I have a giant stack of library books that I am reading. Two of them are for bookclub.

Meanwhile, in literary related news, I read in the Blood Horse that Winning Colors just gave birth to a filly by Orientate. This was her first foal since 1999. So I went over to the pedigree query and looked up her progeny. She has a daughter named Golden Colors who is in Japan and has had 4 foals (listed) one of them named Asfaloth and the other Elessar. This led me to look up Elessar (he is the 3rd of that name in the database.) He is the only colt of three thoroughbreds named Elessar listed. One of the other Elessars is a filly whose sire's name is Sindarin. (I distinctly remember another Tolkien-related horse name in a race sometime last year.)

Shiny new thread we got here. Nice!

So, Raq, did you like House of Leaves? I got it for Christmas, but it's daunting.

Oh, someone loaned that to me recently but I haven't gotten to it yet. I'll be intrigued to hear what people think.

Not Raq, but I loved that book. At some point I need to go back and read just the footnotes, which I ended up kind of skimming the first time around.

I'm reading a book called "Misquoing Jesus" (too lazy to look up author). It's about how the manuscripts for the New Testament have changed over the years and how the modern Bible is different from earlier editions. He's going into detail about how textual criticism is done, especially in the Biblical areas. The author's a hoot, too. In describing a scholar, he described the man as having great respect "among the people who cared about such things." He also describes a flaming war conducted by pamphlets beween two disagreeing scholars. "Ah, those were the days," he writes.

I'm going to have to get his other books on early Christianity and Scriptural variance. I had no idea had conceive such a vivid interest in such arcana.

Early Christianity, and the development of the Christian Bible, is really fascinating stuff. If you're interested in the Gnostic stuff that didn't end up in the Bible, there's a great book by Elaine Pagels about the Gospel of Thomas called Beyond Belief.

For the history part of early Christianity, there's a great Frontline documentary called From Jesus to Christ that usually is rerun at Easter and Christmas. One of my favorite talking heads on that documentary is Father John Dominic Crossan, a little Irish priest from Chicago who reminds me of Barry Fitzgerald with a PhD and a wicked sense of humor. He has a book called The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus that I've been meaning to pick up.

I'm going to have to track down my book on the development of the cult of the Virgin Mary (by Antonia Fraser?) and read it again. I love history, but the ongoing portrayal of major things (attitudes towards the Virgin, what books are considered Scriptures, "The Commisar Vanishes", et al.) are like scholarly CSI episodes. Deducing entire events from scraps of clues.

When I first finished I House of Leaves I didn't know if I'd liked it or not. But it's really stuck with me and has moved into my favorites list, and is a book I don't hesitate to recommend.

My copy walked off with a friend years ago, so I haven't had a chance to re-read.

I also really like the companion CD by Poe (the author's sister). And I like the CD and the book together.

I'm reading a book called "Misquoting Jesus" (too lazy to look up author)

Bart Ehrman. He was interviewed by Leonard Lopate last month (streaming audio or downloadable file) and by Terry Gross in December. I don't remember much about either interview except that in both of them he talked about the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" story. It's controversial for some reason, but a quick search didn't say why & I haven't had time to relisten.