A reader wrote me about a strange omission in the bestselling nonfiction new & future releases list on Amazon.com. Some of the items in the top of the list include:
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
by Christopher Hitchens
Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment
by Deepak Chopra
Letter to a Christian Nation
by Sam Harris
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
by Don Miguel Ruiz
I Am a Strange Loop
by Douglas Hofstadter
God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
by Victor J Stenger
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
by Sam Harris
Out of their list of 100 books Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth is nowhere listed. Though if you go to their bestsellers list it is currently at #17.
Seeing Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason at #1 really makes me laugh though. When I had first saw this title I was sure he had written an autobiography.
5 comments
Strange books! The Buddhist one is indicative of the secular search for meaning..& you often find it in therapy…
Pope Benedict’s book didn’t make this list at Amazon because it’s in a different category. These books are all comedic thrillers.
FYI the Pope’s book is now listed at 19 in their top 100
I was in a branch of a large book retailing chain (Waterstones) in London today. Curious I went to the ‘Religion’ section or, as it is titled by the store – Mind, Body, Spirit. Prominently displayed were both the atheistic books by Hitchens and Dwakins, and yes, loads of silly ‘Gnostic – Da Vinci Code nonsense, books on Buddhism, and, of course, dozens of books on Islam/Koran. After a careful search about I uncovered five of the Holy Fathers books ‘hidden’ at the bottom of a display cabinet. So yep, you guessed. I pulled ’em out and put them in pride of place position.
Only on page 57 of Jesus of Nazareth myself but I am liking what I have read so far.
William
Ah, but you have to remember that a lot of us buy books we can’t get locally at Amazon…and others will get the strange books there so that people at the local book shop won’t come up to them and tell them about Jesus.