Book Recommendations

By now you may have heard about possibly the Most Ignorant Interview in the History of Television, in which Fox News’s Laureen Green grilled religious scholar Reza Aslan about why a Muslim would want to write a book about Jesus. Yesterday Fox doubled down and hosted Brent Bozell, who declared that if Aslan really is “just a scholar” and not a propagandist/polemicist he can’t be a good Muslim. Seriously.

Aslan is no fool. After the interview his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth shot up to the top of the Amazon best seller list, and it’s still there as of this morning. I downloaded the book to my Kindle a couple of days ago, and wow, this guy is a good writer. I haven’t gotten to any parts talking about Jesus yet, but Aslan’s account of all the political/social nonsense going on in the Roman Empire at the time is genuinely engrossing, and some of it is new to me.

Another book I downloaded a few days ago is Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities by Chris Kluwe. I couldn’t resist a book written by a football jock titled Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies. This may be a girl thing. But it’s really a fun little read, along the lines of good blog writing.

Another recommendation, briefly reviewed at the other site, is a novel, Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being I hardly ever find a novel I actually like, and I actually liked this one.

This last book might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I got a kick out of it — There Is No God and He Is Always With You, by Brad Warner, also reviewed and blogged about at the other site.

Oh, and if you buy any books from the evil Amazon — and yeah, it’s Amazon — if you get to Amazon by clicking on the Amazon ad in the right-hand column here, I get a small cut of the profits.