grah
so the first book im reading for my class on apocalypses (yes. it IS an awesome class, why do you ask) is making my head hurt.
y'see, it's got one really good book about tracking down and talking to really crazy people about thier belief in the end of the world, and its got a decent book about the belief systems of groups of crazy people described in a fairly even handed way. Unfortunately, these two books have been mashed together for some strange reason into one, hard to follow, terrible book.
The two books interrupt each other. The chapter on the anti-governament folks would have been better if they had focused on either the dude Ron Cole and his beliefs OR focused on the wacky folks who believe Texas was never a state. And sometimes the author can't even keep focused on a single set of crazies--in the current chapter the author is both talking about UFOs and the crazy idea of Free Energy--without really saying what the two ideas have in common. Free energy rightly belongs in a book about Psudoscience--not about the end of the world. and the Free Energy folks, if menioned at all, should have been mentioned in the chapter about how Earth (the goddess) is going to kill us all cuase we're being bad to her.
arg. I just want to go at his book with an editors scalpel and separate it into two books--both of which i'd happily read. as long as it was one and then another. The book just feels like it's stepping on it's own feet.
anyway. back to the book. I just needed to rant a bit at it.
y'see, it's got one really good book about tracking down and talking to really crazy people about thier belief in the end of the world, and its got a decent book about the belief systems of groups of crazy people described in a fairly even handed way. Unfortunately, these two books have been mashed together for some strange reason into one, hard to follow, terrible book.
The two books interrupt each other. The chapter on the anti-governament folks would have been better if they had focused on either the dude Ron Cole and his beliefs OR focused on the wacky folks who believe Texas was never a state. And sometimes the author can't even keep focused on a single set of crazies--in the current chapter the author is both talking about UFOs and the crazy idea of Free Energy--without really saying what the two ideas have in common. Free energy rightly belongs in a book about Psudoscience--not about the end of the world. and the Free Energy folks, if menioned at all, should have been mentioned in the chapter about how Earth (the goddess) is going to kill us all cuase we're being bad to her.
arg. I just want to go at his book with an editors scalpel and separate it into two books--both of which i'd happily read. as long as it was one and then another. The book just feels like it's stepping on it's own feet.
anyway. back to the book. I just needed to rant a bit at it.