Juliet Naked - Nick Hornby

 I never heard of Nick Hornby until I saw this book, and yes the title got me curious to pick this one up. Why so weak :)

Well, turns out there is no such thing in this one, apart from the title of an album.

The story largely spun around the three main characters Tucker, Alice, and Duncan.

I'll not go into details of a 200 pager but it has some really witty lines, and situational comic elements. And yes a lot of Gooleness and a dead shark.

Quick and light read after the recent heavy lifting.

Love

In the Name of God - The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence by John Teehan

 Don't go with the title.

This is fairly limited to Judaism and Christianity with a small mention of the other religions. And this was very clearly mentioned as a scope of this work.

So, if you thought you're going to talk about everything than you may be disappointed.

This probes the current form as well as history of two monotheistic religions over a period of time in the light of how the human evolution affected these developments.

I may not be very convinced by all the arguments presented here, and in fact a few of them looked like a force fit into the narrative to drive the point backward. But this definitely gives some key points which we can use to understand how these two religions evolved.

One more thing that I noticed was that it was quite critical of Judaism but the Christianity got a bit lenient treatment. But this can be very personal perception because there were instances where the author openly mentions that he is not in favour or against any one religion.

Its quite scholarly read so will be more suited for the readers who are looking for some serious discussion around this topic.

Peace

The Lies That Bind - Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah

 I'm thinking of stop going to the humanity section of the library. This is so full of such titles which pique my curiosity.

But yes I never regretted picking any book from that section.

So, here is this one, and again I didn't know about the author when I took it but this was really good.

The whole narrative was very well defined, and a lot of points/arguments brought forward resonate with the understanding of a common person. It gives you a wide perspective of how different identities were built, and eventually got established over a period of time. I might not agree with the idea that these identities were catered by falsehood even if we don't understand the complexity these were built on.

The identities are largely divided into gender, religion, nationality, class and culture. That is a very wide range to cover because every single one of them fill volumes. But this balanced approach here does justice to all these identities.

Best part is that the author writes about a lot of these from his own experience which is very diverse.

This may not tell you everything about identities but that is not even the aim of this book. This gives you a fair idea, and arguments to construct your own take on identity.

Peace

The Apocalypse - A Brief History by Martha Himmelfarb

 This one was picked up because from the cover it looked like a critical examination of the idea of Apocalypse. And I was not looking for a literal one.

The book does pick up a lot from the apocalyptic literature which someone can really use to dive deeper into it. However, I couldn't add much apart from the different names who defined apocalypse in their own terms.

Which means there is a lot more reading to do before I say if this book was good or good enough.

I'm unsure if I'll go that deep in understanding the whole idea of apocalypse but if you're looking to start from somewhere or want to have an overall perspective, this is a good one to start with.

Peace