What I've been reading

"Towing Jehovah" by James Morrow. This is a selection of the "Infidel Book Club" J. and I started a few months ago; reading out loud to one another has been a lot of fun. The premise of Towing Jehovah is that God's body falls out of the sky and into the Atlantic Ocean. A supertanker captain is hired by the Vatican to tow his body to an icy tomb in the Artic, but, of course, all sorts of things go wrong along the way. Irreverant, well-written, lots of fun.

and

"Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just." This biography of a black man who was born just a few years after Emancipation and who suffered through the indignities of Jim Crow to get his PhD and become a leading authority in marine biology was really facinating. One criticism: I thought it was a shame that the author only devoted, literally, three sentences to Just being interned and then released by the Nazis when he was doing science in Europe - I would have liked more detail there. Overall, though, a worthwhile read — the things he accomplished depsite the adversity are really inspiring.

My full comments on both books here.