A friend of mine invited me to join in an on-line review and discussion of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age.
This book became a little more difficult to source than I first thought. Amazon.ca had only 4 copies left before Christmas, and I was too late to beat the Christmas backlog of orders and the overloaded mail system. And, given the desire to support independent book stores, I inquired at Pages in my neighbourhood to see if they carried the book. They had it on order, and for a whopping $10 more than Amazon. On New Year's Eve day, I went with my family to see if they had it in; getting a new book can be exciting, after all. At 5 minutes before closing, the doors were already locked and the staff members behind the desk insisted it was past closing time, refusing to let us in. We were also mocked - two small children and two exasperated adults locked out in -20C weather can be funny, I suppose.
Sadly, independent book stores cannot compete on price so they rely on the good will of their clients to keep them afloat. Customer service is their only differentiator. It's a little like running a charity, hence how strange it was to have our attempt to give them our business rebuffed.
Never one to give up, I phoned around this morning, loaded up the kids in the double stroller, waded through the slush and snow banks, took the C-Train across town to the south end Chapters, and went home with a new copy at $10 less than it would have cost me at Pages.
It wouldn't be fun if I wasn't already behind. The introduction has been reviewed here.
I'm aiming to get a better understanding of the rise of secularism in the West. Here are some of questions that I hope will be answered (or at the very least pondered):
- Is secularism just another competing parallel "ism", or is it the umbrella under which all other "isms" must learn to exist?
- Is the notion of a secular society a myth?
- How does a Christian let their voice be heard amongst the competing interests of a secular society? Or as better worded by Frank, how do we deal with diversity in a liberal democracy?
2 comments:
Great to have you onboard Ben! Sorry to hear about your experience trying to buy the book, I wonder if this read will also give some insight into how we can arrive at a place where businesses can behave that way and not get how wrong it is. Sounds like you are like me in how you respond to such things - say nothing and go elsewhere. I've heard that is the worst kind of customer, the ones who never give feedback. My wife would go complain to the manager and likely walk out with the book for free! I could never do that though.
Looking forward to your contributions.
I sent a gently-worded nasty-gram indicating my displeasure. Surprise, surprise, they didn't follow up.
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