Reading anything?

[Rev. Powell]

Downloaded a public domain translation of the Hindu epic "the Mahabharata." Since this is the longest poem ever written---3 times the length of the Old and New Testament together---I am not planning on finishing it anytime soon. I'll read a little here, a little there.

[lester1/2jr]

along similar lines: listen to the so called Super Gospel. it's a compilation of a lot of the New Testament Apocrypha. Some of it is revealing some of it, such as the gospel of Nicodemus is from way later and is pretty useless. 16 hours long

[Rev. Powell]

along similar lines: listen to the so called Super Gospel. it's a compilation of a lot of the New Testament Apocrypha. Some of it is revealing some of it, such as the gospel of Nicodemus is from way later and is pretty useless. 16 hours long

I read a lot of the apocryphal gospels years ago. Gospel of Thomas was interesting, nothing at all like the "official" Gospels. I liked the ones where young Jesus used to kill his schoolmates for looking at him the wrong way. Queue Indy in 3, 2, 1...

[lester1/2jr]

that's in the super gospel and is hilarious. He's like the twilight zone kid.

[indianasmith]

I believe that is from a Gnostic Gospel called I Infancy.

[lester1/2jr]

You could pretty much date them based on their quality. the more absurd and loopy they are the later they seem to be whereas Thomas and the Didache are very sober. pretty much so the ones written by Jewish Christians up to and including Revelation are the best, which is the bible and maybe a few other things.

Questions of Bartholemew was the one I was thinking of before. the one where Jesus goes down to hell and stuff a la Enoch

[indianasmith]

The Didache, I and II Clement, and several of those others were actually highly regarded by the early
church, although they were not included in the NT because they were not directly associated with the
disciples.  There was a strong distinction drawn between the so-called "Apostolic Fathers," who were
widely read and respected in the early church, although not considered Scripture, and most of the Gnostic
works, which were generally condemned as heretical from the get-go.  And of course, there were some
that straddled the line between the two.  But you are right - some of the later Gnostic stuff is pretty goofy.
There is one called the "Cross Gospel" where a 200 foot high cross comes out of the tomb before Jesus
rose, and begins talking to the women outside the tomb.

[Trevor]

I read the book Things That Matter by Dr Charles Krauthammer and enjoyed it up until page 237 where he started to talk BS about South Africa.

I closed the book and have never opened it again: I would like to throw it away but it cost too much.  

So, send him a correction letter. I like his work, but who's perfect? Not me.

Dr K claims in that column (which he wrote in 1985) that white South Africans should be sentenced to isolation because of their acquiescence of apartheid. That is BS: apartheid was a true evil and not every white person in SA liked it or supported it, me least of all.

Saying that is like saying Germans should be isolated because of what occurred in their country under Hitler or Britons should be isolated because of the genocide in the concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War.

Incidentally, I gave the book to my Mom. 

[Trevor]

I bought the book Killing Kennedy a few months back: very good. 

[lester1/2jr]

The neoconservatives are all hard core globalists and there aren't too many situations where they don't think "international pressure" should be applied, usually to the detriment of the already suffering citizens of so called rogue states.

[indianasmith]

I just finished WASHINGTON'S CROSSING, a very detailed account by David Hackett Fischer about the Battles of Trenton and Princeton and the events before and after them, during the American Revolution.  Thoroughly documented and very well written, this book explodes the myth of the "drunken Hessians" surprised after their Christmas celebrations and instead portrays a desperate gamble that paid off in a big way for George Washington - but also how his decision to attack was actually driven by the guerilla warfare the people of New Jersey had already launched against the Hessian occupiers.  This is one of the best books about the Revolutionary War I have ever read, and I highly recommend it.

[Rev. Powell]

Essays and stories about Elvis with one rule: Elvis must be dead. Contains essays by Roger Ebert and Lou Reed, stories by Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison and Joyce Carol Oates. The reason I got it is because it's where the "Bubba Ho-Tep" story was first published.

[retrorussell]

2015 Leonard Maltin Movie Review Book.

[Alex]

I seem to have an ever mounting stack of books to read. I am trying to work through the last 4 Terry Pratchett novels, but I've been finding him slowly getting harder to read and less enjoyable over the years. Partway through the middle book of Memory, Sorrow & Thorn while recently I was given a lovely edition of the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales (the ones you maybe don't want your kids to read), as well as The Empire Strikes Back & Return Of The Jedi as Shakespeare might have written them (What light through Yoda's window breaks?) as well as the various collections of Michael Moorcock.

At some point I need to go back and finish the Game of Thrones novels too, I think I made it as far as After The Feast, then I got married and suddenly all my free time seems to have vanished.

[Trevor]

2015 Leonard Maltin Movie Review Book.

I read somewhere that the 2015 edition will be the last: I don't know how true that is.