by journey-on 20 Replies latest jw friends
I just finished "Reasoning from the scriptures with jehovah's witnesses" It took a while to finish because it reads like a combination of the reasoning book and the white pages.
I need to go to the library because I find myself picking up Mrs. Eagle's vampire books. I finished 'Lover revealed' by JR Ward and I want those brain cells back. I may read the back of some cereal boxes later....
Eagle
Terry mentioned favorably "God Is Not Great" in audio format as read by the author.
I'm currently on chapter four enjoying it thoroughly.
I'm just curious- is the title you mentioned "How to read a book" co-written by the same Charles Van Doren made famous by the movie 'Quiz Show" ?
I don't imagine it's the same person. The preface states he is associated with the Institute for Philosophical Research and has worked with Adler on the twenty-volume Annals of America, published by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. in 1969, as well as conducting discussion groups on great books and moderating executive seminars throughout the country.
Maybe someone else on this board knows for sure.
"The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie. Anything that pisses the Muslims off that much has got to be good!
The Curious lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach Anyone read this book Really interesting one of my favorite books
the most bizarre CULT story you could imagine. More wierder than WBTS:
Geek Love is a novel by Katherine Dunn and first published in 1989. It was first published in parts in Mississippi Mud Book of Days and Looking Glass Bookstore Review in 1983 and 1988. The first complete text was published hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, in 1989.
The novel is the story of a traveling circus run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife, "Crystal" Lil. When Al's circus begins to fail, the couple devise an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. Who emerges are Arturo ("Arty"), a boy with flippers for hands and feet; Electra ("Elly") and Iphigenia ("Iphy") the Siamese Twins; Olympia ("Oly") the hunchback albino dwarf; and Fortunato ("Chick"), the normal looking telekinetic baby of the family — as well as a number of still-borns kept preserved in jars in a special wing of the freak show. The story is told by Oly in the form of a novel written for her daughter Miranda.
Two stories are told. The first deals with the Binewski children's constant vicious struggle against each other, but especially against Arty as he develops his own cult: Arturism. Arturism involves members having their limbs amputated so that they can end up like Arty, the cult leader, in their search for the principle he calls PIP ("Peace, Isolation, Purity"). Each member moves up in stages, losing increasingly significant chunks of their limbs starting with their toes and fingers. As Arty battles his siblings to maintain control over his followers, mundane aspects of their lives, such as competition between their respective freak shows, slowly begin to take over their lives.
The second story involves Oly's daughter, Miranda. Miranda, in her early twenties, does not know Oly is her mother, and lives on a trust fund set up by Oly before she was given up to be raised by nuns at the urging of Arturo, who is not entirely coincidentally Miranda's father. Oly lives in the same rooming house as Miranda so she can "spy" on her. Miranda has a special defect of her own, a small tail, which she flaunts at a local fetish strip club. Mary Lick, a wealthy woman who pays poor but attractive women to get operations that disfigure them so that they may live up to their potential instead of becoming sex objects, tries to convince her to have it cut off. Oly's plan is to stop Lick in order to protect her daughter.
just read the god delusion, crisis of conscience, and am now reading half of a yellow sun.
As bad timing would have it, CoC is what I'm reading atm. But I've just finished God is not Great, and next on the list to read is The Mind of a Bible Believer by Edmund D Cohen. I've skimmed it and it looks very good. It mentions the trademarks of cults (which people have used to escape the JWs) and applies them to most of Christianity.
For the earlier posters who wondered about Charles Van Doren and "How to Read a Book", the author is the same man who had earlier been involved in the "Twenty-One" quiz show scandal.
The text below is from this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Van_Doren
Van Doren was dropped from NBC and resigned from his post of assistant professor at Columbia University. But his life after the scandal proved anything but broken; as television historian Robert Metz wrote (in CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye), "Fortunately, ours is a forgiving society, and Van Doren proved strong in the face of adversity." He became an editor at Praeger Books and a pseudonymous (at first) writer, before becoming an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the author of several books, of which the simplified text, A History of Knowledge may be his best known. He also co-authored How to Read a Book, with philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.
Presently, Van Doren is an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut, Torrington branch.
Van Doren still refuses interviews or public comment when the subject is the quiz show scandals.
Silent Pray and Shadow Pray by John Sanford.
