Okay, the revamping has started. It still looks ugly, but the booklist is finally getting some new titles!
Since I stopped watching TV, I have been reading like it was going out of style (it is). And having read in in Sudhir's .plan file that "reading without reflection is like eating without digestion," I thought I would write down some of my thoughts on the books I have read of late.
Hey, it's not like anybody is forcing you to read this or anything, so indulge me.
The basic thesis presented in this books is that modern psychology puts too much emphasis on the importance of interpersonal relationships. This causes individuals to expect too much from their relationships, and it sells short the importance of work and the gratification that can be taken from achievements. It discusses a number of great thinkers from the past and shows how they were able to live happy lives by gaining fulfillment from their work rather than relationships. In particular, it focuses on the importance of solitude to creativity.
I noticed this book several months before I bought it. I refused to accept the notion that solitude might be desirable and not simply a rationalization for loneliness. Eventually, however, I broke down and read it. It was quite rewarding. While gratification from work cannot be expected to replace interpersonal relationships entirely, it can help get through tough spots and it can take some of the strain off such relationships by supplementing them.
This book falls on the border of self-help and psychology. The reason I do not include it as a self-help book is because it declares on the first page that it is not a self-help book. Self help books are meant to help you fix yourself, while this book claims that you are not broken. Rather than attempt to solve your problems, the author emphasizes that we all have conflicts within us and balance is something that needs to be striven for on a daily basis and is unlikely to be achieved.
Rather than focus on trying to understand and figure out the mind, Moore's position is that we are all far to complex to figure out and that the best we can do is simply be attentive to what our souls tell us. Lest one be alarmed as the use of the term soul, Moore points out that "psychology" means "the study of the soul."
As did Hillman, Moore describes Jungian archtypes using figures and stories from Greek and Roman mythology. The reason these myths have lasted as long as they have is because they represent fundamental truths about the human condition. We are all polytheistic, in that we all contain elements of all of these figures. If we are to live fulfilled lives, we need to recognize all of these figures within ourselves instead of just the ones we would like to see.
This book is written with a great deal of care and caring. Unlike most psychology books, it is written for the non-psychologist. And unlike most self-help books, the author does not talk down to us. Rather, he comes across as a concerned and understanding friend. Small wonder that it was a best-seller. But this capsule does not even begin to describe this book. Read it.
While this book does not strictly depend on having read the previous book, it is much more useful to those who have. The soulful approach towards cultivating sacredness in life is extended to cultivating sacredness in interpersonal relationships. Rather than attempt to rationally understand a relationship, it is more important to keep emotional tabs on things. Rather than attempt to predict how others ought to act, accept the beauty of unpredictability that makes life worth living. And most importantly, when a relationship ends, seize the opportunity to grow and benefit from the experience. Not every relationship can "work out" but we can grow and learn from all of them and thereby cause them all to work on the level that is most important.
Again, I would heartily recommend this book, but not until reading Care of the Soul, because after all, we cannot have healthy relationships with others until we have healthy relationships with ourselves.
Mention self-esteem to most people and they are likely to lisp at you that "I'm good enough; I'm smart enough; and gosh-darn it, people like me." Before I read this book, I might have said the same thing. But as the author explains, self-esteem is more than simply blowing yourself a kiss in the mirror each morning. While self-acceptance is a critical part of self-esteem (one of the pillars of the title) it is not sufficient.
This book discusses what self-esteem is, why it is important to have self-esteem, and how you can raise your self-esteem. The point is made that in our information society, the need for workers to make complex decisions with confidence on a regular basis has never been higher. And that requires self-esteem.
Another interesting point is the importance of doing things that will raise your self-esteem. It is not sufficient to simply want to have better self-esteem - you actually have to do something about it. It is only by taking positive actions that one can actually break out of old habits.
This is a superb book. After reading it, it is hard not to see the effects of poor self-esteem all around me. I don't know whether computer science attracts people with low self-esteem or if it causes us to lose our self-esteem, but I cannot think of a single friend who works in this field who could not benefit from this book. And this is probably true of graduate students in all fields.
This book contains vast insight into the human condition - any attempt to summarize it would sound trite and unfair. But I'll try. In essence this book is about looking at life and its suffering from a new perspective. Bad things happen to us - there is nothing that we can do about it. But we can do something about how we let those bad things affect our state of mind. This book is full of insight about how to learn and to grow from those experiences that we would normally consider catastrophic. This book is highly recommended, but only to those with an open mind about spirituality.
This book was recommended to me by a male friend as a means of better understanding women. It had been recommended to him by a female friend as a means of better understanding women. I recommend it to female friends (yes, I have some) as a means of better understanding men. That is high praise.
Two things worth noting about this book. The author tries very hard to write to a third grade reading level. If you are not consciously aware of this, the book will bug the hell out of you because it seems to be talking down to you. But if you accept the fact that he is simply trying to make the book as widely-accessible as possible, it becomes more tolerable. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that much of what he says sounds so obvious. Well, if it was so obvious, why didn't I think of it before? In any case, bear with the pedantic and repetitive style, and you will learn a lot from this book.
2. OK, so my reach exceeded my grasp. What else is new. If I read one of these books each year - which is the pace I am on, I should be done when I am 77. I can deal with that.
I will not say anything about the contents of this book because, well, that would be telling. As with Nine Princes in Amber, half of the fun is simply figuring out what all the characters already seem to know. Any more would simply ruin it. This novel is incredibly novel - one wonders what old Rog is smoking when he comes up with these ideas. In any case, this book is a lot of fun and a very quick read. You will wish it was longer.
Since reading this book, I have seen that it won a Nebula award. It deserved to.
This book is written as a speech by Folly. And who better to sing the praises of folly than Folly herself. As silly as it may sound, this book contains a remarkable number of insights into the human condition. And does a remarkable job of pointing out just how silly life is and how foolish we all are when we take it and ourselves seriously.
The story revolves around a pretentious and over-commercialized cemetery, Whispering Glades, and the pet cemetery down the road, Happier Hunting Grounds, that is trying to cash in on the funeral business by being just as pretentious. Two men working at each of the cemeteries compete for the affection of a woman whose job it is to apply make-up to the faces of corpses so as to make them look happy. And then things start getting really sick.
This is one of the great anti-war novels. Being an avid wargamer, it might seem a bit odd for me to be a big fan of anti-war books. But I just like cardboard war - the real thing horrifies me. This book, The Red Badge of Courage, and All Quiet on the Western Front are three of my favorite novels of all time. There is nothing glorious about war here. It is ugly and foreign and we never understand who is fighting whom or why. All we see is the futility and the necessity of love in a world gone insane.
Anyway, the initial quote in this book should be enough reason to read it:
God in his day, had Emily Dickinson,
whose thrashing surrender under his unmeasurable weight
even she mistook for love.
- Robert Stone
Oh yeah, the book won the Elmer Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, if
that means anything to anyone.
The thing I like about this book is that it is truly weird. But unlike some of the Hunter S. Thompson genre crap, this has a plot. A strange twisted plot, but I have suspended my disbelief more at the movies (I mean, come on, I loved Highlander) But it also is not a captive to its plot. I am not going to spoil any more, but I will say that this book was inspirational to me because it revealed to me that a writer (which I hope someday to be) does not have to be embarrassed for his characters' actions. They take on a life of their own and nobody really blames the writer for some of the twisted things they do. When you get to the scene I am talking about, you will understand. It is truly inspired in its shamelessness!
It was a series of coincidences that led me to discover this book. It is not a book that you will find in any bookstore, but during the last week that The Book Gallery was open, I stopped in entirely by accident and stumbled across this book. I picked it up because of the title and bought it because the subtitle intrigued me, and because the cover picture was not of the glory of war, but of one of the monuments that now decorate the site of the Civil War's most deadly battle.
This book interweaves a description of the battle with descriptions of the battlefield as it stands today. And in the midst of this, it delivers a scathing attack on our modern lives. It would be doing this book a disservice to attempt to summarize it, but I can describe my interpretation.
Abraham Lincoln asked at Gettysburg how we can further consecrate the ground that these men had already covered in their blood fighting for the values and freedom that this country was founded on. The answer for us today is that we can either hold that freedom dear or we can squander it. If we spend our lives in front of the television and living from one self-gratifying pleasure to the next, we make their sacrifice meaningless. If, on the other hand, we regain some sense of duty to posterity and fight to preserve those gains, we do their memories justice.
This book forced me to re-evaluate my priorities and caused me to stop squandering the freedom that they purchased so dearly. Read it.
This book is a hilarious but gentle reminder that we all fail most of the time and that failure is nothing to be ashamed of.
This is a Norwegian novel that was just translated into English. It is part mystery story and part philosophy textbook. It will have you turning the pages and breezing through a history of western thought faster than you thought possible.
No, I am not making this up. I loved this book, but be forewarned that the translation really sucked. As a result, it sometimes reads a little on the childish side.