What Book Have You Read Recently?

What a good thread!!! I love a good book. I have recently read
Night by Ellie Wiesel an amazing book that I really enjoyed and it made me think.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy a different read for me.
 
Been off the coffee for 2 weeks and just had one, so although I'm only halfway through my current book I'm too excited to wait till I've finished:p

It's "Sit Down and Shut Up!" by Brad Warner and tis an excellent book on Buddhism (and punk band reunions). Funny too, if you have a silly sense of humour like me :D

It finally proves that you can be both a Zen Master and a punk rock bass player.

Amazon.com: Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye: Books: Brad Warner

May well have to get his other book (Hardcore Zen) after this ....

Sit Down and Shut Up!

HARDCORE ZEN

s.
 
Last night I finished reading Six Moon Dance by Sheri S. Tepper. Excellent, amazing book. I was interested from the very beginning, although I was a bit slow to get completely pulled in. This book is a bit longer than the novels I usually like to read, being a whopping 520 pages, but it is well worth it. Tepper weaves several storylines together and gracefully intersects a few centuries-young mankind colony on a geologically peculiar world with an alien drama playing out in deep time, touching on issues of gender and interconnectedness/inter-being in her weaving of the plots. Excellent, the book gets my highest recommendation. For fantastic fiction, I rank it with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed--novels which are not only creatively imaginative (am I being redundant?) but also are deeply insightful and intelligent social critiques.

Possibly my favorite passage from Six Moon Dance:

"...Together we will live or we will die, as is the way of worlds. Together all creatures must live, changing together, else the world dies. All creation dances together, is this not so?"

​
:)
 
I'm about midway through The Hebrew Goddess by Raphael Patai. It's a really fantastic survey of Goddess worship from biblical times up through the present.
 
The last book I read was Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Which was about the curious lives of human cadavers! :D It was actually a very humoruous but still senstive look into what happens to our bodies when we're gone, from grave robbers to alternative burials to scientific research.

Right now I'm currently reading...

Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden of which, of course, the primary documents were written by Usama, but they were translated and complied into a book by a host of fine people. I honestly don't know why this book isn't spoken about and read by more people, being a primary source of information. If you want to learn more about something and how to stop it, go to the source- you gotta pull a weed out by its roots.

For lighter reading, I'm also working on The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. Me and my mum liked the movie (it was cute, hush up), so I figured I'd read the book.
 
I'm reading A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis by Samuels et al. I'm only on the a's so far except for some of the specific terms I've looked up but it's really an excellent text. Not only does it present Jung's own ideas but it presents the ways these ideas have developed or if they have been more let go of by modern analysts, places where Jung differs from Freud, etc. With the reading I've done on Jung previously and the podcasts this is really helping me to expand my understanding of his thinking and psychic map.
 
A few days ago I finished Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bhojalian, a novel about love, NPR, family, small college towns, and a transsexual. ;) Funny, depressing, frustrating, clever, and enlightening all at the same time.

This morning I started reading, for at least the third time, a book entitled ANARCHY!, an anthology of articles from Emma Goldman's Mother Earth magazine from the early 20th century.

I am still working on The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture, by Walter L. Williams. I've babbled on about this book quite a bit in the gender thread already, and so I'll spare this particular thread the details. Want more? Go to gender. ;)

I am taking a small break from Leslie Feinberg's heartbreaking novel Stone Butch Blues, which may actually be more of a veiled autobiography than fiction. It is about Jess Goldberg, an unwanted Jewish lesbian who grows up fast and hard in Buffalo, New York. By 16, she has traded in her family of origin for a more loving community and family of people, the working class butches, femmes, and drag queens of Buffalo. This book makes me feel, among other things, like a pampered wuss.
 
The Eye Never Sleeps by Dennis Genpo Merzel.

This short paperback consists of commentaries on the first, ancient Chinese Zen poem “Verses on the Faith Mind” by the third Zen Patriarch, Sosan Zenji. But don’t think that it’s some old dusty academic text book because it is much more than that.


(The translation used for the book can be found at post no. 11 of

http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/non-duality-8056.html )


It is written with great clarity and humour, shining a light on some of the more difficult passages with explanations that you would expect from a modern, Western Zen teacher. In other words, it is easy to relate to much of what Merzel says. In fact in several places I found myself thinking “oh dear, yes I think like that!” and other such uncomfortable insights.

It is quite a long poem and there is some repetition of the major themes of non-dual thinking, emptiness and non-striving but it remains a lively book through to the end.

More stuff about the author can be found at

http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/dennis-genpo-roshi-8131.html


s.
 
I'm waiting for my next amazon order to come in. I've ordered:

Amazon.com: Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's: Books: John Elder Robison
by John Elder Robison, brother of Augusten Burroughs. It's been getting a lot of praise from critics and casual readers alike for content, style and message and seems like something I can likely relate to both for its outlook and different experiences John had as a child. The author's blog ( Look Me In The Eye ) contains and audio excerpt and lots of other goodies.

Amazon.com: The Lotus Sutra: Books: Burton Watson

and

Amazon.com: Opening the Heart of the Cosmos: Insights on the Lotus Sutra: Books: Thich Nhat Hanh

I've read Thich Nhat Hanh before and find him to be an excellent teacher. Recently I started getting involved in a combat game in Second Life set in feudal Japan. There's much katana and naganata dueling. The Tendai-shu school there is based on Buddhist principles. I'm on their waiting list. So while I wait to get in I'm going to work my way through the Lotus Sutra with Thich Nhat Hanh. He's not a Tendai Buddhist or even Japanese but hopefully I'll learn a bit that's relevant. I doubt the school is really very in-depth in its philosophy but I prefer to be more thorough.

Also returning to the book by Wilber I was reading before. I tend to pick something up at first and if there're a lot of new concepts or jargon put it down for anywhere from a week to a few months. When I pick it up again it's typically much easier to follow. I'm finding that to be true with Wilber and I've been pouring over the text. It's good to see he's addressed some of the criticism of pre/trans fallacy but I'd like to see that developed a bit further. Maybe it will happen later in the book. I'm not really certain why Jung need be typified as an elevationist. I can understand Wilber's motivation as a card-carrying non-dualist working within a heirarchical framework. If there are higher levels, there are lower levels. And I think that he's in good company in saying that the mythical level contains a lot more subjective content (something Jung imo would likely agree with anyway) but I think still that the mythical can be a means to an end (going along with the thinking of the Piacezner Rebbe who advocated to those who found it necessary visualizing G!d upon his throne in the heavenly court surrounded by his posse of angels while advising that such a method is inferior to methods that do not maintain such fixed conceptualizations of the Divine) and perhaps, taking that notion further, that there are some things discoverable via interface with the mythical that could not be so readily realized using other methods. I think that, as with any method, there are dangers but that, being aware of the dangers, one need not fall victim.
 
HI

I still seek out traditional and cheap book reading opportunities. I usually frequent thrift stores and obtain 25 cent versions of used books I haven't read. After I'm done I give the books away. The other day whilst on my morning walk, I found a pile of hard and softback books next to a dumpster (really cheap!).

Just finished reading Elmore Leonard's, When The Women Come Out To Dance. About ready to begin another hard back of his that I rescued from dumpster oblivion. I like Leonard for his spare writing style, off-beat story lines, and memorable characters. My mom is now engrossed in James Michener's, Alaska, another dumpster rescue.

flow....:)
 
A history of India from (literally) the physical creation of the continent to 3BCE and the reign of King Asoka.

A good introduction to a profoundly interesting time and place.
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Snoopy, ... 3 BCE? I have deep sense that India is much older than this??? In fact, wasn't a great part of the Middle East referred to as India early on?
 
I'm about midway through The Hebrew Goddess by Raphael Patai. It's a really fantastic survey of Goddess worship from biblical times up through the present.
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Dauer, I sense an Atlantean connection, ... that round of life before the current Man. I have been picking up the atlantean thing as well as a Goddess connection among many of those I have been doing Readings for lately at the larger New Age expositions. Makes me thing the "Goddesses," are now swarming to the cities. :LOL "Snap! You get back in that water and fish!" I am also noticing they seek the mountains. I wonder if large cities with a cental mountain relates to the island (Continent?) of Atlantis?
 
ChristianMyst said:
Snoopy, ... 3 BCE? I have deep sense that India is much older than this??? In fact, wasn't a great part of the Middle East referred to as India early on?
Click to expand...

I was referring to the time period covered by the book (i.e. the "birth" of India as a distinct land mass through to 3 BCE).

s.
 
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