Friday, December 28, 2007

After Christmas

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

- Arnold Lobel  




Some of the books I received for Christmas: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel by R. Alan Culpepper, Guns Germs and Steel: a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years and Collapse: how societies choose to fail or survive both by Jared Diamond, 666 and all that by Greg Clarke & John Dickson and Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright. Feeling jealous yet? My wife says my beard is already too long.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Greg read the Jard Diamond Collapse book - very interesting but somewhat depressing too - Australia has a starring role!

Happy New Year

Stef.

bigdog said...

I was in Durham cathedral in December and stumbled across NT Wright launching 'Surprised by Hope'. So I got a signed copy plus free mulled wine and mince pies. I'm going to say that experience of getting that book was better than quantity...

Victor

meredith said...

I reckon you'll really like the Italo Calvino - I think thats a terrific little book. Be interested to hear your thoughts.

For christmas, i recieved A thousand Splendid Suns, by the author of 'the kite runner' whose name i forget. I thought it was interesting but bleak - i'd never read something set in afghanistan before. I also recieved Germaine Greer's book on Shakespear's wife, which is a really interesting piece of deeply historically informed speculation about a person about whom we can know very little for sure.

Anonymous said...

Been reading a book I think you would apprecited. John Humphrey's - In God We Doubt. It's I ahve found it very interesting and the first time I had read a lot of things from a agnostic perspective.
Doug

byron smith said...

Stef - indeed, Australia does have a starring role. Some minor mistakes about Australia did make me a little wary of how accurate the rest of the book might be on every detail, but it was a fascinating read. Highly recommended.

Victor - Nice!

Meredith - I'm going to post more on the Calvino. I read it in a single day the day after this post and it quickly became my favourite book of 2007! I've read The Kite Runner, which was good, but I wouldn't say excellent. I'd noticed that Greer book and thought it looked interesting.

Doug - thanks for the recommendation, and for the card!

 
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