What Book Have You Read Recently?

ChristianMyst,

The book's got nothing to do with New Age theories. It's a scholarly analysis of the Historical record with an intent to investigate and chronicle what we do know and hypothesize a little further based on what may be likely or possible. There's no mention of atlanteans, ascended masters, thoth, etc.
 
I recently "read" a book about La Cosa Nostra (I believe that is what the Sicilian Mafia is called) for a visually impaired person. I don't recall the author, either. :eek:

I've also read a few interesting mangas (I can list them later since I have to get to class real soon.)

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
A Concise History of Buddhism – Andrew Skilton.


Skilton’s intention was to provide a short history of Buddhism, showing how its doctrines developed over time as the teachings spread out from India. In this I believe he has entirely succeeded. It is written in a clear and straightforward way, and anyone with so much as a passing interest in Buddhism will find it a useful means of getting an overview of how all the parts of the jigsaw came to be and relate to each other.

The book is in two parts. Part one is concerned with Buddhism in India and the chapter headings include The Buddha’s Teaching, The Early Sangha, The Councils, The Tripitaka, Origins of the Mahayana, The Tantra and Vajrayana Buddhism. Part two is concerned with Buddhism “beyond India” and these chapters deal with Sri Lanka, Tibet, Japan, Nepal etc.

Amazon.com: Reviews for A Concise History of Buddhism: Books: Andrew Skilton



The book does not concern itself with Buddhism in “the West” so the perfect follow on from this would be such a history. Step forward All is Change by Lawrence Sutin…

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All is Change – by Lawrence Sutin

Although ostensibly a history of Buddhism in the West, Sutin’s book is so wide ranging I think I would recommend it to quite a few of my brothers and sisters here on CR. (Sutin is not a Buddhist so has no “axe to grind.”) So as well as the usual suspects (e.g. the Dalai Lama, DT Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh), the book takes in such people and topics as: Gnosticism, Leibniz, Thoreau, Emerson, Heidegger, LSD, Theosophy, Transcendentalism, Stephen Batchelor, Aquinas, Aristotle, Jesuit missionairies, Alexander the Great, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Islam, Schopenhauer, Walt Whitman and Voltaire (to mention but a few to give a taste) within its 340 pages.

Amazon.com: All Is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West: Books: Lawrence Sutin

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Big Mind - Big Heart. by Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel.

“Big Mind” is Merzel’s term for the transcendent mind, that to which we may not be awakened, but is always there. As a Zen practitioner his, er, practice had been one of meditation. Then he discovered the Voice Dialogue of Hal and Sidra Stone. This is based on the Jungian idea that we all have many sub-personalities that (unknown to us) control us, rather than us controlling them. There may also be ones we don’t want to exhibit so we try to suppress and disown, but they come out in us anyway, in some form. The central practice of Voice Dialogue is that a facilitator “dialogues” directly with these sub-personalities so they can be acknowledged and integrated into a more healthy personality. That’s my understanding based on this book anyway. The link with Zen comes from the fact “Big Mind” is, from the Voice Dialogue perspective, just another sub-personality; so it can be accessed in just the same manner. The facilitator should be trained in both Voice Dialogue and Zen. Enter Merzel.

I found the book intriguing but rather drawn out in all the “dialogues”. But I’m sufficiently interested to look into it further. I didn’t find the CD too much of an addition.


Amazon.com: Big Mind - Big Heart: Finding Your Way: Books: Dennis Genpo Merzel



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I'm not much of one for "storybooks" (fiction), but I found a copy of a recent Michael Creighton (sp?) book I heard about last year and wanted (but not at full retail $). I couldn't remember the name, but the dust jacket in the second hand store was a dead giveaway. Turns out it is titled "Next," and it deals with a lot of the ramifications of applied genetic science, especially the commercial and legal aspects, along with a very subtle dose of ethics regarding a subject brought up around here before: how do we treat a transgenic human / animal hybrid?

So, who owns your genes? You might be surprised...it isn't you. ;)
 
Release The Sun!

Amazon.com: Release the Sun: An Early History of the Bahai Faith: Books: William Sears

Release The Sun by William Sears is electrifying. It literally made my hair stand up when I read the following: "When He came into the hall, He saw that every seat was occupied except one, which had been reserved as the seat of honor for the heir to the throne, the king's son. The Bab courteously greeted the assembly. He knew they planned to humiliate Him by making Him stand. Without hesitation He walked to that seat of honor and sat down. A silence, long and intense, fell over the gathering. Their plans had been frustrated, and their anger was apparent in their faces. At last the stillness was broken by the presiding officer of the gathering. 'Who do you claim to be?' he asked the Bab. 'What is the message which you have brought?'" Well, everybody knows what happened after that :)eek:). This book introduced me to the Baha'i Faith and shed a whole new light on Islam for me. I am sending props to the people on the Baha'i forum for telling me to check it out, because it is mad interesting, and I plan on reading it again.

Amazon.com: The Prophet: Books: Kahlil Gibran

Currently I am reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
 
I haven't read this book, but this review knocked me out.

Science has discovered many things regarding the positive effects that music has upon brain development and maintenance in humans. As you will see it is also useful in healing brain deficiency and damage.

I would also recommend anything else written by Dr. Sachs. I've read a couple of his books and have benefitted greatly from it.

flow....:)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/books/20kaku.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
 
I am in one of my not-finishing-a-book phases. Currently scattered haphazardly around my life are the following (note that this is an incomplete list):

Several big books about Art Nouveau
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (that's right, I listed it earlier. I got sidetracked. It's been sitting)
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas (this one is very difficult to read; I find it amazing and depressing and discouraging as hell) (I also found this interesting critique of Arenas' memoir)

The last three books that I have finished are:



Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West:
Quite descriptive and entertaining. Some nice use of language, although the author's abuse of pronouns in the last third of the book or so made it difficult to follow the story and irritated me. This book was also existentially and absurdly violent, which was a minus for me, and had some really unsatisfactory gender/sex themes which I think were at least partly a product of "the times" in which it was written (1930s).​


The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett:
Pure entertainment, haha, funny and wacky, yay for Terry Pratchett. Had to read this to lighten myself up after digging through Before Night Falls.

​
Blueprint for Disaster: A Get Fuzzy Collection by Darby Conley
See above. :)

​
 
Am currently reading Ed Husain - The Islamist

Get it, read it ..... go on, what are you waiting for?

If you want to understand Islamic radicalism it is a must read.
 
Just finished reading...... MARLEY AND ME....... its about a dog and his family he is a labrador, it is quite funny but towards the end it is sooooooo saddddddd could not stop crying .
 
I will soon be finishing:

Amazon.com: Integral Halachah: Transcending and Including: Books: Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi,Rabbi Daniel Siegel

which is a book on integral nee psycho- halachah. I've been waiting for a while to see something that goes this in-depth into integral halachah. It's structured after the shulchan aruch. I wasn't surprised by anything in it but am glad I now have it as a resource.

I am also soon going to be reading Ken Wilber's

Amazon.com: The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral Approach to Life, God, the Universe, and Everything: Books: Ken Wilber

It's got lots of flashy graphs and I like graphs. Hopefully it will tell me something I didn't come across in Integral Spirituality.
 
"Acting With Compassion: Buddhism, Feminism, and the Environmental Crisis" by Stephanie Kaza, an essay found in the anthology Ecofeminism and the Sacred, is a valuable look at the intersection of Buddhism, feminism, and ecology. Kaza provides a critique of the patriarchal structures of Buddhism as well as limitations arising from misuse of anger within both feminism and environmental restoration work. Her approach is more synthetic than critical, in that she works to fuse the positive qualities of these different paradigms in an effort to strengthen all three.

The anthology is rich and diverse, touching on issues of Christian eschatology, feminist revisions of Christianity, critical analysis of the concept and meaning of "Mother Nature" in a patriarchal paradigm, and presenting different angles on cultural spiritualities and the appropriation of native/indigenous traditions by culturally dominant westerners.
 
Getting to the last chapter or two of the first book in the Foxfire series. Figure I'll start on volume two when I get done. I am pretty sure these are long out of print, I've had mine for almost twenty years and never quite got around to reading them. They are interviews with Appalacian mountain folk of former generations about day to day living; how to skin a hog, how to make lye soap, how to build a log cabin, that kind of thing.

Breezed through a little hundred page self help book "Monday Morning Leadership" last week for a training program I am taking part in.
Being selected for the training program is a pretty big deal to me, meaningless to everyone else here I'm sure. Luv ya'll anyway! :D
 
juantoo3 said:
Getting to the last chapter or two of the first book in the Foxfire series. Figure I'll start on volume two when I get done. I am pretty sure these are long out of print, I've had mine for almost twenty years and never quite got around to reading them. They are interviews with Appalacian mountain folk of former generations about day to day living; how to skin a hog, how to make lye soap, how to build a log cabin, that kind of thing.
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I think these books are still in print. At least they were 7 years ago when I worked for one of the largest corporate bookstores in America. We always had plenty of new, fresh copies of the many volumes on the shelves. This is a large series of books, isn't it? At least ten volumes.
 
Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio

Inga Muscio is one of my all-time favorite writers. She is a working-class, kick-ass, balls-to-the-wall, hardcore, vegetarian, totally rad, feminist, lesbian, cuntlovin' genius. Cunt is her first book, het second book being the even more brilliant and scathing Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil. She is currently working on a third book which I will be happily reading whenever it is available. She keeps a website at Inga Muscio.

I like this book for so many reasons that to list them all would be a copyright violation (although that doesn't seem to stop google from reproducing many pages from many books in scanned fascimile for us all to peruse at our leisure--which I think, ultimately, is a great thing, aside from google being another giant conglomerate). One of the most memorable lines in the book--and there are so many--has gotta be:

Inga Muscio said:
We are in dire need of a grandmother-based government.
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Love it.
Read this book.
 
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