What are you reading? Options

[Tapati]

What are you reading these days? This can include books in progress or just finished, books on your "to read next" list, or feel free to mention favorite books of all time.

Currently I am reading Dance of a Fallen Monk, by George Fowler, recommended to me by Milla. Along with that I got Karen Armstrong's book mentioned over at GD in the great leaping faith topic, The Spiral Staircase : My Climb Out of Darkness. Reading their early days in the monastery and convent gave me flashbacks of my early days in the temple, right down to what they were thinking.

I recently finished, Lotus in the Fire by Jim Bedard. It is a cancer memoir that chronicles how his Zen practice helped him face his leukemia treatments. One of the things I loved about it was the practical example of how others' prayers actually did have a perceptible effect on his ability to survive and on his consciousness. I highly recommend it.

For fun:

Dead Witch Walking and The Good, the Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison.
Undead and Unwed and Undead and Unemployed, by MaryJanice Davidson
All 4 of these are funny fantasy oriented paperbacks and were great distraction.

I have ordered:

The Circle Within: Creating a Wiccan Spiritual Tradition by Dianne Sylvan
and A String and a Prayer: How to Make and Use Prayer Beads by Eleanor Wiley, Maggie Oman Shannon along with some Carlos Nakai cds.

I also have The Afterlife Experiments: : Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death by Deepak Chopra (Foreword), et al. I haven't had time to read it yet although I've read enough excerpts to know it will be interesting.

[Milla]

I just read "Felicia's Journey" by William Trevor and am now reading "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow" by Peter Hoeg. Next on my list are "LA Confidential" by James Ellroy and "The Loop" by N. Evans.

[0Srijiva0]

I am one who can follow several books, reading a chapter of this one, a chapter of that.... Currently I am reading about five books, Three of which are:

Travels Through the Mind of India by Barbara Brown It goes into first the differences between the Eastern and Western mindsets ans frames of reference, as well as examples of India's mysterious effect has had on the authors mind during her visits.

You Can't Win by Jack Black It is an aoutobiography of a hobo during the turn of the century. William Burroughs cited it as his favorite book. It tells of the authors amazing journey riding boxcars through the hobo underworld, life as a member of the Yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium and surving horrendous penitentiary stints. William Burroughs had admited to lifting huge chunks of this book to write "Junky" and it has always been in the back of my mind to check it out. ..& there it was, beckoning me the last time I was at Powell's Books.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck I loved Steinbecks descriptions of California (my native land) in "East of Eden"; my wife assures me Cannery Row is a must read, for that reason alone, in the very least. I guess this is a book on my list, as it is in my pile...I haven't begun it yet. Now that I have the time, I'm gonna crack it open soon.

Ahh, the pleasures of newfound unemployment....it helps to have alot of time when you read five or six books at a time

[Milla]

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck I loved Steinbecks descriptions of California (my native land) in "East of Eden"; my wife assures me Cannery Row is a must read, for that reason alone, in the very least. I guess this is a book on my list, as it is in my pile...I haven't begun it yet. Now that I have the time, I'm gonna crack it open soon.

I like Cannery Row very much. Thank you for reminding me of it, I would like to revisit it. If you like Tortilla Flat or The Wayward Bus or Sweet Thursday, you will like Cannery Row as well.

I forgot to say a few words about the books I am reading at the moment. Here it goes:

Felicia's Journey is the story of a young pregnant Irish girl who is abandoned by her boyfriend. She goes to England to look for him and meets a Mr. Hilditch who likes to befriend lost girls. The story is sad and melancholic, there is no happy end but a confused and unclear one... just like life itself. Beautiful, powerful writing.

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow is one of the most interesting books I have read in the past few years. It depicts the journey of a lonely woman who is determined to find what actually happened to a small Greenlandic boy who fell by accident from the roof of a high apartment building. The boy had fear of heights, so she can't believe that he went up there to play...

I chose LA Confidential because I had seen the movie and liked it.

The Loop is written by the author of The Horse Wisperer. I like good stories that draw you in another world, and The Loop seems to be one of them.

[Bhaktavasya]

I started reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche (I noticed some posting of the book on another thread) last summer and can only be 'absorbed' in the book while I'm on a bus or ferry. I'm on chapter 18 of 20, 'the bardo of becoming' and am constantly struck at how similar the teachings are to Gaudiya Vaisnavism (more on that later). Here's a 'tidbit' from chapter 14, 'the practices for dying':

"You are lucky enough to have some good spiritual friends near you now. Encourage them to create an environment of practice around you, and go on practising around you until and after your death. Get them to read you a poem you love, or a guidance from your master, or an inspiring teaching. Ask them to play a tape of (the Tibetan master) Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, a chant of the practice, or an exhalting piece of music. What I pray is that your every waking moment should mingle with the blessings of the practice, in an atmosphere alive and luminous with inspiration."

Last book read: 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them; a fair and balanced look at the Right' by Al Franken. Truth that makes you almost want to cry (for the sorry state of the USA) and laugh at the same time. (To my mind, people like Al Franken and Michael Moore are America's real ksatriyas, fighting with everything they''ve got, which is mostly an outragrous sense of humour and compassion and knack for telling the truth plus the courage to act on it).

[Tapati]

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them; a fair and balanced look at the Right' by Al Franken

is definitely on my long list of books I want to buy and read! I have heard such good things about it.

Thanks for reminding me about it!

[sarasvati_river]

Oh, gosh. I'm in the middle of a lot of stuff right now! Let me see . . .

For a school project, I am reading assorted zoology books on sharks in order to research great white sharks, specifically their predatory behavior. I just saw "Air Jaws" so I want to know more about these incredible breach attacks! This is fun for me and has the added benefit that I'll get class credit for a presentation I'm doing in a few weeks.

For pure fun, I just received Tori Amos' autobiography "Piece by Piece" which she co-wrote with Ann Powers. It's very interesting both because I love her music, and because the chapters are divided in such a way to center around different themes, each personified by a goddess (and one god) that has inspired Tori's work. One chapter is even dedicated to Sarasvati! Then, I am also rereading Robert Siegel's Whalesong trilogy for the first time since my childhood.

Finally, for personal research purposes, I have a few books on Wicca. I just finished Robert Hutton's "The Triumph of the Moon" and am following it up with Margot Adler's "Drawing Down the Moon" -- both offer interesting historical perspectives. I also have "Advanced Wicca" by Patricia Telesco, "The Pagan Book of Days" by Nigel Pennick, and "The Earth Path" by Starhawk. I'm supplementing these with a few alternate books: "Altars" by Denise Linn, which has gorgeous photographs, and Dion Fortune's "Esoteric Orders and Their Work" and "The Training and Work of an Initiate".

As you can see, the books I'm perusing at the moment are a fairly wide range of subjects, and numerous enough to fill one level of my bookshelf. I love reading.

[evakurvan]

Milla I saw the movie Felicia's Journey it was pretty creepy and enjoyable, but I also wrote a paper on it and when you have to write about something you tend to pay closer attention to it and I find that paying close attention to anything makes it inevitably more intricate and enjoyable.

I just finished reading the book Kali's Oddiya by Amarananda Bhairavan. This is not a book I would normally read since it is in the form of a novel, but a friend gave it to me so I read it. Here is what some people have said about it:

" As a Kerala scholar I was astonished and delighted to see this material about the Odiyya tradition."

" This is Tantra in its unsullied and purest form. "

" In an age where the local newspapers are full of personal ads hawking "tantric counseling," it is refreshing to come upon a work that clearly delineates what Tantra really means in its original cultural context. Bhairavan's book is recommended to anyone who is interested in Kali devotion or an exploration of authentic Tantric practices not yet poisoned by the Western stereotyping one normally finds in works published on the subject. "

I am not able to judge what they are saying but it was interesting to read especially the Introduction and beginning-middle. It starts off tame and scholarly and then more than halfway into it it gets pretty fantastical, which would probably be hard for most to read had it started off that way. The middle-end is still good anyway, since these days I am rarely into reading books, but I read this one.

Here is a fairly random quote from the book: "Odiyyas are worshippers of the Divine Mother [Kaali]. Having realized this universe to be Kaali's play, they are playful in life and in death."

[evakurvan]

Since we are talking about Whalesongs and I am all about noting references to fish here is something I was rereading yesterday from a great book, Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje, not to be associated with the movie The English Patient!

The middle sonograph shows a dolphin making two kinds of signals simultaneously.

The vertical stripes are echolocation clicks
(sharp, multi-frequency sounds)
and the dark, mountain-like humps
are signature whistles
(sounds containing a small number of frequencies -
which gives a "pure" sound).

No one knows how a dolphin makes both whistles and echolocation clicks simultaneously.

[Milla]

Milla I saw the movie Felicia's Journey it was pretty creepy and enjoyable, but I also wrote a paper on it and when you have to write about something you tend to pay closer attention to it and I find that paying close attention to anything makes it inevitably more intricate and enjoyable.

I am glad that you liked it. Do you still have your paper on it? I will be interested in reading your insights about it. I stumbled upon it by chance and was quite impressed. It is artistic and yet watchable and enjoyable. It is different from the book (it offers considerably more optimistic ending) but it captures excellently its creepy, melancholic and humane mood. Afterwards I searched for other films by Egoyan and liked them all. They are serious, thoughtful and slow, yet telling a good old-fashioned story.

I have become allergic to snobbish and pretentious European films whose only aim seems to be to bore you to death or depress you. One example I watched recently is "The Piano Teacher" after the book of the Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek. Very disturbing and disgusting; I wasn't at all surprised when I read afterwards that the author has drawn from her own experiences with her dominating mother and sexual repression. Somehow it seems very egocentric to me to therapeutically unload your personal issues upon the audience, and not offer some hope for redemption or catharsis or upliftment after the inner demons are released and everything that could go wrong goes wrong.

[evakurvan]

I still have the paper somewhere I am not sure where because it was a long time ago. It is not enjoyable to read because it was for a 101 Philosophy: Ethics class and I was forced to write a paper on such an interesting movie except the paper had to be about: IS HILDITCH ETHICALLY GOOD OR IS HE ETHICALLY BAD? I find this a lame topic, don't you. Plus I was forced to write it by answering all these boring specific questions by emebedding them in the essay, so it really does not read like an insightful movie review because I am not even talking about what I want to talk about. I will see if i find it.

I have become allergic to snobbish and pretentious European films whose only aim seems to be to bore you to death or depress you.

Haha I know what you are talking about with some of these snobby repertory house movies and the worst part is that people are supposed to pretend to like them when in reality they are just bad. But you don't want to admit it or else people will presume you have a short attention span or just do not understand how deep the movie is. There are good art films too but some are just bad and I wish people woud admit it more. One such super bad art film like this I can remember is "The Company" by Robert Altman, a movie about Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. Even though I will like anything to do with dance, which is why I ran to see it, this movie was just -bad.- What makes it even more bad are the reviewers who wax pretentious about it making me think this will be my ideal movie. Sitting close by was an old distinguised man and woman and the the man kept expressing his enjoyment in exclamatory onomatopoeia. I don't know what is up with this movie.

[Tapati]

I'm supplementing these with a few alternate books: "Altars" by Denise Linn, which has gorgeous photographs...

Oh, I've enountered this on Amazon and wondered if it would be worthwhile for someone who is already very familiar with creating altars. I've seen also that she has a number of books and I was wondering about them as well. How did you feel about the writing?

[sarasvati_river]

I'm supplementing these with a few alternate books: "Altars" by Denise Linn, which has gorgeous photographs...

Oh, I've enountered this on Amazon and wondered if it would be worthwhile for someone who is already very familiar with creating altars. I've seen also that she has a number of books and I was wondering about them as well. How did you feel about the writing?

The content was so-so. I thought that some of her suggestions for creating different types of altars were interesting and broadened my idea of what an altar can be: ancestor/memorial altars, wedding and birthday altars, things like that. On the other hand, you start to get the sense that this woman may go a teensy bit overboard with the altars (she does mention at some point that practically every open space in her home has an altar -- and I'm pretty sure that she lives alone). Most of the actual practical information about altars is stuff you can find elsewhere: how to cleanse and purify your altar space, how to use feng shui to pick a location for your altar, what different altar objects mean (candles, rocks, etc.) -- nothing too original. I'd say if you already have any kind of experience with putting together altars, you don't need the book; but the writing is friendly, clear, and it is a useful collection of different things all in one place if you're new to altars or want one handy reference guide.

I picked the book up at the library mostly to look at the pictures, because that was the best part of the work for me. I also have more than a little experience with altars and didn't learn anything new. But the photographs are gorgeous and have a lot of variety in terms of religious traditions and stuff, so if you see a copy, flip through it -- the images are really powerful.

[Tapati]

Actually, as I saw it and several other similar books listed at Amazon, I thought, "Oh, I should have written that!"

I'll put it on my list for the pictures since I enjoy seeing what other people have done with altars.

Thanks for the feedback.

[evakurvan]

Here are notes from the essay.

Hilditch is a lonely man who fills his days by mimicking his mother’s culinary manoeuvers via elaborate chef-d’oeuvres that he eats alone. Sitting in front of his meticulously prepared dinner he plays tragicomic games to amuse himself: he places the white vegetable on his finger like a hat and moves his finger around. This gesture, as though talking to himself, creates an illusory audience for his solitary feast. Hilditch has a pointed relationship with food. In one scene, he refuses to replace the staff with efficient machines, claiming that : "Food must be served by people, not machines. It makes us feel loved. It keeps our spirits up.”

A reserved man, he voices how lonely he feels after being visited by two cultlike religious preachers. They present an appealing world of brightly coloured birds and bliss to him, a world of non-anxiety and absolutes. "For the future is written in the writing of certainty," they exclaim. This line by the preachers harkens back to a line by his mother. During her cooking shows she would proudly exclaim: "How marvelous this is! No question!" Soon after the visit by the preachers, he lets Felicia go, as well as himself, in an act of suicide.

Hilditch finds young troubled girls, undergoes a form of warped filmed psychotherapy with them in his car, then kills them once they feel better and want to leave him. We look into his private workshop-on-wheels through the film footage he tapes. We hear one of the girls plead: "You helped me back to myself now. I'm all right now, that's why I want to go home." There is a break in the film and we realize that Hilditch kills the girl.

We learn that Hilditch does not narrate this act to himself as "killing the girls" but as "putting them to sleep." He explains this to Felicia as she nods off from drugs. The factual actuality of the scene vividly voices ethical violation, yet its creepy sentimentality cries conundrum. Hilditch manipulates Felicia into staying with him through thievery, he invents an elaborate charade to convince her of the death of his non-existent wife, and drugs her without her knowledge or permission. Paradoxically however, the atmosphere is caring and nurturing. His tone of voice is very low and intimate. He carries the drug via an ornamental tray and offers her breakfast in bed. The setting of the bedroom itself is reminiscent of classic tragiromance. We notice all this, though at the back of our mind we know that Hilditch is really planning to eventually kill Felicia. The discourse he uses however is the discourse of curing - not burying.

[jonny rama]

A Course In Miracles-Author unknown.

Using this gift from above to rid myself of all that accumalated shame and guilt.

The Spirit Of Shaolin by David Carradine--Another inspiring tool enabling me to
create a life of grace and gratitude.

Krishna: The Beautiful Legend Of God translated by Edwin Bryant
Stretching the linear mind, softening the stone heart, and always
bringing a smile to my face. This Krishna is a real charmer.

Alexander The Great by Robin Lane Fox
It seems to me that this extraordinary warrior was indeed fathered by a deity.

[sekhmetsat]

eh, my reading selections are fluffy compared to everyone's... a romance series called "texas cattlemen's club", some other "paranormal" romance novels, um, and some regency romances. fluffy stuff, all. i read "nickel and dimed" by barbara ehrenreich a month ago, but it depressed me, because that IS my life.

[jonny rama]

Fluff is nice, fluff is good.

[0ni dios ni amo0]

el amor en los tiempos de cólera - gabriel garcía marqueza
romancero gitano - federico garcía lorca
storming heaven - denise giardina

i also have a lasting, passionate love affair with young adult literature. i just finished reading:
a great and terrible beauty - libba bray
uglies - scott westerfield

[0shivaslingam0]

I'm reading the latest installment of Eliot Pattison's series of 4 novels called Beautiful Ghosts that take place in and around Tibet and China. For my money the most fascinating and hauntingly beautiful and brilliant novels I have ever read. If you've never read these books start with The Skull Mantra and then read them in order. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.
http://www.eliotpattison.com/index.html


Another fascinating book I read last year was Shantaram which has quickly become a cult classic, highly recommended.
http://www.shantaram.com/
read reviews at Amazon.com for Shantaram

And of course the classic Son of the Circus is a must read.


If you like more techno oriented novels Then you have to read the master.
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age