how strongly i recommend it: 9/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 9/10
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how strongly i recommend it: ?/10
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how strongly i recommend it: ?/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 9/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 6/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 0/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 6/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 6/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
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how strongly i recommend it: 6/10
A collection of writings from Charles Bukowski as it relates to our furry feline friends, written in an ever-amusing tone that is signature of Bukowski. If you’re a lover of cats, comedy and poetry, look no further. If you’re not a lover of cats, this book will surely change your mind.
The collection sits at around 100 pages and can be read at random, in no particular order. Here are some of my favorite lines:
“In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.”
“TV can make me ill in five minutes, but I can look at an animal for hours and find nothing but grace and glory, life as it should be.”
“Love is the crushed cats of the universe.”
“…remember that there is a cat somewhere adjusting to the space of itself with a delightful wonderment of easiness."
how strongly i recommend it: 4/10
I stumbled upon After Life by Simon Funk randomly; its novella format and premise of a man who “dies” physically but finds himself revived into a machine (via brain uploading) was intriguing enough for me to pick up.
The philosophical and psychological underpinnings of the novella are told from an Extropian perspective (those who believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely). While the narrative was at times convoluted, crude, confusing and hard to follow, the story and its characters have an ethereal, Kafkaesque tonality to it.
Though short, it’s the kind of story that ought to be read and pondered bit by bit, without hurry. It asks (and answers) big existential questions such as what makes us human, what is reality, love and life after death—questions we need to be asking and thinking about as society continues to move in the direction of man’s evolution into machines (or artificial intelligence).
how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
Annaka Harris makes a bold and worthy attempt to address one of the biggest questions of existence. It is a short read, dense at parts and is a tenable introduction broaching some of the current theories and philosophies out there around consciousness, time and space.
Harris begins with a series of dialectical questions—her endeavor to break down preconceived notions of what the reader might think consciousness is. She challenges our initial intuitions, and ask us to consider whether those intuitions might actually be illusions. From there, she pulls from older and newer theories as well as the latest in neuroscience to (hopefully) bring the reader to draw his or her own conclusion that consciousness may indeed exist everywhere.
It’s important to keep an open mind while reading this book. Harris’ quest to understand consciousness and find a working definition that works for her is based on her own life experiences. Some of it can feel a bit “out there,” but what I admire is her devotion to asking the big, important questions.
how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
From one of the greatest and most brilliant minds to walk the earth comes a uniquely spunky, humorous, clever and insightful treatise into a deep and meaningful life.
Mr. Feynman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, is as varied and multi-faceted as they come. To categorize him solely as a physicist would be doing him and humanity a disservice, as he was also a judicious professor, a talented drummer and performer, a noteworthy artist, an unstoppable safecracker, a magician of sorts, and above all, a master prankster. Here is a man who took his work seriously while living a life with great jocularity.
Feynman’s narration is true to his spirit—deeply curious, playful (sometimes to the point of mischievousness) and intellectual. He recounts snippets of his life in episodic form, memory by memory, grouped together into five main parts. Some of it is linear, some of it is not. All of it is revealing of a rare character who stood for what he believed in, challenged others to question what they know as well as the status quo, and inspired them to stay curious, stay free and live a life of integrity.
how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
I first became infatuated with Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and while The Book of Laughter and Forgetting doesn't disappoint, I found it harder to comprehend as Kundera explores his central themes of laughter and forgetting within the context of love, sex, music, poetry and politics. Without a grounded understanding of the latter—of the history and politics that surrounded Kundera's upbringing—many of his words may flutter away, however poetically, like lost leaves in the wind without a branch or trunk to anchor them.
Seven narratives or vignettes compose the book—each reads like a daydream. With the exception of one narrative, the remaining stories are unified not by time, place nor characters but by an iteration of thoughts and cross-connections. Each vignette provides a glimpse into a particular Czech person's life, and becomes the stage for Kundera to examine, observe, analyze and reflect on the human condition.
how strongly i recommend it: 7/10
Dr. Brizendine takes the reader on a journey, integrating insights based on the latest neuroscientific research and other studies, to illuminate how hormones and brain activity shift and transform throughout the various phases of a woman’s life—from birth to old age.
Some may feel discouraged by the material, as much emphasis is given to that which is beyond our control—the production or reduction of various hormones which may trigger certain ways of thinking and behaving that may seem like convenient generalizations, but I didn’t read it as such. Instead, I thought the book was a courageous, well-researched analysis of the biological nuances and transformations as the average woman travels from girlhood to womanhood.
Rather than accepting a defeatist, it-can’t-be-helped attitude, understanding our feelings, thoughts and behaviors as a result of a potent cocktail of hormones and neurochemistry can be surprisingly empowering. It allows us to acknowledge what we cannot control with acceptance and compassion, and control for what we can with grace.
how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
Carl Sagan once wrote, “The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Robert Wright serves both in his book by narrowing the gap between the two, drawing connections between how recent findings in evolutionary and cognitive psychology might substantiate some of our more subjective, spiritual experiences.
I’m a big believer in evolution and philosophy as a basis for understanding ourselves and the world in which we live. This is likely why this book resonates so much. Wright’s underlying thesis is that our biology, as programmed by natural selection, is built around the singular goal of passing down and ensuring the survival of our genes, which often comes into conflict with finding contentment and satisfaction. If we programmed A.I with this singular goal, we’d all be doomed. And in some ways, Wright argues, we are, unless we get our shit together and start meditating.
This is an illuminating and digestible read for the curious and skeptical, for seekers of truth.
how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
What would it be like to swim in Einstein’s brain, or to enter the realm of his dreams? Alan Lightman attempts to answer this question with thirty short dream-like vignettes which explore the fantastical dimensions of time and space and its effects on our thoughts, behaviors, lives. The book can be read in one short sitting, yet each chapter reveals a unique, hypothetical that leaves the reader long pondering its philosophical implications.
One of my favorite stories is of a world in which people have no memories, a world where people keep notebooks to record what they learn in the brief moment it lives in their heads. In this world, when a husband returns home from work and finds a woman and children waiting at the door, he greets them as though meeting for the first time and participates in each activity with his full presence—“for it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion.”
This is a ruminative and wildly imaginative read for anyone who has sought to understand relativity, for anyone who has ever asked “what if?,” for anyone who has wandered about what could have been or might still be.
how strongly i recommend it: 6/10
A sweet, feel-good novel about a curmudgeon with a big heart. Backman’s prose and writing style caught me off guard at first—he has a tendency towards short, fragmented sentences and simple language, reading a bit like how someone might speak. But the style ends up blending nicely with the characters and story itself.
It’s a simple story with simple characters, but the author successfully builds depth in the color of emotions and compassion I felt as a reader towards this man called Ove, his quirky, rambunctious neighbors and his judgmental, feral cat.
This is the kind of book to sit with at the end of a long, mentally draining day—simple words composing a simple story about a simple man living a simple life. It’s a wonderful reminder of what it means to be human and how a fulfilling life is as much about who you’re surrounded by as it is about the actions you take. But one should never, ever judge a book by its cover.
how strongly i recommend it: 6/10
I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into with this one; it ended up being a fun, enjoyable read. But unless you’re really into mythology, comics, and in particular, Norse mythology (of the Thor-Odin-Loki variety), I don’t think you’d be missing out by not reading this book.
This is a collection of Norse myths, some related to the one before, some not, starting with the creation of the worlds, the Gods and various other ungodly creatures, and ending with the final battle of Ragnarok, doomsday of the Gods. (Many myths have been forever lost, hence the disconnect between some stories.)
What I liked most is the relatability, timelessness, humor (that may be Gaiman’s touch) and creativity encompassed in these tales, written and told eons ago to people who ardently believed them to be the highest truths. It is clear to me how mythology has its place in our world today—for they are the first stories ever told by mankind, and are the foundation for which we continue to tell stories today.
how strongly i recommend it: 8/10
Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha is sort of the book responsible for the evolution of Buddhism in the West. Hesse pulls elements from the Eastern philosophy and tradition (without the usual religious undertones) and introduces them as an alternative to the growing skepticism and resentment towards dogmatic religion in Europe and the Americas, which was manifesting itself in the form of manipulative rationality and materialism. Hesse, in this bildungsroman, presents a similar (but not identical) story paralleling Siddhartha Gautama’s journey towards enlightenment—and in it, contains a renewed approach to living, thinking and being that balances experience with intellect, spirit with science, heart with mind.
The story is short, at parts dense, with a generous sprinkle of insightful golden nuggets throughout. It’s a book worthy of multiple reads, each time a revealing of new truths. It seems to be the foundational book from which all modern books related to Buddhism, spirituality, mindfulness and meditation stem.
how strongly i recommend it: 9/10
This was my first full-length Haruki Murakami novel, and it won’t be my last. Kafka On The Shore is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Few authors can pull off the kind of magical realism found in this story—from talking cats, to sardines pouring from the sky, to spirits traversing various planes of existence—whilst exploring the depths of the conscious and subconscious minds (blurring the line between which is which), questioning the nature of reality and the linear passage of time.
Through parallel, alternating stories of the cerebral Kafka, who runs away from home to escape an awful oedipal prophecy, and the delightful Nakata, an aging and illiterate simpleton “suffering” from a wartime affliction, Murakami artfully weaves together an enchanting story of love, murder and potentially incestuous relationships. I found myself “simultaneously wanting to turn the pages faster and faster to find out what happens and to slow down to savor the depth and beauty of Murakami’s prose.” This book reads like a dream.