For those of you who are good at math, if you compare how many books I’ve read with how many weeks have gone by so far in 2007, you’ll see that I’ve fallen a bit behind. To accomplish my goal of reading 52 books in 52 weeks, the easiest thing to do would be to read one book a week (duh), which I’ve thus far failed on. I have no good excuse for it, but I will be honest: World of Warcraft. For a while, it was eating up a bit too much of my time, and reading fell onto the back burner (or perhaps off of the stove altogether onto the floor…) I have, however, cancelled my World of Warcraft account, and I’m now hitting the books again. Here’s what’s on my plate as of right now:
- Working with Anger by Thubten Chodron.
- The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
- A History of Russia (6th edition) by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky.
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
Yes, I know – I have also failed miserably in reading one book at a time. I think I’m just going to give up on doing that at this point. Regardless of how many times I tell myself I should only read one book at a time, I end up having numerous books going all at once.
Working with Anger is pretty much what the title says. I have, for as long as I can remember, had a pretty bad temper. Working with Anger approaches anger from a Buddhist perspective, exploring how anger functions, what causes it to arise in us, and how to best deal with it. While it isn’t really a book that you should read once and put away, I’m about half way through it. I figure as I work with the methods provided I’ll be dipping back into it from time to time.
The Joy of Living is a peculiarly pleasant mix of Buddhist philosophy and meditation teachings, quantum physics, and cognitive science. I started reading this one today after picking it up at the library. I’m about 80 pages into it, and really the scientific flavor of it appealing. The book offers up the usual instructions for meditation, but instead of just explaining how to meditate, the author also gets into why such meditation practices work. Pretty interesting stuff.
A History of Russia is.. well, that’s pretty self explanatory, isn’t it? The book is, from what I can tell from amazon.com, the leading textbook on Russian history. It’s certainly far slower going than any of the other books I’m reading – I’ve been chipping away at this one for about a week, and I’m around page 100. It’s not dry, and is, on the contrary, quite engrossing, it’s just slow going due to all of the details. For those who are interested in what point in time I’m at right now in the book, I’m hovering on the edge of the 16th century.
Freakonomics is another book I picked up today at the library. I have honestly been avoiding this book for quite some time, due to it being on the top seller list for so long. I know I’ve been being a snob, but I generally dislike most books that hit the top seller list. However, I finally caved today and checked it out. At around the 100 page mark, I’m thus far impressed. There isn’t really any easy way to describe what the authors are doing; I think the subtitle of the book is actually pretty good. Thus far they’ve compared the Ku Klux Klan to real estate agents, school teachers to sumu wrestlers, and attributed the drop in crime rate in the 1990s to Norma McCorvey, a.ka.a Jane Roe, of Roe vs. Wade fame. And what’s amazing is, a lot of what they’re saying makes sense. While I have not quite got my boot fully out of my mouth yet, while I continue to work on that, I recommend you check the book out, if you haven’t already read it.
Of course, whenever I finish all of these books, there will be individual posts for each of them.