I recently wrote a post about a religious problem that has puzzled me for ages. When I looked for further information about the crappy paperback that raised the problem, I was astonished to see that the cheapest price on Amazon was £44!!

The only reason I still have this paperback is because I find it impossible to throw books away. But unknown to me this bit of pulp fiction I bought in a junk shop in the 1970s is out of print, and I suppose because of Dan Brown and the popularity of “The Da Vince Code”, conspiracy theories are back in fashion.

“Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird.” 

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real Mockingbird of this pulitzer prize winning novel, Tom Robinson a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl.

As I read this book I remembered the film with Gregory Peck
who portrays one of the great heroes of literature, a lawyer whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

The Future Homemakers of America  was written by Laurie Graham in 2001. It’s a friendship saga that lasts over a couple of generations. Starting in East Anglia, UK, where the USA Air Force was based to combat the ‘Russkies’ during the 1950s Cold War.

The story follows the American women married to USA pilots, who travelled to different foreign bases with their husbands.  Laurie Graham takes us through Korea and Vietnam, revisting the Cold War years when the world was on the edge of destruction.

Although I’m an atheist I am interested in religious beliefs, metaphysics and philosophy. I am however a lazy atheist, so I like to explore these concepts, NOT in academic text books, but in science fiction novels.

CONTACT is a novel by the late scientist Carl Sagan about first contact with alien lifeforms. Sagan’s enthusiasm and belief in Alien Intelligences led to the establishment of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence).

Contact was an excellent science fiction novel exploring themes of religious belief, science, rationality, faith and god. Contact is also a hollywood film staring Jodie Foster. The film version however, left out my favourite part of the book.

Some of the most boring blogs you can find, are those where every post is urging you to BUY, BUY, BUY, this latest product that you absolutely can’t be without.

These articles could be classified as Product Reviews, EXCEPT you never read a bad review! After all, the blogger won’t make any money out of saying how bad something is.

What’s  worse than the blatant sales pitch, are those blogs where the reviews aren’t even personal. They are just a rehash of the products sales page, or a PLR article scattered with BUY buttons.

I like to read for pleasure, and Science Fiction gives me the greatest pleasure of all………..Sorry, SECOND greatest pleasure; (Thanks for reminding me Margaret).

When I choose a science fiction book I usually go for a title with ‘God’ or ‘Eternity’ or ‘Infinity’ in it. I want to travel to the furthest reaches of human imagination. I usually enjoy the book but I’m almost inevitably disappointed by the conclusion. 

I’m looking for the answer to “life, the universe and everything” (as Douglas Adams would say), but it’s obviously naive of me to think a science fiction author has got all the answers.

I read quite a lot, but the majority of  it has been Marvel Comics and Science Fiction books. When I first joined my book club, (which is mainly populated by female teachers), I didn’t think they would like such a ‘boys only’ genre, so I picked other books for the group to read.

My first choice was I thought fairly ’safe’. “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey. This was also a great film with Jack Nicholson. The book however gives terrifying descriptions of probably the most evil monster in fiction: Nurse Ratched.

I’m a member of a book club which meets every month to discuss a novel chosen by one of the members. I originally joined the club to broaden my reading experience. Left to my own devices I tend to end up reading Science Fiction.

This month’s book choice is a good example of this in action. I have already read three HG Wells novels; The War of the Worlds, the Time Machine, and First Men on the Moon. I think it’s easy to spot the theme here! However I didn’t realise that HG Wells also did comedy very well.

“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” Kublai Khan is probably best known in the UK for the famous poetic fantasy by Coleridge. However the truth behind the legend of Kublai Khan is even more fantastic than the poem suggests.

Kublai Khan was a thirteenth century Mongolian prince who inherited the largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan – and doubled it! His empire reached from the Pacific to the Urals, from Siberia to Afghanistan – 60% of all Asia, one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land area. He was perhaps the most powerful man who ever lived.

I have always been anti-TV. I love reading, so having a TV on in the room interferes with that. Whenever I watch a lot of TV, (more than an hour), I’m left with an empty, “what a waste of time” , feeling. I have never been able to put my finger on why I felt like this, until now.

The psychologist Oliver James has written a book called “Affluenza“, which is an analysis of the causes of depression in a materially affluent world. On page 284 he looks at the effect of TV;