A few of the books found in The Mighty
Wizard's Library
Welcome of my book review page.
I will be writing reviews of books I have enjoyed over the years.
This will be an activity that I will relish immensely. There will be no
schedule as to when reviews will be written. I'll just post them when
I feel like it. Over time, you will get a feel for what I am really like
via reading reviews of the books I like to read.
However, I will promise you something. I have read some rather disturbing
stories over the past few years that many professional book reviewers who
work for newspapers and magazines DO NOT actually read the books they review
all the way through! The general excuse for this is that book reviewers
get snowed under by all of the books that are submitted to them and that
they just cannot possibly keep up with all of them. Ergo, they either skim
through the books they receive, employ people to do their work for them,
or just "wing it" and hope that they don't get caught by anyone prominent
when errors in their book reviews are pointed out.
This was all brought home to me when I had an email exchange with author
Charles Freeman, who wrote that he was quite happy that I picked up on
some issues in his book, namely about the Apostle Paul's role in the formation
of what Christianity turned out like. According to Freeman, he few other
people who had written reviews had bothered to write anything about this
matter in his book. The fact that this occurred makes me wonder exactly how
many other people read the entire book and bothered to write about everything
found in Freeman's book.
In general, I have no "agenda" when it comes to book reading. If I
do have an agenda, you should be able to figure out what it is by visiting
my weblog, etc. If I have an agenda in posting a book review, I will declare
what that agenda is when I post the review.
Regards.
1. The Closing of the Western Mind, the Rise of
Faith and the Fall of Reason, published in 2003 by Charles Freeman.
Posted January 6, 2004. Also, read my weblog entry where I write about
an exchange between
myself and Mr. Freeman!
2. The Gnostic Gospels, published 1979
by Professor Elaine Pagels.
3. A History of God - The 4,000 year quest of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, published in 1993 by Karen Armstrong.
4. Cicero - The Life
and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician, published 2001 & 2003
by Anthony Everitt.
5. The
Blank Slate - The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker.
First published in 2002 by Viking Penguin books.