The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

and The Child Garden by Geoff Ryan.

All three seem to be good reads and right up my alley.

I received the Winterson in the snail mail from the Eastern branch of my family as a birthday gift.

Along with Gluck’s new book of poetry, “A Village Life,” and Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle’s “graphic adaptation” of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of American Empire.”

So lots of good reading ahead of me.

In the meantime I have been doing quite a bit of reading online.  The Wall Street JournalBook Review: ‘Reflections on the Revolution in Europe’ – by Paul Marshal, although reflecting Marshall’s specific understanding of Christianity as a moral system rooted in Christ’s teachings (which is a rather narrow understanding in my opinion), did point me to an excerpt of the book he was reviewing by the same title by Christopher Caldwell which I also read and then interlibrary loaned this morning.

This article and excerpt interest me because they give some background on the current discussion of immigration in Europe. I was especially interested to learn about the Brit Enoch Powell’s early predictions about what would happen if the influx he correctly foresaw would happen.

I found Marshall more narrow than Caldwell but both seem to be speaking from an essentially Western economic chauvinistic point of view.

“The Doers Club” by William KamKwamba and Bryan Mealer is a first person account of using personal ingenuity to upgrade life in Malawi. The article linked is an introduction.

This is his book:

And there was the Guardian article from last Friday about the clash between a Jediist and the Britsh grocery store chain, Tesco. Tesco asked the Jediist to remove his hood but he claimed religious persecution. Very funny. .