What book are you reading right now?

[Vuroth]

Quote:

Author ?
 
How about now - what do ya think, now  ;?)

Patrick Rothfuss.  Fantasy genre.
 
I'm kind of torn.  Parts of it were riveting, parts were uncomfortable or boring.  I'm reading the sequel, so overall I guess I the experience was positive, but I'm still somewhat on the fence.

 

[fatcat28037]

 

[davidcotton]

Terry Brooks, Bloodfire quest.   At least this time we don't need to wait a year for the resolution to the trilogy.
 
More and more these days I find Terry's work to be comfort food.  I enjoy it but think it's time he moved on to something newer.  I miss the days when he would alternate series to keep it fresh.  So we would have shannara, landover, shannara, word and void etc.

Cheers

 

[the wizard of oz]

Seán Sheehan - Slavoj Žižek: A Guide for the Perplexed

 

[Romis]

Now I`m reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

 

[billybob_jcv]

The Secret of Black Ship Island - the latest by Niven/Pournelle/Barnes in the The Legacy of Heorot story arc.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

There really is something worse than Grendels...

 

[finbad]

 
 
EXPLODING THE MYTHS ABOUT MONEY

Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been "privatized," or taken over by private money lenders. Thomas Jefferson called them “bold and bankrupt adventurers just pretending to have money.” Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions — including the privately-owned Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices — and robbing you of the value of your money.
Not only is virtually the entire money supply created privately by banks, but a mere handful of very big banks is responsible for a massive investment scheme known as "derivatives," which now tallies in at hundreds of trillions of dollars. The banking system has been contrived so that these big banks always get bailed out by the taxpayers from their risky ventures, but the scheme has reached its mathematical limits. There isn't enough money in the entire global economy to bail out the banks from a massive derivatives default today.
Web of Debt unravels the deceptions in our money scheme and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading. Then it explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation's, you should read this book.
 
 
Read the Introduction for an eye-opening look at what's really going on with your money!
Or listen to it here...
Excerpts

Introduction

Table of Contents

Foreword by Reed Simpson

Chapter 1 — "Lessons From
The Wizard Of Oz"

Chapter 5 — "From Matriarchies of Abundance to Patriarchies of Debt"

Chapter 22 — "The Tequila Trap: The Real Story Behind the 
Illegal Alien Invasion"


Upcoming Events


Author Interviews


Reviews

Acres USA, April, 2010:
Ellen Hodgson Brown may have done the impossible. She wrote a book about the most stupefying subject in the world - money, where it comes from and how it is manipulated - and made it readable, compelling, even suspenseful. Web of Debt is a page-turner that explains the origin of the Federal Reserve, the functioning of our money supply, currency speculation, capital flows, and the rest. As you read, interest grows like a Wall Street bonus package. . . . The only downside - pardon the finance jargon - is a loss of innocence. Once the destructive reality of the contemporary monetary system sinks in, there is no longer any excuse for apathy.

Online Journal, March 2, 2009:
If there is one book, one newspaper, one blog, one article, that one should read to understand the current economic crisis, to understand the root of the problem, and to understand its solution, it is "The Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free".... "Web of Debt" is an extremely enlightening and remarkable book, providing an understanding to our world and the current economic crisis and providing monetary and banking solutions that will take us out of this crisis and benefit the people... The book is an absolute must read and relevant to people of all political stripes. The only idealogy presented is one of fairness, integrity, and common sense.

Thom Hartmann's Review of the Month for Buzzflash , April 2009:
It's frankly difficult to find a good book that will help a person become literate about our modern money supply. Most that are accurate are hopelessly dense and written for graduate students in economics....Ellen Brown has translated a dense subject into a readable and fascinating story....Web of Debt by Ellen Brown not only demystifies money, but provides some thought-provoking and realistic solutions to our nation's dangerous dependence on a for-profit banking system that is sucking the financial lifeblood out of our nation....Buy it, read it, and get active!

 

[finbad]

[size=small]A History of God[/size][size=small] is a best-selling book by ( f[/size][size=small]British journalist and f[/size][size=small]ormer nun ), Karen Armstrong. [/size]
[size=small] details the history of the three major monotheistic traditions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.[/size]
 
 

 
 

[size=1.5em]

a history of the concept of god​

[/size]

Is the Universe wholly apart from God, or is Creation in some sense, a part of God? Is God solely One in nature, or is there a Threeness, or a Manyness, or an Infinitude to God? Is God knowable or beyond knowledge? Is God personal or impersonal? Does God have feelings? Billions of people have had an opinion on these matters, and that's the subject of this groundbreaking book. Those who depend upon the unshakeableness of their beliefs may find this book upsetting or worse, but to those who consider and question their faith, Karen Armstrong's A History of God will be challenging and illuminating, and perhaps, as I found it, even thrilling.

The title goes for brevity over accuracy. Perhaps it could have been titled “A History of the Idea of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” but that would have lacked panáche, to say the least. Armstrong concentrates on the changes in the concept of God, particularly the unique aspects of monotheistic theology, for instance, God as separate from Creation, God having a “personal” nature, and so forth.

[size=1.5em]

religious cultures in conflict​

[/size]

Armstrong makes theological history simply fascinating. Beginning with the evidence for near-universal worship of a Sky God in prehistory, Armstrong traces the shift from the Sky God to the Earth Mother to polytheism, and then focuses on the revolutionary development of Abraham's faith in one God which would clash with Canaanite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian paganism for the next 1500 years. Many Christians interested in objective Biblical scholarship are familiar with the “Documentary Hypothesis” of the Pentateuch stemming from sources J, E, P, and D. Yet never have I seen an attempt to reconstruct the history and interplay of these perspectives throughout ancient Israel and the surrounding regions, and not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined it would be so illuminating...

For instance, Armstrong shows the revolutionary effect of the prophets in Judaism, beginning with Isaiah, at the time when the J and E material was still being written. She shows that prophetic Judaism was an “Axial religion,” a development of the Axial age when cities became the centers of culture in Asia and the Mediterranean. Other Axial religious developments included the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Zoroaster, the Upanishadic sages, the Buddha, Lao-tse, and Confucius. These all taught a universal ethic, insisting that God or the Absolute needed no temple, transcended all, was accessible to or within everyone, and that compassion was the highest virtue.

The prophets' teaching that “God desires mercy, and not sacrifice,” was in sharp contrast to the priestly, Temple-based establishment, which insisted the Temple was the ultimate dwelling on God on Earth, having chosen the Israel out of all the nations. (This was the beginning of a clash which would endure until John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus.)

But this is just the beginning. Instead of specializing on a single religion or period in time, Armstrong boldly takes up all the threads of theology throughout the four millennia of the monotheistic religions. With them, she weaves a tapestry of our collective religious experience which can help us understand our faith and ourselves better. Subsequent chapters focus on the life of Christ, early Christian theologies, understandings (and misunderstandings) of Trinity, the influence of Greek philosophy upon Christianity and Islam, mysticism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and Fundamentalism.

[size=1.5em]

three persons or three personae?​

[/size]

A special treat is her insight on Trinitarian thought. It was a surprise to learn that the term “persons” in “One God in three Persons” came from the Latin word personae, referring to the masks of characters in a drama.Personae was the Latin translation of the Greek word hypostases,"expressions."  The different words used in Greek and Latin to describe the Trinity reflected (and influenced) very different understandings of God's nature. For the Eastern bishops, the Trinity described how One God, whose essence (ousia) is mysterious, ineffable, utterly beyond and above being known or described in any way, imparts his energies (energeia) to Creation through the expressions (hypostases) of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In other words, the Eastern view of the Trinity reconciled knowledge of God asboth personal and beyond personal, knowing and loving in his expressions, and yet beyond any human conception at all in essence. Have you ever heard it like that before?

[size=1.5em]

world-wide paradigm shifts​

[/size]

Brilliant also is her ability to relate the historic phenomena of mysticism, reformation, rationalism, and fundamentalism beyond just the Christian perspective, into a world-wide perspective simultaneously developing in all “the religions of God.” Her revelation that the Reformation was not just a Protestant reformation, but a universal one is a brilliant example. As the printing press spread, the authority of the written word took on unprecedented dimensions. Galileo, she points out, was condemned by the Catholic Church not because his heliocentric universe conflicted with any doctrine or dogma, but because it contradicted an extremely literal reading of the Bible.

Especially helpful is her knowledge about Islamic history with revealing treatments on philosophical and mystical eras in Islam, before the relatively recent phenomenon of Islamic Fundamentalism. It was fascinating to learn that some Sufi schools were so devoted to Jesus that they adapted the Shahada to “there is no God but God, and Jesus is His Prophet."

Despite five well-earned frims, A History of God has minor but significant flaws: Awkward sentences abound, and her lack of direct experience with conservative American Protestantism makes her disdain for it seem less than objective. Furthermore, errors like “Maurice Cerullo” (i.e. Morris Cerullo) make it feel insufficiently edited, particularly in the age of the Internet. However, none of these are fatal flaws by any means; Armstrong has created a landmark work, undoubtedly unique in its combination of depth and scope. What can I say, but read it!

 

[finbad]

[size=1.7em] The Heart of Awareness:[/size]

[size=1.7em] A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita [/size]

 
[size=11.428571701049805px]Thomas Byrom [/size]
 
[size=small]Thomas Byrom as translator, has produced a literary treasure in bringing us this new translation [/size]
[size=small]version of [/size][size=small]the[/size][size=small] timeless Indian [/size][size=small] classic, [/size][size=small]The[/size][size=small] Ashtavakra Gita which conveys with beauty and simplicity[/size]
[size=small] [/size][size=small]the[/size][size=small] essential teachings of Advaita Vedanta, [/size][size=small]the[/size][size=small] most influential of [/size][size=small]the[/size][size=small] Hindu philosophical systems.[/size]
 
 

 
 
Translator's Introduction: The Mystery of Awareness

I remember the moment clearly.

http://www.sufimystic.net/content/heart-awareness-thomas-byrom

 

[Hutnicks]

 

[Oregonian]

Sleight of Hand by Philip Margolin

I read about a book a week, usually with headphones on.

 

[Quinto]

 
Very nice read..

 

[finbad]

[size=18.85714340209961px]Poems by Rudyard Kipling [/size]

 

[size=18.85714340209961px]"If"[/size]

 

 
//[size=small]Rudyard [/size][size=small]Kipling[/size][size=small] wrote that; "Only [/size][size=small]mad dogs[/size][size=small] and[/size][size=small]Englishmen[/size][size=small] go out in the midday sun." Indian Proverb ~[/size]

 

[longbowbbs]

 

[IcedTea]

Are you guys reading these books through your kindle or are you guys collecting books like music too?