Book Review - Still Here

Cover image photo taken by David Wilder.

Ram Dass is an American spiritual teacher well-known for his bestselling 1971 book Be Here Now, as well as his personal and professional relationships with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the 1960s, his travels to India and relationship with his guru Neem Karoli Baba, and for founding the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He wrote the book Still Here: Embraced Aging, Changing, and Dying after experiencing a stroke in 1997.

The book covers many topics (mostly related to aging and dying) that a person may encounter on their spiritual path. As we age, many things change with our physical bodies and minds, as well as our roles in society. However, Ram Dass attempts to point out that there is another level of being—the Soul level, which is experiencing reality through a human body while simultaneously being untethered to it.

A section discussing changes with our minds—due to the aging process—introduces the concept of mindfulness practice and covers several mentally-related common fears of aging: senility, loneliness, embarrassment, powerlessness, loss of role and meaning, and depression. Following that, Ram Dass gives some advice for facing those fears head on.

The next section covers bodily changes that occur due to aging, such as discontent with body image, low energy, focusing on a list of physical woes, the difference between healing and curing, working with pain, and disease.

Following the discussion on the body, Ram Dass explains how our societal roles change and shift during the aging process, how to live in the present moment, learning to die, and the effects (both positive and negative) that a stroke had on his life.

I greatly enjoyed this book. Like Be Here Now, it is filled with wisdom and sage advice for spiritual travelers. I would recommend this to anyone interested in stepping further down their own spiritual path, especially those who are currently in the later stages of life. I imagine that Still Here would have a lot to offer the average person that is on the verge of entering the next phase of their Soul journey.

4/5 stars. 206 pages.

Book Review - The Last Laser Show

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this novel from the author in exchange for an honest review. However, rest assured—the following review reflects how I genuinely felt about the book.

The Last Laser Show: A Dark, Laugh Out Loud Comedy is a debut novel from the English author Ian Avery, and it is described as "a wild dark comedy with underlying themes of longing and loss".  It follows the adventures of Arthur Deadman, a writer who is attempting to sell his story and make it in show business.

The writing style is reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, although it has more of a British feel to it and the protagonist doesn't appear to be as crazy and reckless as Thompson was. As a debut novel, I was very impressed by the book. There were some parts that could have been edited a bit better, with spelling or grammatical errors, but it didn't really take away from my overall positive impression of the book.

There certainly are many laugh-out-loud moments, the plot is thoroughly engaging, and the characters are interesting, fresh and believable. The book takes a bit of a turn toward the end, away from action-packed events and focusing more on a fledgling romance, but that change seems to be for the best.

All in all, I'm very glad I read this book. I encourage you to read it if you get a chance!

4/5 stars. 334 pages.

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Book Review - Distrust That Particular Flavor

Cover image photo taken by David Wilder.

William Gibson is best known for his fictional works, including best-selling novels like Neuromancer and Zero History. He also has a fascinating Twitter account, that includes a lot of interesting quips and retweets. It's well worth following, in my opinion. I have read all three of his trilogies (Sprawl trilogy, Bridge trilogy, and Blue Ant trilogy), a short-story compilation titled Burning Chrome (in which he coined the term "cyberspace"), and a collaborative novel he wrote with Bruce Sterling called The Difference Engine, and this book was next in the queue for me (I am in the ongoing process of reading many authors' works in chronological order, Gibson included).

Distrust That Particular Flavor is different from the rest of Gibson's works because it is non-fictional: a collection of essays, articles, speeches, introductions, book and music reviews, travel journalism, etc. that he wrote over the past few decades. It's a refreshing take from an author that I have grown to admire over the past decade or so for his fictional works.

The book takes us to foreign lands like Singapore and Tokyo, analyzes the evolution of communication media, observes of the early forms of the Internet, pays tribute to famous writers like H.G. Wells and George Orwell, details Gibson's obsessive quest to find wrist watches on premodern eBay, and many more interesting tidbits. I especially liked how autobiographical some of the pieces were at times. This was a really easy read for me, which is exactly what I was looking for at this point in time.

For now, Distrust That Particular Flavor provided an excellent set of pieces that should tide me over until I re-dose with Gibson's latest novel, The Peripheral, published in 2014, which I am greatly looking forward to tackling sometime in the (hopefully) near future.

5/5 stars. 260 pages.

Book Review - Buddhism in a Nutshell

For the past five weeks, my girlfriend and I have been taking an introductory level Buddhism course titled Buddhism in a Nutshell at my local Buddhist center, the Kadampa Center in Raleigh, NC. Many of the center's members suggested this book to me over the past several months, and I decided to purchase it for reading alongside the course.

Simply put, I have been completely blown away. This is hands-down the best book I have read about Buddhism to date, at least for someone at a true beginner's level of understanding the basic concepts—like myself. I took notes furiously throughout my reading of the book, and will be putting into practice many of the meditations, dedications, and advice that it contains for several weeks, months, and years to come.

Buddhism in a Nutshell was written by Lama Thubten Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and Venerable Amy Miller and published in 2010. It covers a lot of subtopics under the wider topic of Buddhism, including defining what Buddhism is, a brief biography of who the Buddha was, an explanation of dharma, what karma is and how it works, the four noble truths, the fundamentals of meditation, various approaches of teaching Buddhism, the importance of finding a qualified teacher, the intriguing-yet-confusing (to me!) concept of emptiness, and an appendix featuring a list of recommended reading and resources.

The book also includes an audio CD that contains 11 hours of teachings spoken by Venerable Amy Miller, which I have started but not yet completed. From what I have heard, I can report that these recordings are very helpful for a beginner like myself.

Reading this book alongside the classes I have been attending has been very helpful, as it goes into much more detail than the classes have, and reading the book has suited my personal learning style better than the verbal-based lecture style.

My only criticism whatsoever of Buddhism in a Nutshell is related to the poor editing job that was done prior to its publication. There are misspellings, grammatical and syntactical errors, and punctuation mistakes scattered throughout the book. Normally, that would cause me to bump my rating for a book down, but I am willing to overlook it in this case due to the high quality of the teachings.

Suffice it to say that if you are interested in learning about Buddhism and are looking for an all-around guide that will cover a wide variety of topics without getting so complicated as to confuse you, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book and its audio CD companion. Once I have studied it some more and am comfortable with the teachings, I plan to lend my copy out to those who would like to read it, and will consider purchasing copies for friends and family who would benefit from its teachings.

5/5 stars. 243 pages.

Book Review - The Crack in Space

This is a fairly representative sample of Philip K Dick’s paranoia-fueled alternate universes at its best. The Crack in Space was published in 1966 and is an expanded version of the novella Cantata 140, which was published in 1964. Both are based on the short story Prominent Author.

The novel is set on Earth in the year 2080. The planet struggles with overpopulation when a portal to a parallel version of Earth is discovered, hidden within a vehicle known as a Jiffi-scuttler. There are a lot of moving parts to the story, and it can be a bit difficult to keep them all in mind while reading.

For one, it is an election year (how appropriate for me to read this in 2016), and one of the candidates believes that the alter-Earth can be utilized for moving 70 million people known as "bibs", who have been cryogenically frozen until the overpopulation problem has been resolved, to colonize the planet. However, it is later discovered that this alter-Earth is not uninhabited.

Since I don’t want to give to much of the plot away, I will leave the description of the novel at that.

I found the book to be extremely enjoyable to read. I hesitate to say that it’s one of Dick’s finest works, because there are some truly amazing pieces that I have read along with even more that I have yet to get to. But when it comes down to it, this particular novel really nails the paranoid explanation of alternate realities that Dick was excellent at creating and expressing in some of his novels. It verges on the line of being classified as a horror novel, rather than just a science fiction novel, because a lot of the book strikes a chord similar to that of HP Lovecraft—something utterly wrong and horrible has happened, but it isn’t clearly defined.

At any rate, I’d highly suggest giving this one a read. I’m not sure if I’d rate this in my “Top Ten” Philip K Dick novel’s list yet, but it seems to be a worthy contender at this point.

4/5 stars. 188 pages.