Rupert Sheldrake, The Sense of Being Stared At
Crown, 2003
Dazai, Ningen Shikkaku. Absolutely riveting.
I’ve just begun to read Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Beautiful illustrations in it too by Gustave Dore’ - translation by Henry W. Longfellow.
This one…
Yoooo, that’s the copy I’ve got!
Yep, the illustrations are awesome, but it’s a bit too big to read in bed I find…
Had it for years, but still haven’t read beyond Inferno. I hear that’s the best part anyway. Love’s me some hellish comeuppance and demonic ghouls. Although, all the political references get a bit tedious.
At the mo, I’m half-way through The Karamazov Brothers (getting too much though, I’ve got a modern day attention span. Sorry, D) and I’ve just begun Heart of Darkness.
Romancing the Shadow, by Connie Zweig.
Umberto ecco foucalts pendulum
Christian slater- in pursuit of loneliness
Deleuze’s Difference and Repitition ← not easy!
Kafka, The Trial.
World Without End
by Ken Follett
the bitch in the house… and the bastard on the couch…two different books
The good luck of right now by Matthew Quick
Will order it tomorrow after reading fairly bad reviews from the New York Times book review but countered by a sense of affinity
Hi obe. 
Hello Arcturus, nice hearing from You. I have a confession to make related to oak trees in general : I too have AN oak tree which I believe by now has druid type powers, it’a roots anchoring my soul into an existential terrain. It has redemptive powers which has taken me into it’a power, I was so terrified about loosing “it” that it leas me to a duplication of itself on an old English park scene which I can always see. My daughter asked for it but I will not let it go.
Just finished The Magus of Java (Kosta Danaos). Interesting read but… 
From the blurb at the back of the book:
[i]In 1988 the documentary Ring of Fire was released to great acclaim. The most startling sequence in the film is that of a Chinese-Javanese acupuncturist who demonstrates his full mastery of the phenomenon of ch’i, or bio-energy, by first generating an electrical current within his body, which he uses to heal the filmmaker of an eye infection, and then setting a newspaper on fire with his hand. Ring of Fire caused thousands to seek out this individual, John Chang, in pursuit of instruction. Of the many Westerners who have approached him, John Chang has accepted five as apprentices. Kosta Danaos is the second of those five.
In his years of study with John Chang, Danaos has witnessed and experienced pyrokinesis, telekinesis, levitation, telepathy, and much more exotic phenomena. He has spoken with spirits and borne witness to the afterlife. Most important, he has learned John Chang’s story. John Chang is the direct heir to the lineage of the fifth-century B.C. sage Mo-Tzu, who was Confucius’s greatest rival. His discipline, called the Mo-Pai, is little-known in the West and has never before been the subject of a book. Now, John Chang has decided to bridge the gap between East and West by allowing a book to be published revealing the story of his life, his teachings, and his powers.
The Magus of Java is the story of Kosta Danaos’s apprenticeship with John Chang, and it is the story of the Mo-Pai, who for the past 2000 years have kept their teachings secret. Included are scientific, physics-based explanations of Chang’s paranormal abilities that we in the West consider impossible–abilities witnessed by the author and vividly described. The Magus of Java will surely expedite what may well become the greatest revolution of the twenty-first century–the verification and study of bio-energy.
KOSTA DANAOS is a former engineer for General Dynamics, a martial arts instructor in jujutsu and tai ch’i chuan…[/i]
This is a section of the documentary that introduced John Chang to the west.
youtube.com/watch?v=072oMtT8nnI
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I was assigned Hesse’s Siddhartha for my humanities class (the current chapters are on India), and I have just finished reading it in a single sitting. Given that, going into the book, I was already aware it was going to be more about self-discovery than the religions and cultures of India, and that Kipling’s Kim, which I had read a few years ago, was infinitely more pertinent to the subject matter, I was predisposed to dislike Siddhartha. It says a great deal about a book when one goes into it with scorn and comes out as its advocate. It’s not irreproachable, but it was well worth my time.
It also says a great deal more about you. 
So you were correct in thinking that it was “going to be more about self-discovery”.
You needn’t say but what do you intuit it has taught you? As I said, you needn’t say, but to yourself. 
I myself have had the same experience with books and movies and even with people.
Moby Dick… Is it just me or are there covert undertones of homo-eroticism in this book (even the whale itself is a sperm whale; plus his name is Moby Dick ← ok, that part may just be me, but there are passages that I could quote that are undeniable)? I’m only at Chapter 11 (it’s a huge book) so we’ll have to wait and see.
No, it’s not just you, gib. The book is replete with homo-erotic images and hints especially between Ishmael and Queequeg. I wouldn’t read it through a modern ‘queer eye’ perspective, though. In my opinion, that would miss the point. I think the sexual suggestions should be seen on a psychological level and read with the mindset of the time it was written.
These men are emotional/sexual beings. They’re thrown together through some of the most extreme situations where they’re broken down physically, mentally and emotionally. They have to rely on each other. They have to develop strong bonds between each other or they’ll die. Testosterone is pumping at abnormally high levels over long periods of time. In these circumstances, beliefs about how relationships supposed to work, start to fracture and boundaries begin to crumble.