So I am going to Barnes and Noble with a mission next weekend - I want to buy some good thought provoking books. What can you all recommend at the moment please?
Barnes and Noble
by stillajwexelder 28 Replies latest social current
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wednesday
a few good books I like:
" Why People believe Weird Things" Michael shermer
"The Demon-Haunted World" Carl Sagan
"The Battle For God" Karen Armstrong
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stillajwexelder
"The Battle For God" Karen Armstrong
That sounds a good read
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ballistic
let's see what have I got lying around here...
The Road Less Travelled - Scott Peck
Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E Frankl
Easy Way To Stop Smoking - Allen Carr
The A- Z of Being Single - Jeff Green
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wednesday
it really is. Not an easy read, (well not for me anyhow) one of the reviews says
"...Armstrong succeeds, brilliantly in placeing fundamentalist movements in historical context, showing how each is both a product of its times and typical of reccurring trends..."
I'm reading now how secular jews came to "be" .
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wednesday
I remember the first time I read Victor Frankl, I was stunned and so moved. it was one of the first things I read when I began searching for answers other than the ones I had.
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stillajwexelder
Easy Way To Stop Smoking - Allen Carr
Err -quit 23 years ago -dont need that one - but thanks anyway
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SickofLies
Secret Lover by Penthouse, full of suspense and drama!
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ballistic
Err -quit 23 years ago -dont need that one - but thanks anyway
yes, lol. You asked for thought provoking books - the first two are VERY thought provoking. The second two I just added so you know what's on my desk right now.
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slimboyfat
Some of the best books I have read recently:
God is Dead: Secularization in the West by Steve Bruce (how society lost faith in God and why the upsurge in a few fundamentalist sects does not disprove secularization)
Jehovah Witnesses: Portrait of a Contemporary Religious Movement by Andrew Holden (brilliant observations on why Jehovah's Witnesses choose such a restrictive lifestyle, and also why many come to reject it - the chapter on how children negotiate their relationship to the community - double lives - is especially good)
Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault (how knowledge is constructed, how discources are formed, and how to identify what powerful interests are served by discursive formations)
The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration by Bruce M Metzger and Bart Ehrman (new edition of classic text gives a thorough account of how the Bible reached us and all the problems of human error and outright falsification it faced along the way)
Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Hebrew by Sue Groom (excellent study of how to determine the meaning of Ancient Hebrew using various methods such as comparative philology, lexical domain studies and so on - better if you read some Hebrew already, but not essential)
The Rise of Mormonism by Rodney Stark (Stark is convinced that Mormonism is destined to be the next world religion on the basis of recent growth figures, so he gives an account of the reasons for their success, which includes expansion through the personal networks of ordinary members. Stark grossly overstates Mormon growth and potential, as he has also done with Jehovah's Witnesses, but it is a fascinating book nonetheless)