Order and Chaos

I've finished off Sean Martin's book on the Templars, and very edifying it was too. I think that I am quite convinced by the theory that the Templars adopted Switzerland as their ordensland and sank thier much-discussed wealth into banks there. It would explain much.
Saturday saw me mooching around Waterstones (RIP Borders) and becoming quite annoyed by their categorization system. The biography section was full of misery-lit which, as many of them are highly questionable if not totally fictitious accounts makes you wonder whether they should be on a shelf of their own. The 'body mind and spirit' section which incorporates 'popular psychology' is filled with complete twaddle including tarot reading sets. I was looking for Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, which I failed to find, although some other books of his (The Stuff of Thought and How the Mind Works) were in the popular science section. What I did find, however, was Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett, which I seized eagerly as an adjunct to my current studies and, along with Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels With Herodotus, made my foray into the store eventually tolerable.
As this Waterstone's doesn't have an in-store coffee shop, I had to haul my prizes to the new Cafe Nero so that I could have a quick scan of them with a cup of coffee. I used to spend a lot of time in the old Nero when I was doing my OU courses, and in those days it was actually still possible to have a smoke along with your latte. How intellectual I felt with my books and pencils and a Gauloises roll-up to hand! No more though: thanks nanny state! I'm so glad you've determined what's best for me!

The book-buying slump seems to have passed, thank goodness, and I'm currently waiting for a copy of The Romans Debate by Karl P. Donfried to arrive from The Book Depository. This volume consists of a number of essays on Paul's letter to the Romans including the reason for his letter, which is far from settled. On the way back home I popped into our local charity shop and picked up a couple of bargains: The QI Book of General Ignorance (a genre currently much favoured by the Bright-Eyed Boy) and a Templar novel Order in Chaos (ostensibly for my mother), but which turned out to be the third in a trilogy. Guess I'm going to have to find the other two first! Doh!