Favorites 6/20: Bhagavad Gita translated by Stephen Mitchell

 

Bhagavad-Gita. I recently reviewed a new translation that I’d read of this, so I won’t say too much more. I’m not including classics on this list (well, before Moby Dick), so I omit a lot of religious or classical writing, but this is one exception. I make in this exception in part because I only read it first as an adult and because I’ve read different translations now. It still resonates. 

7/20 Favorites, Confessions of a Conservative by Garry Wills

Confessions of a Conservative by Garry Wills (1980). I would normally expect one book per author, but here I have to make an exception. While Nixon Agonistes is a well-recognized classic, Confessions appears to be out of print. What a shame! It is in part autobiographical (how Garry Wills came to be “Garry Wills” the author we read), and it provides further deep insights into how are political system works. Wills doesn’t come to this on his own; in fact, I’m always amazed at the breadth of his learning, which will often reference Samuel Johnson, John Ruskin, or Walter Bagehot, among others. I’m leaving out some other great Wills books, but I’ll stop here. (Write me if you want further recommendations.)

Books 2012

It’s time for my 2012 book summary. This is always a fun exercise; it’s like viewing photos from your vacation. “Yea, that was a real cool place”, or “It wasn’t what I expected”, or whatever. (I really wouldn’t have a “this was a dump” memory because I would probably have never started such a book and I certainly wouldn’t have finished it.). As the title indicates, this list reflects books that I have finished this past year. As usual, I have done a lot of reading on-line, which I now track on my Twitter feed or in Readability. These are wonderful tools for tracking and sharing reading. In addition, Abbas introduced me to Goodreads. It's a program for tracking your lifetime reading, planned, in progress, and completed. I recommend it. But enough musing and on the list. I will list books in no special order. Most of them I’ve written about before, so I’ll cite my own reviews. Others, because of my delinquencies, I’ve reviewed in this blog, so I’ll mark it for a future blog. I’ll list my favorites at the end. 

Adam Sisman, An Honorourable Englishman: The Life of Hugh. Trevor-Roper. 

Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (audio)

 

John Horgan,  Rational Mysticism

 

John Lewis Gaddis, George Kennan: An American Life 

 

Michael Erard, Babel No More: The Serach for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners

 

Doug McGuff, M.D. and John Little, Body by Science

 

Garry Wills, The Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine & the Mystery of Baptism

 

Jonathan Haidt, Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics & Religion

 

William J. Broad, The Science of Yoga

 

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast & Slow (audio)

 

Robert Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (audio)

 

Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President & the Fracturing of America (audio)

 

Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour Work Week (audio)

 

Robert Parker, The Professional (A Spenser Novel)

 

Eric Ambler, Background to Danger

 

Iain McGilchrist, The Divided Brain & the Search for Meaning

 

F.L. Lucas, Style: The Art of Writing Well

 

Pico Iyer, The Man Inside My Head

 

Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (An Isabel Dalhousie Novel)

 

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

 

Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen

 

Joe Jaworski, The Source: The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation

 

Tony Hiss, In Motion: The Experience of Travel (review forthcoming)

 

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature : Why Violence Has Declined (audio) (review forthcoming)

 

Okay, drumroll please, while I select the favorites . . . .the judge is now ready to pronounce his decision. The favorites are: 

 

Caro, The Passage of Power

 

McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

 

Pirsig, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

 

Perlstein, Nixonland

 

Haidt, Righteous Mind

 

Gaddis, George Kennan

 

Mann, 1493

 

Well, another fine year, but lots more to go. I’m off to a good start in 2013, and I’m looking forward to the summary for next year. Until then, Happy Reading! 

 

N.B. I've also read a great deal about India from diverse sources, including the internet (NYT, The Economist, etc.), daily papers published here in India, and many books, but I haven't finished a good number of books that I've dipped into, so expect to see a flood of India books in the list for next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation by Joe Jaworski

The business book section of your local bookstore is always an interesting place. A lot of the titles are variations on how to become rich, while others focus on the latest management techniques or reports on successful enterprises. I suppose in the end its like most sections of the store: many titles with only a few worthwhile. But in this business section, we do sometimes come across some interesting ideas. After all, one thing that contemporary business aims for is a competitive advantage, and to that end some authors can dig very deeply for worthwhile answers, or a least suggestions. They tend to be long on practical application, but they take the basis research and theory seriously, as well they should. Given that most of us spend the majority of our days and lives in various business ventures, as owners, employees, or even as householders, we should indeed consider these issues very carefully. All of this is a lead in to my recent completion of this book:

 
The Source: The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation by Joe Jaworski (2011). This title takes up Jaworski's very interesting and personal story where it left off in his book Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership (1997). Jaworski, the son of Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, and a very successful lawyer in his own right, finds himself pulled or called (both intentionally provocative words to which I don't think that he would object) to leaving his practice and entering the realm of business through a sense of intrigue about leadership and how we can enhance and improve our world. 

In The Source, Jaworski reports his pursuit of ideas and interests that were ignited by his acquinatance, both personal and intellectual, with physicist David Bohm. Bohm's ideas about the nature of reality, the "implicate order" capture Jaworski's imagination, and even after Bohm's death, Jaworski continues to pursue Bohm's line of thinking and related topics. He goes into consulting and works with persons such as Peter Senge and Otto Sharmer, both of MIT Sloan Business School, to develop ideas about personal and organizational development that are on the edge; indeed, some would suggest the work "fringe" might prove more apt. But Jaworski presses on with his quest for understanding and insight. He comes to two major beliefs: first, there is a "source" or "implicate order" or whatever, that if we tap into it, enhances our abilities as human beings. Second, based on work by scientists such as Robert Jahn at Princeton and William Tiller at Stanford, as well as numerous others, we can enhance our ability to tap into this Source to enhance our individual and collective well-being. Jaworski gives examples of qi gong, yoga, and nature quests as avenues of enhancing our ability to tap into the Source. 

Nonsense? Well, for most of human history, what Jaworski says would be considered a  matter of common sense, which certainly doesn't vouch for its truthfulness or usefulness in our world, but it should help us to avoid dismissing what he says out-of-hand. As someone who's obviously quite intelligent and capable, and as someone who left a what appears to have been a very successful career as a lawyer to pursue a whole new set of endeavors, I have to give his search some credibility. The issue becomes, of course, of whether we can replicate his findings and incorporate them into our lives and world. 

Tarquin Hall: The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery

Since learning that we’d be coming to India to live, I’ve tried to read a great deal about this vast nation. The amount written about this country is immense, and given that I’m a promiscuous reader wanting to master several topics at once, I’ve only made a dent in learning what I can about India. Thus, while I have completed relatively few books, I have read a good deal or learned vicariously from IG and her reading. Amartya Sen, William Dalrymple, Shashi Thoroor, Andre Betielle, Richard Sorabji, Pankraj Mishra, Kathryn Boo (via IG), NYT articles, The Economist, and so on have served as very enlightening guides. I’ve made a dent, anyway. However, now I’ve made a breakthrough: I’ve completed The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall. 

Hall is a Brit, married to an Indian, and living near Delhi. His skill as a writer combines with his insider/outsider status to give me some delightful insights into India. In fact, I’d posit that the standard detective novel, the “who dun it?” may prove the perfect vehicle to learn about a new society or culture. In this case goes a long way in supporting that proposition. 

Vish Puri, a former Army intelligence officer turned private detective, with a caring (if occasionally bothersome) wife and meddling “mummy-ji”, assited by a stable of colorfully nick-named stable of helpers (labor is cheap in India), gets called into work on the death of a prominent Pakistani. The death involves two subjects of great emotional valance in India: cricket and Pakistan. The decedent is involved with cricket, the national game here, and (I think) in Pakistan as well. His investigation of the murder leads Puri to Pakistan, which, before these events, had simply been “the enemy” to Puri. But as Puri learns, the two nations share a great deal, including a troubling and sad history that still holds the memory of many wrongs on both sides of the border. Puri expands his horizons in the course of his investigation, while he’s also dodging or ignoring the dietary constraints that his wife wants him to follow. His nickname isn’t “Chubby” for nothing. 

This book caught my eye because the front cover displayed a favorable blurb from Alexander McCall Smith.  I discovered that Hall’s creation matches many of the attributes that makes Smith’s No.1 Ladies Detective Agency and Isabel Dalhousie series so successful: an endearing main character--not a super-hero, hard-boiled type, or super-sleuth--but a wonderfully fallible character deeply immersed in the culture around  her. So for shear enjoyment while learning a great deal about this vast country, and with the highest compliment in comparing this book to one of McCall Smith’s books, I suggest you put this in your reading pile, whether you come to India or only want to explore from your armchair. I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed.