On the Bookshelf XV

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Hilarious, insightful, and just plain fun to read. Quotable, too. Consider: “No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, ‘Good food at it’s best’, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.” Can I hear an amen?

Sourcery (Discworld #5) by Terry Pratchett
Vacationing on the Disc is one of the craziest, funniest, most enjoyable experiences a reader can have. ‘Nuff said.

The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther
Three cheers for that hearty German monk of Olde! I’m thumbing my nose at the school reading schedule, though: a chapter a week is the prescription and there’s no way I’m sticking to that. Restricting myself to one chapter is like [insert well-known and highly overused potato chip metaphor].

The Rhetoric and The Poetics by Aristotle
Very, very good so far. A friend told me it is “a must-read for the theologian who would write.” Nicely put. I’m using the translations by W. Rhys Roberts and Ingram Bywater.

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
Picked this up at the library to satisfy my sci-fi craving. I enjoyed it, though I wasn’t as impressed as many reviewers seem to be. “Pop Squad” and “The Calorie Man” were both excellent; the rest were good, but not great. If you’re a fan of dystopian or science fiction, you may find this one worth your time. Fair warning, though: it’s not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoyevsky
“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.” Halfway through now, and loving it. I’m already daunted at the prospect of writing a review. There is no way I can do sufficient justice to this massive tale, apart from writing a book about it. Sheesh.

Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey
As Francis Schaeffer put it, “Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital ‘T.’ Truth about total reality, not just about religious things.” Early prediction: this book will be one of the best books I read all year. Easy.

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