I’d like to recommend Christopher Hitchens ‘God is not great’. Christopher Hitchens died a couple of months ago but had time to write many books and articles and engage in many debates and lectures about politics and religion. The book ‘God is not great’ is about the dark side of religion and how it has been used to manipulate people through history and in our day. It is available in several languages.

English edition

German edition

Spanish edition

French edition

Swedish edition

Watch him speak on YouTube

Thanks brother. I don’t read as much as I should and I am dying to read the Kreator “bio” book, “Violent Evolution”. After I can get an English copy of the Kreator book, I’ll try to get to your suggestion. As everyone knows, I am a Christian. I’m screwed up but believing in Jesus Christ as your personal savior is what makes a Christian. I may not act like it because the last thing I want to do is have you guys think I am a straight laced, boring Bible banger that tries to force Christ down your throats. Think of me as a brother, not a Christian.

That book really does sound totally cool, though. I’d love to give it a read.

I wish someone would open a thread on movies. I’m really into movies. If no one opens up a movie thread, I suppose that I will do it soon.

sounds interesting - i added this book to my amazon wishlist. while i usually dont like to read fiction at all, i’ve recently been reading all of patrick mcgrath’s books. he writes dark twisted gothic fiction that is usually pretty depressing. “asylum” is easily my favorite book by him, but i just finished “trauma” and started “dr. haggards disease” a couple nights ago.

I orderred the violent evolution book…signed by Mille

I’d get a copy of Violent Evolution in Yiddish if Mille signed it. If they don’t translate into English for me, I’ll never be able to read it though.

Phantom Antichrist - 24 February 2012 03:18 AM

I’d like to recommend Christopher Hitchens ‘God is not great’. Christopher Hitchens died a couple of months ago but had time to write many books and articles and engage in many debates and lectures about politics and religion. The book ‘God is not great’ is about the dark side of religion and how it has been used to manipulate people through history and in our day. It is available in several languages.

English edition

German edition

Spanish edition

French edition

Swedish edition

Watch him speak on YouTube

I’ve been watching hours of Hitchens speak on YouTube now. He is a strange dude, but he is very smart for sure. I need to get back into reading more. I just finished reading Stephen King’s “The Stand” for the 5th time.

Did you read this book?

when you click on the english link for the book it recommends things that other people have bought, and one of those is “the god delusion” by richard dawkins. the name kept ringing a bell, and then i remember that my boyfriend recently read this book. i asked him about it and he said it was really great - so i think i’ll borrow that from him as well as buy “god is not great”. i might even go get it today because i need something different to read.

dOT rOT Thrash - 26 February 2012 06:10 PM

when you click on the english link for the book it recommends things that other people have bought, and one of those is “the god delusion” by richard dawkins. the name kept ringing a bell, and then i remember that my boyfriend recently read this book. i asked him about it and he said it was really great - so i think i’ll borrow that from him as well as buy “god is not great”. i might even go get it today because i need something different to read.

Hitchens and Dawkins are both authors who has been very active writing books and holding lectures these last years. Together with Daniel Dennett, AC Grayling, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Victor J. Stenger and Sam Harris they are considered to be a movement that has been called ‘The New Atheists’ by both people who appreachiate their works and by critics. I can esprecially recommend Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book ‘Infidel’. It is a very interesting book about how she grew up as a muslim in Somalia and escaped a forced marriage as a teen. She then started study in Holland and later moved to the US. She has survived genital mutilation, forced marriage, physical violence and death threats from the muslim community and is the most hated woman by fundamentalist muslims.

MPetrozzaIsGod - 26 February 2012 06:06 PM

I’ve been watching hours of Hitchens speak on YouTube now. He is a strange dude, but he is very smart for sure. I need to get back into reading more. I just finished reading Stephen King’s “The Stand” for the 5th time.

Did you read this book?

Ha ha! I know what you mean. I have been there myself watching debate after debate.

I read ‘The Stand’ as a kid. I must have been around 13-15. I liked it back then. But my favorite was the first Stephen King book I read, which was ‘IT’.

You know what? I am starting an atheist topic as well. This topic is supposed to be about book recommendations but I think there seem to be an interest to talk about these things.

Did you read “God is not Great” in its entirety, yet? I did see your “atheist” page. I’ll be sure to go there so you guys can rip apart the Christian of the bunch. I read here and there, but I’m more of a movie person. When someone starts a page on movies, I’ll double my number of posts from 150 to 300 quickly.

I just didn’t know if you had totally finished “God is not Great”. I wanted to know if you liked it and if you knew what it was before you bought it. This guy has been around and lecturing for quite a while (until he died, of course) and I didn’t know if you had heard about him and then bought the book, or if you bought and read the book and then found out more about him. He’s smart but he has a strange outlook on his non-religious topics as well. I’m a Christian, but that doesn’t mean that I throw away other people’s opinions and outlooks….. that is why I’m not a typical Christian… I like the idea of “free thinking” a lot more than the Vatican does. I’m not Catholic though so what would I know about the Vatican? I’m always talkin’ sh*t!

NEVER EAT YELLOW SNOW!

Yes, I have read the book. And I will write a little story about it in the atheist thread if you are interested.

Since you are a christian I think you would find Hitchens work a bit insulting since he is very provocative in the way he writes and speak. But if you find the suject interesting and want to learn about how the atheists make their case I think you might find Daniel Dennett’s ‘Breaking the spell’ interesting. Even if you are a believer I think you would find it quite fun to read. He is a philosopher and his way of arguing is different from Hitchens (a journalist a political writer) and Dawkins (a biologist). You also have a compilation that was put together by Hitchens which has many different thinkers writing about atheism; ‘The Portable Atheist’ which I have but have not completed yet (I have to much to read at school at the moment). Many famous writers are included like H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, Einstein, Salman Rushdie and Mark Twain as well as many of the people I mentioned earlier (Hirsi Ali, Harris, Grayling…).

You are not talking shit. Abstaining from eating yellow snow is sound advice.

Another book recommendation: Nikanor Teratologen ‘Assisted Living’.

I have only read this book in swedish but it is now in an english translation. Not only will you be the only person in your city that has read this book but I can garantee that this is the sickest book you have ever read. It’s about a boy and his grandfather who has an incestious relationship and spend their time killing and torturing people. The original is written in dialect (imagine the thickest redneck dialect you can think of) and it is hard for me to know what this book will actually look like in the english language. As horribly gruesome as this book is, it is also very funny. It is also very high brow and it has many literary and historical references. This makes the obscenities even more disturbing. It might sound like this book was only written to shock people but it is actually a book that seem to tell us something important about human depravity and about ourselves. The writer wrote this book under a fake name and he is probably not all sane. From what I have heard his library consist mostly of nazi literature and philosophy. After writing this book he didn’t write another book in many years so it doesn’t seem like he is writing to earn money. I have read a lot of horror literature but this book was hard to read before going to bed. Only buy this if you are a sane person; you won’t be after reading this. A proper review can be found here.

Swedish title: Äldreomsorgen i Övre Kågedalen

I just bought some literature today from two different online bookshops. Here is a link where you can see the books I bought from Bokus.

Since it’s in swedish you might not see exactly what is what so here is what I bought:

From Bokus:

Christopher Hitchens - Thomas Paine’s Rights of man

Thomas Paine - Rights of man

These two books are for my dad. One of them is a biography about Thomas Paine the other one is the book Rights of man itself.

St Petersburg

Lonely Planets travel guide to the city. I will be going there next month.

Nick Cohen - What’s left?

This book is about how the political left in Europe have lost their way by supporting islam and self-censorship.

Christopher Hitchens - Love, Poverty and War

A collection of essays where (among other things) Hitchens defend his support for the war in Iraq.

George Orwell - Essays

The largest one volume collection of Orwells essays by Everyone’s library. Fine binding.

Michael Shermer - The Believing Brain

Shermer’s follow up book to his ‘Why people believe in wierd things’. The subtitle explains what the book is about: How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

From CDON:

Nick Cohen - You can’t read this book

A book about how political correctness and cultural relativism limit our freedom of expression in an age where it should be much easier the communicate than before.

Nils Dacke - Islam under slöjan (Islam under the veil)

A book about islam and how it affect social norms and politics.

Fjodor Dostojevskij - Vita nätter (White nights)

A short novel set in St Petersburg. I try to read up before my trip. ;-)

Tony Iommi - Iron Man

Tony Iommis autobiography. Will be interesting to read.

Nikanor Teratologen - Att hata allt mänskligt liv (To hate all human life)

Nikanor Teratologens latest novel which takes place in colonial India and describes the dialog between a british explorer and an ancient demon.

I can recommend Sam Harris ‘The End of Faith’ which I finished last week. It falls into the New Atheists category. Well argued and an easy read.