Books That I Finished
Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour
The Irrational Decision by Benjamin Recht
On Writing & Failure by Stephen Marche
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman
The Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Seven Mountains Mandate by Matthew Boedy
Moroni’s America by Jonathan Neville
The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods
The Lost Gems of Genesis by Jonah R. Barnes
The Man From the Broken Hills by Louis L’Amour
Books That I DNFed
- The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip
- The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby
- Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
- Strata by Laura Poppick
- Salt Lakes by Caroline Tracey
- Blindsight by Peter Watts
Two things…
1) The Seven Mountains Mandate: Plan to Christianize America? Is this guy on drugs? Islamicize America is more accurate, especially since Imams are openly saying that’s the plan.
2) The Riddle-Master of Hed: Why did you DNF? I remember liking that series when I read it 40+ years ago. I have the “Riddle of Stars” 1984 omnibus from the Science Fiction Book Club.
I wanted to like The Riddle-Master of Hed, but I felt totally lost after three or four chapters, especially since I couldn’t tell whether one of the characters was dead or alive. I like Patricia McKillip’s writing, but plot structure is not her strong point. I’ll probably try reading this book again sometime, or maybe pick it up in audio.
As for the Seven Mountains Mandate, I finished it, but gave it 2.5 stars. Here’s what I wrote in my reading journal:
“Hard to tell what to believe, since he accepts at face value claims of misinfo and conspiracy theory. Also, many of his “gotchas” aren’t really that big to me. But I do think there’s some smoke here in the Christian Nationalist movement. Just hard to suss out the fire from this book.”
I don’t think we’re in any imminent danger of becoming an Islamic country (though parts of this country like Detroit and Minneapolis are certainly getting closer). I know there are people who want to impose sharia law, at least locally, but the domestic Islamist movement is still too small, and if they push too hard for it, the blowback will kill the movement. Europe is a very different story, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if Europe becomes as muslim as the Middle East in a hundred years—though personally (and this is one of my wilder predictions), I think it’s more likely that Islam will no longer be a major world religion a hundred years from now.
Islam historically depends on two things to retain its members: controlled speech and fear of other muslims. The internet catastrophically disrupts both of those things, so I think it’s entirely possible that Islam does not survive beyond the internet age. The rise of radical Islamic terror in the last few decades is a sign to me that the religion is becoming weak, since people don’t generally resort to force until all of their other options are exhausted. Same thing with the rise of assassination culture in the US right now: it’s a sign that the left is weak and dying.