArthur
The Mysterious Collapse of WTC 7 - David Ray Griffin

savedbygrace05 said:

What books (apart from the bible) are you reading just now? I have just finished The Racketeer by John Grisham. I am also currently reading Faith Like Potatoes by Angus Buchan.

As a Christian, I tend to limit what I read and find that Grisham (a fellow Christian), not only writes excellent books, but also does so without the use of sex, bad language etc

Click to expand...

Im on "Why did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?" by Brian D. McLaren. Inspirng book! Relevant topic! He try to answer a question how to be faithful Christian in a multi-faith world. So far I agree with his thoughts. Excited to finish this book.

Well, Im craving for more books but couldn't find Christian book in Milton Keynes and I'm new here in UK.

MorkandMindy said:

At work where I can't concentrate in the lunch room, when weather is bad I read bits of Buddhist Boot Camp by Timber Hawkeye.

It has a multitude of wise and helpful quotes between the bits he's written, today I read: 'if you keep doing the same things you will keep being the same person'

It isn't complex but it is useful and deep. One complaint I've heard is basically that it isn't for coping with really big tragedies in life but rather for avoiding them.

I'm having a very rough time right now but following the wisdom in the book is making a difference.

Click to expand...

Someone at work thought it looked interesting so I lent it to her to read at home and I took in Eight Steps to Happiness and then someone asked me what that was about and was interested in reading it, there is a hunger to understand what life is all about, but it is a problem when you want to read a book.

Next book to take in is the Daniel C Dennett book I mentioned in post 2. It is just short of 500 pages which hopefully will scare off the most people. If that doesn't work then I'll have to resort to my biggest physics book!

A lot of people read newspapers for a diversion but there are actually productive diversions which are more effective as diversions.

Something that involves physical activity is a good break from hours at the computer.

And the problem with newspapers is the risk of actually believing something in them. On every topic I've had inside knowledge of I've found the newspaper report to be closer to the opposite to reality than to the actual reality.



I've heard this referred to as the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:

Briefly stated the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows:

You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.

Often the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward - reversing cause and effect - 'wet streets cause rain' stories. Papers are full of them.

In any case you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story and then turn the page to national or international affairs and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. That's the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

I stand corrected from my earlier post.

I'm liking 'Pentecost' now. The plot is hotting up.

I was reading 'Glencoe' by John Prebble.

Seeing what the wicked Westminster Government did to the people there.