Samuel Paty [in memoriam]

the Galaxy and the ground within [book review]

This book is a standalone sequel to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer trilogy. Where strangers find themselves stranded in the same spot for days and start sharing and relativising their differences. If on a useless rock in the middle of the Universe rather than in a snowed-in Yorkshire pub! But the science-fiction aspects become quickly irrelevant, except for enlarging the initial specific (as in species) differences between the five (non-human) antagonists. On the one hand, this book is a rather conventional, caricaturesque, care-bear, feel-good, rosy, cocoonesque story… On the other, it is a more profound and humanist fable on the fact that we are more alike than we are unalike. Actually, the book reads better as a fable than as a novel as the story is almost inexistent and the characters too perfect to be anything but shells (and literally so for some of them) for their awakening to the others. Perfect mind-candy for a bleak day!

humanism [book review]

Along Atheism a very short introduction, I also bought Humanism a very short introduction, as they come by two at the Warwick campus bookstore (!). And here is a very short review.

Written by Stephen Lee, the book is much less irritating than Atheism. In my opinion. Maybe because it is constructed in a much more positive way, maybe because the quotes and illustrations suited me better, maybe because it was another day, or maybe because the stress on the “human” rather than on the “a-” is closer to my own philosophy. Still, the core of the two books is essentially the same, namely a rebuke of the argument that morality only comes as a byproduct of religion(s), and a rather standard processing of arguments for and against the existence of god(s). Plus entries on humanist education and the meaning of life. And a nice cover. Pleasant but not earth-breaking to the point of convincing sceptics.