Here are some books I've read that I recommend:
A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich
A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich
In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, 26-year old Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to write a history of the world for younger readers. He did so, and what he wrote isn’t only for children, but for adults. Weaving narrative with historical facts, Gombrich tells an engaging and thoroughly enjoyable history of the world in a little under 300 pages. It’s a truly remarkable tome on history and something that everyone should read. I wish my history teachers in high school had made this required reading.
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
A fascinating and exciting journey that tells the story of one man’s quest for peace by building schools for poor children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His belief: that through education, Islamic extremism will be extirpated.
Camino by Shirley Maclaine
Shirley tells of her spiritual exploration during a pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino. It is said the Camino lies directly under the Milky Way and follows the ley lines that reflect the energy from those star systems above it. The Santiago Camino has been traversed for thousands of years by saints, sinners, generals, misfits, kings and queens. It is done with the intent to find one's deepest spiritual meaning and resolutions regarding conflicts in Self. It makes me want to go!
Closer to the Light by Dr. Melvin Morse
Published in 1990, this is the classic book about Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Instead of focusing on adults, Morse’s scientific research delves into the NDEs of children who have not been exposed to ideas and images that are part of our collective culture. We’ve all heard of people near death who have floated over their hospital beds, seen a tunnel, been welcomed by beings of light and deceased family members and friends. The children in this study have not been exposed to these thoughts or ideas and the resounding consensus is that the children all had similar experiences of transcendence at the point of death. Any wonder why I’m reading this again right now?
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
What a fascinating, perfectly written mock biography of an Elizabethan era duke, Orlando. I've only read one-third of the book so far, but the language is gorgeous. I've never read anything by Woolf. I understand the praise now.
On Writing by Stephen King
I've read many books on the writing process, but King's direct, engaging dialogue with the reader is a sublime recollection of his life and what has influenced him as a writer. Before Carrie was published, he was an alcoholic teacher living in a double wide trailer in Maine with his wife and kids, cleaning the local high school during the summer to make ends meet. It gives me hope because I do believe more and more that through challenges, tragedy, and rejections, the best in all of us emerge. Every writer is different, every writer has tomes, mantras, tricks of the trade and books to recommend. King does this with ease and grace. Even if you're not a writer, it's a quick, sublime read.
A Room With A View by E.M. Forster
This gorgeous book brings to life the world of Edwardian England before WWI with great romance and humor, exposing the culture of the time with grace and elegance. The 1985 Academy-Award winning Merchant-Ivory film production is spot on, one of the most faithful adaptations of a book I've ever seen. Read the book first, and then watch the movie!
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
Another sumptuous tale by the master of Edwardian England social mores and class clashes. This time, Forster takes the reader on a journey to Italy in which the sister of a well-to-do family marries a poor Italian and dies giving birth to a son. The matriarch sends down her son to buy the baby back into the family and bring it back to England, but things don’t go as planned.
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
A National Book Award-winning exploration on the foundation and beginnings of the Christian Church. Pagels eloquently juxtaposes Christian orthodoxy and the other sect of gnositcs who battled it out to decide whose point of view would triumph. As you probably can figure out, the orthodox version of Christ’s passion and life won, but the book offers wonderful insight into what could have been, and also what still can be if people truly studied the history of their religion.
The Field by Lynn McTaggart
McTaggart is an investigative journalist, so this book on quantum physics is eloquently written in layman’s terms. She takes the studies of countless physicists and offers of a stunning picture of an interconnected universe and a scientific theory that makes sense of supernatural phenomena. Her thesis, based on scientific experiments and facts, is that on our most fundamental level, the human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment (like Newton and Descartes would have us think), but a packet of pulsating power constantly interacting in a vast energy sea. A fascinating and mind-blowing read.
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 by Garrison Keillor
I adore Garrison Keillor. Freiman and I saw him at Town Hall last Spring doing his Prairie Home Companion radio broadcast. He has a penchant for instilling nostalgia in me for a past that I don’t even know – I was born in 1972 and he’s waxing on about life in the Midwest in the 1950s. Nonetheless, it’s almost like this collective unconscious experience listening to him because he makes you feel like you’ve been there with him. He’s a brilliant writer, poet, narrator, et al. He’s my Mark Twain, and his book, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, is a treasure. This is the first novel of his that I’ve read. I picked it up in Woodstock for a dollar at a flea market and it’s worth twenty times more. It follows the story of 15-year old Gary during an eventful summer in Lake Wobegon as he deals with his almost cultish Christian family, his love for his cousin, and being hired as a reporter to follow the local baseball team. It’s an easy, breezy read; something that puts a smile on my face, and I can just hear that great, gravely voice of Keillor’s reading it to me every night before bedtime.
Royal Babylon by Karl Shaw
The 252-pound glutton, Princess Mary, the completely bonkers King George III, and German Empress Augusta (whose face was lacquered so thickly with industrial strength make-up, that one observer thought her to be an automoton). These are only three of innumerable members of royalty that made me ask: Who would have known that the history of European royalty was fraught with obesity, sex maniacs, incest, hemophiliacs, nutjobs, and an entire smorgasbord of weirdos and wackos? Well, I expected there to be a few, but reading Royal Babylon has shed the side-splitting light on an ignominious history of royalty that is at both funny and sometimes revolting. Did you know that Czar Alexander was so furious with his wife’s infidelity that he had her lover decapitated and the head pickled and placed by her bedside? How about the empress who kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? And then there’s the diminutive (4 feet, 10 inches) lunatic Prussian emperor, Frederick William, his 102-inch waist, and army of giants whom he kidnapped from every corner of Europe. How these people kept power and continued to live as another breed is fascinating and hilarious. This is not the history taught in the classroom but an anthology of funny and brilliantly told stories of monarchs and princesses, dukes and duchesses, et al., that prove what Queen Victoria meant when she said it would be unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe.
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
James is a master of sumptuous language. I'm amazed at his eye for detail, conversation, and wit. He's also delves deeply into the psychology of his characters so that you know them inside and out, but somehow, they still surprise. It's a gorgeous, devastating novel. It's also very long - it took me several months of subway rides to finally finish it, and as with all favorite stories, I was sad to see it end. There were a few days when I had a morose feeling of separation from the 19th Century world in the book. But, as with all great stories, it's now apart of me and will never leave.
Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett
A book about faith and spirituality written by the host of American Public Radio’s Speaking of Faith, a weekly radio program about religion, faith, and spirituality. It’s a wonderful program. I try to listen to it every Saturday morning. Tippett delves into her own personal history of faith and how it has evolved over the years. She somehow weaves Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into a beautiful tapestry of acceptance for all traditions, and that religion does have a place in our society. Her point of view is that religion isn’t bad, it’s only human frailty and the psyche that have distorted it. I’m still reading it, and don’t agree with everything she says, but Tippett is incredibly eloquent, scholarly, and willing to discuss weighty topics in a new light that makes them accessible to all. She’s the kind of person I’d like to talk with every day for an hour over tea.
The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle
I love this woman and wish I had taken the opportunity to visit her when she was librarian and writer-in-residence at St. John of the Divine up on Cathedral Parkway. This book, number three in her Crosswicks Journal series, delves into her faith as she reflects on being a woman, mother, artist, grandmother, from Advent through Christmas, Lent, Pentecost, Transfiguration, and back to Advent again – a year in a life, so to speak. While not all of it speaks to me (I find some of her religious points of view a bit too rigid), she does have an innate gift of questioning her faith in a way that I think any agnostic would appreciate. She writes that a teenager once asked her if she really and truly believed in God with no doubts at all, to which she replied, “I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts.” I like that.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Published posthumously, this collection of memoirs about Hemingway's life in Paris after World War I is an elegant evocation of the time of the expatriates who lived and breathed art in all its forms.
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Greene is somehow able to make physics, including much of Einstein and the newer quantum physics, understandable. While he isn’t always open to the spiritual implications of science, his delight in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the universe is infectious.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I've seen the film more times than I've read the book. When I heard last week that it was Lee's 83rd birthday, and that Mockingbird was the only book she's ever published, I thought I should reread it again. It has the magical grace of prose that makes me feel like I've died and gone to book heaven. This is my top 10 deserted island choices for reading.
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
This is the first James Bond, 007, novel I've read. I loved the movie with the sinister titular villain and his Korean sidekick with the deadly bowler hat, Oddjob. But after reading the book, I have a newfound respect for Fleming as a writer. His brisk, eloquent prose enraptured me, and whereas the movies usually go for the flashy cars and gadget gimmicks, its villains and heroes pushing the envelope of believability, the book stands strong as its own entity of the characterization of a secret agent with foibles and intellectual strengths that would challenge any writer to create. It also makes me want to smoke Chesterfields and drink bourbon.
The No. 1 Woman’s Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
My friend, Susan, introduced me to this series of books about Mma Romatswe, the one and only woman detective in Botswana. I love this series and have read the first two books in the cycle of ten. I marvel at how the author, an English man, could get into the mind of a fat, black, Botswanan woman detective, but he does it peerlessly, and the more I read, the more I believe that Mma is real. The stories within the bigger framework of the narrative are engrossing and eloquently written. The pages fly by with ease and before I knew it, I was finished and wanted to start reading the next book.
Capote by Gerald Clarke
A fascinating, in-depth biography of the inimitable author and self-destructive social tycoon. I’ve read Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood and think Capote is one of the great writers of all time, and reading this book gives me new insight into the lisping, impish man’s almost heartbreaking life.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
Janzen’s memoir of returning to her Mennonite family after her husband divorces her for Bob, a man he met on gay.com, is both excruciatingly funny and full of humanity. Her incisive wit and observations of family, friends, and the foibles of being human make me laugh out loud, not a phrase I use lightly.
Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell
From the book jacket: “Before Buffy, before Charlie’s Angels, before Purdy and Emma Pell there was Modesty Blaise. For almost 40 years, Peter O’Donnell’s iconic heroine drop-kicked her way through a swath of villains and into a unique place in popular culture.” Well put! Modesty is a kick-ass female doppelganger to James Bond!
Without Buddha I Wouldn’t Be A Christian by Paul F. Knitter
Knitter is my advisor at Union Theological Seminary. He’s a Catholic and a Buddhist. Strange combination, no? But not really. Buddhism has helped him connect more strongly with Spirit and see that, as a religious pluralist, there are many ways on the path of grace, kindness, love, and respect. A beautiful, personal book from an erudite theologian.
Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhanta Henepola Gunaratana
A sublime intro book on mindfulness and meditation for the nascent meditator - like me!
