A couple weeks ago, this video of author Reza Aslan made the rounds on the interwebs. It’s pretty ridiculous, and it inspired me to buy his book Zealot. I don’t know a lot about biblical history, so I was excited to read Aslan’s book and get a historical outlook on Jesus.

Aslan divides this book into three parts. The first section is an overview of ancient Judea for about a century before and after Jesus’s birth. This was great because it provided a lot of background on the political and social climate that existed at that time. The second section covers Jesus’ life and ministry. The third covers the history of the early church for about a century after Jesus’ death.

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David Borgenicht’s Action Hero’s Handbook is a good novelty book, but it has some good information and it is an enjoyable read. In the first chapter you learn how to clear a room, secure a crime scene, handle a hostage negotiation, and kill a great white shark. I don’t care who you are, you gotta love a first chapter like that.

Handbook is full of short, fun how-tos for all kinds of improbable situations. It’s not a textbook, but it’s useful to get oriented in case you ever need to keep a bus going at over 50 miles per hour. The only complaint I have about it is that it’s a little short. It doesn’t help that two of the chapters, “love skills” and “paranormal skills” are filled with nothing but platitudes and pointless knowledge, so those are essentially wasted pages.

It only takes a couple days to read Handbook, and it’s a lot of fun to learn all of these skills, so if you’re looking for something to kill time with or a gift for a non-reader, give this one a shot, it’s worth it.

See the full list of books that I’ve read for this project here.