With Hurricane Sandy wrecking havoc on the east coast and further inland, what's really important in life can become real...real quick. Sometimes you have to just sit down and be grateful and thankful for your circumstances. Both mine and David's sisters (and their spouses and children) live where a lot of this craziness is occurring...luckily, both have been spared any real damage ::knocking on wood:: so, that's something to definitely be grateful for.
Following that same line of thought, being grateful and praying for beneficial outcomes, this book can shed some interesting light on our everyday lives as well as, perhaps, one's faith. I initially bought this book off the bargain bin in Barnes & Noble and thought it more resembled a coffee table book than anything. Not because of it's size, but it's layout. The entire book is simply one separated paragraph from another. So, there's not one big, long extended thought. Rather, the author picks one thing at a time and gives you a short synopsis of it, including scripture footnotes if necessary.
The book is broken up into various chapters where similar ideas and premises are clustered: America, familiar phrases, literature, music, places, famous people, etc. The idea is to denote what or who has any sort of link with or around biblical texts...along with some notations that people think come from the bible, but actually do not.
A few examples include the phrase "the handwriting on the wall" and where the words "amen" and "beautiful" come from. This book goes over dancing and why some religions might forbid it, as well as why some religions forbid women to become pastors. Also, did you ever wonder who or when the different books were divided into chapters and verses? This book explains how and when that occurred. It was also interesting to learn that a lot of classic books, poems and plays have roots within the Bible (i.e. Vanity Fair).
I found this book enlightening and learned quite a few things through my perusal. I would recommend this book, definitely, though I did notice quite a few grammatical errors throughout. It's almost as though the editors just skimmed over it and rushed it to publication. Most of the errors are the lack of punctuation and capitalization, but I just hate it when a book is like that. It ruins some of the reading enjoyment for me. But regardless, I would definitely recommend this book especially if you need something to read either on a plane, while you're waiting for your car to be worked on, etc. I guess what I'm saying is that it's easy to be interrupted and then come back to this book. You don't have to worry about rereading a paragraph or two to get caught back up in where you were.
And again, I want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy.
I think it sounds like this would be a good bathroom book...not that I think it isn't more special than that...but one you can read in small "sessions". :D
ReplyDeleteAnd this will go on my list to read.
ReplyDelete