by Ravi Zacharias

I can't really do much of a review on this book because it seems fairly self explanatory. The author is brilliant and, as usual, his book excellently shows a man who is unbelievably humble. Even in spite of Sam Harris' emotional and illogical rants against religion and Christianity in particular, Zacharias remains graceful and intelligent, although in his forward he warns that this, The End of Reason, is his most strongly-worded book so far.

Not having read Letter to a Christian Nation, I'm not sure if it would be more beneficial to read it before The End of Reason-- Zacharias takes many quotes directly from the book, so the reader doesn't really feel lost.

I doubt there is a man better qualified for writing this book: the author himself was an atheist once, is incredibly familiar in many world religions, and highly educated. In fact, Zacharias is still the only pastor whom I will gladly listen to on the radio, or whose books I will eagerly pick up and read.

Highly recommended for everyone, although I doubt those who need it most [the new atheists] would be interested in reading something that so clearly refutes one of their own's most applauded work.

by Stephanie Meyer

my first introduction to Stephanie Meyer was actually on Facebook. several months ago it seemed like a million preteen girls were making "pieces of flair" that proclaimed all the amazing things about Edward Cullen.

i thought Edward Cullen was some up-and-coming teen star, so i googled him out of curiosity. turns out Edward is one Meyer's characters in her Twilight teen-vampire series books and is ultimately an old-fashioned romantic gentlemen type (or so i hear). Meyer actually has a reputation for her men-characters-- i didn't know that at the time.

within the past several months, the Twilight series has exploded in popularity-- Meyer is as big (or bigger) than J.K. Rowling was with the Harry Potter books. and like Harry Potter, although the novels are written for teens, an amazing amount of adults grab them up. vampire stories have always been in vogue, but Meyer has taken it to a whole new level.

when i first saw The Host, i thought it was part of the Twilight saga, but was later corrected: The Host is actually Meyer's only adult book to date. and by "adult", i mean in reference to its intended audience, not its subject matter. however, i had a difficult time thinking of this as a serious adult book-- with the main character only 20, it still feel like a teen book.

although the book is labeled as "sci-fi", there's not a lot of sci-fi involved, other than the fact that the world has been taken over by "souls"-- aliens who are surgically inserted into a human host and then suppress the owner's mind/personality.

these "souls" are good, noble, and never do evil. they watched how horrible the human race had become and decided that the beautiful planet earth should be enjoyed by beings who deserve it more. thus, souls travel from planet to planet to experience life, and earth was one of their destinations.

our protagonist is a two-for-one deal: the alien soul Wanderer, and her host's body Melanie. unfortunately, Wanderer isn't able to suppress the strong-willed, passionately angry Melanie's mind, and there is constant bickering inside their head. it is the ultimate split personality.

unfortunately, Melanie has a lot of memories from her normal human life that Wanderer must find a way to access-- there's a small group of human resistance out in the desert somewhere and the souls need to find them to suppress them. Melanie doesn't want to give up her secrets, though, because both her little brother and her boyfriend are presumably safe with "the resistance".

however, the story is as much about the importance of humans' individuality as it is about aliens taking over the world. souls find human hosts difficult to manage because no other species have such a wide range of emotion-- from suicidal depression to insane euphoria. will Wanderer ever subdue her hosts' determination to stay conscious? or will Wanderer give up because it is too difficult?

my main props for Stephanie Meyer is the fact that she's not boring. even some of my favorite books ever, my mind will wander for a page or two before i realize i was supposed to be reading. Meyer keeps things pretty fast-paced, and something is always going on.

my other props for the author are for the unusual way she treats the subject. it's not a typical little-green-mean-have-over-taken-earth story-- it's less about aliens than it is about humanity.

i didn't have any big issues with Meyer, although she's hardly a great writer. she's not very descriptive at all, and i don't think she understands the line between "intriguing/mysterious" and just downright frustrating because you can't get a good idea of what just happened.

also, i didn't like her characters-- not only did Wanderer spend the entire middle section of the novel essentially proclaiming "whoa is me, i'm better off dead, please kill me now" (you can imagine that gets old quickly), but also most of the romantic interests in the book were simply annoying. even the good-natured father-figure Jeb was so extremely stereotypical that i knew what he was going to do/say before he did/said it.

my overall opinion of the book was that it was entertaining. no more, no less. it held my attention, but gave me little food for thought. i didn't feel like i wasted hours of my life reading it, so that's a good thing, but it will ultimately become "just another book i read" in my mind.

by Mike Dash

i don't read a lot of nonfiction books, but as soon as i heard of "tulipomania", i knew i needed to find a book that would give me an idea of exactly what it was and where and when it happened. Mike Dash's Tulipomania seemed to be one of the best-reviewed on the subject, so i located a copy at Barnes & Noble and started reading.

"tulipomania" is the name given to an era of Dutch history in the early 17th century when the popularity of buying and selling tulips practically became the national past-time. it was in the 1630s that rare tulips started fetching exorbitant amounts of money and merchants discovered what seemed to be a fool-proof way of doubling their money almost over night-- especially since this was the only market open to anyone and everyone, with no legal regulations.

at the peak of the mania, the buyers and sellers had lost all sight of appreciation for the tulips themselves. instead, the tulip trade became more of a stock market, with prices rising almost daily and buyers turning around and selling their merchandise [which was still in the ground, unseen, waiting to be "lifted" in the spring] to another buyer, who in turn sold it again. eventually there was quite a chain of buyers-and-sellers who never had any actual proof that the bought tulip even really existed.

the crash finally came just after several "lots" of bulbs were sold at an orphanage for un-heard-of amounts-- something around 60-years salary of a middle-class merchant. almost immediately people started realizing that the price of the flowers couldn't go any higher [and therefore no one could afford them], they started selling, and the market crashed.

mike dash's book gives a thorough overview of tulipomania in the Dutch republic, but also delves deeper into the history of the tulip itself-- its origins in Asia, the fondness for the flower in the Ottoman empire, and even brings the history up-to-date with reflections on other flower manias all the way up to the 1980s.

the books is well-researched by the professional historian, with over 20 pages of notes at the end of the book, in addition to a bibliography and index. i found Tulipomania very interesting and full of unusual information. i'd recommend it to anyone interested in European history, trade, or even those curious about the history of the tulip.