Some of the news that is fit to print

Why am I a recovering Catholic?

Even beyond the fact that I am gay and the Pope ain't to fond of The Gay... there was this story:

Pope Criticizes Harry Potter [London Times, 7.13.2005]
Pope Benedict XVI has condemned the Harry Potter books as "subtle seductions," capable of corrupting young Christians, in two letters which have now been published online.

And apparently the Church isn't a big fan of the DaVinci Code either.

All of this, of course, comes after the church is reexaming its postion on evolution, of all things.

Somehow I'm become more and more anti-religion these days, and the amazing thing is that it isn't my fault!

March madness, the book edition

March brings the big basketball tournament, referred to as March Madness. For those of us less sports minded, read about the Tournament of Books, sponsored by online bookstore Powells.com and the zine The Morning News. The tournament pits books against one another in the search of the best book of the year. The final has Philip Roth's The Plot Against America against David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.
What a fantastic idea!

Roth's 1940 what-if...

So I do not get very excited about books all that often, but I am very excited to read Philip Roth's new novel, "The Plot Against America," which has been getting just amazing reviews.

The book is essentially a 'what if' book -- what if Franklin Roosevelt had lost the 1940 election to Charles Lindbergh, who then seeks to make peace with Germany and Japan.

The book seeks make references to the world we live in today.

The very long NYT review this weekend said:

"Philip Roth has written a terrific political novel, though in a style his readers might never have predicted — a fable of an alternative universe, in which America has gone fascist and ordinary life has been flattened under a steamroller of national politics and mass hatreds. Hitler's allies rule the White House. Anti-Semitic mobs roam the streets. The lower-middle-class Jews of Weequahic, in Newark, N.J., cower in a second-floor apartment ... The novel is sinister, vivid, dreamlike, preposterous and, at the same time, creepily plausible. ...

"The sad-voiced scholarly narrator recounts the childhood memories of a boy called 'Phil Roth' ... Not once in any of this does Roth glance at events of the present day, not even with a sly wink. ... Roth has found his way to an archetypal nightmare — the anxious, ancestral, midnight fear of the American Jews."

The Washington Post's review over the weekend said:

Certainly it is understandable that some people will refuse to read The Plot Against America because its depiction of Lindbergh offends them, but the loss will be theirs. This is not a novel about Lindbergh (or Roosevelt, or Henry Ford, or Fiorello LaGuardia, or any of the other historical figures who appear in its pages) but a novel about America: the complex and often contentious mix of people who inhabit it, its sustaining strengths and its persistent vulnerabilities, its susceptibility to demagoguery and anti-democratic impulses. It is also a novel about living amid the turmoil and unpredictability of history, about people's powerlessness "to stop the unforeseen," or, as its narrator says: "Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as 'History,' harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic."

A healthy read...

A Holiday Guide to Health Books [WSJ]
Some of the best advice on health is still found in the pages of a book. But the best health books usually aren't on the bestseller lists and rarely promise a "cure" for what ails you, says Tara Parker-Pope.

Bubba's books...

Hey... Bill reads!

Clinton Releases List of Favorite Books [AP]
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Ah, nothing like curling up in front of the fireplace with 21 of President Clinton (news - web sites)'s favorite books.
To coincide with the opening of a Clinton Library-related exhibit of books and gifts he received while president, Clinton has released a list of his 21 favorite books — from his wife's "Living History" to Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" to Thomas a Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ."

Googling books, part II...

I cited a SJMN stories earlier about this, but this Slate piece is even more detailed and complete, so...
The Best Search Idea Since Google [Slate.com]
How Amazon can make money from books you already own.

Amazon's book google...

Amazon's new search finds kudos [SJMN]
Call it a Google for books: Amazon's latest feature allows readers to search millions of pages online to browse before they buy. The question now is whether they will buy after they browse.

Book review: More on Enron...

I cited USAToday's review of the Enron books earlier...
The NYT book review has its reviews...
24 Days
By Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller
The Smartest Guys in the Room
By Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind

"The story of the rise and fall of Enron may provide the best window into the manifold dynamics that drove the boom," writes Jonathan A. Knee, who teaches at Columbia Business School

Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller, reporters for The Wall Street Journal, have written a book that "is basically about their investigation," says Knee. While their reporting "played a critical role in accelerating Enron's exposure," he says, "the Enron story does not lend itself" to this approach. "By organizing the book around various Journal scoops, Smith and Emshwiller give an unbalanced view" of the problems at Enron, writes Knee.

"Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's powerful and shocking book ... [succeeds] in opening a disturbing window into both the company and the era," says Knee. "Each chapter presents an incisive portrait of some individual corporate executive, Enron division or enabling institution (like its accounting firm)," he says. "The case McLean and Elkind make for the guilt (moral if not necessarily legal) of everyone involved is so overwhelming that the epilogue -- reminding us that to this day no key decision maker has taken any responsibility for his actions -- is truly chilling," says Knee.

Book review: e Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron makes riveting reading
The Smartest Guys in the Room is food for the brain, an alternative to the witless news shows, TV dramas and true-crime paperbacks that litter the media landscape.