(April 27, 2021 at 9:03 am)Five Wrote: It's off and on irritating to find good ones available. My local library is a dinky little country place so the selection sucks. So, I mostly read from Kindle Unlimited selection or I look for deals on other books. It might sound entitled and stuck up, but I'm not paying $8-$15 for a book I haven't read. I did that quite regularly in my youth and ended up with a bookshelf of expensive books that I never finished because they sucked. Who wants that? *friends come over and give them a tour of my house* "And over here is the shelf full of books that I don't like but won't give away because they're horrible."
I mostly stick with a strategy of not forcing myself to finish books I don't like. An author has to earn my attention. If they haven't done so within the first 50 pages or if they have annoyed me something awful in the first 10-20, I drop it and move on.
Are you familiar with Robert Green Ingersoll?
A little back story, I was a freshman in college, way back when in 1999 when computers and the internet was far less advanced than it is now, I came across this wonderful man and his oratory works. I read his stuff, and his genius awoke something in me that has not dissipated to this day. He is famously known as The Great Agnostic, yet his approach quite closely mirrors modern atheistic thought.
His works are free to read here: Robert Green Ingersoll
Here are the works I particularly found most useful:
About The Holy Bible
The Devil (a personal favorite)
The Truth
Why I Am An Agnostic
By all means, check out anything else of his that interests you. He was one brilliant man.