The Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea

In a very narrowly focused novel Rajaa Alsanea gives us a look into Arab culture. The view is skewed because it is all about people of means, and pretty much ignores everyone else. It seems that upper class girls in Saudi Arabia have just enough freedom to get into impossible romantic entanglements. When the subject of marriage arises, both the men and women are forced to knuckle under to the demands of an ancient culture as enforced by their parents. Alsanea blames men for this situation, but it is often the mothers of the men who insist on a marriage that confers social status on their sons. The Girls of Riyadh centers around four girls and their intriguing stories. The only annoying thing about the novel is its structure of being written in emails; each chapter starts with the author's remarks to her electronic audience and this seems entirely superfluous.

The New Physics and Cosmology edited by Arthur Zajonc

It took me a long time to plough through this book which is only 222 pages long. The subtitle is "Dialogues with the Dalai Lama" and it is the record of a Mind and Life conference held in Dharamsala, India in 1997 with the Dalai Lama and several physicists. The goal was to compare Buddhist philosophy with philosophies emerging (controversially) from the study of quantum mechanics. This is a subject dear to my heart but I really only bought the book because it was being remaindered and was therefore cheap. It was also turgid, but I stuck to it. Since the science is difficult and the philosophy is all over the place, the best I can do for you is to pull a couple of quotes:

Zajonc, an Amherst College physics professor, writes, "I could not help noticing the correspondence between the view of the Dalai Lama and, for example, the 'eternal, fractal, inflationary universe(s)' being advanced by contemporary astrophysicists...."

Referring to participant Tu Weiming, who is Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Zajonc says, "What he and others seem to be pointing toward is the possibility of overcoming the delusion of consciousness that places us with our thoughts and feelings over and against, and forever separated from, the rest of the natural world. ... The subtleties of quantum entanglement and observation begin to sound like part of a mature Buddhist philosophy."

Given the fact that outcomes in quantum mechanics are influenced by the role of the observer, Piet Hut, professor of astrophysics at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, says "...we are moving from a science of objectivity to a science that includes subjectivity, as well as objectivity."

But my favorite quote was a thought lifted from Danish physicist Niels Bohr. "He said that a simple truth is a truth where the opposite is not true. A deep truth is a truth where the opposite is also true."

My Stoke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor

At age 37 Jill Bolte Taylor was a neuroanatomist working at Harvard's Brain Bank when she suffered a massive stroke that flooded the left hemisphere of her brain with blood. She was amazed at what was happening to her and thought "Isn't this cool!" before coming to grips with the reality that she needed help. She was reduced to infanthood in her capabilities to deal with life, but what was left of her scientist's mind kept observing her situation. She realized she'd lost personality traits that were better left lost, so she consciously supervised the return of her left brain functions. It took eight years. Her reflections on this process somewhat parallel Eckhart Tolle's ideas on the need to get away from defensive ego reactions and approach others in a more open and loving manner. She points out that the strong emotional reactions we sometimes experience are physiological in nature and course through our bodies in 90 seconds. By waiting until the physical reaction has passed ("count to ten") we have much better control over our response. While not a great literary work (grammar mistakes!), My Stroke of Insight is a wonderful story from which much can be learned.

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

A murder is committed in a small town in the Canadian wilderness of the 1800's and at least three different people come under suspicion. One of them, an eyewitness, takes off after the murderer without telling anyone what he is up to. He treks through the cold winter forest and two different groups take off after him. The trail leads to a Norwegian religious community and then on to an outpost of the Hudson Bay Company. It is sometimes hard to keep all the characters straight in this novel, but it is well written and, on the whole, a good read.

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

Writer Barbara Ehrenreich rose to the challenge of an exploring the lifestyle of America's low wage workers. She left her comfortable home in Florida became alternately a waitress, a housecleaner, and a Wal-Mart "associate." With each job she would hunt up an apartment she could afford on the low wages. This in itself was a challenge; but throw in the need for food and clothing and she realized how stressful living at that level really is. She makes the point that the people in these jobs are hard-working, generous with each other, and smart about stretching a dollar.

Quantum Enigma; Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

Thank goodness for physicists who make the effort to communicate the implications of their research to the rest of us. Rosenblum and Kuttner teach a course called Quantum Enigma which is designed for liberal arts majors at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In it they brave the frontier between physics and philosophy where most physicists refuse to go. One of their colleagues told them that "Though what you're saying is correct, presenting this material to nonscientists is the intellectual equivalent of allowing children to play with loaded guns."

Simply put, the quantum enigma is that observation actually creates the physical reality observed. As one Nobel laureate put it: "It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness." This situation, in which the act of measurement or observation affects the outcome of an experiment, is referred to by physicists as "the measurement problem."

Quantum Enigma gives a great summary of the development of quantum theory and elucidates the controversy surrounding its various interpretations. Its conclusion is that the origin of energy in the universe can probably not be understood without reference to life and consciousness. And this has made me re-think my opinions about the nature of human life. It seems we really are (as an Episcopal priest once told me) co-creators of the universe.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Literary critics were a little hard on Gladwell's second book, Blink. But it has sold well, so evidently there's a market for interesting presentations of psycho-sociological aspects of our minds and our culture. Gladwell's genius lies in the facts that he writes well, tells great stories, and gets the reader to think. In Blink he writes about how snap decisions, made in the blink of an eye, often serve us very well -- even better than would careful consideration of more information. He also gives examples of how other times snap decisions can lead to disaster. Many of the examples he gives are drawn from the world of marketing, but there are also examples from medicine, police work, and the world of art. Blink is a fun read and will get you thinking, but you will have to come to your own conclusions because the author doesn't really provide one.

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

For fans of science fiction Physics of the Impossible is a big help in separating the currently possible from the "could be done" and the "maybe in another century or two" and the "never happen." To do this, Kaku describes state-of-the-art physics with regard to force fields, invisibility, teleportation, psychokinesis, extraterrestrials, UFOs, time travel, and other subjects. It is all buttressed with historic background in physics written in a clear and entertaining style. Good read, even if you're not especially into science fiction.

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

While there is much to be learned from Musicophila, I do not believe it is as good as Sacks' previous books. It's a little choppy in style and does not have the echoes of far-reaching implications that were so enchanting in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how music can be used as therapy for people who have neurological diseases and to learn that perfect pitch is more frequent among people whose native language is tonal (e.g., Mandarin, Vietnamese.)

Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

Bibi Chen, a purveyor of Asian art in San Francisco, dies right before leaving to take a group of people on a tour of China and Myanmar (Burma). As a recently deceased person, she becomes the omniscient narrator of this wonderful novel, and she watches as the group decides to do the trip without her and nominates someone else as leader. The ghost of Bibi goes along on the trip and chats to the reader about the members of the group and how they fall into the hands of an isolated tribe who believe that one of the members is the "Little White Brother" who has come to save them from persecution by the government. Amy Chen's knowledge of art and insight into the quirks of human nature make Saving Fish from Drowning a great read.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

Capra has written the classic book about the parallels between modern (quantum) physics and eastern mysticism. My copy is the 25th anniversary edition of this work which was originally published in 1975. His description of the evolution of physics is juxtaposed with summaries of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and classic Chinese thought. This makes it very easy to see that both quantum mechanics and religious mysticism point to an understanding of the universe as a dynamic whole. In describing particle physics Capra writes, "The vacuum is far from empty. On the contrary, it contains an unlimited number of particles which come into being and vanish without end." And then he quotes Chinese sage Chang Tsai who wrote "When one knows that the Great Void is full of ch'i, one realizes that there is no such thing as nothingness."

Extraordinary Knowing by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer

"Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind" is the subtitle of this first person account of a highly credentialed (Harvard, Stanford) psychotherapist whose view of reality was upset, midlife, by a freaky experience with a dowser. Her response was a skeptical and intellectual inquiry into psychic phenomena in the course of which she became acquainted with Freud's writings on telepathy, CIA experiments with remote viewing, cutting-edge neuroscience, and quantum mechanics. Mayer focuses on why we humans want to reject the reality of these phenomena which are experienced frequently enough to warrant serious consideration. Mostly she chalks it up to our fear of losing the firmly logical and rational grasp of reality provided by a certain portion of our brains.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Ignore the scurrilous language and the burden of tiny-print footnotes and you can't help being drawn in by this novel about a family with one foot in the Dominican Republic and one in New Jersey. Oscar is a normal but enormously unattractive guy who is often hopelessly in love and in the end gives up his life to it. In the background there are stories of the horrors endured by the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo years. The footnotes that look so daunting at first are actually amusing bits of historic scuttlebutt and the story is all the more vivid for the casual attitude and language of the author.

The God Theory by Bernard Haisch

Subtitled Universes, Zero-Point Fields, and What's behind It All, Haisch's personal take on the nature of God is typical of a spiritual man of science. His answer to "What's behind it all" is consciousness; God is an infinite, timeless consciousness. But he also honors the Kabbalah in noting that "all descriptions of God are necessarily wrong, because an infinite, timeless consciousness can have no characteristics that can be properly translated into physical terms. Love, light, and bliss come the closest."

Haisch is an astrophysicist and Catholic seminary drop-out; currently he says he's an independent Christian who occasionally attends a Unity Church. He believes that scientists who rigidly adhere to a reductionist materialism are as dogmatic as religionists who ignore the principles of science.

Mystics of all religious traditions invert science's assumption that consciousness is a byproduct of the material brain and its neurochemistry. They say that matter does not create consciousness; consciousness creates matter. Quantum mechanics is coming close to agreeing. "In the physics laboratories of today, we acknowledge an enigmatic, but undeniable, relationship between consciousness and the outcome of quantum experiments."

Excellent book for pulling science and spirituality together.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

A Spanish shepherd named Santiago sells his sheep and ventures into northern Africa to travel to the pyramids and find his "treasure." The adventures he has along the way increase his life skills and enhance his spirituality. There is much that is mystical in his experience, the basic lesson being that "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." As a simple moral tale, The Alchemist has been compared to Jonathan Living Seagull and St. Exupery's The Little Prince. It is pretty easy to read but difficult to pull Santiago's experiences into a cohesive philosophy.

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

A twenty-four year old librarian in Slovenia makes an attempt at suicide and lands in an insane asylum. There she meets people whose stories give her insight into how she has lived her own life. Coelho is a Brazilian author who has remarkable clarity about the struggle between conformity and individuation, the need to be true to yourself, and the tenuousness of our understanding about what it is to be insane. With the subtitle "A novel of redemption" Veronika's story is compelling and thought provoking. Great read and probably a good discussion book.

Blindness by José Saramago

José Saramago is a Portuguese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is also a communist and atheist but these things are not obvious in his dark novel, Blindness. In it he posits a city whose inhabitants are stricken with a sudden "white blindness." Perhaps you can read political implications into the resulting chaos, but it was really more about individual suffering.

I found this book difficult to read for a few reasons. First are the run-on paragraphs which sometimes go two pages or more. Within those paragraphs, whole sentences are often not separated by periods but merely by commas. There is lots of dialog but no quotation marks (seems to be publishing style these days). You know someone is speaking just from context and the fact that a word following a comma is capitalized.

Secondly, there are many philosophical ruminations embedded in those long paragraphs and they slow down plot development without really adding much to knowledge of the characters. Thirdly, the book seemed repetitious to me. I was eager to know what would happen to the characters, but dipping into their harsh, bleak world was not exactly fun.

Eat, Pray, Love by Eizabeth Gilbert

Crashing from a divorce and post-divorce affair, Elizabeth Gilbert seeks to regain her strength and independence by taking a year to do something purely pleasurable (eat her way through Italy) followed by something inspirational. From Italy she went to an ashram in India where she honed meditation technique and made the spiritual connection she'd been looking for. Then it was on to Bali to visit an old medicine man. Gilbert's sense of humor, personal insight, and clear reporting make Eat, Love, Pray a joy to read. It is the tale of a highly individualistic and courageous woman who transcends the expectations of society to become more truly herself. Excellent book.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

The winner of several literary awards, Out Stealing Horses comes from Norway and takes place mostly in the forests of the northern part of that country. It is essentially a psychological novel told by a sixty-seven year old man who is coming to terms with his relationship to his father. His revery focuses mainly on the year 1948 when he was fifteen and making the transition from child to young adult. In that sense it is a coming-to-age story, but there is much mystery attached to the figure of his father who had worked for the resistance during World War II and that mystery is very engaging. The time sequence is scrambled but not too hard to follow. The first person hero (Trond) enjoys being close to nature, and there is much description of the Norwegian countryside. Trond's own story as an adult is sketchily given but the astute reader will pick up on some similarities between father and son.

Excellent novel. I will probably suggest it for my book club as I know it created good discussion in another book club.

The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami

Many people believe that the Universe is consciousness. In The Self-Aware Universe Amit Goswami comes up with a coherent theory of how quantum mechanics melds with ancient philosophy and modern psychology to show that "consciousness creates the material world." It is only a theory and I sometimes had trouble following the physics and philosophy, but here is my understanding of what Goswami was saying.

When physicists look closely at particles, they find that sometimes they are in wave form and sometimes in particle form (which has caused at least one writer to refer to them as "wavicles.") Before they express themselves as either a wave or a particle they exist as a bundle of potentialities in "superposition." Then, when measured or observed, they "collapse" into one form or the other.

These terms, "superposition" and "collapse," are standard quantum jargon. Wikipedia says that "collapse" is less popular these days than "decoherence" which means a gradual leakage of stuff into the environment even while its source (the quantum) maintains its superposition (chunk of potentiality) which is by nature unmeasurable. However, the January 2008 issue of Discover says that for the first time ever physicists have been able to watch this process of collapse as it happened in a photon.

If we're not "getting" this, I think it's because the physicists are still a little fuzzy about it.

Anyway, Goswami goes on to apply the "collapse into reality" idea to the nature of human consciousness. He sees our minds as having two modes of functioning: the classical mode which holds our memories, logic, and conditioning; and our rarely accessed quantum mode from which we get creativity. He suggests meditation to better access our quantum mode better.

Science and the Akashic Field by Ervin Laszlo

One of my favorite books is an out-of-print children's book of cosmology. It says that in the beginning there was a force, spirit, or vibration that yawned and decided to create a universe. Once it had done so, it disappeared, because it was now contained within everything in the universe, including you and me. Ervin Laszo is one of several scientist-philosophers writing books that are essentially saying the same thing. Science and the Akashic Field (subtitled An Integral Theory of Everything) refers to a stillness in which nothing exists and yet the potential for everything is there. An explosion (the Big Bang) releases energy that forms itself into patterns, each pulsating ripple connected to every other ripple and replicating in miniature the totality. "The cosmic proto-consciousness that endowed the primeval plenum with its universe-creative potentials becomes a fully articulated cosmic consciousness -- it becomes, and thenceforth eternally is, THE SELF-REALIZED MIND OF GOD." [His full caps.]

I believe this is a good theory although I'm not sure the use of the word "akashic" (Indian for "ether" or all-pervasive space) is really necessary. I think it is pretty much the same as what physicists refer to as the quantum vacuum or in-formation. By suggesting that the universe is really the mind of God, Laszlo seems to be subscribing to the theory that the universe and everything in it is made of consciousness. This is a popular theory, but one he suggests is condemned to remain hypothetical.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Everyone at book club agreed that Hamid's novel is an absolute work of genius. It is the story of a Pakistani who leaves his country at age 18 to attend Princeton where he excelled in his studies and went on to become a highly competent appraiser of businesses. He struggles with a difficult personal life and with his identity as a Pakistani in America around the time of 9/11.

It's the way the story is told that sucks you in and builds tension. The protagonist is in a cafe in Lahore telling an American the story of his life. His is the only voice we hear. The American's remarks go unrecorded and we have only the responses to them given by the Pakistani narrator. It is evident that the American is uneasy and the reader begins to imagine that he is there to do the Pakistani harm. Or is it the other way around?

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

In the aftermath of 911, nine-year-old Oskar Schell struggles with the loss of his father whose calls from the burning World Trade Center he heard on the answering machine while he was alone in the family's apartment in New York City. Jonathan Safran Foer puts the reader in the head of this highly imaginative and sensitive boy as he seeks for meaning in the life and death of his father. The result is sometimes hilarious, but mostly poignant. The back story about his grandparents is a little too bizarre to be believable, but being in Oskar's mind is wonderful even though he often has "heavy boots" and is not feeling "one hundred dollars."

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close would be a good book for discussion, but I probably won't suggest it for my book club, beause I think they would find it weird and perhaps too challanging -- Oskar's voice is distinctive, but narration sometimes switches to other characters and can be a little hard to follow.

March by Geraldine Brooks

The little women of Louisa May Alcott's famous novel were mostly without their father who was away at the Civil War. In March author Geraldine Brooks imagines the adventures of the absent father who joined the Northern Army as a chaplain. Before leaving, he had cast his family into poverty by giving his wealth away in support of abolitionist John Brown. So the March family in Concord, MA struggled to keep body and soul together while Dad went off to fight for the Union and the abolitionist cause.

March is wonderfully imagined and drawn. Brooks is subtle and nuanced in her portrayal of March as an idealist who worries about his courage, his worth, and what role he should be playing in life. A strong underlying theme in the story is the lack of communication between Mr. and Mrs. March. In our book club we talked about how the experiences each had endured during their prolonged separation would impact the marriage. It was clear that March would be returning home a profoundly different man.

Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Do imaginative artists uncover the nature of human consciousness? According to Jonah Lehrer, they do -- at least in the field of neuroscience. His short and very thought-provoking book describes how the work of Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Wolf relates to the current understandings of mind and consciousness as revealed by the neurosciences. Lehrer describes how the work of some artists, originally rejected as jarringly modern, chaotic, or meaningless, can be seen as the artist's way of breaking down old thought patterns to establish new ones. It is as if they have had an intuitive insight into how our neurons and synapses work. I found it utterly fascinating.

Excellent book.

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

Fun story of love and betrayal at the beach.

The Turning Point by Fritjof Capra

I was attracted to this book because its underlying thesis is that developments in quantum mechanics are pointing to a new perception of reality that should have us turning away from Cartesian dualism (mind/body) and Newtonian physics (the world is separate from ourselves and can be measured objectively.)

As Capra puts it, "The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of separate objects, but appears as a harmonious indivisible whole; a network of dynamic relationships that include the human observer and his or her consciousness in an essential way."

He also quotes British physicist James Jeans who in the 1930's said, "Today there is a wide measure of agreement . . . that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine."

Capra's clear and cogent presentation of human intellectual history draws on a wide variety of time periods and cultures. It's also well documented. However, Capra lost me when he started applying his thought to economics and sociology. The Turning Point; Science, Society, and the Rising Culture was first published in 1982 and smacks of 1960's and 1970's intellectual stylishness: the big bad military-industrial complex, small is beautiful, back to the farm, etc. Because I'd just read Friedman's The World Is Flat, I felt much of the economics in The Turning Point was outdated. In an odd way this made the book more interesting because you could assess Capra's views of the future against the way things have actually been turning out.

Very good book about the need to change our perception of reality.

The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson

A young English mathematician named Andrea Aspinall is recruited by British intelligence for duties as a spy in Portugal during World War II. The cast of characters she works for and against are indeed a company of strangers. Many of them are double agents. They appear, disappear, and reappear in Andrea's life throughout the novel's time period of 1940 to 1989. Towards the end, with the Berlin wall coming down, it becomes difficult to keep track of who is spying for whom. The twists and turns and surprises keep happening and it all leaves the reader wondering if anyone really knows anything about their compatriots.

Good spy novel.

The Art of Seeing by Cammie McGovern

A story of two sisters, one of whom is going blind, Cammie McGovern's first novel focuses (pun intended) on the sisters' relationship. There is much overt and implied reference to visual perception (the younger sister is a photographer) as the two girls move into adulthood both supporting and competing with each other. Tightly written, The Art of Seeing has inspired me to go buy McGovern's second book, Eye Contact.

Good novel.

The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman

I can't believe I read the whole book! Thomas L. Friedman is fascinating in his exposition of how communications technology is globalizing and, as he puts it, flattening the world. I'm not sure he really needed to drag it out for 630 pages, but he is so entertaining in the stories he tells, especially of global businesses, that a little repetitiveness is easily forgiven.

His is a hopeful perspective paying much attention to India, China, Malaysia, and other countries with large populations of poor people. They are moving more and more people into the middle class, thanks to outsourcing in this country and the technological ease with which people can do business over great distances. Friedman realizes that Americans are going to have to compete more on a global basis and that we will probably experience some economic displacement because of this, but he believes that with better education Americans will adjust and remain leaders in innovation.

Furthermore, the world should be a better and safer place when wealth is more equitably distributed and more of us have a stake in keeping the global economic system going. It is almost as if what socialism and communism have failed to do, technology is going to bring about naturally with an underpinning of democracy rather than totalitarianism.

Excellent book.

Torch-Bearer to Light the Way by Neal Vahle

Ironically, I developed a cold while reading the biography of a spiritual healer. Torch-Bearer to Light the Way; the Life of Myrtle Fillmore is by Neal Vahle and includes an explanation of how Fillmore and her husband started the Unity movement from their home in Kansas City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Along the way there is much connection with the contemporaneous Christian Science movement, but eventually the Fillmores distanced themselves from it. They felt it is more important to rely on your own inner knowing than to accept the dictates of outside authorities, especially in your spiritual life. And Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy appears to have been pretty dictatorial.

I try not to proofread when I'm reading for my own pleasure but this book was amazingly full of typos and mistakes. At one place I pondered over how a daughter could have been born before her mother until I finally realized that the author had inserted a birth date where he should have used a death date.

Adequate biography if you're interested in Unity.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The ladies of my book club loved On Beauty and were amazed that the author who was born in 1975 was so able to get into the minds of characters in their 50s. She sets up two academic families, one in England and one in Massachusetts. The English family is black and conservative while the American one is mixed race and liberal. There is professional competition and hard feelings between the two patriarchs; and when the English professor comes to teach at his competitor's college, the men take opposing stands with regard to academic politics. In the small town environment their families also develop interesting relationships.

The juxtaposition of liberal and conservative attitudes is interesting and I kept watching to see which the author was going to prefer. However, she revealed no bias and showed both liberals and conservatives as a mix of good and bad traits with a touch of hypocrisy and a little infidelity here and there.

Good novel.