Some books bought on impulse

Books bought feb13

Last Sunday, after I attended mass in greenbelt, I passed by Powerbooks to check out a Marketing Book I had been trying to find for some months now, 22 Immutable Laws of Mktg by Al Reis and Masters of Success by Ivan Misner.

They said they had ordered this last year but it has not yet arrived. As always I try to scan through the new books on display. All of a sudden I noticed the newly arrived "Secrets of Angels and Demons"! I had been a Dan Brown fan since Da Vinci, Digital Fortress, and Deception Point, but my favorite remains to be Angels and Demons.

Dan Burstein, the author has an interesting comment on why Dan Brown's novels including all the characters and information stated has become very controversial and popular.

He believes that " our culture is starved for intellectual discussion about the big questions of our time. " and that "we no longer understand the signs and symbols that were once intuitively obvious to our forebears".

He further states that " We are becoming deracinated from our own cultural heritage. We are torn between the impulses toward faith and spirituality on the one hand, and science and technology on the other. The more logical and technological our society becomes, the more some of us crave spirituality and a return to past values." The more some conclude that God is dead or irrelevant, the more others find themselves returning to church. And the more globalized and materialistic our cultures become, the more small groups seem attracted to the most illogical, untenable, extremist, and dangerous religious dogmas." We are supposed to be living in the information age, and yet we don't know if we are being lied to about basic facts. We know more and more about what happened microseconds after the big bang, yet we still know nothing about what happened before it. We are plunging headlong into a new millenium that is qualitatively different from the two millennia prior. We desperately want to talk about the experience, but there is no forum for doing so."

"Dan Brown's books give us the chance to engage in some of this discussion."

I bought "TheTruth behind the Da Vinci Code" since its short and easy reading compared to the other similar books which came out last year. The more I will not be able to read all of them if they have several hundreds of pages. I found out from this book that Da Vinci never named any of his works! It was the author Giorgio Vassari who actually named Mona Lisa, which was originally named Monna Lisa.

The Holy Place (Sauniere and the Decoding of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau) was from the same author as Holy Blood, Holy Grail (which I have not finished reading and which was the basis of the book Da Vinci code). What made me buy the book is that it contained some photos of the Holy Temple specifically in Rennes-le-Chateau which some believe may be related to the Holy Grail. I had been to some places in the Pyrenees area particularly in the Languedoc Region but never had stopped by Renne-de-Chateau. One day I hope to be able to visit the place.

Of course the other three books are related to my south beach diet. The 40 30 30 book was on bargain so I got it otherwise it would not have been on my cart. The Low Carb recipes were very easy to make and used some local materials. In my previous post I mentioned that this south beach thing is getting expensive so I am trying to learn how to cook the meals myself.

The smallest version of the South Beach Diet series (Good Fats, Good Carbs guide) provides summaries and tables of all the types of food per phase. Dr. Agatson must be a billionaire by now :)

Oh and most important of all, I bought one business book - "Niche and Get Rich". The word Niche stuck to my mind after I consulted a good friend and successful business person who is more than Rich - Dennis Valdes :) This is the reason I just had to buy this book. Fortunately I found out it was rated very high in Amazon, compared to other similar business books.

So this is what happens when I step inside Powerbooks, to think I didnt find the original book I intended to purchase :)