April 17, 2010

Finished four books this week:
Sergeant Nibley, PhD   Hugh Nibley 
I knew Nibley a little when I lived out here in the 70s and 80s, and I worked tangentially with him against the Vietnam war. He had referred obliquely a few times to his experiences in WWII, so I was really interested to read this book by him and his son Alex. It was a lot more work than it needed to be because it is very poorly organized and crowded with unnecessary pictures and sidebars. I guess the editor thought it needed to be dumbed down for the Mormon readers even though it pretends to be for a non-Mormon audience as well. Still glad I worked my way through it. He still means a great deal to me in my intellectual and spiritual development.

If the Dead Rise Not   Philip Kerr 
Latest in the Bernie Gunther series, number 6. Now he’s in Cuba, but most of the book takes place during 1934. Again Kerr’s sleek prose that slips us through the narrative. His pre-war and Third Reich world is good history as well as compelling fiction. Really liked it. Hope he keeps writing them.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything   Christopher Hitchens 
“Read” this as an audio book, and it was great listening to Hitchens read his own prose as I drove around in my Beetle. He loves to skewer people and our preconceptions, so there is a glee in this book as well as some good insights and history. But he is not a philosopher, and his arguments wind around a little even though they are, for the most part, right on the money. Very good, really glad I read it.

Bhagavad Gita  translated by Stephen Mitchell
A beautiful and profoundly spiritual text that has changed the way I see the world. This, more than any other “sacred” text I have read, seems purely spiritual and conveys an understanding of life. I am not comfortable with the Lord/God references except that they can be understood to portray a reverence for the foundation of existence throughout the universe, which I loved. Also loved the clarity and simple beauty of Mitchell’s translation.