The great book hunt

January 11, 2006 5 Comments

Mason and I went on a little bookstore-to-bookstore expedition yesterday afternoon, before picking up Bailey from school. Short version of a long story: My work hours were only guaranteed to be full-time up until the first of this year. I talked to my boss on the 3rd, he forgot about it but gave me another guaranteed extension in full-time hours for “another few months.” Since that hamstringed my plans to take one or two journalism courses at the local Junior College, I began my search yesterday for a decently priced, quality book on journalism and news writing for the web. When you write for an actual paper versus the web, there are different guidelines, rules of thumb, formatting, etc that you need to take into consideration to be a truly effective writer.

Basically, I’m trying to learn this stuff the ghetto way. Blind leading the blind here.

First we went to Barnes and Nobles and they had a total lack of writer’s resources other than dictionaries and thesauruses. We then drove across town to Borders and while I despise Borders for their drastically inflated prices on just about everything you look at, I did find they had a decent writers resource section. Which is terrific! If you want to be a poet, or know how to write and market your own screenplay or novel. They had two copies of a single 50 page long book by the Associated Press on news writing which basically consisted of page after page of examples of alternative ways to say something. This, I don’t need as I already have a copy of the 2005 Associated Press Style Guide which handles most of that anyways.

While looking for my desired section, I stumbled across the Science reading section. Remembering mine and Ian’s winded debate on evolution vs. “intelligent design”, two books caught my eye: Finding Darwin’s God and The Origin of Species. Odd books to come home with when you go searching for a book about news writing and journalism for the internet.

So far they’re good. The Origin of Species is interesting although Darwin was apparently a painfully wordy man. Some sentences were so long I had forgotten how they began when I had come to the end. I’ve read bits and pieces of The Origin before but never actually read it word-for-word which I intend to hopefully do very soon. I figure it’s inappropriate of me to form an opinion on something when I have never actually read the original (or as close as we can get to it) book that generated the turbulence to begin with.

The second book, Finding Darwin’s God stood out to me because it’s written by a biologist who believes evolution took place and is still taking place, but also acknowledges the existence of the God of the Christian bible. This makes me curious. Because it seems to me that you cannot believe in both, without one contradicting the other. With the little time I’ve had to read (maybe an hour all day yesterday) the author of Finding Darwin’s God claims to answer some interesting questions, and if he does, it could be a very good book. However, for example, he spent about 6 pages talking about all the scientists over time that helped us learn what we know of the sun. The point he was trying to drive home was that it is possible to learn about something when we can’t actually experience it, such as evolution of centuries past. He also spends some time talking about the evolution of the beer can. Beginning with the early days of needing a “Church key” to puncture two holes into the top – one for air, the other for drinking out of – all the way to the modern day “Wide mouth” opening. Why? I don’t know. I just hope he cuts out the erroneous crap and gets down to the subject matter he claims to discuss – can God and evolution coexist and is it possible for them to share a common ground?

Seems to me it’s not possible, but maybe this mans book will prove myself, and millions of others, wrong. Depending on the severity of the pain killers, I may post my thoughts as I crank through these books over the next few days while I try to not think about all the food i can’t eat while I rebound from having my wisdom teeth pulled out.

Related posts:

  1. Sixth Harry Potter book hits shelves July 16th
The Random Thinker
  • http://www.evilblog.net Ian

    It seems to me that you cannot believe in both, without one contradicting the other.

    It depends a lot on your interpretation of the bible. If you believe that it is literal, absolute, word for word truth, then, yeah, it’s pretty hard to reconcile the literal story of Genesis with the theory of Evolution.

    But many Christians believe that much of the Bible (especially the really old parts) is alegorical; an attempt to explain the grandeur of God in ways that people with little scientific knowledge could understand. This is hardly a minority view among Christians, either. The largest Christian denomination by far, Catholicism, believes in both God and Evolution.

    I’ve recently seen Finding Darwin’s God recommended in other places, too, so I’ll have to check it out. Let me know what you think when you’re done with it.

  • http://www.deguia.net Daniel

    I’ll definitely let you know what I think of the book. It seemed to be the most unbiased look at the issue, of the 5 or 6 books they had there. Most were clearly slanted to the “Evolution is evil!” viewpoint. One was actually called “Darwin’s dangerous idea”

    :: queue the creepy horror flick music ::

  • http://blog.logtar.com logtar

    The earth is flat just so both of you propaganda pushers know.

    Reading the beginning of this entry made me a little self concious about my writting. Sometimes I wonder how people that actually are good writer (yourself included) stomach reading my tirades.

    A writers book is not a bad idea, let me know if you find one.

  • http://www.sonic.net/jdf/ jdf

    First, there are a great many book out there regarding style. The Barnes & Noble on 4th and D has a couple shelves worth (on the second floor). You linked to Amazon.com in reference to the books you purchased regarding Evolution. That site also can be a good resource for writing aids (Sin and Syntax : How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose stands out as a good example).

    Regarding the possible coexistence of a Christian God and Evolution, I agree with Ian that a good resource would be to talk to a Catholic priest about it. You don’t live too terribly far from a Catholic seminary, and priests tend to enjoy engaging in long conversations about such topics.

  • http://www.deguia.net Daniel

    I checked Barnes & Nobles (both floors) and I didn’t see any books on style. I searched tha tplace. They were also in the midst of re arranging stuff so they may have just not been available yesterday.

    A lot of the style books I’ve seen are more on web standards and don’t focus much on the actual writing. I found a book on Amazon and found it cheaper at half.com through addall.com. It’s on its way and is one used in college courses so it should be worth the $33.55.

    Honestly, I wasn’t aware that Catholics believed in both God and evolution. Next time I have a few free hours, child-free (HA!) I just may wander over to St. Eugene’s and pester them about it. Or hell, I may just call my Grandmother.