This was an absolutely amazing book!  I found it at a discount bookstore this summer and bought it as a last resort.  I was unable to find any other good books there and this one was the only one that showed the slightest bit of promise.  Then, even after getting it, I waited a couple months before I actually decided to read it.  Silly me.

So what was so good about it?  It's hard to describe. This in the fantasy genre but it avoids sounding like all of the other cliched books in the genre.  On the surface it is a story that has been done many times over -- a "normal" person is transported to an alternate world and discovers that he's the long awaited hero to solve their problems.  And in the vein of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, the main character in this book is not at all interested in being the hero.

All My Holy Mountain is the concluding book in L. B. Graham's Binding Of The Blade series.  Graham neatly wraps up the loose ends that he had left dangling since the very beginning of the series.  While things end predictably, it is entertaining none the less to see the
story unfold.

When it comes to fiction C. S. Lewis is best known for his children's series the Chronicles of Narnia and his space trilogy.  There is, however, a collection of lesser known short fiction works.  The Dark Tower contains these works as well as a couple incomplete writings. The centerpeice of this collection is the 100 page beginning of the book The Dark Tower which was intended to be a sequel to Out Of The Silent Planet. There is another incomplete manuscript that tells the chronicles the events just after Troy was sacked. Two previously published short works and two unpublished, but complete, stories round out the collection.

A few years from now scientists discover that the sun is burning out much faster than they expected.  So much so that earth's climate has cooled to the point where humans will not be able to survive much longer. In a desparate attempt a ship is launched to the sun to explode a huge nuclear bomb in the sun in order to reignite it.  Along the way everything goes wrong.

The books in the Binding of the Blade series get better with each installment.  Each book in the series starts right where there previous left off as if this was one, long, five volume book.  In this book we start to see all of the plans coming together (but things won't be resolved until the fifth book).  Even when all the plans that Aljeron and the others had been making have been falling apart, in Father of Dragons there is some hope.

New York City recently passed a new law requiring that all chain restaurants display the calories for each menu item along with the price of the item.  This is having quite an impact on NYC establishments.  The low calorie items are quick to go while the high calorie items are being left on the shelf.  Personally I think this is a good thing.  I'm not sure I like the government being involved because it is restricting freedom for the restaurant owners.  I would rather that they did it themselves.  But that's not going to happen.  And that's not the point of this blog entry.  So, politics aside, I think it is a great idea that restaurants show the calories for every menu item.  People are starting to realize just how many calories they are eating.  That "healthy" cranberry bran muffin doesn't look so good at 650 calories!

Despite the subtitle, I'm afraid that this book didn't actually solve the mysteries of evolution.  In fact, it didn't a fairly poor job of even trying to.  Most of the book revolved around a history of Darwinism from the middle of the 19th century till the late 20th century and an interesting narrative of how the fields of genetics and cellular biology arose.  At best the book, tried to show how some evidence can be interpreted with an evolutionary explanation.  While that's interesting, it certainly doesn't "solve the mystery" of evolution.  The book also suffered severely from a bad case of strawmanitis in that it characterized all who didn't "believe" in evolution to be mindless religious zealots who ignore scientific fact because it conflicts with their beliefs.  And finally, the book's coverage of australopithecenes did much more harm than good to the cause of evolution.