Ian Daniel Stewart

My first blog meme, via Classical Bookworm. I guess I’m an official blogger now… Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback? Whatever I can get. I prefer the trade paperback, though. It’s easier to handle. Amazon or brick and mortar? Definitely brick and mortar – with a sign that says used or bargain out […]

Pantheism, the multiverse, and the problem of evil – all in one paragraph: On the principle that you can never have too much of a good thing, reality could very well consist not just of a single infinite mind, but of infinitely many. Even so, this situation wouldn’t be “perfect” in such a way that […]

Average weight of a blue whale: 200,000 to 300,000 lbs. Average weight of an American automobile: 6,000 lbs. Estimated weight of Samuel Johnson: 360 lbs. Weight of blog author Ian Stewart: 155 lbs. Combined weight of the three published volumes (of a projected five volumes) of N.T. Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God: […]

I find it tough to put books in ordered lists and come up with even one top book. They can all be so different. If I was going to be really serious about it how would I go about it? I’d probably spread all my favorites out on the dining room table first. Then I […]

“It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open . . . ” I hope everyone enjoys the new site design! Let me know what […]

I’m off for the weekend! That’s the schedule I’m trying to keep, at least one post every weekday and no blogging on the weekend. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not obsessing over the blog. I’m giving myself a crash course in web design over at Upper Fort Stewart’s secret evil twin test site. Right […]

Now that I’m finally finishing up The New Penguin History of the World (who knew there was so much to know about penguins?) today seems like a perfect time to begin a review of my grand, accidental experiment in History. Somehow I managed to grow up suspecting the world was illusory. I blame this on […]

Poor George Orwell. You had to go and get yourself on the high school curriculum, didn’t you? “i give this book one star i had to read it for class and i know it’s suposed to be a “classic” but god itis awful. first of all its NOTHING like the future is probly going to […]

I remember flipping through the The Tibetan Book of the Dead at the used book store and wondering why anyone interested in Buddhism would ever read it. Mark Bearn of The New Statesman ponders that groovy gas himself and also wonders why anyone ever reads it: “One could tolerate this if there was also profound […]