The central crisis of the Modern Age is the crisis.. Visa hela

The central crisis of the Modern Age is the crisis of faith, the failure of our belief in God. Our disbelief is an inevitable outgrowth of increased scientific understanding of the world around us, particularly in the realms of Physics and Evolutionary theory. It is a predictable corollary of the individualistic political and economic doctrines we have adopted with such success. And to a little appreciated degree, it is a function of the material comfort that we enjoy. Taken together, all of these factors have removed ignorance, superstition, subservience and desperation as reasons to believe in religion. Since Reason would require proof of God's existence, which it is probably impossible to provide, all that's really left is simple faith and, from what we've seen this past century, faith is not enough. There is much that is good about this liberation, the freeing of man from God, but there are also some terrible consequences. The most important consequence is the removal of metaphysical standards of Right and Wrong, of Truth and Beauty, and the resulting disastrous slide into moral relativity. The other main consequence is the sort of inchoate longing that, even if you haven't experienced it personally, is so readily apparent in things like the Psychiatric, Environmental, New Age and Wicca movements. Absent God and his laws, what is there to give our lives meaning and direction? What are we doing here? Do we have a purpose or are we, individually and as a species, as insignificant as science has made us seem? The difficulty of answering those questions lies at the heart of the soul sickness that human society suffers. This inability to attach meaning or value to ourselves and our actions has left an enormous void at the core of our beings and, thus far, science has offered us nothing to fill the vacuum.

Oh, how I love Anne Rice. I actually started readi.. Visa hela

Oh, how I love Anne Rice.
I actually started reading these books after I read Twilight. Yes, surprisingly, I went back to vampire fiction after that. Meyer is a good writer, but once you've met Anne's Vampires, you're never going back. Anyhow, this book was great. It still has the good kind of vampires: the ones that sleep in coffins, drink human blood and burn in the sunlight.
This second book in the series wasn't disappointing, although I feared it might be, after reading the amazing 'Interview With The Vampire'. It was also quite interesting, since I read this book after I'd seen the movie 'Queen of the Damned', which is based on this book and the next book.
The violin!! Turns out it didn't belong to a girl at all, but to Nicki, a boy. Damn you, untruthful modern cinema.

Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butter.. Visa hela

Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken. Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who would not be defeated.

Flawed though they may be, this continuation of th.. Visa hela

Flawed though they may be, this continuation of the ten volume saga is a fun read for Eddings fans. This is the second to the last in "The Malloreon" and takes our friends through previously covered ground and into new. While the character developement is rather stinted, Eddings never-the-less packs a lot of action into each chapter the the story keep moving at a nice brisk pace. There are a couple of nice, predictable twists and some not so predictable. All in all, Eddings fans will enjoy the work. Those who are not fans probably won't. Either way, if you have read this far into the series, why stop now? All in all, recommend.

Meg Cabot does a neat portrayal of teen heroines... Visa hela

Meg Cabot does a neat portrayal of teen heroines. They are spunky…have some of the most interesting and weird conversations in their heads and more often than not come up with ear-bending dialogue like: “Lay one hand on my brother and I’ll stuff you right back into that grave from which you crawled out.” Yep, real heart-warming stuff…

Suzanne (Suze) Simon is no different. Her widowed mother has remarried and the mother-daughter duo shift from bleary New York to California, sunny-side up. Her step-father (who breaks the cliché and is a real sweetheart) comes armed with three sons. Snatched from familiar surroundings and plonked into a place that’s too pastel for a native New Yorker, Suze has quite a lot on her plate.

Add to that her one dark secret. Suze is a Mediator…a ghost-mediator...she talks to the dead and handles their unfinished business on earth. She encounters nice, snotty and downright nasty ghosts. Not all want to move on to the great big Pizza Parlour in the sky. So Suze has to kick (surprisingly solid) ghost butt at regular intervals. Things heat up as she shifts into her new home. There is a seriously good looking Spanish ghost in her room called Jesse. And Suze also has to deal with the ghost of a snotty, preppy high-schooler called Heather. Heather is as mean as your average poltergeist and is set to wreck hell in Suze’s new school, seeking revenge on the boyfriend who dumped her. The result is plenty of Buffy-style action and hi-jinx.

The first in the Mediator series is a quick one-hour read…witty and quintessentially Cabot.