Wednesday, January 04, 2012

A New Year's Resolution for the Mind

From Ken Samples. Or, I suppose, you can take the Debunking Christianity challenge. Or, both at once.

4 comments:

David B Marshall said...

So many books, so little time. I hope they have bean-bags in heaven.

Anselm I do need to read. I read much of his biography, by Eadmer, his disciple, in 2011. A likeable guy, and why should we listen to an argument from a creep?

B. Prokop said...

Being a compulsive list maker myself, I loved reading Samples's list of six recommended books to read in 2012, and made one myself:

1. St. Augustine, Sermons. (No complete volume exists in English, but Amazon does offer a collection of the "essential" ones. read the reviews on that site for more info.)

2. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets. Perhaps the finest poem written in the last 100 years (at least in English), this is a most profound meditation on the Incarnation and Redemption.

3. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. Gets my vote for the best work of apologetics in the modern age.

4. Julian of Norwich, the Revelations of Divine Love. Written in the 14th Century, a hauntingly beautiful work by medieval England's most famous mystic, about the meaning of Redemption.

5. Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory. A novel about a fugitive Catholic priest in Mexico fleeing an anticlerical revolution. Beyond praise - wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

6. Dante, The Divine Comedy (Dorothy Sayers translation. Sayers may not have produced the best English rendering of what I consider the single greatest artistic achievement in human history by a single person (if you haven't read The Divine Comedy, you have no business calling yourself an educated person), but her footnotes and introductory material have no equal.

If there's a book on this list that you haven't read, by all means get a copy and dig in! I guarantee you'll be glad you did.

PhilosophyFan said...

Ok, while we're doing recommended books I will make my own list, though I cheat and put authors in simple categories.

[Not as an intellectual endeavor, but as a glimpse into how some people in the world think...his books are popular among prisoners and some CEOs, etc).
1) At least one of Robert Greene's four books: The 48 Laws of Power (interesting aside: William Dembski taught on this book in an apologetic course; I'm sure he didn't endorse everything), The Art of Seduction, The 36 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law (don't dismiss just 'cause 50 cent was involved).

[As an intellectual endeavor]
2. Nicholas Taleb's books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.

3) Pascal's Pensees. [note, this also puts his Wager in context...I believe Peter Kreeft and Douglas Groothuis have valid defenses of his meaning/intention).

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the nod. I hope someday you read Thom Stark's book and review that one if nothing else.

Cheers.