Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Quite a few people have suggested Alain de Botton’s book “Religion for Atheists” to me, and I also read Jack’s review with interests a few months ago. Given the brevity of the book, I decided it was certainly worth a quick read to see what it was all about.

The book begins by saying suggesting that the least interesting question we can ask of any religion is whether it is true. This has been a point of some criticism from reviews but I wonder if many have actually missed the central point of the assertion.

What Botton actually means, and perhaps a better way to phrase it would have been, “given we know religion is completely untrue – there clearly isn’t a god and we all know it – what interesting discussions can we have about it?”

From this perspective, his comment makes make more sense and also perhaps explains why he paints religion in such a positive light. It isn’t that he is wearing rose tint glasses, but merely starts from a point where we acknowledge religion is both untrue and destructive, but there are some good features that have allowed it to flourish. Of course I don’t know if this is the case, Botton does not state it, so perhaps he is guilty of the rose tint after all.

The book consists of a series of chapters looking at various aspects of religions and how they could be implemented in a secular way. Laying out restaurants to encourage discussion with strangers, creating mile stones and celebrations, and delivering academic lectures with the passion of evangelical preachers are just some of the suggestions that spring forth.

I read them with mixed reactions, some I like, some not so much. A stronger focus on interesting delivery of academic content for example would certainly have improved my university days. I often struggled to stay awake in lectures and remembered nothing, in which cases a smaller amount of repetitive information would have actually increased learning.

Milestones also play an important part in our lives – this is clear from the half a million people that attended a Humanist ceremony this year. As Jack points out, the historical tradition and grandeur of gradation helps to provide such an occasion in the secular world already though.

In summary, I think Botton is generally on the right track, but then I would, holding the same position. Religion has endured throughout our history, and even onto the days when we know it is patently false, because it provides for our “spiritual” (for lack of a better term) needs. Extracting these into a secular context is essential to removing superstition from our society. Whether Botton’s suggestions are the way to do it remains unclear though.

Book twelve in the Discworld series follows the adventures of Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg as the travel to Genua to do some good old fashioned fairy godmothering.

I thought the book took quite a while to get going – I was 15-20% of the way through before they even left for Genua but after that it picked up. Nanny Ogg has firmly cemented herself as one of my favourite characters from the series.

I first attempted to read Ulysses while we were in Dublin last year, as it seemed culturally appropriate, but having made it through the first part I soon found myself overwhelmed by the complexity and seamless tradition of abstract and concrete ideas expressed throughout the novel.

Not to be beaten though, I recently gave it another go. Now that I have made it all the way through, looking back on what I’ve done with my life so far, reaching the end could be the most impressive achievement.

I started off making the amateurish mistake of trying to follow the plot and work out what was going on. As Joyce darts randomly between things that are actually happing and the various thoughts that flow from each of the characters, discerning reality from imagination is a tricky business indeed.

A much better approach is to simply lay back and enjoy the language. What wondrous language it is though, a beautiful river of descriptive and colourful English in which a lexicon of over 30,000 words are employed in a novel only 265,000 words long. Joyce constantly switches between writing styles while presenting a vivid picture of life in Dublin in 1904.

It was also interesting to find out that the novel had been twice adapted into a film. Interesting, because I can’t think of a novel that would be less well suited to such an adaptation. The beautiful of Ulysses is in the language and in the picture painted in the mind of the reader – filling in the gaps surely could only damage the experience.

The 11th novel in the Discworld series, Reaper Man tells the story of what happened when Death was retires and goes to work on a farm. This is bad news for senior wizard Windle Poons who finds himself stuck between the world of the living and the dead.

Of course, any novel with Death in is going to be a good one. But I’m not sure how much I enjoyed the other half of the book – the parallel story of Windle Poons. At times it felt like the Fresh Start Club had been invented just to fill a bit of space in the story before getting back to Death.

Ulysses is heavy reading, so in between reading a chapter from it, I’m reading Discworld novels. So far, it’s proved a very successful formula. The most recent having been the ninth in the series, Eric.

It is much shorter than all of the novels so far – about half the length of the most of the others. It is based on Faust, but as I haven’t read that, the references were lost on me.

Never the less, it proved an interesting read. It isn’t my favourite Discworld novel, far from it, but the short length meant that the arguably sparse storyline didn’t get boring because it kept moving in a switch fashion. Plus having Rincewind in a novel is always a good thing.

Not a book for those new to Discworld, but for those who are already fans of the series, it makes for a short and fresh instalment.

The eighth book in the Discworld series, Guards! Guards!, follows the adventures of The Night Watch in the city of Ankh-Morpork. It is almost certainly my favourite novel in the series so far, as I love anything to do with the city, so spending an entire book there was a delight.

The more I read through the books, the more I can see Prachett’s world come together in one cohesive, precisely disordered and very entertaining world. Plus anything that features the head librarian is always going to be awesome.

The seventh book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series focuses on Djelibeybi, an ancient kingdom not unlike Ancient Egypt.

I hugely enjoyed the start of the novel in which it discusses Teppic at the Assassins Guild in Ankh-Morpork, as well as the description of the kingdom and many interesting rituals and customs presided over by the high preist Dios. My attention trailed a little towards the end, but overall it is one of my favour novels in the series so far.

Wyrd Sisters is the sixth novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. For me, it was the first novel where the witches really came into their own – Equal Rites was good, but the development in Wyrd Sisters really brings them along.

As good as Granny Weatherwax is, I have to say that my favourite character is Nanny Ogg. I wasn’t overly in love with the Macbeth theme, but who needs to be when you have such awesome characters.

Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir is a book by Amanda Knox, the girl who was convicted of murdering University of Leeds student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Four years later the conviction was overturned on appeal, though is since going back to trial.

I’m not sure how useful it is as case notes – it’s clear from the book that Knox is innocent, but then as she wrote the book, you would expect it to be. If everything she says in the book is true, then the entire trial is a joke, but it certainly can’t have been written without bias.

BBC News published an interesting article about how what she writes in the book differs from what she said at the time. Things have almost certainly changed in the edit. But that said, even when you strip away the bias, it seems very generous to describe the evidence they do have as beyond reasonable doubt.

In any case, the book itself makes for an interesting read. Presumably there is little left to hide after the trial went through every detail of her personal life, so it is laid out without reservation. It’s structured well, in a small chunks that made it easy to read and I struggled to put it down every time.

I was quite excited to get onto Sourcery, the fifth book in the Discworld series, as I’m a big fan of the wizards. Plus, who doesn’t love Rincewind? I’m seriously considering it as a middle name for Chris Junior. While I was an enjoyable read, I didn’t find it quite as good as Equal Rites or Mort – but then anything with that amount of Death in it is always going to be hard to beat.