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Reading List

In this section I will post a list of books that I have read (and can recommend). More than anything, this is an accountability list to myself as I find myself not reading nearly as much as I would like! Also included is a section on books which I would like to read. Somehow, this list is seeming to grow at an unmanageable pace!



Reading List - Books Read in 2007

The Zahir - Paulo Coehlo

Paulo Coelho's novel The Zahir is about a renowned author who writes about spirituality and once went on a pilgrimage along the road to Santiago.

It begins with a glimpse or a passing thought. It ends in obsession. One day a renowned author discovers that his wife, a war correspondent, has disappeared leaving no trace. Though time brings more success and new love, he remains mystified - and increasingly fascinated - by her absence. Was she kidnapped, blackmailed, or simply bored with their marriage? The unrest she causes is as strong as the attraction she exerts. His search for her - and for the truth of his own life - takes him from France to Spain, Croatia and, eventually, the bleakly beautiful landscape of Central Asia. More than that, it takes him from the safety of his world to a totally unknown path, searching for a new understanding of the nature of love and the power of destiny. With "The Zahir", Paulo Coelho demonstrates his powerful and captivating storytelling.

"Suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself - free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on."



Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coehlo

Eleven Minutes tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heart-broken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer..." A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune yet ends up working as a prostitute.

In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love while at the same time developing a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything to find her own 'inner light' and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

In this gripping and daring new novel, Paulo Coelho sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love and invites us to confront or own prejudices and demons and embrace our own 'inner light'.



The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coehlo

A community devoured by greed, cowardice and fear. A man persecuted by the ghosts of his painful past. A young woman searching for happiness. In one eventful week, each of them will face questions of life, death and power, and each of them will hae to choose their own path. Will they choose good or evil?

The remote village of Viscos is the setting for this extraordinary struggle. A stranger arrives, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: are human beings, in essence, good or evil? In welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever makr their lives.

In this stunning new novel, Paulo Coelho dramtatises the struggle within every soul between light and darkness, and its relevance to our everyday struggle: to dare to follow our dreams, to have the courage to be different and to master the fear that prevents us from truly living. The Devil and Miss Prym is a story charged with emotion, in which the integrity of being human meets a terrifying test.



Lamb: Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore

While the Bible may be the word of God, transcribed by divinely inspired men, it does not provide a full (or even partial) account of the life of Jesus Christ. Lucky for us that Christopher Moore presents a funny, light hearted satire of the life of Christ - from his childhood days up to his crucifixion - in Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. This clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it's a coming-of-age story of the highest order.

Joshua (a.k.a. Jesus) knows he is unique and quite alone in his calling, but what exactly does his Father want of him? Taking liberties with ancient history, Moore works up an adventure tale as Biff and Joshua seek out the three wise men so that Joshua can better understand what he is supposed to do as Messiah. Biff, a capable sinner, tags along and gives Joshua ample opportunities to know the failings and weaknesses of being truly human. With a wit similar to Douglas Adams, Moore pulls no punches: a young Biff has the hots for Joshua's mom, Mary, which doesn't amuse Josh much: "Don't let anyone ever tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone." And the origin of the Easter Bunny is explained as a drunken Jesus gushes his affection for bunnies, declaring, "Henceforth and from now on, I decree that whenever something bad happens to me, there shall be bunnies around." True to form, Lamb keeps the story of Joshua light, even after its darkest moments.



Visual Intelligence - Donald D. Hoffman

From Publishers Weekly

With wit, insight and charm, Hoffman, University of California, Irvine professor of computer science, cognitive science and philosophy, explains in this spectacular volume how we use vision to construct the world around us. Hoffman does a masterful job of demonstrating that vision encompasses so much more than merely what we see, and of illustrating that much of what we see may not, in fact, exist. Presenting the 35 rules of vision that Scientists claim we use to piece together our environment ("Rule 1. Always interpret a straight line in an image as a straight line in 3D"), he analyzes many common optical illusions, explains how we perceive motion, colour and depth, and philosophizes about the nature of reality and perception. Throughout, Hoffman makes wonderful use of myriad photographs to demonstrate the points he is making. The photos in the chapter on motion fail, necessarily, to catch the imagination the way the others do, but an ancillary Web site allows observation of the full motion of his examples. Not only is this book an outstanding example of creative popular science but, given the many optical illusions it presents, it's also the rare book that, in line with its subject, can be thoroughly enjoyed both right side up and upside down.



Jesus Lived in India - Holger Kersten

Why has Christianity chosen to ignore its connections with the religions of the East, and to dismiss repeatedly the numerous claims that Jesus spent a large part of his life in India?

This compelling book presents irrefutable evidence that Jesus did indeed live in India, dying there in old age. The result of many years of investigative research, Jesus Lived in India takes the reader to all the historical sites connected with Jesus in Israel, the Middle East, Afghanistan and India. As well as revealing age-old links between, the Israelites and the East, the evidence found by theologian Holger Kersten points to the following startling conclusisions:



Identity - Milan Kundera

Sometimes - perhaps only for an instant - we fail to recognize a companion; for a moment their identity ceases to exist, and thus we come to doubt our own. The effect is at its most acute in a couple where our existence is given meaning by our perception of a lover, and theirs of us.

With his astonishing sill at building on and out from the significant moment, Kundera has placed such a situation and the resulting wave of panic at the core of his new novel. In a narrative as intense as it is brief, a moment of confusion sets in motion a complex chain of events which forces the reader to cross and recross the divide between fantasy and reality.



Hinduism, An Introduction - Dharam Vir Singh

Author's Note

This book is mainly for the layman who would like to have an idea about Hinduism and the Indian way of life as quickly as possible, without going into too lenghty mythological treatises. It would be of special interest to the tourist who comes to India on a short visit. Since most of the miniature paintings, temple sculpture etc., are based on Hindu mythology, a basic understanding of the religion is necessary. My fourteen years' experience of interacting with tourists and giving them lectures on religion and history made me realize that the scope of the book had to include not just Hindu deities but also short notes on the Hindu way of life. The miscellany section answers questions on the sacred cow, marriage rituals, caste system, yoga, meaning of the sectarian marks, karma, and describes many interesting things that a person would see on the streets of India.

The first section deals with the deities, where, illustrations have also been provided. The details of the festival connected with the deity are given at the end of each description, making it more meaningful. More festivals are mentioned in the "Festival" section. Once of the attractions of the books is the section on ancient Hindu sciences, music and dance with notes on painting and sculpture. Another helpful feature is the family tree of the deities which makes it easy for the reader to, at a glance, understand the relationship of the various Hindu gods and goddesses and their incarnations.



The City of Joy - Dominique Lapierre

Author's Note

During frequent stays in Calcutta I was fortunate enough to meet some exceptional human beings. They have given me so much, and have had such an impact on my life, that I decided I wanted to tell a story about their lives, in a remarkable area of the world called the City of Joy.

This story concerns men, women and children who have been uprooted from their homes by implacable nature and hostile circumstances, and thrown into a city whose capacity for hospitality has been pushed beyond imagining. This is a story about how people learn, despite incredible difficult odds, to survive, to share and to love.

My story about the City of Joy is based on three years of extensive research in Calcutta and various areas of Bengal. I was given access to personal diaries and correspondence, and the bulk of my research consisted of over two hundred lengthy interviews, conducted through interpreters in various languages including Hindi, Bengali and Urdu. These interviews, which I transcribed into English and French, are the basis for the dialogues and testimonies in this book.

The protagonists of the City of Joy wished to remain anonymous. Therefore, I have purposely changed the identities of some characters and certain situations. The story I tell here is, however, true to the confidences that the people of the City of Joy have shared with me, and to the spririt of this unusual place.

This book, though the fruit of extensive research, does not pretend to speak for the whole of India. I have enormous affection for India, and great admiration for its intelligence, its achievements, its tenacity in overcoming difficulties. I know well its virtues, grandeurs and diversity. The reader should not extend to the country as a whole impressions he gathers here of one small corner of it - a small area of Calcutta called the City of Joy.



Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War, afterwards attending the colleges of New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where be began a successful career in the advertising departments of, progressively, Time, Look and McCall's magazines. It was during this time that he had the idea for Catch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961.

His second novel, Something Happened, was published in 1974, Good as Gold in 1979, God Knows in 1984, and Closing Time in 1994. He is also the author of the play We bombed in New Haven.

Joseph Heller is a honorary follow of St. Catherine's College, Oxford, to which he comes periodically and meets with students who are writing fiction. He lives in East Hampton, New York.



Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts

A novel of high adventure, great storytelling and moral purpose, based on an extraordinary true story of eight years in the Bombay underworld.

In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, and armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in and Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan... Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions. It's a profound tribute to his willpower... At once a high-kicking, eye-gouging adventure, a love saga and a savage yet tenderly lyrical fugitive vision.




Reading List - Books to Read in 2007+

Books that have been recommended or that have looked interesting in a book shop and that I hope to read in the not-too-distant future!



[Updated December 2007]