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comment by cW
cW  ·  3950 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Rise of the Gimmick Bible

The Gideons are pretty brilliant, no mistakin'. And props to them for proceeding with an element of subtlety. Still, I think the benchmark for Christian publishers is still Johannes Gutenberg. Now, that man could set some type!

Actually, I'm wistful for the days of books being laboriously copied by hand onto expensive sheets of vellum made from animal skin. It's not that I begrudge the animals their skin, quite the contrary. Papyrus would have been way more cruelty free, though longevity issues might have arisen (as they most likely will with digitally encoded media, incidentally -- perhaps a blessing).

It's just that nothing got published by accident, or as some kind of half-assed afterthought, or inevitably, by rote, at the hands of disinterested script grinders working to fill an anticipated demand. There were doubtless no "Zombie Apocalypse Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guides" in the outhouses of the thirteenth century peasants. (Though I must admit, of frivolous publications, that is one of my favorite).





cytokine_storm  ·  3946 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The companion of the survival guide; World War Z, is actually a quite thoughtful look at the world through the lens of zombies. That sentence might come off as a bit of mindless post-modernist thinking but I think there's genuine value in both books despite the apparent triviality of them. Although I certainly agree that a lot of what is published today is useless or vain.