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Oh man, I love to read. My bookshelf is overflowing. For those fantasy lovers I really recommend Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, or Jaqueline Carey's books (the ones that start with Kushiel... I don't think there is a series name, but I haven't read her other series). For sci-fi, Heinlein is an excellent author (I try to push Stranger in a Strange Land to everyone I know). The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman is a really good book too. Terry Brooks is a pretty good author. Um....Stephen King's It is a terrifying book. Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz is kinda thrilling and funny (and will make you hungry, he spends paragraphs describing different kinds of tasty treats). sweatdrop I'm sure I can think of more, but this is all I will put for now. Has anyone else read Kushiel's Dart and the books that follow?

Books on atheism (that I've read):



Books on atheism (that I'm going to read):



Books I'm reading right now:



And when I'm done with those two I'm going to hit Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate and Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene.

I mostly like reading books on language, in particular Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue are really good, although the latter is already kind of outdated.

I just finished The Stuff of Thought, now I'm reading The Blank Slate.



Some of the examples he uses are already out of date (mostly stuff that changes rapidly, like slang) and Pinker points out that he got a few of his assumptions wrong (about swearing I believe). Also it was written in 1990 before the Internet took off and had a major influence on the English language. It would be cool if he wrote a revised version, it's still a very good book. I heard about it from John McWhorter's Great Courses lecture where he kept using it as a source.

I have two of his other books: Made in America and A History of Nearly Everything, neither of which I have read yet.

I am a film fan first, a novel lover second. I always watch the film first. Often I see a film just because it's based off a novel, and read a novel because I heard it was made into a film, then depending on whether the preview looks good, I may read or watch one or the other first. I read the "Da Vinci Code" first, because the previews looked crappy, but I was so disappointed with the book that I didn't see the film. Needless to say I have no desire to experience Angles and Demons as neither a book nor a film.

Anyway, I'll get around to the Harry Potters sooner or later. Which reminds me, The Hobbit novel = awesome, The Lord of The Rings trilogy novels = boring. Soooo glad I watched those movies first. If I had read the books first, I would've had no desire to see the films.

I did see it. Although, I was surprised that it wasn't as "Pro-Atheism" as the zealots made it seem. All I heard on the news was how Theists were protesting it, saying "it tells us to kill God!" I went with high hopes of seeing a huge parody of the evils of religion, but left feeling like I'd just watch another kids film. I seriously think the zealots overreacted to that one. Anyway, the film was alright. It had the usual really-good-book-to-film problem of feeling like too much information was crammed into to little time. I've thought about reading the books, but usually if I don't like the film, I'm not too inclined to read the books. But if you say they are really that good, I may give them another chance.