Ricardo Caneiras Caneiras من عند Mikosze, بولندا من عند Mikosze, بولندا

I'm going to get the criticism out of the way before I move on to why I *love* this book. Richard Dawkins is not an easy read. He never pulls a punch, and if any of the beliefs he is attacking in his book are yours then this is going to get your back up. Not for nothing was he passed over as a witness in the intelligent design trials in America. His appearance on the witness stand would probably have worked for the ID advocates as he pointed at every 'believer' in the room and berated them for their gullibility and simple mindedness. The book tends to read at times like a diatribe which pummels you, and leaves you wanting to put the book down for ten minutes to get your breathe back. However, having said that, I think this book is just fantastic. At times its a comedy masterpiece as he quotes various religious bodies, allowing them to shoot themselves in the foot by highlighting their own inconsistencies or the avoiding of debate. For instance, The Catholic Encyclopedia dismissing Atheism: 'Formal dogmatic atheism is self-refuting, and has never /de facto/ won the reasoned assent of any considerable number of men. Nor can polytheism, however easily it may take hold of the popular imagination, ever satisfy the mind of the philosopher' Why not? That isn't reasoning, beyond the simple 'I say it ain't so, so it ain't so'. At other times the book is a very clear explanation of the evolutionary pathway which may have led to humans becoming susceptible to such simple fairy stories. The second half of the book then concentrates on the downsides of religion and argues for all sensible, intelligent non-believers to make their voices heard, to help the scales fall from the eyes of those infected with faith. What I particularly loved about this book is that I have been atheistic for many years (more than half my life, and I'm almost forty now), but this is the first time I've read a really coherent, well argued text on what is wrong with religion (all of them). The scientific approach to ripping down the pillars of faith probably won't achieve all that it should, faith being what it is. But it was an excellent read anyway.

Disappointing.

Ok, I realize I have a huge bias here, but I love Star Wars and even the mediocre stories have a warmth and familiarity to them that make me happy to read, and Millennium Falcon is no different. It's an interesting take in the Star Wars EU saga being that it's only a single novel in a field of multi-part epics lately, but it fills the gap between the events of the previous tragedy involving Jacen and the future and in the meantime reveals nuggets of information that Star Wars fans may have been scratching their heads at for quite some time. Where did the Falcon come from? How did Han get her? Luceno constructs a decent, but not too mysterious and not too involved treasure hunt for the lost history of the Falcon and does so through layers of narrative and an overall organization that is interesting. While a former owner traces the lineage forward in time, the Solos trace it backward to a fateful intersection involving an 80 year old secret from the days of the Clone Wars. The newer characters introduced aren't that memorable, but Luceno gets the Solos down perfectly and manages to give a bit of personality to the anthropomorphic Falcon. Interspersed in the narrative are vignettes from the history of the EU with Han and the Falcon and at times, this book feels like an attempt to catch new readers up to speed with what's been going on in the SW universe since the original trilogy ended, mainly through the eyes of the ship that everyone recognizes and loves so much. Fun reading for SW fans, but probably not that engaging or exciting for people not hugely invested in the characters and the mythos of the Star Wars universe itself.