1
Dec
2009
The Portable Jung by CG Jung, ed. by Joseph Campbell
Of course, with the drive towards ereaders, the portability of a book might not be of consequence, but it’s fun to carry around a book of Jung’s writing like he’s your own personal guru. Somebody tells you about an encounter or a dream or a movie, and you can say, hang on, let me consult with my colleague Herr Dr. Jung.
24
Nov
2009
Spiritual but Not Religious by Robert C. Fuller
Have I told you guys about the second and last time I ever went to confession? The first of course, was when I made more first reconciliation in 4th grade. The second time, I was in 10th grade, on a field trip to Washington D.C. We were visiting the Church of the Immaculate Conception, and I felt like going to confession.
21
Nov
2009
Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell
Oh Joseph Campbell, how I love you. If you weren’t dead, I would find you and stalk you until you married me. I want to live inside your head. No other one scholar has influenced me like you have. It was your work which inspired me to major in Comparative Religion, possibly the most useless of all liberal arts degrees (except maybe Art History), and I have never really regretted it.
13
Nov
2009
Why I Became an Atheist by John Loftus
Jenners, it’s all your fault I read this book. Actually, I think it’s your husband’s fault as I believe you once told me that he came up with the “phone an author” part of the Take a Chance Challenge (in which one randomly opens the phone book, points to a name, and must read a book by an author with the same last name).
13
Oct
2009
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
This is an epic, character-driven, beautifully-written, philosophical, sad, political, morally-ambiguous, expertly-foreshadowed, thematic,hard to get immersed in, dramatic, ironic, difficult, sweeping book.
10
Oct
2009
Going Home: Jesus and the Buddha as Brothers by Thich Nhat Hanh
I love Thich Nhat Hanh. I really do. But there’s something about reading a book, and thinking, haven’t I pretty much already read this in his other books? that gets annoying.
8
Oct
2009
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
The fourth installment of Douglas Adam’s Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, So Long and Thanks for all the fish, gets its name from the long debate of who is smarter, humans or dolphins. Humans believe they are smarter because they came out of the sea and onto land and don’t spend all of their time swimming and mucking about. Dolphins believe they are superior for just the opposite.
24
Sep
2009
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Listen, O my brothers, as I relate to you a skorry tale of Alex and his droogs, who are real horrorshow malchicks, what with their bitvas, using everything from nozhes to fisties to booties, and tolchocking litsos, viddying the krovvy running red. That is, when they aren’t busy drinking the old moloko at some mesto or giving a devotchka the ultra-violent in-out in-out while they boohoohoo. The whole while Alex slooshies his droog Ludwig van in his gulliver, which might make him unusual because most nadsats slooshie real gloopy pop warbles that about makes him bezoomny.
23
Sep
2009
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Imagine this: you are a well-educated, upper-middle class. rising professional, who has never broken the law, and you have been put on trial for…something. You don’t know what it is, because nobody will tell you. Your education is no help because while the courts in which you are tried are legal, they operate outside of the realm of normal jurisprudence.
11
Sep
2009
Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
Readers of books one and two of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. What they don’t know, is the question.
