Somusing

These early months of 2020 might be a record for least reading done by me. It’s partly the coronavirus excitement, which means I’ve been reading more news, as well as cooking and cleaning a lot more, since most of the kids are at home and I don’t have to go to work! How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan 🎧 Michael Pollan is an excellent writer and I love his books about food. I wasn’t sure I’d be interested in this one, but it was fascinating. I learned a lot and I hope current studies will lead to legal therapeutic use of psychedelics, because it seems like they could be helpful for many people and problems. What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide by Jana Riess I’ve read many articles about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints written by Jana Riess, so when I discovered that she’d written a book about one of my favorite TV sh...

Books I read or listened to in 2019, audiobooks denoted with 🎧: The Witch Elm by Tana French 🎧: I like her books. Good characters, good stories. But they always seem to go on a little longer than I’d like. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson 🎧: Very good! Read by Claire Danes. The Diary of a Hounslow Girl by Ambreen Razia 🎧: Good and interesting. Fun accents. The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt: Fantastic! Should be required reading for everybody, especially educators and parents and teenagers and college students. And everybody. Autoboyography by Christina Lauren: Pretty accurate description of Provo Mormons, but flat, stereo-typed characters. I didn’t like it. The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg: Very good. I love Elizabeth Berg. The Library Book by Susan Orlean: Excellent! Mr. Penumbra ’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: Quirky and fun. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal 🎧: This was...

Biblical scholarship has long been aware that the gospel account of the scribes and Pharisees bringing the woman taken in adultery to Jesus was not included in the earliest manuscripts of the gospel of John. In modern Bible publications the account is now commonly shown in brackets. For example, the English Standard Version (ESV) , says in a footnote: Some manuscripts do not include [John] 7:53–8:11; others add the passage here or after 7:36 or after 21:25 or after Luke 21:38, with variations in the text. Having the account not only be missing in some manuscripts, but appearing in different places and with variations, makes it an interesting case. The David Bentley Hart translation of the New Testament gives more detail and background to this: There is little doubt among scholars that the episode of the woman taken in adultery was not written by the same hand that produced the surrounding text. It is not found in the earliest manuscripts of John, or in any Greek or Lati...