Sensei Anthony Stultz wrote the smallest book I have read yet this year, the 73-page Free Your Mind: The Four Directions of an Awakened Life. Stultz offered a simple and structured approach for people find peace of mind, personal empowerment, and the way to greater freedom in life. A student of both psychology and theology, Stultz [...]

The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth is a fascinating work by the third president of the United States. Thomas Jefferson set out to produce an account of Jesus Christ’s life and teachings that was not tainted by the evangelists, those writers of the four gospels named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and [...]

Thich Nhat Hanh’s 1997 book True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart is a very short and physically small book (the book only has 108 pages and is a little larger than an index card). The book’s physical size is no indication of the breadth of knowledge and thought contained between the covers. Instead, one can [...]

When I was reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, I could not help thinking of the move “Stand By Me.” Like that movie, The Virgin Suicides was apparently narrated by a male peer of the five girls that committed suicide. The whole suicide thing also made me think of the movie “Heathers.” The common thread [...]

Vine Deloria Jr.’s The World We Used to Live In is a treasury of stories that detail the great spiritual powers held by the medicine men and women of the many indigenous tribes that once roamed free in North America. Deloria explored the following: dreams and visions, spiritual powers (including healing, location, and prediction), communication [...]

2008 was a pivotal year in my life because of significant advancements I made in several areas of my life, especially in intellectual and spiritual matters. I attribute these advancements to the words and ideas found in these ten books. Of the fifty books I completed this year, these ten had the most influence.

Open Mind [...]

While digging through Jodi’s laundry basket of unwanted books, Mikita Brottman’s The Solitary Vice: Against Reading caught my eye because it looked controversial. As a chronic book reader, I was intrigued by Brottman’s search to find out why reading is so great. For some reason, I had expectations of a great philosophical debate concerning reading [...]

Margaret Atwood’s Payback is an examination of how debt and wealth work in modern humanity. I became fascinated with Atwood after watching an interview she participated in with Bill Moyers on the PBS show “Faith and Reason”. Atwood has religious views that are similar to the views I hold, which made me interested in this [...]

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki wrote Mysticism, Christian and Buddhist in 1957 as a way of comparing Buddhist and Christian mysticism, particularly the concepts of infinity, eternity, and the transmigration of souls. Suzuki was a Japanese writer of many essays and books on Buddhism, Zen, and Shin. In this particular book, Suzuki compared Buddhist mysticism with sermons [...]

My latest trip to the Half-Price Books store ended with me purchasing two books, one of which being Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness. Those familiar with writings on vocation know Palmer’s work well, as he is a leader in helping people tap into themselves to unlock their life’s work and meaning. In A Hidden Wholeness, [...]