Atheistically Speaking Book Club discussion

What books have you read recently, or what are you currently reading?

I recently finished Undeniable by Bill Nye. It was pretty good, but very basic. Nye's voice carried through the whole thing, it was like listening to an audio book. It was definitely written for people who watched his debate with Ken Ham and didn't know a lot about science or evolution. Very basic overview of why we know evolution is true, but entertaining. He had a chapter that was kind of anti GMO in the book, but he has since said his views have evolved and retracted some of what he wrote.

I also finished this really bad YA book called Fallen. Goodreads recommended it to me because it's so popular, with over 300,000 ratings. I should have looked closer before I read it. The plot is basically Twilight with fallen angels instead of vampires. The main character resurrects as the same girl and is cursed to fall in love with this immortal fallen angel, and then die when he kisses her. This has been happening for hundreds of years or something, but this time it's different because her parents aren't religious - so she was never baptized. I guess the author's new-age Christian belief is that you only resurrect if you've been baptized.

Uugh, just the description of that book hurt to read. I just finished When You Reach Me and found it smart and beautiful if you need to cleanse your brain of that fallen angel tripe. A young reader recommended to me For The Win, It's a great YA adventure that involves social justice and economics rather than magic and superpowers.

The fallen angels stuff makes it seem like a response to "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman (which is surely the apex of YA or YA-ish fiction).

Anyway the last book I finish was "Crabwalk" (or "Im Krebsgang. Eine Novelle, as I'd prefer) by Günter Grass. He died recently so I thought I'd try another one of his books.

Right now I'm reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Last months I've read:
Richard DawkinsAn ancesteral Tale - Richard Dawkins. I enjoyed that very much. Really learned many many aspects about evolution. The book was very accessable: its make up is deliberately a bit in the form of 'Canterbury Tales'. A series of short stories, each illustrating an interesting aspect of a particular life form and evolution.

Darwins Dangerous Idea (not totally finished actually) - Dan Denett. It is a splendid book on evolution, especially on the immense strength of it's underlying principle: copying, varying, selecting. Denett proposes similar mechanisms may explain other phenomena as well: such as the origin of life and the rise of culture. Sometime I feel Denett takes a lot of words to make his point: a bit lenghty here and there. There are quite a few references to American popular culture which I do not always get (not living in the US)

Holy shit - I just read Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan, and it was really intense. I knew it was his last book, and I probably should have realized from subtitle, but I didn't know it was published posthumously. The last chapter was called "In the Vally of the Shadow" and was all about death, his fears, and his struggles with the illness that killed him. The chapter ends with some words of optimism after his second bone marrow transplant. After that his wife, the co-author of all his books writes an epilogue about his life, their life, and his legacy.

I listen to books while I work, and luckily I didn't start this chapter until I was about to leave for home. I was pretty much sobbing by the time I got to my car.

The rest of the book was good as well. All of Sagan's books are pretty timeless because the problems he writes about still aren't solved today. Being the latest, this one was a little more relevant with less focus on ozone and more on global warming - though he kept his stance that nuclear weapons are our greatest threat. He had a chapter on abortion which had some good arguments in it, but also went into the history of abortion and our beliefs about it, which I found really interesting. Apparently it wasn't so long ago that abortion pills were advertised in church bulletins.

There was also a chapter that covered the game theory from Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation, similar to how Dawkin's covered it in The Selfish Gene before the book was published. This is basically the prisoner's dilemma and how it affects how we interact with each other. Sagan managed to put a much more human touch on it and give the ideas more weight then I got from Dawkins. I haven't read Axelrod's book yet, so I think that goes on my list.

Ben wrote: "Right now I'm reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami "

How is this book? The only Murakami book I've read was 1Q84. I don't know that I liked it per se, but it definitely was one of the most bizarre books I've read. I've been afraid to try another.

Danielle wrote: "Ben wrote: "Right now I'm reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami "

How is this book? The only Murakami book I've read was 1Q84. I don't know that I liked it per se, ..."

I'm really liking it (I'm only half way through) but I have a high tolerance for "magic realism". Plus it deals with history and memory which are two of my favorite themes in fiction. It's the first one I've read of his but I'll definitely try some others. I did hear that 1Q84 wasn't well received.

I am currently reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. I'm only in Part 1 and he is talking about all of the booms and busts that have happened through out history. Very interesting when you realize the tech bubble of 2000 and the housing bubble of 2008 are just repeats of all of the hype foisted on investors going all the way back to the Holland tulip craze.

Marcel wrote: "Last months I've read:
Richard DawkinsAn ancesteral Tale - Richard Dawkins. I enjoyed that very much. Really learned many many aspects about evolution. The book was very accessable: i..."

I really liked The Ancestor's Tale. Well-written and informative. I particularly liked the bits about the hippos and the platypus. It's the first Dawkins book I've read, and while I don't particularly dislike him, I'd never realized why people liked him as much as they do until I'd read something in his academic field.

Ben wrote: "The fallen angels stuff makes it seem like a response to "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman (which is surely the apex of YA or YA-ish fiction).

Anyway the last book I finish was "Crabwalk" (or..."

I LOVED Darwin's Dangerous Idea! thanks for reminding me I wanted to re-read it...

Pete wrote: "I am currently reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. I'm only in Part 1 and he is talking about all of the booms and busts that have happened through out history. Very interesti..."

The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype are his best, though all of his Biology is worth the read.

Fiction: I finished So You Want To Be A Wizard yesterday, only because Harry commented positively on it in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality--By the way, everybody everywhere should read HPMOR. It's possibly the best fiction I've seen in the past 5 years.

So You want to be a Wizard was amusing, but not extraordinary. I doubt I'll look at the rest of the series.

Previous to that, I read Haunted which was good, but absolutely not for the faint of heart.


Non-Fiction: Finished Quirkology last week. It was fun, but there are a lot of "weird facts about your brain" books out there, and this was only in the middle of that pack.

Just finished reading the book: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell this book really lays the foundation for his views on politics especially his disenfranchisement withl leftist politics when he fought in the Spanisn War in the 30s. Reading the book you can see how his experience from both sides the left and right politics in Europe affected how he wrote subsequent books.

Highly recommend this first hand account of fighting for guerilla and marxist group in Barcelona .

Just in case anyone is interested, Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon today. I don't know what the e-book usually sells for, but it's $2.99 today.