Individual Entry: Books 2008/03/17
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March 17, 2008

Books : Books 2008/03/17

Current count of books pending to be read: 125
Read four, received three that I had ordered a while back.

Books finished this week:

Perdido Street Station

by China Mieville

Just to prove I take my own advice; Meiville’s last three books have all been nominated for Hugo awards, so I thought I should check him out. I’m very glad I did.

The story itself is a kind of strange mix of Fantasy, steam-punk SciFi and Horror, set in a world where there are steam powered robots, and different fields of magic are treated as scientific disciplines (a bio-thaumaturge can manipulate living flesh, etc.). The forces of elemental chaos occasionally sweep through the world creating new species, often chimerical combinations of previous creatures – sentient, mobile, man-shaped cacti; a race of women whose heads are beetles; human-frog hybrids; and the like.

The author starts slowly to provide a chance to understand the world (although the travelogue is never boring); but once the action starts it keeps moving quickly and I had trouble putting the book down. The main plot is about several parties trying to put a stop to a set of creatures that eat dreams/minds (and excrete nightmares) who are inadvertently released into a populated area.

The main character however is the city in which the action takes place – New Crobuzon, which is kind of like a Victorian London with magic and advanced steam technology. The city is ruthlessly ruled by the mayor through his secret police. Crimes are punished by the criminals being “remade” – transformed by magic into a new form. Perhaps they are given the body of a dog, or have steam-power claws magically grafted on to replace their hands.

I enjoyed the book a lot, and as soon as my reading list gets reduced a bit more, I want to read his two sequels in the same world – Scar and Iron Council.

Going to Church in the First Century

by Robert Banks

A short narrative of what it might have been like to “go to church” in the first century, as told from the point of view of a Roman who was invited to join the group. The book is well researched, although there clearly is some level of speculation. It is well written by a Simple/Home church advocate. I certainly recommend the book and expect to share it with people I know. I certainly would be quite happy to attend a meeting like the one described.

This Little Church Stayed Home

by Gary E. Gilley

I recommend that people always seek out opposing points of view to help clarify their own opinions, and it is in that spirit that I purchased and read this book. It is a sequel to “This Little Church Went to Market” in which the author provides criticism to the seeker-friendly and mega-church movements, accusing them of trading in the gospel for entertainment and slick marketing.

In this book he examines the impact of postmodernism on the Christian church and provides specific criticism to Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” movement (or at least Warren’s poor use of scripture), Christian Mysticism (particularly Foster’s “A Celebration of Disciple”), the Emerging/Emergent church movement (particularly McLaren and Sweet) and a short epilog on Barna and the Simple/Church movement (although this was clearly added late in the development of the book and not a thorough treatment of the subject).

While the book did not change my mind on any specific points (I already disagreed with McLaren and was suspicious of modern Christian Mysticism), it did provide me some things to look out for - channel markers to use to know if I am sliding outside the main flow of Christianity. There are several points on which I disagree with Gilley (for example, he seems to take the position that anything said by a Catholic is automatically wrong); but I still found hearing his point of view useful.

Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life

by Aimee Weber, Kimberly Rufer-Bach, and Richard Platel

I have been meaning to try out Second Life for a couple years now, and at one point I even bought a couple of books on the subject. This is the more programming-oriented one (I already read the more user-oriented one). Having still not tried the service, I can’t speak to how complete it is; but it certainly seemed useful. Perhaps when I get finished with this book-reading project I’ll allocate some time to try out Second life.

Computer Games Played: none
DVDs Watched: none

Next Book: The Mind of the Market

Posted by Steven at March 17, 2008 05:00 AM