Reading Journal

During the month-long hiatus from this blog, I started and finished "Stranger in a Strange Land." It's apparently the most famous sci-fi novel ever written. Which explains why I've heard of it. A kid from work loaned it to me; he'd been bugging me to read it for a while.

Overall, I liked it. The premise, anyway. Humans make an expedition to Mars and a woman gives birth to a child conceived as a result of an affair, so she leaves him there. He gets raised by Martians and brought back to Earth. Loddy-doddy-this, loddy-doddy-that, I'm going to spoil the ending (since a truly good read is more about the journey than the destination, anyway) by telling you he runs off with the first woman he met and they establish a religious-based way of life. There were more parallels to Mormonism than I would expect from a European author in the early 60's, although I hesitate to say that. The hesitation comes from the unparallels.

I was also bugged by some editorial errors. I've returned the book, so I can't provide actual anecdotes, but there were things that editors should have caught. I don't know why they haven't. The loaner insisted that every mistake was intentional. And while there were some that I could view as intentional (you're going to have broken speech when you have a Martian learning English, after all), some of them were inexcusable.

Another downside to returning the book (on the day I was given the internet back, of all days) is that I can't reference any quotes I found particularly intriguing. However, there was one that struck me enough for me to write it down elsewhere.
p. 363
"Love" is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

I'm still, erm, pacing through "Twelve Ordinary Men." Once we got to the especially ordinary ones, it got less interesting. I also just started a book called "One Thing You Can't Do in Heaven." And the answer to your question (I know you're asking because that's why I started reading it) is: ministering to a non-believer. Not really far enough into it to be able to say much. Maybe it'll help with my new church calling as a ward missionary. Funny, but I just now realized that the former owners of this house were professional missionaries for some other evangelical organization.