Christmas Reading

As usual the Christmas break has given me a chance to catch up on a bit of reading. It also adds substantially to the backlog as I tend to receive books as gifts. Here are the books that have been entertaining me over the last couple of weeks.

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

The usual Dawkins fare, with relentless hammering home the point, this time that evolution is fact and not theory. Got a bit preaching to the converted towards the end but plenty of in depth discussion of experiments carried out to prove evolution is real.

Dan O'Brien - Ireland, Europe and the World

A collections of articles published mainly in the Irish Times by Dan O'Brien over the last 10 years. Some of them are remarkably insightful given what we now know, others less so but there is a lot of quality writing in this book.

Mike Soussan - Backstabbing for Beginners

What can only be called a romp through the UN Oil for Food programme in Iraq. Hilarious, depressing, insightful, outrageous, Soussan's story hits pretty much every emotion and shows the UN in a pretty grim light.

Victor Stenger - God, The Failed Hypothesis

A pretty comprehensive collection of thoughts all leading to the proof that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God cannot exist as he is portrayed.

Other books that I still have to get stuck into include Stephen Kinsella's Ireland in 2050, Susan O'Keefe's The Candidate, The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and about a dozen other titles, not to mention a heap of Lucky Lukes and the latest Fiona McIntosh. Might be a lot of late nights catching up.