What Book Have You Read Recently?

A Sideways Look at Time by Jay Griffiths: Amazing, this poetic polemic against standardized time and western consumption civilization, which imprisons with clocks, schedules, work ethics, down to the minute, second, nanosecond, picosecond. Jay Griffiths humorously rails against the absurdity and inhumanity of the enclosure of time, as well as its physical, philosophical predecessor: the enclosure of space. No friend of corporations and commodity culture, Welsh poet of soul and yonic, elastic time, Jay Griffiths caught my imagination, my love for language with her amazing trip-of-the tongue proficiently poetic prose, and engaged my creative intellect with her daring, revealing, stripping, damning indictment of the clock and the workaholic, hateful, dominating culture derived thereof. A gorgeous, giggling, screeching, smiling, beguiling, overflowing with bubbles and beautiful useful insightful offerings, this is a book to keep, bookmark, read, research, and reread.

As the kids used to say,
the bomb.
 
This is not the same old crap you've seen in a thousand books you don't want to read. This is Zen for people who don't give a rat's ass about Zen. This is the real deal.

Thus it says on the back cover of Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner (or Zen Master Odo as he doesn't like to be known) and thus it is.

s.
 
My new books just arrived. Yayyy.

I'm just starting

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matter Most by Stone, Patton and Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

and will soon start

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes Are High by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler

and probably after that will read

The Mediator's Handbook by Jennifer E. Beer, developed by Friends Conflict Resolution Programs

I am loving Difficult Conversations. It's very clear and teaches hot to turn difficult conversations into learning conversations. Influence looks very good too. So far I've only read what was up on amazon for that one but it was very fascinating.

At the same time as all that I picked up Spiritual Intimacy again which is a study of counseling in hasidism.
 
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The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived


The life of Jesus Christ, presenting every event in his earthly life that is set forth in the four Gospels, including the speeches he delivered and his illustrations and miracles. Full-color illustrations on practically every page. 448 pages
 
My i have been busy of late 2 books on the trot


creator.gif
Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?
 
Finally finished Foxfire, (say that fast three times...), finished "The Other Side of the Mountain" and "Frightful's Mountain" a couple of weeks ago, now I'm about 2 and 1/2 books into the Chronicles of Narnia. No real comparison with the Lord of the Rings in my opinion, still waiting to see where it goes...
(one reason I am not a huge reader of fiction, short attention span when it comes to fantasy, unless there is some redeeming quality about the story).
 
Currently reading Dune by Frank Herbert (I'm borrowing the book from my friend Tyler, who absotively posolutely raves about it.) I've been around :kitty:s for so long that I've picked up one of their purrsonality traits: curiosity.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
:O Dune! Awesome awesome awesome book. I read all 6 books of the original series and a couple of the prequels. The first three books in the series are really good, then it starts to get kinda bad.
 
I'm with Dauer on this. Dune is awesome, the next two are OK, I only got to number four and it was getting old by then. By all means though, enjoy the best of the litter!
 
try the Katharine Kerr novels. they are awesome. next one to be released here in a few weeks. yayayayay. daggerspell, dawnspell, etc. also Im into Robert Jordan (rip) wheel of time series. excellent author.
 
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Pretty interesting stuff.

Oh, yeah I read Dune a while back and those other books, but not the very recent one. Fairly good. Ever read Lucky Star or The Stainless Steel Rat?
 
Just finished "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle. I thought it had a lot of great concepts, a little redundant (OK, sometimes a lot redundant), mostly aligned with what I already thought so nothing particularly new there, but some useful tidbits all the same. More for the first world reader. I struggled with seeing how some of it could be applied if you lived in more dire situations.

On to "The Elegant Universe." I saw the Nova series a while back and got curious, so now I'm ingesting it bit by bit.

I'll need to start up something a little lighter to run simultaneously.

Oh, and I just read some short book yesterday like "How to Become a CEO" or something similar. It had some good ideas and some odd ones, and some that would depend on what type of org you're working for. I liked that it encouraged people to set clear boundaries around home life/family and put that first.
 
path_of_one said:
Just finished "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle. I thought it had a lot of great concepts, a little redundant (OK, sometimes a lot redundant), mostly aligned with what I already thought so nothing particularly new there, but some useful tidbits all the same. More for the first world reader. I struggled with seeing how some of it could be applied if you lived in more dire situations.
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Is that the book Oprah has been on about for the last month or so? Strikes me as if she is trying to start a cult or something around this book...
 
juantoo3 said:
Is that the book Oprah has been on about for the last month or so? Strikes me as if she is trying to start a cult or something around this book...
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Yeah. But it'd be pretty hard to start a cult around the book, in my opinion. Anyone who actually took the book to heart wouldn't be interested in joining much of anything is my guess. ;)
 
Derrick Jensen's Endgame Volume I: The Problem of Civilization

Finally, a man with the balls to call a spade a spade. In this book, Jensen lays out repeatedly and in very definitive terms why and how civilization is killing the planet, making a strong case for civilization as a most violent and denying abuser of Earth: mineral, vegetable, and animal (including humans). He has no patience for saving the world through petitions and peaceful means while the violent ruling parties bulldoze and bomb their way towards completely eradicating life and the ability to sustain life. He spends some time analyzing the fallacy of Gandhian non-violence, with his basic argument being that those who dogmatically refuse to use violence under every circumstance play into the destruction wreaked by those in power who have absolutely no issue with using violence to have their way.

Jensen writes a lot about landbases, bringing us back to the basic fact that we need clean water and air to survive. He recounts the violent and expansive history of entitlement, encroachment, and insatiable consumption that is civilization, constrasting that to the lives of indigenous people the world over, who are among the diverse forms of life which continue to be systematically destroyed by civilization, in the name of "progress."

Volume II, which I haven't read, is called Resistance, and is supposed to explore the tactics that people can use to "bring down civilization." Jensen explores the basis of these tactics at the end of Volume I, explaining the concepts of "fulcrums" with which to leverage force against the many "bottlenecks," or weak points, of civilization.

Review: Facing reality in Derrick Jensen's "End Game"

I've now started James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, describing the peak oil problem as well as some problems inherent in the progressive model of civilization, and how we all are in for a big shock when oil starts running out (indications are that this is happening now). Sounds grim, but compared to Jensen's analysis, this book seems to be a skip through a fairgrounds wearing rose-colored glasses and a tie-dye tee-shirt.

I'm sure many of you will want to go out and read these books immediately. :rolleyes:
 
I don't think Oprah wants to become a cult leader but I do think she's already hit New Age guru status.



I finished reading Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matter Most and it was the most awesome book. It presents the nature of difficult conversations in a very clear structure and shows how just by phrasing things in a certain way you can get a much different response. It's been extremely helpful for me, not just in really difficult conversations, but even in normal ones. I've been able to see the difference.
 
mee said:
Where Is This World Headed?
Today’s moral breakdown is so severe that it is fulfilling Bible prophecy!



JUST FINISHED READING THIS ONLINE :)
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I skipped to the end.

Where Is This World Headed said:
After this world ends, earth will become a paradise
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Great. So we can look forward to the wars and the toxification of our environment, because they are actually miraculous lightning bolts of purification ejaculated by Gawd. After the ongoing holocaust, paradise.

Pass me more bible tracts, please.

:rolleyes:
 
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