For years I’ve kept a list of books I’ve read largely for bibliographic purposes.  That way if I ever needed to cite something I could pull out the list, invent a page number, invent a statistic and accurately attribute it to the author complete with print locations.  Goodreads.com is a “reading social network” but more importantly the site keeps this information so I can pitch updating the spreadsheet.  After I updated it with what I’m reading, it searched for other users through my gmail contacts and presented a list that I’m hesitant to friend: they’re all churchy.  All of them.  Every stinking one.  The page displays your most recent read book and  I’ve recently gone on a bidge of skeptical reading ranging from The Faith Healers by James Randi to  Irreligion by John Allen Paulos (Temple prof, go Owls!).  For fear of their divine wrath I have to space my updates in pairs so The Secret Origins of the Bible will be quickly followed by The Big Book of Adorable Puppies or something equally buccolic to both act as protection from the superficial glance and as counterweight when St. Peter reviews it.

I use hardback, spiral-bound notebooks to jot down ideas and so on but mostly as a to-do and a to-post list.  I was rifling through an old one when I found the following entry: “God 215-917-XXXX” (don’t want to just give out God’s phone number).  I should probably call him/her sometime.

Site Note: I added about 3-4 postings from Thursday to Saturday that I’ve back-dated.  So if you’ve missed some, they’re probably there.