Category: Books
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Review: McAuley’s Quiet War
The Quiet War, Paul McAuley Fans of science fiction often try to place works in the genre into one or more subcategories. It is “space opera” or it is “cyberpunk”; it is “steam punk” or it is “military SF”. It is “Hard SF” or “New Wave”. These distinctions can be helpful to the reader picking…
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No king but Jesus
To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, James Davison Hunter, Oxford University Press (2010). One of the major paradoxes of contemporary American politics is that Christians have never been more organized specifically as Christians, and yet the goals of their various agendas – from alleviating poverty…
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Remaindered: Books that don’t quite belong
(First in an occasional series, in which the odder fringes of my library are hauled out into the light for the edification of the public.) Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy: A Child’s Book About Satanic Ritual Abuse, Doris Sanford and Graci Evans, Multnomah Press, Portland (1990). One of the most headline-grabbing social fears…
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Adolf Hitler, magic yoga spaceman
Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press (2002). Few things are more tedious in political discussion than accusations that some politician or party is analogous to the German National Socialist Workers Party, more commonly known as the Nazis. Intended as the ultimate discrediting putdown,…
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The loneliness of the library book sale
Library book sales always leave me with an almost physical sense of sadness, a kind of psychic fatigue that settles over me as as soon as I glimpse those tables with discarded books from unknown homes all lined up like judgmental ex-lovers. Many book people love these events, savoring the chance to spelunk in the…
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One less question on the Voynich Manuscript
There was big news this week in the land of Voynich Manuscript hobbyist. The book is apparently quite old. A book of illustrations and writings composed in a language no one can understand, the Voynich Manuscript (VM) has had a cult following in certain obscure corners of the bibliophilic world for sometime. This week, researchers…
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One Less Question on the Voynich Manuscripts
There was big news this week in the land of Voynich Manuscript hobbyist. The book is apparently quite old. A book of illustrations and writings composed in a language no one can understand, the Voynich Manuscript (VM) has had a cult following in certain obscure corners of the bibliophilic world for sometime. This week, researchers…
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Review: Epictetus
Discourses and Selected Writings Epictetus (trans. Robert Dobbin) (Penguin) Epictetus. Freed slave, logician, and stoic, is one of the many classical writers more often referenced than read. Epictetus’s name is bandied frequently when the subject of stoicism comes up. His writings were extremely influential on Marcus Aurealius (some of the writing attributed to Epictetus exists…
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Acquisitions Week of 2/13/2011
V. Charm is adding to his holding a lot faster than I am. My only acquisition this week is: Israel Drazin, Maimonides: Reason Above All, Geffen, New York (2010) Received as a review copy from the publisher. – Seanv2
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Acquisitions, week of 2/7
I was belatedly celebrating some overtime this week, but that’s still no excuse. The piles of unread books lining my garret climb ever higher. Still, here are the books I acquired this week. W. Branch Johnson, Folktales of Normandy. The Whitefriars Press, London (1929). I got this at a used bookstore in the college town…
Milo and the Calf 