I was blown away by the latest book I read. This book, much like Sam Harris’ really made me think. Overall, this book gets a thumbs up.

This book, with its seemingly simplistic title opens up with a very head-on approach. The first chapter, Putting It Midly, caught my interest because of the poignant questions; I was enticed to continue page after page. Here are some of the thoughts Hitchens presents us with.

If Jesus could heal a blind person he happened to meet, then why not heal blindness? What was so wonderful about his casting out devils, so that the devils would enter a herd of pigs instead? That seemed sinister. . .

This rings so true to me, why wouldn’t he do something to cure blidness for once and for all? Then you wonder, if it was all a perfect plan, why would there be such a thing as blindness to begin with? Almost any devout religious person would explain that it is part of our punishment, for the original sin. Christopher poignantly addresses as many of the arguments that religion gives us to keep itself in control.

When speaking of religion:

Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the “meaning” of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet –the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything.

Although reading some of the history in there made me cringe, the author points out how terrible some of the faith-based laws and regulations actually are killing us. Religion Kills is the title for another chapter and it is named appropriately. He talks about Yusra al Azami. . .

“[She] was shot dead in April 2005, for the crime of sitting unchapperoned in a car with her fiancé. The young man [the fiance] escaped with only a vicious beating.

Allabu Akbar means God is Great, and this is where the title of the book comes from God is not great, How Religion Poisons Everything. Lately books are working hard on keeping your attention with catchy subtitles, but this is not just a gimmick, it really sums up the body of the book. After Hitchens lays down the groundwork, and poses some faith shattering questions, he dives head first into the major areas of our lives and humanity. Then makes some very compelling arguments to explain How Religion Poisons Everything. Continue Reading “Completed: God Is Not Great.” »

Woot! another book read, onto the next one soon. First I thought I’d give you my take on this one.

The Year of Living Biblically. One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

A.J. Jacobs is hilarious, this medium sized hardbound will keep you reading if not for its insights, at least for its light tone and comical nature; its hard to put down. It is a funny memoir that takes Jacobs, and sometimes his family through a year of radical changes in lifestyle. You are quickly exposed to the determination that AJ musters to bring you the results of this crazy experiment.

I must admit that the wide range of topics in this book touch on a lot of recurring themes in my life. The search for truth, the notion of spirituality, the reason behind ancient customs, to name a few all surface constantly in my life. Until I was 12 or so, I was raised Catholic, the whole shebang; kneel, sit, stand, pray, sing, eat crackers, rinse and repeat. Then after several years of freedom from religion, I chose to become a Christian. For over four years I was a firm believer in Christ. I participated in a non-denominational Christian church extensively, to the point that you could find me with some friends on the corner of Main street preaching to anyone that would listen and some that wouldn’t about Jesus. That’s all in the past now and perhaps topic for another discussion later on, but I wanted to point out that I’m not unfamiliar with religion, especially Christianity and Judaism. It is perhaps this familiarity with religion, faith and all that comes rolled up in that pacakge that sparked the desire to read this book.

The book has a strong contrast to Sam Harris’ book, The End of Faith which advises us (and I agree) to stop believing everything you are told without demanding real evidence from a source other than that which demands your faith. A.J. on the other hand must follow almost everything he is told by the Bible and his wise guy circle as I call it –a large group of experts that help him clear up some cryptic biblical stuff. Lots of times he is told to just go along with it. A.J. opens up by explaining how he’s going to do exactly what the title implies; live biblically for a year. Each chapter is a month and the whole book is narrated in journal style highlighting the most important days. Jacobs constantly is at odds with things that the Bible tells him to do and how he feels about it.

He takes us through his visit to the Holy Land, to visit his crazy uncle Gil, all the way to a meeting with Jimmy, a snake handling preacher in Knoxville, Tenessee. I love the way he enthusiastically tells a story and I lost count of how many times his narration of the ordeals made me laugh out loud. Having lived under rules from the Bible for years at one point, I can only admire Jacobs for actually completing a full year and then some of this grueling project. Julie, his wife also deserves credit if only for putting up with the lunacy of this undertaking, most of it while pregnant with twins! That’s love right there.

I don’t want to tell you much more about the book, it truly is worth reading, it all goes by quickly because of the way it is written. He begins with 72 pages and 700+ rules collected after reading the Bible from beginning to end. Towards the end of the journey, he collects over 100 books on biblical law, tradition, cooking and other relevant topics that help him discern these nutty laws. I think this is a great insight into what your life might be like if you truly tried to live in accordance to the Bible.

Here’s one of my favorite days. Simply because of the way it starts:

Day 181, afternoon. I was on the subway today, sitting a few seats down from a Buddhist monk. He looked at me, with my white raiment and bushy beard, I looked at him, with his orange robes, and we exchanged a knowing nod and smile.

It was a great moment. I felt like I’d been let through the velvet rope at a holy nightclub.

On another one of my favorite passages he actually stones –if you can call it that, an old guy in NY. It cracked me up.

I think the great sense of humor the A.J. displays is a big part of what gets him through this endeavor. Coincidentally as I found out just today when I finished this book, he is also the author of another book that has been in my sights, The Know-It-All, and the now famous article My Outsourced life. If you haven’t read that article, I recommend you take a peek, I read it a long time ago on Steve’s website, and it is definitely funny and informative. On a side note, lately have been actually testing the whole concept of outsourcing your life; mainly thanks to that article.

Two thumbs up for this book and its author, I now want to read his other book, The know-It-All.

Hey, anyone want to join me on this reading adventure? If you want to read any of the books I have listed and want someone to discuss them with, shoot me an e-mail. I’ll be happy to do some talking about them with you as we read them. Or use the comments on my posts to voice out your thoughts, opinions and the like, I promise I’ll respond to each comment.

I was sick a good part of last week and earlier this week so I got plenty of time to read while the flu got the best of me.

I have now completed two more books directly off the list I posted earlier this month:

Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer and The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs.

I was initially going to post my commentary for both books all in one article but I thought that each deserved their own little post. If you’re interested on my thoughts about the books, you can read them here and here respectively.

Sorry guys, I was sick on Tuesday. I had just enough energy and will to bring you a rant about staying home and I missed the triple Tuesday link post.

Here are 3 new sites worth checking out.

Nophonetrees.com - This site seems promising, it is a service and I’ve only used it once with really good success. The premise is that you shouldn’t be going through endless menus when calling someone. Press 1 for this, press 3 for that, please hold, all of our representatives are currently busy; you know the drill. This site takes your phone number, goes through all the prompts and connects your call when the call is about to reach a live person. Great stuff, they also promise not to give your phone to anyone, not even your mom “even if she bakes us milk and cookies and asks us very nicely.”

While I was sick the other day, I used WebMD to check out my symptoms and see what was going on with me. I’ve used it in the past to find out more about different ailments and diseases. Its a great resource and if you haven’t used it before, its time to check it out and add it to your favorites. This is one of the most, if not the most complete medical reference available online and its free. To use it type up your symptoms on the search bar and see what it finds for you.

The last link I have to share for you today is del.icio.us. This is the best bookmarking site out there. It has grown in popularity  tremendously over the past couple of years. It easily integrates into your browser to capture your bookmarks and favorites. Then you can share them with friends, other people or simply keep them to yourself. The greatest thing about it for me is the ability to easily share links with my friends and family. Another great benefit of using it is that I have my bookmarks available no matter where I go; if I’m online, I have access to them. If you’re already on del.icio.us, check out my profile and share some links.

So I will try to give you three new sites each Tuesday, here you have the first three.

After you’re done posting that ad to sell your old clunker in Craigslist, you can take a quick break and check out Best of Craigslist. What I really like about this site is the creative writing that people come up with. I think the anonymity allows for people to really spill out their guts. If you have a few minutes to kill, give it a visit. Some of my latest favorites: To the drunk Hottie that fell off my motorcycle, Looking for a dead deer and 20 things I gotta tell my boss.

If you are busy stumbling, or blogging, or actually getting stuff done and can’t do any more surfing but you still want more stuff to look at, then fire off Flickrspy on your second monitor. It is kind of like watching a global slideshow from the most recent pictures in Flickr. Flickrspy got its own domain now, but I still like the old version better.

Pick the brain. To me a sophisticated life-hacking site, it has articles ranging from using  procrastination to your advantage, to essays about the nature of some of our social problems; this site is a heavy hitter. Its a multi-author blog that keeps me coming back day after day to read their latest. I may not always agree, but they make their point concisely and eloquently.

So last year I planned on procrastinated about giving you a list of the awesome list of books I had in my reading list. Without further ado, here’s the list of what I plan to read in early 2008.

Each of the titles links to Amazon, just in case you want to buy the book; in the order in which I intend to read them, here’s my list.

…actually the first three I’m reading concurrently.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris. I heard about it on one of the podcasts I subscribe to. I actually can’t find which one of my dozen or so podcasts I got the tip from, but they recommended 3 books; I started with this one. Consisting of 221 pages, with an epilogue and an after word adding about a dozen pages, it has been a breeze to read thus far. I’m on page 164 and should be finished by mid week next week.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Timothy Ferris. I am also in the middle of reading this awesome piece of work. It is a motivator, if you are yearning for change you should read this. I’m taking it one chapter at a time because it calls for specific stuff you should do. Informal exercises call for action which makes the reading an interactive experience. As with most good books, a lot of the narrative is very down to earth and much of the “how to” in this book just makes sense.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Somehow subconsciously, I bought this and the 4 hour workweek at the same time; I think I picked up the tip subconsciously from one of my daily RSS reads. If the 4 hour workweek is the “why” this is the “how.” GTD has been making waves for a long time now. This is the book that could change your life if you are a procrastinator like me or just simply want more out of life, but aren’t sure how to do it — whatever *it* may be.

The rest of the books are on my nightstand ready to be cracked open soon. Mostly purchased out of recommendations either by friends, bloggers or bestseller lists. In the order which I intend to read them on:

- Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The cover reads “In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself….”

- The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. The comical cover of the Author dressed in ancient costume, holding a coffee cup resembling a Starbucks Latte on one hand, and the 10 commandments on the other, expands on the title with this: “One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible”. I just have to read this.

- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This is an older book (1955), controversial in topic even today. One of those that many people say is a must read. Wikipedia says: “The novel is both internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the book’s narrator and protagonist Humbert Humbert becoming sexually obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.”

- God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens. In my ever persevering search for truth, this makes #2 on that group of 3 books I mentioned earlier.

- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. During high school I managed to skip reading this classic. Huxley’s essays caught my attention some time ago, and this is the most popular and renowned. So I think it also falls into the “you should read this” category. It describes a Utopian society and Wikipedia further describes that after the utopia state has been reached… “The irony is that [Utopia has] been achieved by eliminating many things that humans consider to be central to their identity — family, culture, art, literature, science, religion, and philosophy. It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, especially the use of soma, a powerful drug taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies. Additionally, stability has been achieved and is maintained via deliberately engineered and rigidly enforced social stratification.”

- The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Sam Harris, opens his after word for The end of Faith, with a long quote by Richard Dawkins. And this is the 3rd of those three books I mentioned earlier. I can’t wait to get to it, that is why its at the bottom of the list; hopefully the motivation to read it will push me through the previous books.

That is it for now. I intend to keep a small log for each of the books as I read them so stay tuned if you’d like to know what I think of each one as I go through them. I would like to be done with these by mid February, hopefully some of your feedback keeps me motivated. Do you have suggestions for the next list?

I heard about this in the morning news. As usual, the tv news are months behind, this article is back from October last year. Regardless of its age it is worth reading and knowing about this.

The size zero pill is basically a pill used to treat horses. Yet people are using it to loose weight. Now… you tell me, why would anyone in their right mind subject themselves to this potentially fatal practice? I don’t know nor can I comprehend it. But my word of advice on this is: if it says it is for animal consumption… you should not eat it. Period.

Continue Reading “The size zero pill | the Daily Mail” »