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.