What I'm Reading

I just finished reading The Party of Death by Ramesh Ponnuru. It deals mostly with abortion, but also euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and even infanticide (it does have its advocates, believe it or not). It is a logical defense of the pro-life position and doesn't rely on an appeal to religion to make its point (mostly so that it cannot be dismissed as a simple religious tract, although that hasn't stopped some people ...). I know some people who would dislike the lack of a religious appeal, but it's a more effective appeal to non-believers when it doesn't rely on that (at least not primarily). It also exposes some of the extreme positions of NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and others, and knocks down some of their false arguments (for instance, the prevalence and medical necessity of partial-birth abortion). For those who read past the title, the party of death is not the Democrats, although there is significant overlap between the two; he uses the term to describe advocates of a political position rather than a political affiliation. Anyway, it was a good read, and I recommend it; available from Amazon or I'm always willing to loan books locally.

Also, I've recently read the first two volumes (and am working on the third) of The Complete Peanuts, covering every Peanuts strip from 1950 through 1954. It's interesting to see how different many of the characters were (Snoopy was more dog-like, Charlie Brown pulled practical jokes, et cetera), but also how early certain traits and gags appeared. While I remembered several of the strips, some had never before appeared in book form. Interestingly, they had problems locating quality copies of some strips, as circulation of the strip was much lower in those days and many newspapers rid themselves of their hard-copy archives for microfiche, which does not quite do the art justice. One Sunday strip, they were unable to find a copy with the top line intact, and an editor had to re-create it based on what they did have. Speaking of Sunday strips, they didn't begin until 1952, something I did not know (I did know the Sunday strips ended after the daily strip, but the difference then was about a month instead of a year). The Complete Peanuts is being released at the rate of two volumes per year (each volume containing two years of strips), to be completed in 2015, so it's something I intend to be sinking money into for some time yet (though it's not really all that expensive -- Amazon has the first three two-volume box sets for $31.47 each).