Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Monday, June 22, 2015

Living Mindfully by Deborah Schoeberlain David


Title: Living Mindfully
Author: Deborah Schoeberlain David (no website found)
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Rating: WARTY!

I'm always very wary of books where the author insists upon putting some academic string of letters after their name. Take a look at real books written by such people, and they never do this. Look at books by Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Stephen Jay Gould, Brian Greene, Steven Hawking, Steve Jones, and so on, and not a one of them does this. Not to comment upon this particular author, but just note in general, to beware of authors who do this.

This is the second in a pair of books I'm reviewing from Wisdom publications. The first tried to teach Buddhism in the light of the Star wars movie franchise and failed dismally. The second seemed initially much more practical in that the author is passing on what worked for her, but the questions I had as to whether what she's doing actually achieves anything, and even if it works for her will also work for you and me, remained woefully unanswered at the end.

She certainly seemed to have the right idea about how to dip your toes in the water and work up to full immersion from there. Her advice begins with taking a single breath, which seems innocuous and easy enough. She referred to this as a Mindful Breath and in what seemed to be a pattern here, offered three steps to heaven: breathe in, breathe out, pay attention to taking the breath. This technique is nothing new, and is definitely the approach taken by promoters of meditative breathing techniques, where paying attention to breathing and being focused on the breath as we take it in and exhale it, is always the rule.

Building on this, she added a new step or technique with each new chapter, which rather begged the question as to why we need such a large book for so simple a thing - if indeed it is that simple. The next step we were offered was called the Pause, whereby we focus attention on taking a single full breath, actually take the breath, and then return our focus to the task at hand, which in this case was reading this book. This is supposed to make us realize that out mind has a tendency to wander (as if we didn't know this!), and by consciously being attentive to the wandering, we can return our focus to the task at hand.

Frankly, this has never been a problem for me when I'm reading a book. I am all there all the time, and while my mind does go off at tangents on occasion, it's pretty much always as to how bad the book is or how good it is, or how can I leverage that idea into a story of my own and so on, so my mind is pretty much 100% on the novel 100% of the time. A non-fiction book is a different experience, and maintaining this focus when performing other pastimes, tasks, and chores is not always so easy.

Of course this isn't a guide on how to read books (there's already one out there, believe it or not!). It's about focusing our attention rather than letting our mind run riot as it usually does. This is an odd topic, because our brain is a multi-tasker. Were it not, we would certainly not be able to breathe, keep our heart pumping, drive to work, and keep an eye on the clock so we don't arrive late, as well as remember we have that package to drop into the first mailbox we see on our way.

So the real question here for most people, is not whether or not our mind is all over the place (it is, that's a given if you didn't know it already!), but what exactly the problem is with that, and what's to be gained by disciplining it in the way advocated by adherents of meditation and mindfulness. In this regard, this book fails dismally, because while the author repeatedly advises us as to what she had to gain in her particular circumstances, she failed for the rest of us to tell us anything that this would do except in the most vague and inutile terms imaginable.

One thing I can promise you is of value is good posture. There is an all-too-brief section on this which is related only to meditating, but good posture is vitally (and I use that word advisedly) important in all walks (and sits) of life. This doesn't mean you should start practicing walking around with a book on your head, but you should be aware of what evolution has done to us. The spine never was designed. Had it been, it would have been made from carbon fiber or something, instead of a salt of a brittle metal called calcium, stacked in donuts of rough bone around a delicate and tender central nervous system and padded only by flimsy cartilage!

Worse than that, it evolved for animals moving horizontally, and humans, who typically think they are better than any other living thing, decided to go vertical, which puts stresses on the spine for which it has never evolved. It's no wonder that back pain is such a pain. Your spine has your back, but only as long as you realize that it's operating out of its comfort zone and needs some pampering, especially when we sit and even more especially when we lift something heavy.

The progression towards meditation continues as we're advised that we can count mindfully. Mindful Counting means that we focus attention on counting full breaths as we take seven of them in and out. We observe what our attention is on, and refocus as necessary. After this we pretty much get mindful everything - feeling (parts one and two, no less!), listening, static sensation, stand with attention(!), dynamic sensation, sharing kindness, movement, and on and on. There was a veritable grocery list of mindful things, so much so that trying to keep track of all of them became a distraction from actually doing the thing!

I was intrigued by this author's anecdote about her teacher laughed at her and made an "astounding" point when she complained that her mind seemed to be on its way to greater chaos, not less, as she began practicing these techniques. He advised her that her mind wasn't becoming more chaotic, but that she was now noticing the chaos which already existed. I thought it poor teaching that her yogin or yogini had never thought to address this point during class!

I also felt it showed a marked lack of self-awareness that this student had never before realized how easily distracted and busy her mind actually was. Bad teacher, bad student! Has she never begun a conversation which has meandered through half-a-dozen topics in a very short time and then marveled at how adrift she and her fellow conversational participants were from where they started? It felt to me like the author had been so closed off to herself that what was astounding, startling, and revelatory to her would be nothing of the sort to most people with a modicum of self-awareness.

One thing to bear in mind is that this is a writer who is coming from a background of boredom and depression, and who therefore has a very different perspective than most people who fortunately are not clinically depressed and who hopefully have sufficient stimulation in their lives that they are not readily bored or lacking for something of value to do with their time. I found myself wondering frequently if such an author was indeed the best teacher of this topic, or if perhaps her message might have found more apt and fertile ground had it been sown on a more targeted audience.

When she went to a lama to discuss her depression instead of going to medical professional, I was disappointed. Fortunately this lama wasn't stupid and re-directed her to a qualified medical doctor. If you are depressed more than seems reasonable from everyday living, and especially if you're post-partum or have had a loss, do not seek out a lama! Find a medically qualified doctor who has time for you. If your doctor is doing you no good, find a new one.

Depression is something I am fortunate enough to never have suffered (not in a clinical sense anyway!). Boredom is something with which I am never afflicted because there is always something to do, something to think of, something to find wonder in, especially if you have children, or pets, or if you can get interested in a hobby, in art, in reading, in sports, in TV or movies, theater, or whatever. Boredom is never anything with which I have to contend, and mediation may not fix this problem for you, if this is something you find in your life. When you're engaged in something you love or with someone you love, your mind doesn't wander into the depths, and you don't get bored or depressed easily.

On this topic I had to take issue with this assertion by the author:

If you say "I am bored," you are literally defining your identity as boredom.

That's a horrible thing to tell a person. It's also a lie. You are neither literally defining nor metaphorically defining yourself as boredom, you're merely giving voice to a mental state which you're experiencing. While your entire collection of mental states is definitely you, one isolated mental state is not you and it's an awful thing to suggest otherwise.

I was a bit disturbed to read the section detailing where the author flew off to India to attend a conference on the role of contemplation in K-12 education (that's kindergarten to grade twelve - or primary school to graduation and hopefully heading off to college). It sure must be nice to be able to jet around the world to attend conferences! What I didn't get was why this author was all over the place on education instead of consulting more local - and/or more expert sources!

I mean, for example, there are lots of sources for how to best educate children. Why fly off the handle to India? Why not, if you want to find out how to direct attention, simply ask a magician or an illusionist, who are experts at this?! But more to the point, why ask about directing attention in the first place? Is it because we want them to learn to meditate, or we want them to simply learn? If the latter is the case, then why not seek examples from the best education systems such as Finland or South Korea? India is a very overcrowded and impoverished system which isn't known for being the best - far from it.

There is a chapter on mindful sex, which struck me as completely redundant! I know there are distractions during sex - if you're married and you have children, there's an obvious potential one! - and there can be other forms of distraction, like if you're not convinced that this was a good idea (in which case the answer should have been no, and still can be), or if your relationship is on the rocks (ditto), but aside from those obvious exceptions, I sincerely doubt that anyone isn't in the moment when it's happening. If you're not, then you probably have some sort of medical or relationship issue which ought to be addressed.

That was amusing but expected. What I was truly disappointed with was that even in the conclusion, we get no idea offered of what we've purportedly achieved or in what way this is supposed to change our lives, or at least deliver some sort of benefit! All we get is a recap of what we already read, and some advice about getting a real teacher to teach this because you can't really learn it from a book. What?!

When I began reading this, I felt like this one might actually have something to impart, but very quickly I came to see that it doesn't deliver any more than the other volume did. I thought that at least we might get some idea of what this is - ultimately - supposed to do for us that nothing else can do, and this was nowhere to be found.

In the final analysis, there was nothing on offer here that I cannot see a person getting from doing something else, such as taking up a martial art, or some sort of sport, or running a marathon, or pursuing some form of art, or writing a journal, or pursuing a hobby, taking your dog for a nice long walk, or for that matter, simply sitting out in the garden with a nice cup of tea and enjoying nature. Or even just falling in love! I can see if your mind is particularly troubled, then maybe there is something here for you, but I'd recommend seeking competent medical help first. As it is, I can't recommend this.


Saturday, June 20, 2015

The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin


Title: The Dharma of Star Wars
Author: Matthew Bortolin (no website found)
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
Line gap between 'of' and 'misunderstanding' (p15)
"regiment" used where "regimen" was intended (p15)

After I'd done reading chapter two, I was done reading this book because it failed for me - and failed miserably. The last straw was the attempt to link Luke Skywalker's experience in the cave on Dagobah with our experience in everyday life on Earth. Yoda tells Luke that the only thing which is in the cave is what Luke takes with him, clearly implying that the only thing on Earth is what we all carry with us, and that just as Luke was responsible for his experience in seeing Vader (and contrary to what this book suggests, actually failing to realize that the dark side was in him too), so too are we all responsible for the suffering on Earth.

Now I concede that as a society overall, we all share responsibility for what that society does, good and bad, but there is no way in hell you are going to tell me that anything I could have personally done in my own life would have either caused or stopped that psycho from killing those people in the church this week.

That's not on me. It's not on any one person, and nothing any one person can do was going to stop that from happening - unless that one person had a gun and shot the guy before he could kill other people. That is one thing which would have prevented this (short of going back to that guy's childhood and taking charge of his upbringing), but this one thing is the very thing for which Luke is chided in this book: that taking his light saber (how is it even a saber? Lol!) with him somehow precipitated the appearance of the Vader/Luke hybrid! Or that while not intending to start trouble, being prepared for trouble was a mistake?! No. Being prepared is never a mistake.

Luke's experience had nothing to do with the weapon, and everything to do with Luke's own mindset, but changing his mindset would not have magically made Vader disappear from the galaxy and undone all his evil. That's what this author seems to fail to grasp. First and foremost, he is applying Buddhism to a purely fictional world, not to the real one. I haven't read all of this book, but nothing that I have read has demonstrated to me how applying the principles of Buddhism in your own life is going to change anything any more materially than simply doing what most of us do anyway - living a good, considerate, and decent life - is changing anything.

Yes, if all of us ran wild and had no respect for others, then the world would be a truly horrible place, but just because some of us choose to live a decent life - even if the majority of us did so, this will not cause the recalcitrant minority to quite hurting people or blowing up people, or shooting people, or driving like idiots, or being boorish, thoughtless, inconsiderate, and stupid. All we can do is deal with our own lives, and while what we do can indeed help keep a bad situation from escalating, what we do is not going to magically make the world a paradise. Even if everyone whole-heartedly embraced Buddhism, this would not stop volcanoes and earthquakes and floods and tornadoes from taking lives and bringing suffering into lives. The only preventative for that is for all of us to commit suicide, and the Jonestown "solution" is utterly unacceptable to me!

This is an attempt to popularize an aspect of Buddhism by linking it with a very successful movie franchise. Dharma or Dhamma has no simple or direct translation into English, but can be thought of as the natural order of things. This isn't to be thought of in any pejorative way or as some idiotic Victorian idea of superiority or one class or race over another. It's focused on the way nature works and how humans can try to live their lives in harmony with this natural system just as we used to when we were apes. If you think of all of nature as a team, then Dharma is about how we can become the best team player we can be.

In that light, the problems with approaching this topic by linking it to Star Wars are manifold. Star Wars wasn't about the natural order of things. It was about might makes right and about how the underdogs could destroy that might. You can argue that this was really more about the Jedi way of life, but the Jedi were not really a part of the natural order of things. They were a gifted and superior 'race' who far from fitting in with the natural order sought to dominate and control that order for their own ends, no matter how benign some of those ends might have been.

In this way, the Jedi vis-à-vis the galaxy were no different than humans have been vis-à-vis planet Earth. As the Jedi sought to put in place a certain order of things, so humans have done the same on Earth. Given what we 'superior' humans have done with our power, I'm far from convinced that this is really the best way we have to look at how we live our lives!

I should probably say at this point that I do not believe in any gods. There is no good or useful evidence for any, nor is there any evidence that we live more than one life or are reincarnated or are in some sort of endless loop through which we will continue moving, like a pet rat on a treadmill, until we break the cycle and move on to the next level. None of it makes any sense, and for those who believe it does, I invite then to consider how all of this works given what we now know of the appearance of life on Earth and its evolution.

Humans have no always been here. At one point, and for massively overwhelming majority of the time that life has been extant upon Earth, there was nothing human here, but about six million years ago, a species started moving towards what we have now become. For all those who believe in reincarnation, I invite them to consider what the real evidence for this is, and to explain to themselves when this all began. Was it with the first cell that arose out of the chemistry of Earth? Was it when mammals evolved? Was it when primates evolved? Was it when Australopithecus evolved? If so, which species? Was it when Homo neanderthalensis evolved? When and why did this system come into being? No one has even tried to explain this, much less explained it with supportive evidence and made sense of it! That's why I don't buy into this juvenile concept of a cycle of death and rebirth.

In short, the Buddhist claims are nonsensical and have no evidence. That doesn't mean that living decent life, or that practices like meditation and yoga are of no value. It means that we shouldn't blindly invest them with meaning and value to which they have no right, and it especially means that eastern religions do not get a bye simply because they're new-agey, and exotic, and perhaps don't even posit any gods, like the three big monotheistic ones do, or like Hinduism does.

This book begins by recalling the beginning of the Star Wars saga (episode one, The Phantom Menace), where Qui-Gon Jinn reminds Obi-Wan Kenobi to keep his mind focused on the here and now, and not some speculative future course of events. In their circumstances, this was appropriate, but in life in general, it's important to both keep your mind on the here and now, and to plan for the future. Anyone with Jedi skills ought to be able to do both! Any human who fails to do this is inevitably going to run into trouble.

We jump from this to episode 4 A New Hope and are reminded that Luke only succeeded in destroying the Death Star when he abandoned the technology at his disposal and relied purely on instinct. In real life this is nonsensical. It's like disabling the brakes on your car and relying on your natural instinct to start slowing down in good time. We know how well that works by counting the skid marks on the highway, and the bumper scrapes on the concrete walls of on and off ramps! We have brakes and air-bags for a very good reason. Technology works. Humans often don't. Anyone who disagrees is invited to compare death and injury rates from accidents prior to seat belts and air bags with the same thing now.

Yes, you can argue that if we were more mindful when driving we would have far fewer scrapes and close calls, and this is true, but to make a blanket claim that we can all rely on instinct and our inner pilot to get through life is to assume that everyone has already achieved enlightenment, and no that one is mentally ill, not in any way at all. This is nonsensical and dangerous.

The Nazis were following their inner guide when they determined that all handicapped people, homosexuals, Jews, Roma, and other 'undesirables' should be exterminated or at least neutered. They were following their inner pilot when they pursued their belief that the "Aryan" race was superior. In the same way, organized religious groups have followed their instinct when they have tried to exterminate members of competing religions, such as when the Catholics tried to purge everyone they deemed to be a witch, and later those who were Protestant, or when they tried to force "heathens" to submit. Islam is all about submission. Judaism is only for the house of Israel.

Everyone today who isn't blind knows that these people were delusional, no matter how much they acted on their instincts and inner pilot. Your inner pilot isn't always reliable, no matter how much we may fantasize that it is. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't need laws to protect people from those who act on instinct and who give no thought for the future or for others.

We're reminded of Luke on Dagobah, where Yoda loses patience with him because his mind is all over the place and we're expected to believe that Luke was a poor student when the truth is that Yoda was a really poor teacher, as was Obi-Wan Kenobi. They had years in which they could have trained Luke yet neither lifted a finger. This was precisely because they were focused on the here and now - on their own survival - instead of planning for the future! Their incompetence nearly cost them everything. A little planning for the future would have made a huge difference, but each of them was so obsessed with the here and now that they took no thought for tomorrow. The founder of Christianity advised the same short-sighted tack.

Qui-Gon Jinn wanted to train Anakin and he was refused because despite the extreme youth of the boy and despite his qualifications (as judged by his midi-chlorian levels), it was already deemed too late in his life to teach him. The fact that he was taught so late was the reason he was so easily won over to the dark side, we're given to believe. Yet not a one of them questions the teaching of Luke who is considerably older than Anakin when he starts and far less qualified midi-chlorian-wise. yet no one questions this wisdom of this move!

Yes, Luke could have applied himself better, but so could Ben and Yoda - they could also have begun his teaching a hell of a lot earlier. Yes, this is fiction, but it wasn't me who decided to use Star Wars as a teaching tool for the Dao of Buddhism!

When Qui-Gon fights with Darth Maul, we're told that he is smart enough to center himself when the doors close between them, so he's ready to fight when they open, but this is a classic example of his failing to properly plan for the future. If he'd waited just a minute or two for Ben to catch up with him, there would have been two of them to take on Maul, and Qui-Gon might well not have been killed. By taking no thought for tomorrow, and getting himself killed Qui-Gon failed Anakin. Planning for the future is important. Focusing on the now is good, but it's not all there is, as Qui-Gon himself actually realized. He was planning for the future in an unfortunately limited way when he took the time to center himself.

An example is made of Anakin's anger over his mother's death, and his slaughter of the Tusken people, but this doesn't work either, because the root of this anger is that he was taken from his mom at an early age. No attempt was made to allow him to reconnect or to bring his mom to join him, or at least bring her to safety. that would have been planning for the future, so it's forbidden, You must focus on the here and now! Immediate gratification is demanded again Obviously this preyed on Anakin's mind, and his behavior was perfectly understandable. Some thought and planning here would have made a huge difference. Clearly neither Yoda nor Qui-Gon, nor Obi-Wan meditated on this!

What this book doesn't tell us, when it discusses suffering, is how selfish and callous the Buddha himself, Siddharta Gautama, truly was. He was a married man with a child. His wife was Yaśodharā, and his son was Rāhula. He was also a wealthy ruler of a people, yet he abandoned all of that and took off on his own selfish path. He never invited his wife and child to join him and share his journey, much less the people for whom he was responsible. He purportedly rejected wealth yet there is nothing to indicate that he redistributed what he had amongst his people. How much suffering did he put them through? His actions were not admirable. They were very selfish. Abandoning a wife and child is inexcusable. Women and particularly men are rightly pilloried in this day and age for this, yet we're expected to admire and emulate a man who did exactly that when there was no reason whatsoever for him to act as he did?

We're told that before we can improve a situation we must accept it for what it is, but this is wrong. We are forced to live with it, but acceptance of it means we're not likely to be looking at how it came to be or how it can be remedied. Women would never be able to vote now if they had accepted that they were unjustly excluded from voting and took no thought for the future. It's understanding, not acceptance, that we need, because only understanding will convey to us the power to change injustice, and to prevent it happening again. I think this book represents blinkered advice - or very poorly written guidance at best.

We're told that being mindful of our daily life allows us to see suffering as it manifests, but being mindful of what is likely to happen in the future means we can take steps to avoid that suffering manifesting in the first place. This is yet another example of how focusing on the current and the state we're in to the exclusion of all else isn't the best plan at all. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging the state we're in and understanding it, because this may offer ways out or at least insights into avoiding getting into this mess again, but to sit around wallowing in it, or meditating on it isn't going to get anything done in and of itself. Ultimately it's action which changes things, even if that action must be preceded by thought.

I think the dharma of Laurel and Hardy might have been a better comparison than this one with Star Wars. They never had a problem acknowledging that this is another fine mess you've gotten me into. Their intentions were always the best, and they had no problem working diligently to fix troubles rather than simply of sitting around meditating on them. I can't recommend this book. I see little real point in it and no value to it.

The short conclusion is that this book offered me nothing that any other decent religion offers - or that abandoning religions altogether and simply being a society of good and thoughtful people would deliver. I didn't see what this had to offer and I thought it was a poor approach to teaching this topic.


Friday, May 22, 2015

Braden's Story by Mason Dodd


Title: Braden's Story
Author: Mason Dodd
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Braden is thirteen and being hit with the growing realization that he's gay. His family, highly religious and very fundamentalist, isn't going to like this one bit. This story details how Braden comes to terms with his true nature and his feelings, and how he copes or fails to do so, with the reactions of others. I started out liking the story, but quickly grew tired of the writing style and the endless grammatical and spelling errors, some of which I list on my blog. No matter how much I might want to support books like this one, I cannot in good faith recommend this particular story.

The errors, in what is a story badly in need of an editor, were numerous. In addition, there were other issues, such as the fact that these are very religious folk, yet the language the younger ones employ seems highly unlikely at best, and their disrespect for adults isn't believable given their background. Just be warned that if you're tempted to pick this up thinking it's a religious or spiritual book, it's really not!

Some of these problems with this book could have been caught with a good spell-checker while others, such as the use of 'alter' in place of 'altar', and 'apart' in place of 'a part', can only be caught by a good editor or better beta readers.

Errata:
"...But is there someone your are interested in, or...?
"...felt that I was apart of something important" should be "...felt that I was a part of something important"
"... wedding alter..." should be "... wedding altar..." or preferably just "altar".
"... get those handless stuck on..." should be "... get those handles stuck on..."
"But is there someone your are interested in, or." Should be " But is there someone you are interested in, or.". I didn't get the hanging 'or' at the end, but after reading this form of speech used frequently, I decided that this was simply a figure of speech.
"Okay, you weren't listing in Mr. Miller's class at all." should be "Okay, you weren't listening in Mr. Miller's class at all."
"...to discuss the situation with Tom and is acceptance of gays..."
"...Mum was cooking in the kitchen when I got home..." Unintentionally humorous - Braden's family are cannibals - and incestuous ones, too!
"...how does that fit inline with..." should be "...how does that fit in line with..." (the lack of a space in "inline" changes the meaning)

Here's one example of the inconsistent use of bad language:

His goddamn smile, it was so cute and had this effect on me. I know, I know, it was only a goshdang smile...

This was a thought expressed by the narrator, who has been raised in a highly religious family, so it's hardly likely he would say "goddamn" and just plain weird that he says that and immediately follows it with "goshdang" so it didn't sound authentic to me at all. I know that even religious people cuss, and this isn't confined to adults, but the language felt unnatural for the context, and it was way overdone, as though the author was using it purely for its shock value rather than because it was the natural argot of these characters.

I don't care if people cuss in stories, because they cuss in real life, so in general terms it's inauthentic not to have them use bad language from time to time, but it needs to be authentic to the situation in which it's used, or to the people into whose mouths these words are placed.

There really are people who come down hard on gays and gay marriage, acting under the religious delusion that being gay is a sinful choice which calls for a cure. They're morons. Throughout history, human attempts at "curing" nature have been consistently disastrous, and this one will be too. People who delight in having anal sex with their wife or girlfriend irrationally think there is something wrong with two guys enjoying the same thing with each other. People who preach 'love thy neighbor' out of one side of their mouth have no problem stirring up resentment and hatred against people who only want to be allowed to love and marry one another. It's not only hypocritical, it's sick.

The problem for the big three monotheistic religions in accommodating this however, lies in the ignorant words of old men who specifically prohibited homosexual relations in the Old (men) Testament - only between men, however! The OT has nothing to say about lesbianism! People mistakenly think that Queen Victoria did not believe that lesbianism existed, which is why it never was made illegal in England, but this belief is a myth. It was never mentioned in Victorian statutes for the same reason it was never mentioned in the OT. Old white men couldn't have cared tuppence about women's sexuality. It wasn't even considered that they had any. Only male homosexuality threatened these geezers, and why on Earth would women be attracted to each other when there were so many manly men around?!

So the problem for those who adhere to these religions is that the Bible does expressly prohibit it. This means they either have to dispense with the blind edicts of ignorant old men, or they have to dispense with homosexuals, and they're far too cowardly and insecure to do the former, so it's gays who suffer.

Some of the other things which these young teens were depicted as saying were bizarre too. At one point for example, Mia, who is Braden's best friend, says to him "Gimme a break, Bray Bray" which sounded so babyish that it brought me right out of suspension of disbelief. These teens are also using bad language in church when they're sitting close-by grown-ups, which struck me as stupid and unrealistic.

I didn't have a problem with the religious people cussing, but for kids to use such bad language within earshot of their parents and family friends struck me as very unrealistic and spoke poorly of the kids' judgment. This was a bad impression to give because it fuels an argument that Braden's sexuality was also an example of poor judgment rather than his nature, which is nonsensical, but it's a serious mistake to write in a way which puts ammunition into the hands of your detractors, even if that ammo is a pile of duds.

There was a lot of texting described, too which felt way overdone to me. Invariably, depicting texts fails in YA stories. It seems like the writer is trying far too hard to be hip and 'authentically teen', and it just makes me want to skip it, especially since the bulk of it really conveys nothing of value and does little to move the story. A simple brief sentence describing the text is far more effective than a whole paragraph of text-onics.

There was a certain naiveté to this story. It felt a bit like reading fan fiction, or reading a first draft by a young author, and usually this will turn me off a story. In the case, the simplistic tone actually tended to lend it some authenticity. First person PoV stories are usually appallingly unrealistic. I am not remotely a first person fan. Far from rendering the story more immediate and accessible, it typically makes it seem irritatingly false and self-centered to me. This one wasn't, but the value of this was lost amidst all the other issues.

The novel was pretty much completely lacking in any really descriptive prose. It was mostly about movement between one place and another, and the conversations which took place between the teens - chats which were in serious danger of losing the reader because very few of the speeches were ascribed to a specific speaker. It was mostly a list of spoken text with insufficient attribution to give the reader a decent idea of who was saying what. There was almost nothing to set atmosphere or to describe the surroundings, not even sketchily. It made the story seem rootless in many ways, like it wasn't actually happening in real life but in some ghostly existence divorced from the real world, which is also a mistake for a novel of this type, which really begs to be solidly grounded in reality.

In the final analysis, I can't recommend this, but if you happen to like it, there is a companion novel titled Aaron's story. I can't say if these two are tied together in any way.


Saturday, March 28, 2015

The Egg by Andy Weir


Title: The Egg
Author: Andy Weir
Publisher: Audible Studios
Rating: WORTHY!

This is a really short story available free on-line, and also in audio form. I recommend it. It's rather hard to review though, without telling the whole story, because it is so short.

I'm not even remotely religious, so I have no skin in the game of who has the best religion; they're all clueless, and that's the joy of this story because it makes more sense than any of the other religions out there! Not that that makes it true. It's fiction after all.

The basic plot is that a guy dies and meets god, and gets an education as to how life and death really works! Of course, ultimately the story still makes no sense, but it's original and fun, and it's a quick easy read, so what's not to like?

I think those who reviewed this negatively either have a religious axe to grind or they're taking fiction way too seriously! It's just a story and a short one at that. I recommend it. Even if you hate it, you've lost only five minutes of your life and you have something new to think about to boot. If you don't like it, go ahead and write a parody of it and have some fun!


Thursday, March 19, 2015

The Story of Buddha by Hisashi Ōta


Title: The Story of Buddha
Author: Hisashi Ōta (no website found)
Publisher: Ichimannendo Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Translated (and I have no idea whatsoever how accurately!) by Juliet Winters Carpenter.

This book was pretty cool. It was interesting, informative, very cleanly and competently drawn in gray scale line drawings and delivered the facts as they’re known.

I’m an atheist, and while I don’t care what people choose to believe for themselves ( it’s their business after all), I am not a fan of organized religion, and I’m an implacable foe of religions trying to dictate to the rest of us how we should live our lives.

Even a religion as ostensibly benign and pacifistic as Buddhism hasn’t won me over, because for me, at its roots, it has no more to offer than does any other religion, so I’m a woodist! Religions are all uniformly making claims they cannot support and claiming knowledge they do not have. None of them is standing on any sort of realistically supported foundation. I don’t trust a one of them because they’re inherently flawed in that they offer power to those who are willing to believe (or fake a belief in) things for which there is neither rationale, nor scientific evidence.

Setting up any organization, and particularly one which can grow to be powerful, based on blind belief is a recipe for disaster and abuse, and we’ve seen how this works out. We’ve seen it repeatedly throughout history and not one of today’s religions has learned a thing from the glaring flaws of past incarnations or versions of these vacuous cults.

None of these faiths can claim any handle on real or useful knowledge of gods, or of any after-life, or any of the stuff they claim to have any insight into. They cannot offer any individual anything more than can simple rational thought. The story of Buddha, though, is interesting, and not of the usual kind. Usually prophets, avatars and messiahs come from lowly backgrounds and can rise from there to positions of power and fame. The Buddha traveled in the opposite direction, starting out as a prince, and descending to a lowly position.

This story is so old now that it’s impossible to know how much of it, if any, is true, but it is related faithfully and accessibly here for anyone interested. My favorable rating is not to be construed as acceptance of any of this story, but of how well it’s told and how interesting it is (for me!).

It seems to be accepted that Gautama Buddha, aka Siddhartha Gautama, aka Shakyamuni (‘shake yer money’ is a great name for most religious leaders isn’t it?!) actually lived. When he lived is debatable. It seems to have been either around 400BC, or around 560BC give or take a decade or two. He’s considered to be nearly contemporary with the founding of Jainism.

Just as with the founder of Christianity, there are no contemporary written records of his existence – we learn of him through records dating after his death, and it’s on these legends and stories that this modern retelling is based. While I recommend this as a great way to get a quick and easy introduction to his life, please understand that this is not the same a recommending Buddhism as a realistic approach to living one’s life – a recommendation which I don’t make.

My problems with Buddha’s view of life is that it’s so negative. He’s obsessed with aging and suffering, and with disease and dying, and in his obsession, he misses all that life has to offer. Buddha was a deadbeat dad; he abandoned his wife and child, which is an appalling thing to do, and almost as badly, he abandons his position. Normally I would not support royalty, which is largely an unjustifiable parasite on any society which tolerates them, but in this case, he seemed (from the stories) to be enlightened even before he became ‘enlightened’.

If he had stayed in his position and became king, then how much good could he have done for everyone? The very suffering and disease which ironically took over his own life could have been at the very least ameliorated if he had used his position of power to help people. He could have done this and also sought enlightenment, yet he chose – if this story is to be believed – to run from it in a most cowardly fashion, and make it all about him instead of about others. That is the biggest indictment against him and makes him decidedly unworthy of founding a religion, doesn’t it?

That said, I do recommend this if you’re interested in learning a bit about other religions. That’s definitely a body of knowledge of which the USA population could certainly avail itself to its betterment, and this does it without getting into any boring detail!


Friday, November 21, 2014

The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen


Title: The Wicked + The Divine
Author: Kieron Gillen
Publisher: Tim Nolen
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

Artwork by Jamie McKelvie (website worth a visit - I love the opening page (as of today's date the girl on the telephone pole)
Coloring by Matthew Wilson
Lettering by Clayton Cowles (another amusing website - as of today's date, Empire fighter craft versus a witch on a broom?)

This is an amazingly original story about gods and humans. Note that this is a compendium volume featuring the first five issues. I love that it was subtitled "The Faust Act"! Anyway, these gods are reincarnated in young human bodies every ninety years, but they only live for two years before the human body dies and they go dark again. They don’t know when they will be reincarnated because not all of them are incarnate at once. The gods are treated like celebrities - music and movie stars. They hold concerts and the younger generation flocks to see them

I love that Luci (guess what that's short for!) was female. She was by far the most complex and intriguing character, especially when she was arrested for exploding the heads of two people who were firing automatic rifles into her apartment - the problem is that during her trial, the judge's head also explodes in a similar fashion, and she's immediately imprisoned.

A girl whom Luci earlier befriended now takes up her cause, and seems to be the only person interested in doing so. None of the other gods seem to care. The conversations between these two, and between Luci and a blogger-journalist are fascinating. The fun really ramps up though, when Luci loses patience and breaks out of jail.

One problem I had with this graphic novel was that on some pages, the text was rendered in such a tiny font that it was really hard to read, even in a full-screen Adobe Digital Editions reader ebook. Fortunately it wasn't that many pages, so it wasn't a huge issue. Other than that, the artwork, coloring, and lettering were exemplary: beautiful, bright, brilliantly colorful, clean and sharp - and really eye-catching. It was a joy to see as well as to read. I was spoiled for choice in trying to narrow it down to my usual two or three samples that I post on my blog, so I tried somehtign brand new (for me!) this time and put all my faovrites into a GIF. This is the first time I tried this, so I hope it works OK.

I read some other reviews after I wrote mine, and I noticed that some people were confused by this graphic novel. It really isn’t confusing at all, but I grant that it does take a while to get into it. Other reviewers bemoaned the fact that they didn’t have enough background on the gods: why do they come, why do they have to die? The god who started it all, Ananke made it quite clear why they come and what they want: they want to be adored, but these reviewers were right in one regard: it didn’t explain why the visit was confined to only two years. Maybe it’s explained later in the series (this compendium covered only the first five volumes and had a great "ending"). I'm guessing it’s because they don’t want to devalue the currency! Or maybe the presence of a god in a mortal body burns it up really fast. A better question is why they need the physical body.

I recommend this for a really good read, and for an original story, and for something which was truly creative, imaginative, and inventive. This is everything a really great comic should be.


Friday, November 14, 2014

Henni by Miss Lasko-Gross


Title: Henni
Author: Miss Lasko-Gross
Publisher: Z2 Comics
Rating: WORTHY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

For reasons which really rather escape me, I fell in love with Henni Hogarthe from the first few panels, where we find her chasing a dragonfly and excitedly calling her father over to share in her discoveries and excitement. Henni is a cat-person - not a cat lover, but a person who is a cat - or at least very cat-like! She lives on another world where religion is insane and cruelly dominant - not very different from Earth when you get right down to it.

The artwork in this graphic novel is simplistic, but I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. The coloring is also simple, but it’s perfect. The drawings are clean and focused, and overall the effect is really pleasing, very artistic, and they're another reason why I quickly warmed to this story.

Told in several episodes, the story hits us almost immediately with the injustice perpetrated upon a society where one small group of privileged individuals gets to dictate what reality is and how people should behave. Her first experience is her father being hauled away as a heretic, and her mother doesn't even shed a tear for this despicable unbeliever she has found in her home.

Henni's next revelation about religion is that the priesthood lies and is corrupt. No surprises there! Periodically, food has to be taken as to the church as an offering, and Henni discovers that these treats are nothing more than disguises to hide bribes which in turn sway the priesthood into acting favorably towards marriage proposals for those who submit sufficient cash. Even Henni's own mother sends bribes.

Henni is eventually kicked out of her village for trespassing on a holy site which has an unearned reputation, and she has to find a life elsewhere. Branded (quite literally) and with no possessions other than the fur on her back, she discovers that her new home is hardly an improvement. People think she's primitive because she wears no clothes. She ends up in trouble there, too, but she's smarter and more cunning now, and she talks her way out of a death sentence, getting herself banished from this village as well. Where will she end up? I’d really like to find out in the next volume because this one ends in a most stirring and intriguing way.

I loved this intelligent and engrossing story, and its fearlessness in exposing ignorance and bigotry championed as religion and faith. The main character is one which really spoke to me - again for reasons I can’t reliably articulate. I felt sorry for her, yes, but I also admired her resilience and persistence. It’s really nice to find stories with truly strong female character, and Henni is one if I ever saw one. Bring on volume two!


Saturday, August 23, 2014

Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley


Title: Florence of Arabia
Author: Christopher Buckley
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

Buckley wrote the novel which gave rise to the movie of the same name Thank You For Smoking which starred Aaron Eckhart and which I found amusing. It was one more reason to pick up this novel, the first being: how can you not like one with a title like this? Well it turns out that this novel failed to keep its promise which is no doubt why it's likely to be made into a movie.

Florence's real name is Firenze Farfaletti, an American of Italian descent who started using the Anglicized version of her name after too much teasing at school. In later years, she married a minor royal figure of the ruling family of Wasabia (yes, some of the names and other items are quite amusing). Florence discovered what a huge mistake that was, and she literally escaped his clutches to move back to the US, where she eventually wound-up working for the State Department.

After a traumatic encounter with an old friend, another bride of a prince, who she couldn't help and who was subsequently beheaded, Florence comes up with an outrageous scheme to liberate Islamic womanhood, and gets unexpected government backing in the form of a guy she thinks works for the CIA.

She refers to him as Uncle Sam, and he loads her up with massive volumes of cash. She uses this to fund her scheme, beginning with the recruitment of her team: a gay friend from the State Department, a James Bond style ex-marine, and a PR guy who has the morals of an alligator, and who took his tutelage from Nick Naylor, the morally-challenged protagonist of Thank You For Smoking.

Florence sweet-talks the Emir of Matar (which borders Wasabia) into allowing her to approach his wife on the topic of setting up a TV station, and she also then sweet-talks Laila, the wife of the Emir (and first lady), into running the TV station. They start transmitting rather slapstick and demeaning shows across the Middle East. In reality, no Arab nation would even allow this kind of condescending nonsense, yet here we're expected to accept that it causes a sensation and starts making money for the Emir from advertising. While i could see where Buckley was going here, I found this portion truly amateurish.

The Sheika is thrilled because it gives her a chance to get back at her husband who is constantly running off to his harem and he's thrilled because he's becoming ever more rich, yet things start going badly very quickly, and given the content it's hardly surprising. The neighboring nation denounces the TV transmissions. The news reader, a young woman, is stoned to death one day, and the Emir is killed in a coup.

This problem arises when the Emir's brother, who has been nothing but a playboy, is talked (by the French, who supply him with his Formula One race cars) into making a power-play for the throne. Civil disorder starts to brew, the marine ends up shooting someone in self-defense, a bomb explodes downtown, and the mullahs are stirred up by more French moolah into becoming vocal about the Emir's lifestyle. Oh and the ayatollah of the neighboring fundamentalist nation of Wasabia issues a fatwa on the westerners involved in producing the TV show.

The Emir's bother comes to power, yet despite all we've been told about his newly-found religious fanaticism, he fails to dispatch Florence despite having her in one of his jails for some time. Instead, she's inexplicably freed.

There were some real moments of laugh-out-loud humor in this novel, but for the most part it was plodding, juvenile, amateur, and worse: not very funny or very entertaining. I just kept reading wanting it to be over so I could go read something more interesting. When I put it down I didn't want to pick it up again and I found no reason for the story to drag on as long as it did.

Most of the humor simply wasn't that great, and this conceited fiction of having, once again, the white American come in and save the wee cute colored people (substitute which particular skin shade/ethnic region you wish here) from themselves simply wasn't funny at all. I can't recommend this one at all.


Friday, August 22, 2014

Waking Up by Sam Harris


Title: Waking Up
Author: Sam Harris
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WORTHY!

I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris's writing, but I was not impressed by this effort when I first began reading it. He is the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, and Lying, all of which I've read and enjoyed, but this one initially imbued me with the feeling that I wasn't going to end up with a worthwhile take-home message. Having finished it, I still feel like that, but I was impressed by the chapters that came after chapter one. I found them fascinating, and this is why I think this is a worthy read.

This is subtitled "A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" yet there are critics who quite evidently have paid no attention to Harris's explanation of what he means by that. His basic thesis is that spirituality has nothing to do with religion and we can lead spiritual - useful, content, fulfilling lives imbued with a sense of joy and wonder at the universe - without having to delude ourselves that there's a magic giant in the sky who, despite being the creator of literally everything (so welre expected to believe), has consistently shown himself incapable of subduing evil!

I agree with Harris's thesis, but I'd take issue with the wisdom of his decision to employ the term 'spirituality', which has evidently confused way too many people because of the baggage with which it comes so effectively larded. I don't know: maybe Harris is trying to reclaim it for secularism? Good luck with that!

Harris meditates, and offers some guidelines to how to do it in this book and on his website. He doesn't do it to link to 'the godhood' or some numinous higher consciousness. He simply does it to center himself and bring a balance to his thoughts and actions, and there's no better reason.

I'm not a meditater myself. I believe you can get to precisely the same place by employing any number of more mundane methods: listening to your favorite music, occupying yourself with your favorite craft or hobby, watching a good movie, taking a stroll in the countryside, reading a loved book, pursuing your favorite sport, enjoying an art gallery, cooking your favorite meal or treat, playing with your kids or your pets, conversation with someone you care for, any any other number of pursuits many of which l'm sure I haven't even considered, but Harris offers evidence for his perspective, so maybe this is another option.

The advantage of meditation of course, is that you can pretty much do it anywhere. It's rather harder to read a book when you're at work (that's an advantage of working in a bookstore - which are sadly in decline), or watch a movie (again, with the decline of video rental stores it's a lot harder to work in a place that lets you play movies isn't it?!).

Harris tells an interesting tale, but for me he spoiled the purity of his message with too many asides. That's what most annoyed me in chapter one. The book reads more like a scientific paper than a guide to secular spirituality, and this detracted too much from his message for me. I also think he did the scientific theory of evolution a disservice, not because he doesn't accept it - he does - but because the terms he employs when talking about it are so easily distorted by its ignorant detractors.

Given the number of times people of scientific backgrounds have been abused by the profound dishonesty of religious nut-jobs in taking the words of scientists and thoroughly warping and distorting them (when they're not outright and knowingly misquoting them), I find myself in askance that so many people of science still speak so loosely.

Harris, for example says, "25 percent of Americans believe in evolution (while 68 percent believe in the literal existence of satan)." thereby equating the fairy tale of religion with the fact of evolution! Evolution isn't a belief, it's an honest acceptance that the fact of common descent cannot be denied by any honest, rational person. It's not a belief. It's not dependent upon faith. Claiming that 'Satan' is real is a pure faith assertion because there's no more evidence for a satan than there is for a god. To equate those desperate delusions with a scientifically established fact by using the word 'believe' is a serious mistake. Shame on Harris for making it.

The discussion of what is self and what is consciousness in the chapters succeeding chapter one were what really changed my mind about this book because to me they were fascinating and in some instances revelatory, particularly the discussion of how each of us is, in a very real way, a split-personality by dint of the fact that we have a split brain. This book is worth reading for that discussion alone. I recommend it.


Sunday, July 13, 2014

The Bible's Cutting Room Floor by Joel M Hoffman


Title: The Bible's Cutting Room Floor
Author: Joel M Hoffman
Publisher: Macmillan
Rating: WORTHY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This blog is nearly all fiction, but once in a rare while, I take a look at a non-fiction work because it really interests me, and this book is one such exception. To me, the Bible itself is a work of fiction: a collection of fairy tales. The only difference is that there is some factual material included, so I guess it's more like a work of historical fiction or historical fantasy than anything else. There is supportive evidence for many of the factual aspects of the Bible, but none for the supernatural aspects, and the Bible is simply flat-out wrong when it tries to assert, for example, that the universe is only some 6,000 years old or that there was a global flood some 4,000 or so years ago.

One thing about the Bible which most believers simply do not get is how unreliable and contradictory it is, and this is why I was interested in Joel Hoffman's book, which delves into these aspects of it inter alia. The author is quite evidently a knowledgeable scholar who is intimately familiar with the material he discusses, and for as much as I've read on this topic, I confess he raises issues with which I had not been familiar.

The first couple of chapters are an historical overview of Biblical times and a relation of how the Qumran (or Dead Sea) scrolls came to be unearthed. I largely skimmed these because the material is not unfamiliar to me, and they were not what I was interested in. Frankly I was a bit surprised to find the first chapter there at all in that form, but if you want historical details, these chapters are replete with them.

Where this book really shone for me was in the remaining chapters, where Hoffman himself shines relating information, detail, overview, and fascinating snippets with a sly sense of humor and an exert eye. Rather than try to précis the content, I'm going to list the chapter headers here:

  1. Jerusalem: An Eternal City in Conflict
  2. The Dead Sea Scrolls: How a Lost Goat Changed the World
  3. The Septuagint: How Seventy Scholars Took Seventy Days to Get It Wrong
  4. Josephus: The Only Man to be a Fly on Every Wall
  5. Adam and Eve: Falling Down and Getting Back Up
  6. Abraham: Humans, Idols, and Gods
  7. Enoch: The Beginning of the End
  8. The Big Picture: Finding the Unabridged Bible

The book also includes an appendix with suggestions for further reading, but there is plenty for thought right here. How many people know, for example, that the Septuagint, long considered an authoritative text, is riddled with error - and for good reason?

You will note Josephus is the topic of one of the chapters and his work is cited by many believers as powerful evidence for the existence of a real Messiah named Jesus who was a miracle-working son of a divinity. How many of those people know how unreliable and fanciful Josephus is, and that the passage they love to cite is not an original but a later interpolation?

How many people are aware that Genesis doesn't tell the whole fable of Adam and Eve (a first couple now categorically disproved by modern science). There is another book which was excluded from the Bible, which continues the story.

The central theme here - not necessarily the author's theme, but one to which I subscribe - is that the Bible is not the word of any god. It's an arbitrary collection of tales written and put together by very fallible humans, nearly all of whom were men, and all of whom had one agenda or another. Until and unless people understand that and appreciate it for what it means, they're never going to grasp what the Bible actually is on the bottom line.


Friday, June 6, 2014

The Search for an Abortionist by Nancy Howell Lee


Title: The Search for an Abortionist
Author: Nancy Howell Lee (no website found)
Publisher: Open Road Media
(Originally published 1969 by the University of Chicago Press)
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
Author Nancy Howell's "Preface, 2014" has an error in the second line, where the word 'radical' is repeated.

In fictional works, I routinely skip the introduction or prologue or whatever the writer chooses to name it, because there is no place for such a thing in a novel. In non-fiction (which I do not review often on my blog) I do tend to read such things, and so I have to say that I wasn't impressed with Mark Crispin Miller's introductory rant in which he posits unsubstantiated claims of stealthy censorship. Yes, he may be right. In fact, I don't doubt that there have been cases where novels and other works have ended up buried for one reason or another, but whether there is a huge number of such episodes. and whether the effort to suppress written works is active, and/or concerted, and/or widespread remains only an hypothesis with no supportive evidence offered here, notwithstanding the conviction of those who declare it to be so.

Moreover, I can see how these claims might have had some basis in fact in the past, when Big Publishing™ ruled the roost, but that case no longer holds. We live in the era of the Internet where pretty much anyone (assuming that they have access of course) can post pretty much anything. Even those who cannot afford a computer can use machines in their local library. There is no censorship here; neither government nor Big Publishing™ exercise any control over this. No matter how true or otherwise these assertions may have been historically, in an era of easy and free self-publishing, claims such as those which Miller makes have no foundation upon which to secure a sound lodging.

As far as the book itself goes, it's not really for reading, it's much more of reference, since it's less like a textbook than it is a scientific study (which is what it actually is, of course!). However, that should not prevent anyone from reading the salient points in this, because that's the real value of this book, and that's the topic on which people need to be educated, and this book will educate you to the reality of life when abortion was common but not legal and was definitely not safe.

Religious fanatics have been trying to drag us back to the stone age for a long time (before that, they were trying to keep us in the stone age!). Their absurd assault on a woman's reproductive rights isn't anything new. They've been assaulting women in one way or another since the Bible was first invented by blinkered, cantankerous old men. The problem is that the present wave of professional oppressionists is just as blinkered. They cannot see that you cannot keep people in ignorance of contraception, and prevent people from obtaining it, and then not expect that unwanted pregnancies will be one serious result, yet this is precisely what these morons do.

They are also hypocites. They claim to live by Biblical principles yet depart from them as soon as they become even slightly inconvenient. The Biblical god quite evidently had no problem aborting literally thousands of people whether they were babies or not. That god quite clearly had no respect for life. The Bible definition of life was when the baby took its first breath after departing the vaginal canal and thereby inhaled the spirit of this god. The Bible most certainly does not define life as beginning at conception any more than we do today. If we did, then everyone would be nine months older. Your birthday is the day you are born, not the day you're conceived. These people are morons.

But true as that may be, that's not the premise of this book. The premise is that people will get abortions whether they are legal or not, and will suffer far worse if they are illegal than if they are legal. Women are not dumb, nor are they as cowardly as the anti-abortion psychos, and they will take care of their needs whether Biblically sanctioned or not. The first step to understanding what this means in the real world is to read this book and thereby arm yourself against the propaganda and outright lies put out by those who are supposed to adhere to the injunction not to bear false witness.


Sunday, March 9, 2014

Fifty Years in Polygamy by Kristyn Decker





Title: Fifty Years in Polygamy
Author: Kristyn Decker
Publisher: Synergy Books Publishing
Rating: TBD


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This blog has been primarily about fiction, which is what I intended, but in honor of International Women's Day (yeah, I'm a day late and a dollar short - story of my life! Deal with it!) I started reading a story rooted in a topic about which I care very much: the subjugation of women and the abuse of children by religion. Kristyn Decker is the daughter of a "polygamist prophet". She was pretty much trapped in a religious cult (all religions are cults in my book no matter how mainstream they are), so I'm pleased to have a chance to read this and help expose this, well, let's call it what it is - crime - of the abuse of women and of children.

Kristyn Decker, when she went by the name of Sophia Allred, was born into a rather clannish family of cult followers in one small branch of the highly sectarian Mormon church. The abject failure of the church is explicit in how many sub-cults it has spawned since Joseph Smith died, and this same sectarianism is rife throughout all religions, including the big three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Indeed, Christianity has spawned well-over twenty thousand sects since the first century - that's very nearly a new splintering of the "one true faith" every single month since it began. That's how worthless it is. The very fact that there is no one true religion is proof positive that there is no true god. Kristyn's life was one of abuse and of rape, and of the wholesale marginalization and demeaning of women which went on for decade after decade in her direct experience.

I did have some technical issues with this book. The first problem I ran into is the same kind of poorly-formatted ebook issue I've been encountering with every other ebook I've read this month. This book is not formatted for the Kindle. The contents, rather than showing a single (or even a double) column of chapter headings are all jumbled together into one continuous paragraph, which actively prevents a reader from reaching the beginning of the book proper! When I touch the right side of the screen to move to the next screen, I'm hitting some chapter heading and I'm transported directly to chapter thirty-nine or whatever! When I hit 'Beginning' to return to the start of the book and try again, I'm right back at the introduction, and I have to wade through six screens again only to find myself right back at the contents!

Fortunately Kindle also allows you to slide your finger, rather like slipping a page over, so I got by that way, but this was bad formatting, which is annoying at the very least and not a good start to a book I'm supposed to be reviewing! The Adobe reader version was fine, and even showed the few gray-scale illustrations, but the Kindle version showed only dark gray rectangles where the images should be.

Another minor bitch: if I'm in possession of the ebook, then I really don't need a couple of screens of book recommendations to wade through from people I don't even know and therefore cannot rely on for a recommendation! I'm already planning on reading it otherwise why would I even have the ebook? This isn't smart thinking. Why would I need a recommendation which conveys nothing to me? I don't actually see the point of those in a print book for that matter, but I could argue that there's more point there than ever there could be in an ebook. You cannot leaf through an ebook in the store to see these recommendations or to get a feel for how it reads. Indeed, you cannot leaf through an ebook unless you already bought it! Seriously, I do not think publishers have even begun to catch up with what ebooks are all about. They're still thinking in terms of print books. Just saying!

So finally I get to start reading it and at 483 pages, it's a bit TMI for my taste. For me there was far too many unappealing details of everyday activity. The history went back to well before Kristyn was born. The problem with that, for me, is that I didn't ask to read this for her family tree, but for what happened to Kristyn herself. Having said that, let me get to the meat of the project: hidden amongst the mundane - and it was truly worth searching for, especially if you mistakenly harbor a benign view of religion - were some truly horrific revelations which might be too graphic for some readers (it was the uncensored version which I read), and this is what, for me, made it worthwhile wading through the tedious parts.

This was a no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled story of what a religious cult can do to young children and to women, and it's depressing at best and horrific at worst. This isn't a story of something religion did during the crusades or the inquisition, awful as those things alone were. It's something truly horrific which was done - and continues to be done - in the lifetimes of anyone who might read this. It's going on right now, somewhere. I'm already well aware of how evil organized religion is, so much of this did not actually come as a shock or a surprise to me. Indeed, the only truly surprising thing to me was how people can cling to a belief in a benign god when these horrors happen not rarely, but routinely and on a daily basis. It was disturbing and it was sick, just as such a god would be if there were one, but this is the information that needs to get out, and which needs to keep coming out until organized religion dies the natural death that it's long overdue. I recommend this book.


Friday, November 8, 2013

External Forces by Deborah Rix





Title: External Forces
Author: Deborah Rix
Publisher: Dime Store Books
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.

This novel has a prologue - really short, but which I automatically skipped. Prologues are a waste of time and effort. If it’s worth telling, it’s worth putting in chapter one, front and center. Chapter one starts out badly by immediately telling us this is three weeks earlier, May, 2125, but it’s told in first person present! Chapter three brings us to the present - the novel's present, still in first person present PoV. Confused yet? Why we didn’t simply start it without the immediate flashback is as mysterious as it is annoying. First person PoV's are becoming increasingly anathema to me, and this novel is exemplary in offering a plethora of reasons why.

Finally, after all the ambling preamble we get to the story: now it’s June 2125, and Jess Grant is entering the military because she doesn’t want to be classed as a deviant and the military evidently gets a hall pass for this. Shades of Divergent anyone? (No, my comparing a novel to Divergent is most definitely not a compliment!) Deviance is evidently a really bad thing in a fundamentalist-future genetically-purified USA, where you can be killed for it, by the authorities, with no questions asked.

How we got to this sorry state of affairs isn’t really explained very well (except by passing reference to a comet strike in the Arabian sea and civil unrest), but if it's religion, it doesn't really need a rationalization, does it? It looks like Rix went the same way I did in Godstruck!, but starting from that same kind of premise, took off in a different direction, with a lot more technology, so I was initially quite curious to see what she did with it. That curiosity was soon dissatisfied.

To begin with, in a novel about an elite special forces unit, I could have done without the trope YA romance which frankly made me sick to my stomach. The advice she gets from her new best friend about shooting a pistol with your middle finger and using your forefinger to point, for example, seemed really stupid to me, not to say, er, pointless! But niggles aside, I confess I did start out liking this character and this idea. Unfortunately, Rix seemed to be determined to sicken me with her character's childish behavior and with the sadly puerile view of special forces to which she seems beholden.

I know this is set in the future, and it's fiction, and things have changed, but have military requirements mutated so drastically? Unless standards have dropped precipitously over the century between now and then, the training is nowhere near adequate or authentic. There's no way someone like Grant would ever have got in. The atmosphere in the barracks is completely juvenile and unrealistic. There is no way stupid childish stunts like throwing knives at people up against dartboards would ever be tolerated in an elite military unit: the soldiers have too much respect for the uniform and for their fellow soldiers. This is frankly an insult to special forces.

Again, unless IQs have dropped in a century (and given the eugenic breeding programs, perhaps they have) the behavior and training just didn't cut it. I didn't buy at all the "sim" units. They were completely inadequate and offered nowhere near realistic training for these poor soldiers who are doubtlessly going to die, and soon, as inadequately prepped as they are. It didn't help that we learn that Grant is a death-squad soldier in a Nazi regime - and she joined up knowingly. I'm supposed to like this teenager, who is inadequate as a soldier and, as if that's not bad enough in and of itself, who goes all wilt-and-vaporish over her sergeant Every. Single. Time. She. Sees. Him. Without. Fail and without a shred of self-possession, self-respect, or decency? I'm sorry but I was hoping for a much better main character than I got. It reminded me of that old Schwarzenegger movie Jingle All the Way where Langston finally gets his beautiful Turbo-Man figure from the santas for Jamie, only to open it and find it falls apart, and doesn't even speak the right language! That's this novel all over.

The sergeant's behavior towards Grant is absolutely no better, and a disgrace to his uniform. And completely out of left field. What has Grant done to even remotely appeal to the sergeant? Nothing! Nothing at all. And what's with her constantly referring to him as sergeant, anyway? Special forces don't identify rank: it gives too much information to their potential enemies. I kept telling myself that Rix had better have some really, really, and I mean really good stuff to tell me if I was going to let her get away with this kind of story-telling and not call her on it. And she didn't. I had no choice but to quit reading this and call her on it because, far from getting better and more engrossing, it got worse, and worse. Very soon - too soon, in fact - I couldn't stand it any more.

I really wanted to like this one, and I looked forward to reading it; I felt I had a lot of common ground with Rix's PoV in this story since I felt that the basic premise has so much in common with Godstruck!, but life is too short to waste on something which isn't pleasing you, and she left me no choice but to rate it warty. Here's a tip: I'd much rather read about Matt's second-in-command than about Jess Grant. There's no contest. She sounded far more mature, capable, and interesting. Indeed, one real fear I had was that she would be killed off and Jess would replace her as Sergeant Matt's second! That really would have killed me, so perhaps it's best that I didn't finish this one. But who knows, Rix is full of good ideas; maybe next time she'll execute them without executing them. One can only hope. We never run out of a need for fresh and original voices.