Since the midterm of my first semester at law school, I have spent more time studying, blogging, and reading. I’m not sure what got squeezed out (maybe sleep?) to make room, but it has been a great semester. I read eight books during the first half of the semester, and eleven books in the second half. When I am reading them, I have lots of thoughts that sometimes get translated into articles for Political Cartel, but I rarely feel like reviewing them after I am done – I am too antsy to move on to the next book.
These are my latest books and my quick thoughts on them:
- Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk – Palahniuk is always a clever writer and this was one of my top three favorites of his. Everyone knows Fight Club, at least the movie, but they have no idea how disturbing his writing really is.
- Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller – Lots of people loved this book at Harding, but I don’t know why. It was poorly conceived, poorly organized, poorly written, and poorly edited. Miller is apparently a full time writer, and he frequently complains about it in his book – no wonder, he is not a good writer.
- The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins – Dawkins is a leader in the aggressive atheist movement. There is a possible shift now among atheists from merely avoiding religion to openly attacking it. Dawkins’ approach is based partly on biology and partly on philosophy.
- The Evolution of God, Robert Wright – Wright describes how religion evolved from pre-historic to modern times, and makes a good argument for the value of religion at a time when defending religion is not intellectually fashionable. It started out very good, but got a little goofy at the end.
- The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson – This is a cleverly satirical mockery of intelligent design and religion by the prophet Bobby.
- Republican Gomorrah, Max Blumenthal – This was a great book that describes the Religious Right’s destructive obsession with sex, tying together lots of stories and scandals.
- The Bible: A Biography, Karen Armstrong – It is a short summary, not of the Bible itself, but of its compilation and interpretation. It is a combination of source criticism, literary criticism, and historiography, and it is good.
- What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell – I’m glad he calls these stories “adventures,” because each one feels like that. It’s a different format from the Tipping Point and Blink, but it is good.
- The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling – It made me feel like a kid again. So much that I rented the Disney movie from the library and watched it multiple times afterward.
- The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine – It was really interesting to see his arguments and how relevant his criticism of religion still is.
- True Love, Tich Nhat Hanh – Heather gave me this because she loves me and knows that I love Tich Nhat Hanh.
If I can read 15-20 books per semester and a few more over Christmas and summer, then I can finish more than a hundred during my three years at law school. That would be cool.
If you have read any of these, you may have your own insights. I’m wondering what to read next. I have the new Dan Brown book and a book my mom recommended, The Road. I also have the Koran and the Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran. I want to get a book by Ray Kurzweil because my undergraduate debate professor was obsessed with him and I enjoy his talks on TED.com, and I want to get some book about primatology. Any other ideas?
Anything by Daniel Dennett. He’s brilliant and pretty easy to read for someone who reads a lot.
And if you liked Dawkins, read his Unweaving the Rainbow. It really does it for a science nerd like myself.
The Road is great, as are most of Cormac McCarthy’s books that I’ve read. I’ve been reading Jon Krakauer’s latest, Where Men Win Glory, and it is excellent.
The Evolution of God is a pretty great book. It basically took over my life for a few months last summer. Definitely worth reading and discussing.
I would recommend Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Its a great piece of historical fiction centered around Thomas Cromwell at the court of Henry VIII. Probably the best political novel I’ve read. Clever, insightful, and hilarious. I’m also currently obsessed with Henning Mankell’s Swedish crime novels.
I’m not a big fan of the agressive atheists and their books. I read “Letter to a Christian Nation” and much of “God is not Great,” and I found their arguments to be obnoxious and ineffective. Are you really a fan?
Good suggestions – thanks everybody.
Brian, I like their books and I am torn about the aggressive part. It’s something I have been arguing back and forth with my friends for a while. Traditional atheists have looked at religion condescendingly and dismissively, but the new aggressive atheist movement is openly hostile. I think it has a lot to do with reaction against the Bush administration and the religious right, and that’s understandable.
The interesting debate isn’t really about whether the specific claims of any particular religion are accurate. The much more interesting question is whether, on balance, people believing in religion (regardless of its truthiness) is a positive or negative thing. The historical and current negative effects are too easy to spot: wars, discrimination, intolerance, violence, anti-intellectualism. But sometimes the aggressive atheists are too quick to dismiss any value that religion has. That’s why I appreciated The Evolution of God – the author doesn’t subscribe to any of the religions he describes, but he shows how religious institutions help socialize people and give them a framework for thinking about morality. And he shows how they continue to get better. As I said, I’m torn, but it’s an interesting debate (unlike the evangelical vs. atheist debate, which is quite dull).
There is another interesting phenomenon at work. Atheists disparagingly call it the “Christian Persecution Complex,” but whatever it is, the effect is that Christians find the mere existence of atheists to be hostile to their beliefs. They react very strongly against any public display of atheism or demand for equal treatment under the law for atheists. There are some reasons for their paranoia. For one thing, the term is an anti-term. That is why most atheists prefer to describe themselves as humanists or secular humanists. For another, there are plenty of hostile atheists and they have become the public representatives of the unbelieving crowd.
Harris is probably my least favorite writer and Dawkins my favorite. I like how Harris writes, but he doesn’t have the substance that Dawkins (a biologist) has. None of them are writing to persuade a devout Christian audience, though. So if that’s where you are coming from, then it’s understandable that you didn’t appreciate them.
Re: Blue Like Jazz and Donald Miller’s status as a writer:I completely, wholeheartedly and utterly agree.
All I got out of his book was a few decent quotes—it is unfathomable to me why so many people think he’s a great writer.
I just remembered this one: Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens. If you haven’t read it yet, you’re missing out on quite a piece.