The girls got an early Christmas present yesterday \u2014 tickets to a big concert at the For the chauffeur (me), that meant several hours in coffee shops and diners, which was good because I had a lot of offline reading to catch up on. The problem was that one of the books I\u2019ve been reading is Bob Larson\u2019s In the Name of Satan: How the Forces of Evil Work and What You Can Do to Defeat Them<\/em>.<\/p>\n Having spend much of the past eight years working my way through the first two books in the Left Behind series, I\u2019ve gotten used to sitting in public reading something appalling, and thus I\u2019m pretty adept at concealing my reading material in coffee shops and waiting rooms. But even so, the Bob Larson had me more worried than usual that someone might catch a glimpse of the cover.<\/p>\n Had anyone asked, I could have assured them that their seeing another person reading this book should, in no way, be construed as suggesting that this book was in any way worth reading. I could have explained that this was research<\/em>. I could have described my developing theory about the way an obsession with Satan in popular religion feeds a delusional, self-aggrandizing form of piety. I could have pointed out that Larson is a ridiculous figure \u2014 a hopelessly pompous idiot who has carved out a lucrative career scamming the gullible to hire him as a rogue demon hunter. And I could have gone on to describe how Larson\u2019s book is the embodiment of W. Scott Poole\u2019s observation of the way that distorted portrayals of religious beliefs in popular culture take root in the imagination and are then reabsorbed in popular religion until ideas that originated<\/em> in pop culture come to be taught as \u201ctraditional\u201d religious dogma.<\/p>\n But what if they didn\u2019t ask?<\/p>\n The concern here isn\u2019t one of vanity. I\u2019m just some anonymous guy in a diner, and when no one knows or cares who you are, you don\u2019t need to worry about damaging your reputation. But what if someone saw me reading Bob Larson\u2019s book and, God forbid, thought: \u201cHmm, look\u2019s interesting. I\u2019ll have to check that out.\u201d If even one person saw me reading that book and was then even slightly<\/em> influenced toward perhaps reading it themselves \u2026 I just couldn\u2019t have that on my conscience.<\/p>\n My wife ran into a similar situation recently when she was reading Alexander Zaitchik\u2019s Common Nonsense,<\/em> which featured a large photo of Glenn Beck on the cover. Those who looked closer might read the subtitle \u2014 \u201cGlenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance.\u201d But what if someone just glanced over and saw her reading what they mistook to be a book written by<\/em> Glenn Beck? And what if this observer were to take from that the dangerously mistaken idea that reading Glenn Beck \u2014 or watching Glenn Beck, or listening to Glenn Beck \u2014 was somehow acceptable<\/em> behavior? What if their passing glimpse of that book cover were, even in some small way, to reinforce the notion that reading Glenn Beck was something that decent, mature human beings might proudly admit to<\/em> in front of their neighbors? You can\u2019t risk encouraging that kind of obscenity, even accidentally. So she took off the dust jacket and replaced it with one from a Sue Miller novel.<\/p>\n But so anyway, my question here is this: What books have you<\/em> been reading that you were uncomfortable being seen reading? Maybe it was a research project, or a guilty pleasure, or something unfairly maligned or something easily misunderstood. Or maybe it was several of those at once. What was the book?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The girls got an early Christmas present yesterday \u2014 tickets to a big concert at the Spectrum II CoreStates Center First Union Center Wachovia Center big arena where the Sixers and Flyers play. For the chauffeur (me), that meant several hours in coffee shops and diners, which was good because I had a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-5123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"yoast_head":"\nSpectrum II CoreStates Center First Union Center Wachovia Center<\/del> big arena where the Sixers and Flyers play.<\/p>\n