The Overstory by Richard Powers
“This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”
“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. . . .”
This is Happiness by Niall Williams
“Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprising or beautiful, but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something alive that has caused you to realise once again how astonishing life is, and you leave the book, gallery or concert hall with that illumination, which feels I’m going to say holy, by which I mean human raptness.”
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
My first time reading this book. Plenty can (and has) be said about it, but my personal takeaway was simply that moral relativism is much more extreme than I previously appreciated. I can sit here and say, "I'm not a murderer. I would never murder." But all it takes is a handful of bombs or a solar flare, and all of a sudden my neighbor is dinner, and the "self defense" argument becomes flimsy at best. Pair this with The Overstory and the fact that when I discuss murder, we immediately assume human murder, and not the casual murder (although we use softer language) that we all commit every day against other living, breathing, thinking, talking, feeling things, and the topic of morality starts to look even more interesting.
The Best of Me by David Sedaris
The greatest hits - perfect for anyone new to Sedaris.
“If you read an essay in Esquire and don’t like it, there could be something wrong with the essay. If it’s in The New Yorker, on the other hand, and you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you.”
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
“Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. Emotions arrive in all their newborn nakedness, unprotected from the harsh light of scrutiny and, especially, the pitiless glare of irony. Platitudes that wouldn't seem out of place on a Hallmark card flow with the force of revealed truth. Love is everything. Okay, but what else did you learn? No - you must not have heard me; it's everything! Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude? No, I decided. A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is: the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight.”
“You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.”
"Whether occasioned by drugs or other means, these experiences of mystical consciousness are in all likelihood the primal basis of religion. (Partly for this reason Richards believes that psychedelics should be part of a divinity student’s education.)"
“A happy brain is a supple and flexible brain, he believes; depression, anxiety, obsession, and the cravings of addiction are how it feels to have a brain that has become excessively rigid or fixed in its pathways and linkages—a brain with more order than is good for it. On the spectrum he lays out (in his entropic brain article) ranging from excessive order to excessive entropy, depression, addiction, and disorders of obsession all fall on the too-much-order end. (Psychosis is on the entropy end of the spectrum, which is why it probably doesn’t respond to psychedelic therapy.)”
Based on a True Story by Norm MacDonald (audio)
“Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha, like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange, like a Woody Allen marriage.”
Conscious by Annaka Harris
A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
Exploring the evolving definitions, philosophies, and scientific findings that probe our limited understanding of consciousness.
“Our experience of consciousness is so intrinsic to who we are, we rarely notice that something mysterious is going on. Consciousness is experience itself, and it is therefore easy to miss the profound question staring us in the face in each moment: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious?”
A Separate Peace by John Knowles (audio)
“It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.”
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (audio)
Novel about adventures and misadventures growing up in North Korea.
“Where we are from stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.”
Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson (audio)
“When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him.”
“Socrates’ method of building an argument through gentle queries, he “dropped my abrupt contradiction” style of argument and “put on the humbler enquirer” of the Socratic method. By asking what seemed to be innocent questions, Franklin would draw people into making concessions that would gradually prove whatever point he was trying to assert.”
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
“Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).”
On Having No Head by D.E. Harding
Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious
“The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see ... Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people. HUANG-PO (9th C.)”
Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck (audio)
Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live
“Almost everyone who feels stymied, aimless, directionless is carrying an unresolved emotional wound. A lack of enthusiasm for life is always a sign that the deep self is hurt. Every person's essential self is pure, productive energy, and yours will return and send you into a fulfilling life almost automatically if your psyche is in good repair.”
A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost (audio)
“Super religious people are basically saying, “You have to see Jesus! Otherwise you’ll never get to heaven!” And I keep thinking, Yeah... but I don’t want to go to heaven if you’re gonna be there...”
Is This Anything by Jerry Seinfeld (audio)
“Adulthood is the ability to be totally bored and remain standing.”
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (audio)
“The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder."
The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku (audio)
Speculative history connecting the Greek mysteries of Eleusis (psychedelic ritual involving ergot) to the Christian sacrament.
“Without the wine, there is no Dionysus. And without the Eucharist, there is no Christianity.”
The Science of Storytelling by Will Store (audio)
“We experience our day-to-day lives in story mode. The brain creates a world for us to live in and populates it with allies and villains. It turns the chaos and bleakness of reality into a simple, hopeful tale, and at the centre it places its star – wonderful, precious me – who it sets on a series of goals that become the plots of our lives."
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (audio)
“The pencil is mightier than the pen.”
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”
“The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.”
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr (audio)
“I’ve said it’s hard. Here’s how hard: everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little.”
“In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right.”
Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck (audio)
“There's more God in one hurt child than in all the religions humans ever created.”
San Fransicko by Michael Shellenberger (audio)
Not sure what I think about this - homelessness, addiction, and public policy on these topics are of course complicated - this is one attempt to analyze a famous example that hasn't been working.
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