Reading: Miscellania

It was noted that I haven't posted anything in a while, which I refuted, until I realized it has been since the 20th. But I've been starting a new job and moving, so hopefully that will excuse the absence.

Since I'm in a new place, I'm getting to experience something rare for me. It's almost enjoyable, especially since I know the experience will be fleeting. It's that rare time in a new library district when I don't have my card number memorized! I received an e-mail notice that I needed to return or renew a couple books, and I realized without a memorized card number I'd have to walk ALL THE WAY downstairs to find my wallet to retrieve the card. Oh the inconvenience!

But the slowdown in card memorization has not slowed my desire to have a precarious stack of books on my bedside table. This doesn't mean I'm READING them that fast. About 50 to 75 percent of books I check out have to be renewed, returned and checked out again before I actually get to them, but these are a few that I'm starting or partway through already:

Is Belief In God Good, Bad, or Irrelevant: A Professor And a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity
The book is a collection of e-mails between Preston Jones, a Lutheran theology professor, and Greg Graffin, a biology lecturer but better known as the lead singer of Bad Religion.
It's oddly engaging for a collection of e-mails, and gets much better as the book progresses. Jones is initially star-struck by e-mailing Graffin, and as such the debate is rather one-sided with Jones eating up every word from the veteran punk. Later on the book becomes much more substantive with some hearty debate on what belief in god does for people, with Graffin arguing thte negative against Jones' positive.
I tend to agree with Graffin, and even moreso as he starts to explain his belief in biology and Naturalism as the root of his faith. Many Christians would like to dismiss non-religious beliefs as without faith, but Graffin seems to have a much more spiritual understanding of his biological beliefs and what they mean for him.
But Jones makes some great points as well, with an amazing argument about the destructive nature of the old cliché "God works in mysterious ways."

This Is Your Brain On Music and Musicophilia
I've always got some book about the psychology of music sitting on my "To Read" list, but never get around to it. I've got both of these out from the library, and the former sitting next to me for tonight's reading. I got interested in actually picking up a book after hearing an episode of Radio Lab called "Pop Music." There's a great story in that episode (which can be found on the front page of the show's website) about people who hallucinate music in their head all the time.

Uglies, Pretties, Specials and Extras
(no spoilers I promise, Patrik!) It's a future dystopia about Tally Youngblood, a teenager who lives in a world where every person gets plastic surgery to be super-model gorgeous on their 16th birthday. Human-rights violations are abound like nerds at a comic convention.
I'm through the originally intended trilogy (Uglies, Pretties and Specials) and I'm about to dive into the new book, Extras. I'm told it'll be a movie, and I'm glad to be on top of this one before that happens. I was shamefully reading the Harry Potter series frantically as the first movie came out.

A People's History Of The United States
Eh, if it's good enough for Matt Damon.
When I nabbed this at Powell's a few weeks back, I passed a book called A Patriot's History Of The United States. Howard Zinn subtitled People's "1492 - Present" and the authors of Patriot's subtitled theirs "From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror."
I'd add commentary here, but I think the comparison speaks for itself.

That's what I'm reading. Now if only that pesky job would stop getting in the way.