The Way Things Are

Another book for my mysticism class. Huston Smith was my professor's professor at Syracuse University back in the day, and this book is a collection of interviews that have been conducted with him throughout the years. Friend of Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and the Dalai Lama (just to name a few), Smith uses his position as a spiritual guide to inspire others on their personal religious path.

I really like his approach to religion. He speaks a lot about finding your spiritual roots, which means going back to the religion you were born into and discovering the mystical aspects of it, instead of finding a whole new religion to adopt and follow. It's a weird concept for me because I have mixed feelings about Catholicism, but I'm interested. So I guess the book succeeded in that sense.

8/10

477 points

Optimism

For Humanities I read Voltaire's Candide. It was a quick read that followed the misadventures of Candide and his companions around the world. This is a satire about, among many things, the "Perfect" world in which we live. Terrible events continue to afflict Candide and co. as Candide attempts to retain the belief that "all is for the best". The book is entertaining to say the least. I've enjoyed most of the satires I have read and I would consider this one worth reading.

6.0/10

344 Points

The Essential Mystics

To be honest, I probably would not have finished reading this book if it weren't for this contest, so yay for motivation! The Essential Mystics, by Andrew Harvey, outlines the mystical aspects of the world's major religions and offers excerpts from holy books to back up his assertions. About 90% of the book was excerpts and reading that kind of stuff isn't really my thing. Our class discussions, on the other hand, are awesome and my professor is able to make the class interesting and relatable, so I'm thankful for that.

4/10

216 points

... And she don't care

I finally finished Ticket to Ride, an autobiographical account of radio reporter Larry Kane, the only American journalist to accompany The Beatles on every stop of their first American tour in 1964. The book basically follows each stop on the '64 tour, covers highlights from the '65 tour and tacks on a few other encounters Kane had with the Fab Four afterward. The subject was interesting, but I hated the way he wrote the book. After the first few chapters, you get sick of reading the same thing over and over: the fans went wild, crying, throwing jellybeans, trampling each other, etc. But I guess if you were actually there, it never got old. You could tell the author was really conservative back in the sixties, because he'd end each chapter alluding to some big scandal that happened at the next city, and all that happened was a fan offered him sexual favors to meet The Beatles or something. He didn't seem to be close enough to the band to get the nitty gritty details, and he only included a couple excerpts from his interviews in each chapter.

5/10
270 pages

The Road

As you all know I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The story is rather haunting. A father and son travel to the coast not necessarily hoping to find anything but they know that they cannot survive the winter where they were. The style of writing was interesting, where the narrator has a seemingly infinite vocabulary and a distinct diction, and the characters are curt and repetitive. I think the ending is a fair compromise and accomplishes its function.

8/10

487 Points

Into the Jungle

For my Vertebrates class I just finished Into the Jungle: Great Adventures in the Search for Evolution by Sean B. Carroll. This is a collection of nonfiction essays and stories about various naturalists and their adventures. The books features Darwin, Wallace, and Andrews among other famous naturalists as they travel the globe. The later stories focus on select organisms crucial to understanding the methods of evolution as well as vertebrate anomalies. This is a really interesting collection. The naturalists all had such fascinating lives. This book made me want to travel to some remote area of the globe and classify species or locate ancient fossils.

7/10

383 points

Eaarthlings

Bill McKibben's newest book, Eaarth, wasn't as easy of a read as his last that I read. This book focused more on the harsh realities of our current situation- the state of our planet, how this has occurred over the past few decades, and what we can feasibly do about it. It was, essentially, depressing. Which is why it is so very important for people to start facing these realities, instead of continuing to pretend that they don't exist, or that they aren't effecting us.

Key points included moving away from unlimited growth as an economic ideal and learning how to turn towards local communities- which may be a bit repetitive, but at this point, absolutely necessary.

8/10

412 points