Then, out of complete randomness today, I decided to come back and check it out.
And I read my old posts. And I was like, "Hey, I kinda like reading this blog. I'm pretty cool, IMHO." I'm thrilled with my previous levels of irreverent honesty - as I read my old posts I was like, "O - M - G !!! That's EXACTLY how I feel!" Of course it is, goofball ... you wrote it.
He he he. So I decided to write another post.
I've been thinking for months that I'd like to post book reviews of all of the books I'm reading. I tend to read about 4-5 books at a time, most of them non-fiction, with one fiction in the mix. I inevitably finish about 3 fiction books before I finish a single one of my non-fiction works in progress - and the reason is that I get bored easily by the non-fiction books, but I LOVE learning from them so much that I force myself to trudge through them.
So here's what I'm reading right now, and then I can post more and backtrack through books I've recently finished (I read about a book a week).
- Atlas Shrugged: by Ayn Rand. - My understanding is that I will probably hate this book by the time I finish it, but it's considered a political classic so I think it's important to at least know what it says. So far I find the story/characters fun and compelling, but it seems everyone is strangely extreme in bizarre ways that I cannot correlate to reality.
- Common Wealth: by Jeffrey Sachs. - In case you don't know, I'm very unsecretly obsessed with Jeffrey Sachs. I'm actually terrible at being obsessed though, because I don't really keep up on what he's doing - I think I just like him as an icon to me of intelligence, power, goodness and philanthropy. Anyway, I love his books, and I'm really enjoying Common Wealth, but it's taking forever for me to read because it covers a LOT of the same stuff almost word-for-word as a textbook for one of my classes last semester (Environmental Economics & Policy, by Tietenberg and Lewis), so it's been hard to work through the redundancy. I'm a little more than 1/2 way done though, and it's starting to get its own tone, which is nice.
- The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: by Joel Orosz. - This book is really interesting, because it's written to grantmakers, so I can see what the grantmaking process looks like from the other side of the coin. But it's way too ... work-related and dry ... for me to read to much at a time. So I'm about 1/2 way done, and just plunk through it every now and then.
- A Course In Miracles : by Jesus. - Well, it's by Jesus in the same sense that the Bible is by Jesus. Anyway, I'm constantly working my way through this book because it's my spiritual canon.
- Living Deeply : by Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten and Tina Amorok. - This is a cool book where they've done statistical research on what spiritual practices and attitudes and beliefs create power and peace and happiness and spiritual experiences in people's lives. They've interviewed like 900 people or something for the book. I can't remember all of the details, but I really have liked the book.
I'm just reading those right now. Here are the books I've recently read:
- 1984: by George Orwell. - So my sister, dRM has been talking about this book for about 20 years, and she just bought a used copy of it so I would read it. And so I did. And it was good. Really good. But then at the end some guy had written a philosophical review on it and it was like BOOM this book is IMPORTANT and LIFE-CHANGING and MANDATORY for goodness. I became obsessed with the concept of doublethink - the fact that we accept some things as true even if, in our lives, we believe in the EXACT opposite (for example, Republicans fight abortion because it's murder, but they're all pro-war. That's doublethink).
Actually I have to stop now, because I have to do some stuff for work. I'll post again soon!
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