Son of Hamas Leader Embraces Christianity

I found this recent news story about the son of a Hamas leader becoming a Chrisitan fascinating.  It is the story of how the son of a high-ranking member of Hamas (a militant Muslim organization) came to embrace Christianity and the fundamentals of the Christian faith.  It is a great interview and there are lots of interesting tidbits about Islam and Christianity.  It is not really amazing that this man came to know Christ; after all the Apostle Paul was just as opposed to Christianity before his conversion.  Still, sometimes we forget that things like this can and do happen.

In the Course of Duty – Book Review

Title of Book:  In the Course of Duty: The Heroic Mission of the USS Batfish
Author:  Don Keith
ISBN Number: 0451216598
Publisher:  NAL Trade
Genre/Market:  History/WW2
Publication Date:  October 4, 2005
Book Length: 336 Pages
Price:  $ 14.99 (Paperback)
Rating Good

It is hard to write a bad submarine book. Surely it can be done, but there is something intrinsically so dramatic and intense about submarines, that their tales are almost automatically interesting. In this respect Keith’s book more than holds its own.

The Batfish was one of the many underwater war machines cranked out by the United States and her allies at the height of the Second World War. It served honorably but mostly unremarkably for most of the war until making a name for itself in the last months of the war in 1945. The Batfish was able to become remarkable by destroying a record three enemy submarines on one patrol in only a matter of days. This amazing hat trick earned the Batfish the redundant (as Keith points out) nickname of “submarine killer submarine.”

At the beginning of the patrol that earned the Batfish her reputation a torpedo was stuck in one of her tubes. The back cover of the book, which is what caused me to purchase it makes it sound as though the tube was stuck in the tube for three days. The actual story in the book portrays the tube as an intense few moments. It was heroic either way, but I felt as if the tension was a letdown from what I expected before reading the book.

The book tells the story of the Batfish and her heroic sailors well. There is, however, a second element to this story. Today the Batfish resides in Oklahoma, not exactly the most famous naval state in the union. The book also tells the story of how the sub came to be docked in Oklahoma, as the centerpiece of a museum and memorial.

The parallel story line of the Batfish’s journey to its Oklahoma resting place is interesting to a point, but the characters involved in this part of the story are in some ways more developed than the actual sailors who lived and fought aboard the Batfish. I would have liked to have gotten to know the men who dove aboard the Batfish in the heat of battle more, but all in all In the Course of Duty was an excellent story.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation – Book Review

Title of Book:  Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Author:  LYnne Truss
ISBN Number: 1592400876
Publisher:  Gotham
Genre/Market:  Grammar
Publication Date:  2004
Book Length: 209 Pages
Price:  $19.95 (Hardback)
Rating: Excellent

As anyone who has ever ready a post on this blog can attest, grammar is not my strong suit.  It isn’t that I don’t know how to punctuate sentences as much as I just haven’t taken the time to make sure I do things correctly.  However, if I am going to do this writing thing as a career I need to get a handle on issues such as: what exaclty is the role of the semicolon, how many commas can you fit into one sentence, and what is the difference between a long and a short dash.

Realizing that this is a weak area of mine I decided that I need to increase my ability to punctuate sentences.  Given that it has been over a decade since I have studied anything having remotely to do with English grammar it was high time that I got back into the swing of things. Enter Lynne Truss’ wonderful book.

Even I have to admit that any book that takes its title from a joke about a panda shooting a gun has potntial.  From a grammatical perspective I found Eats, Shoots and Leaves to be helpful.  The excpetion to this is that Truss spends so much time discussing the variety of opinions about grammar that it can definitely leave the reader more confused than when they began at times.

Still, if you hav to read a book that spends dozens of pages discussing the apostrophe this is the book to do it with.  Truss’ book is a good read, it is helpful, even to those of us who aren’t grammatical sticklers.  Besides how often can you get a laugh out of a discussion of commas?