over the past month or so I have finished two books! hurrah
The first was Miroslav Volf’s “Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.”
I really enjoyed it but it did take me 3 years to get through it. Partly as I mainly read while traveling on public transport, and partly because every time he said something interesting or I had never thought of before I would pause and try and put it into some semblance of thought within my small brain. I really enjoyed it but i am not sure i find forgiving suhc as easy task now.
I had been developing an inappropriate level of giving. (reckless perhaps rather than inappropriate maybe). Random people benefited from that giving at random times. and while this remains, the forgiving element has begun to get harder. not from the point of saying i forgive you, but fromthe point of view of forgiveness now being and more deliberate and costly affair. I ma not so quick to forgive as I used to be. but I do wonder if the forgiveness I used to deal in was forgiveness at all or just some sort of ritualistic memory wiping trick.
Perhaps I have just realised how much I don’t forgive myself.
buy it here :- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Charge-Forgiving-Culture-Stripped/dp/0310265746
Peter bentley’s the book of Numbers was great. As a popular maths book it did exactly what it said on the tin. it made maths more popular with me.
Maybe it’s just the years of watching “QI” maybe it’s just my age but this book certainly did made maths and numbers suddenly something I could get an in on. I still struggle with lots of aspects of maths, I just don’t think in the way you need to think to be a mathmatician. (thankfully) this book was able through a mix of history, simplifing large concepts and storytelling to show some of the life behind the “do this because we have proved it worked” blind faith stand point which my school maths career seemed to stall on.
The key to the book was starting at the beginning and working through the development of mathematical knowledge from the earliest point to the current day. Suddenly the back story made the discoveries and theory something real rather than something abstract which I could never quite get. As a side point I had the Hardback edition and it is beautifully printed with great photos and illustrations ensuring the text never seemed to heavy or the example boxes to complex.
so with them read I should finish the Zizek’s “The Fragile absolute” but i lost it on an nondescript morning commute somewhere. Hmmmmm. so reading something competely different instead
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