Atheist Ireland Forum

The Rejection of Paxscal's Wager: Paul Tobin
Constantine's Sword: James Carroll
Forged Writing in the New Testament: Bart Ehrman.
Excavating Jesus.. John Dominic Crossan
Voices of Gnosticism: Miguel Connor
Trouble with Resurrection: Bernard Scott
Rediscovering the Apostle Paul: Heikki, Raisanen
What Jesus Didn' Say: Gerd Ludemann
Liars for Jesus: Chris Rodda
The Christian Deosion: John W. Loftus
Why I became an Atheist: John W. Loftus
Yhe God Virus: Darel Ray
Render Unto Rome: Jason Berry

DVD's
The Magdalene Sisters.
Religulous The Secret Files of the Inquisition

I haven't read any of those books. I tend to read more science.

I'm currently reading:
Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down, J.E. Gordon
Eyewitness Companions: Architecture, Jonathon Glancy
Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Will read next:
The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin

Books I've read recently that I highly recommend:
Empires of the Sea, Roger Crowley
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Richard Dawkins
Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?), Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Jeez Robert, you need some lightness in your life!

Just finished reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Am currently reading Michael Palin's 2nd set of diaries.

Tin Tin is well worth a watch and hey, take a look at Anchorman... a bit old at this stage but no less funny for it!

I saw that for the first time when it was shown on RTE2 a few weeks ago, unfortunately I had just come home after having a hernia operation earlier in the day, the lauging caused me excruciating pain!

I recently read this book, it's science fiction that takes evolution from 65 million years ago into 500 million years into the future. I'd recommend it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(novel)

I tend to buy books in bulk but for various reasons I have not done so in awhile so my "to buy" list has become somewhat large... though a couple of books on the list are ones I have read but need to replace missing copies....

Religious Topics:

The Good Book: A Secular Bible A. C. Grayling
Why People Believe Weird Things Micheal Shermer
Godless Dan Barker
Infedel Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Why We Believe What We Believe Andrew Newberg
The Missionary Position Christopher Hitchens
God The Failed Hypothesis Victor Stenger
The christian Delusion John Loftus
Dont sleep there are snakes Daniel Everett
Paranormality Richard wiseman
The Happy Atheist PZ Myers

Philosophy and Morality topics:

The Moral Landscap Sam Harris
The Philosopher and the Wolf Mark Rowlands
Consciousness Explained Daniel Dennett
Tricks of the Mind Derren Brown
Sophies World Jostein Gaarder

Science Topics:

The Demon-haunted World Carl Sagan
The Beginning of Infinity David Deutsch
The Science Of Discworld Terry Prattchett
The Tell-Tale Brain V.S. Ramachandran
Why Evolution is True Jerry Coyne
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea Daniel Dennett
Ascent of Man Jacob Bronowski
Inside Jokes Daniel Dennett et al
The Meme Machine Susan Blackmore
Flim Flam James Randi
The Archimedes Codex Reviel Netz, William Noel
Death by Black Hole Neil De Grasse Tyson
Origins Neil De Grasse Tyson
The Sky is not the limit Neil De Grasse Tyson
The Magic Of reality Richard Dawkins

Other Non Fiction Interests:

Finn McCool's Football Club Stephen Rea
Hitch-22 Chrisopher Hitchens
Joomla for Dummies Seamus Bellamy and Steven Holzner

Fiction:

Contact Carl Sagan
Bright's Passage Josh Ritter
Transition Ian Banks
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Star Maker Olaf Stapledon
Coelestis Paul Park
Soliders of Paradise Paul Park
Enders Game Orson Scott Card
Lensman series E. E. Smith.
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Children of God Mary Doria Russel
The three imposters Arthur Machen
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
Galápagos Kurt Vonnegut

Vispassana:

Mindfulness in Plain English Bhante Gunaratana
The Experience of Insight Joseph Goldstein
Wherever You Go, There You Are Jon Kabat-Zinn.

So I finished Catch22 a few weeks ago. It's a really great book and I highly recommend it. There's a strong theme of religion versus atheism throughout the book (I hadn't anticipated that at all before I read it).

I also bought a Kindle Touch recently. I'm finding it very easy to use and I think it will great for storing all my novels and for college/work as I can store papers and reference books in pdf format. Does anyone else have an e-reader and if so how are you finding it? Any tips?

Great book. Love the way Major Major Major Major insists that meetings with him are only to be arranged when he's not there and jumps out the window to avoid such meetings...

I got a kindle 3. I have to use it horizontally to read pdf’s though and even then the print is on the small side. I don’t know if the kindle touch fixed that. A good program to use is calibre for managing and converting ebooks. Converting academic pdf’s or books with info boxes doesn’t work very well as the format is all messed up. Internet archive has lots of free books in the kindle format that are out of copyright or free. It’s very handy to email documents to your kindle email and have them turn up seconds later on you kindle.

Did Kindle touch fix that paolovf? I was interested buying one to read journals and research papers out side but if the format is mixed up then that is no use.

Thanks for the info mkaobrih. So far I've tried a few pdfs - a few have worked well but I've had trouble with some tables and graphs. I haven't had the horizontal display problem and the Touch allows you to zoom quite easily. I want to spend some more time researching it and I have a few ideas to change the pdf to a few different formats that may suit the Kindle better.

From what I read today there are alot of things you can do with the device if you're somewhat computer savvy (e.g. legally removing the ads free of charge). I'll let you know if I get it working properly.

Thank you, Can't wait. I really would like to have the kindle so I can read research papers etc in the sunshine! Need to write mt Thesis next year.

I'm currently writing my thesis too Tulip!

I've tried some papers (pdf format) on my Kindle Touch. I've used papers that contain a wide range of text, graphs and images and I've had no problems. The device displays them in portrait and the user can easily zoom and pan with touch-screen control.

A friend of mine also got a Touch recently and he had trouble with one pdf, specifically with the resizing of the text and lines that made up a table of data, such that it all overlapped when he zoomed. In this case I'd look at formatting the pdf again such that the table is converted to an image, or if that's too awkward or time consuming, I'd just convert the whole document to images rather than text and lines (hope that makes sense). You can download free (and legal) pdf converter software to do this.

For the week I've been playing with it, it seems to me that the device is quite capable of handling most pdfs.

Thanks for the review paolovf. mmm really want one now.. haha What are you studying? I am doing Environmental Science. Work placement this summer and than project and thesis. it is going to be a busy year next year.

No problem. I'm doing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, I'm in my last year now. It's difficult (for various reasons) but I'm glad I'm doing it. It's carried out in collaboration with a Irish manufacturing company so I'm getting alot of experience and great exposure to important people in academia and industry across the globe. Most of my week is spent working on my PhD.

I think this kindle thing is an excuse to do something else while telling myself it will be beneficial to my work

I'm nearly finished The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer (non fiction). It has some interesting theories about the rise of religious fundamentalism and right wing authoritarianism. He is allowing it to be downloaded for free. Here's a link to the uni website if anyone is interested.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/