Unmarked Grave

There is only a week remaining before this blog winds down to a close. Oh, I'm not abandoning it. But it was meant to run six months. Here we are at the end of the sixth; I no longer have the obligation to make a textual accounting of every book that passes through my hands. Entries are no longer mandatory! I can read all kinds of secret books which none of you will ever know about . . . Presumably there is nothing hindering me from continuing to make entries, but let us be honest, my friends: I was always better at chewing through the books than I was at reporting on them.

In a way, Booked Under shut down weeks ago. See the title up there? Just above the first paragraph? (For those of you too unstimulated to bother moving your eyes back up, it says "Unmarked Grave".) This post is so named because there have been many books these past few weeks. I've lost count of them, but they were all novels. You could ask me to tell you what they were but my memory would not support your request. It's all a damp haze. There was that trilogy about the farm girl foot ball player, a weird one about a kid with flaps of skin running from his arms to his rib cage, another trilogy by Sanderson (brilliant brilliant brilliant, each installment more so than the last) and some other books not coming to mind. A bevy of novels came to me, were read swiftly and covertly, and were then buried quietly in a dark, out of the way place. A minute of silence, please, for the nameless paperbacks and forgotten hours that were my life for the month of June.




That wasn't a minute. Maintain your silence, if you please.




Okay. Thanks. I think we are permitted to move on.

Well, move along there. The whole point of the silence was to give us time to clear our minds and wash away all the meaningless fiction. Get out of here! Go read something wonderful!

Mass burial

We're not caught up. Instead the backlog has mushroomed and festered, nursing itself into mammoth proportions. So it seems to me as I contemplate making ten distinct entries. The prospect of gnawing through the content of all those books before pouncing on the next great read inspires me to wilt and pine away. I liked most of them, but thoughtfully representing what I made of them and took from them in several paragraphs each would take a week or two, and I want to live life. I want to breathe in sunshine. In a nod to summer (and a pity gift to myself) let's put them all away here. List 'em off, give them some cursory comment and move on. Deal? Alright then.


Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide (Coloroso)
Grim in subject, softened by the hopeful voice of Barbara Coloroso. She wrote the book believing that an ability to recognize genocide and appreciate its nature is the key to preventing future genocides. In essence, she claims that genocide is the graduated form of bullying, an exaggerated expression of contempt. It is not war. It uses war as a mask, an excuse, and a distraction. The book wasn't fun, but well worth the time.

How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie)
A book on the art of friendly manipulation. There's some good stuff in there. Dale Carnegie explains why criticism doesn't work so well, why a soft touch and a sweet word will punch a hole through most defences, and how to go about explaining what you need. Deservedly a classic.

Blink: The power of thinking without thinking (Gladwell)
Written by Gladwell and therefore fabulous. However, not my favourite among his books. Outliers still holds my full allegiance. If you read only one Gladwell, go for Outliers. If you are sensible about your reading, you will consume all of them.

Till We Have Faces: A myth retold (Lewis)
My second time through. It was as mesmerizing and meaningful as ever. As a novel, this is the book I think of when I want to show someone expert character development. As a work of philosophical magnificence, it is one of the foundations to my conception of love and a measuring stick when I'm questioning what I mean when I say I love someone.

The Five Love Languages (Chapman)
Borrowed from a canny friend who assured me of its great worth. I read it and quickly thereafter purchased it to give to someone I love. The next book I buy will be my own copy of Chapman's explication on love and its expression. It would be awesome if you were to read it too. Tell me, what's your language?

Strange News from Another Star (Hesse)
Don't know if I get along nicely with Mr. Hesse. He's thinking hard and reaching high, but I don't know if I like where he's going or how he's getting there. He is an idealist. That puts us in some accord. But what ideals I can extract from his hints and allegories are either not ones I share or similar but altered enough to force strange pursuits down dour paths. If colours can be put to feeling, then his work gives me a dingy grey that dreams in white.

The Reluctant Widow (Heyer)
Another Heyer-reading friend stocks this one on her personal shelf and tells me Reluctant Widow, and not Talisman Ring, is the best of Heyer. I cannot agree.

Death by Black Hole and other cosmic quandaries (Tyson)
A touch repetitive yet reliably delightful. Here, try this:

"Turns out that some celestial bodies give off more light in the invisible bands of the spectrum than in the visible. And the invisible light picked up by the new telesopes showed that mayhem abounds in the cosmos: monstrous gamma-ray bursts, deadly pulsars, matter-crushing gravitational fields, matter-hungry black holes that flay their bloated stellar neighbours, newborn stars igniting within pockets of collapsing gas. And as our ordinary, optical telescopes got bigger and better, more mayhem emerged: galaxies that collide and cannibalize each other, explosions of supermassive stars, chaotic stellar and planetary orbits. And as noted earlier our own cosmic neighbourhood - the inner solar system - turned out to be a shooting gallery, full of rogue asteroids and comets that collide with planets from time to time. Occasionally they've even wiped out stupendous masses of Earth's flora and fauna. The evidence all points to the fact that we occupy not a well-mannered clockwork universe, but a destructive, violent, and hostile zoo.

Of course, Earth can be bad for your health too. On land, grizzly bears want to maul you; in the oceans, sharks want to eat you. Snowdrifts can freeze you, deserts dehydrate you, earthquakes bury you, volcanoes incinerate you. Viruses can infect you, parsites suck your vital fluids, cancers take over your body, congenital diseases force an early death. And even if you have the good luck to be healthy, swarms of locusts could devour your crops, a tsunami could wash away your family, or a hurricane could blow apart your town.

So the universe wants to kill us all. But, as we have before, let's ignore that complication for the moment."

Is it not yummy?

The Blue Castle (Montgomery)
Gables have I hated, Castle have I loved. Odd, that.

Never Cry Wolf (Mowat)
Mowat is replete with deft description, delicate sarcasm, smooth irony, and delicious language. However, do not resort to him for happy feel good material. He is too much a realist to soften the edges for us. In me he achieved his objective, which was to inspire respect and affection for the wolf and bitter antagonism for those who set about to exterminate it.


Clean slates are lovely. Breathtaking. Why have I denied myself this pleasure for so long? Off we go, then. Next book: Not a novel! Full entry! A week or two from now!

The Name of This Book is Secret (Bosch)

Not much to say here. It's a novel. (By now my shame is well established so I'm not going to mention it.) The style and tone are very similar to the Series of Unfortunate Events - factual, a little spare, and with that grim glee. And, like the Unfortunate Events, Secret is totally lacking in character development. This is not to say it wasn't fun. The chatty narrative proceeds with a playful tone and tinkers with the standard format of narration. Near the end a couple of pages are lined and and without text so that you can write the chapter yourself. There's a false ending or two and chapters about the writing of the story instead of the story, and several mysteriously loose ends. (The narrator, for example, never explains who he is and how he knows about all this.)

However, the most distinctive component was the relentlessly efficient foreshadowing. Every plot turn was apparent two to three pages before I actually arrived there because of the precise planting of details. Sometimes I prefer a book that doesn't set it up so neatly. They don't have to tell me everything. Unexpected can be good. Revelations that I could not have foreseen are acceptable.

Alright. It looks like I have read nothing but novels for the last month. This is not so. There are four other books I have neglected to report, and only one of them was a novel, and it was meat not milk. I am not so reprobate as often appears. Patience please. There will be more entries to come over the next few days. By this time next week we'll be caught up. Pats on the back all around.

The Talisman Ring (Heyer)

Another novel. I blush. This specimen is, I am assured, the best of Georgette Heyer's work. The copyright information tells me it was first published in 1936, and the writing style fits nicely in that era. There was a time when novels were more measured, a little drier, and still possessed of restraint. Fictional characters had more respect. They were granted a portion of privacy through the right to retain some details behind a shield of decency and propriety. Georgette Heyer endows her characters with generous helpings of dignity.

What's left when you cordon off the visceral sensationalist element? Elegant wit, softly crackling conversation, good natured drollery, a dash of adventure, a tinge of romance, and a soundly trounced villain. And, naturally, the proposal of a marriage or two just as everything is winding down. The whole is draped in delicately figured language and tinted with the high tones of refined society. For once I was not brow beaten into emotionally engaging with the characters, and the book was all the more delightsome for affording this freedom. I may return to Heyer some day for frothy summer reading.

Princess Ben (Murdock)

What happened to avoiding novels? Um. Permit me to explain myself. As you might have noted, the previous post concerned itself with a novel also, the consumption of which was fully justified - I would like to emphasize this: fully justified - by the nature of the story. While the events therein were fictional it wasn't so much about plot as ideals, aspirations and the false face of failure. I would read it again. I would buy it and add it to my shelf. I would pass it around to people I love. It isn't novels I set out to avoid but the cheap, easy entertainment they so frequently embody.

The present post I make with sheepish expression and cringing. (Yes, I have ceased explaining myself and now move on to self accusation. Forgive me if I slightly grovel.) Princess Ben is without justification, being book candy of the most pleasant and unremarkable sort. There is a princess and her life sucks. She suffers, rebels, finds a new passion, wanders, is exiled, and returns in triumph. It's the kind of well worn fictional fare that I insatiably lap up, gorging myself on escapism and impossible fantasy. Princess Ben is an especially appealing example of its kind. It's charming, fun, adventuresome, and built around an imperfect and amiable character. She progresses nicely through the chapters and by the end I could not have been more on her side. This piece of confectionery was delectable. I didn't regret it while I read it. It is only now, with powdered sugar dusting my cheeks and my teeth dissolving in my head, that I remember this is precisely the edible from which I was endeavoring to abstain. Oops.

Fantasy lovers take note. For a light, breezy read check into Princess Ben. For nutritionally rich mind mulch, go elsewhere. (Try the nonfiction section. I hear they have books there too.)

The Journey to the East (Hesse)

Three of my exquisite associates read this obscure little novel recently. One of them described the plot and said the book made her think differently. How can you resist such a recommendation? By working hard, I suppose, but I am lazy so I borrowed the book. Having finished it ten minutes ago, I can say this:

I don't know what happened. I don't know what it all means. There are glimmerings of profound insight all throughout but it sways unsteadily through the fantastic and the metaphorical. In the end I can't say what did and did not happen. I couldn't tell you how it ended. Remember that book, The Giver? He goes blazing down the hill in his silly sled and has that vision of the village? Either he was saved by the most freakish happenstance or he is dead. More probably he is dead. But you can't know for sure because there isn't another chapter to tell you what the cabbage just happened. The book is over and you're going to have to accept the indecorous lack of resolution.

Would I corroborate my friend's recommendation? Absolutely. The solid portion of the book - the text on the pages, the descriptions and declarations - was opaque and muddled. But something fluttered behind the pages like a crimson silk trapped in a milk jug. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was vivid and clear. It insisted on a return to faith, conviction, and courage. It hinted at the richness of an inner life that seeps out of steady intervals of contemplation, prayer, and renewal of purpose. With such advantages, even the most impenetrable narrative merits a look.

A sample:

"Finally, he could no longer hide and contain himself. His suffering became too great, and you know that as soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward. Brother H. was led to despair in his test, and despair is the result of each earnest attempt to understand and vindicate human life. Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side."

Tao Teh Ching (Lao Tzu)

I'm getting behind. I closed this book some weeks ago and no longer remember what I might have wanted to say about it. (The same holds for two other books. Agh. By now I'll have to reread them before I can offer any lucid commentary. Remember this: procrastination tortures before it kills.)

I am spared the effort in this case because like this blog, reading the Tao Teh Ching is a list item from "The Homeland" and so there's a post already in existence. Rather than wracking my memory for additional remarks or pasting the text straight over (loathsome redundancy) I have crafted for you a link. May you have joy of it.

Outliers: The story of success (Gladwell)

Malcolm Gladwell is gifted. He, of course, would argue with me. He might tell me that he's spent more time preparing to write and writing than some people spend sleeping. He'd say that his cultural and familial background (as well as multitudinous opportunity and favourable circumstance) shoved him into his chosen profession at a time when his brilliance could be best leveraged for success. He'd suggest that what I call 'a gift' he calls 'expertise fostered by the right background and plenty of experience.' He'd insist that I not attribute his excellence the the wrong quirks of fate. Quirks of fate there may have been, but they are not the ones I imply with my uninformed choice of wording.

Fine. Starting over then: Malcolm Gladwell is excellent as a writer and as a thinker. His book Outliers is a monument to his skills in both areas. I love how the book is arranged. I love the titles and subtitles at the beginning of each chapter, I love how Gladwell uses italics, I love the crackle behind his writing. What is more, I fully approve of the way he uses exclamation marks. I am difficult to please concerning exclamation marks. He has probably received loftier accolades, but I take this minute victory as evidence that he is remarkable in many ways, including the small ones that count precisely because of their triviality. Gladwell gets everything right. Everything.

Well, mercy me. All this gushing, and I haven't yet mentioned the contents of Gladwell's masterwork.

So what's this book about? The subtitle claims it is "the story of success." It's an unimpressive description. Bookstores are packed to the cobwebs with works claiming to contain the secrets to riches, health, beauty, happiness, and a devoted clientele. This is not another book about positive thinking or self management. Instead Gladwell explains that:

• remarkable ability is the reliable product of a given number of hours in practice
• a high IQ does not guarantee success, particularly where there is a lack of practical intelligence
• practical intelligence, far from being innate, is a skill best transmitted by a particular approach to parenting called "concerted cultivation"
• meaningful work is the best way to both competence and happiness
• plane crash incident rate per country corresponds with that country's Power Distance Index and the accompanying changes in communication across a status gradient, and from this we can conclude that
• where you come from dictates the norms and expectations you will have absorbed, and therefore proscribes the situations in which you will succeed unless
• you recognize how your traditions are messing with you and take steps to change them, in which case, no problems
• Asians are our mathematical superiors because their language and rice paddies conspire to make them that way
• the previous point is actually valid for reasons which require a chapter's worth of explication - which he kindly provides
• children can be really smart if their schooling consumes all of their waking hours six days a week
• a twelve hour work week is within your grasp if you are willing to move to the Kalahari desert to hunt and gather with the !Kung bushmen
• his awesome hair comes to him legitimately, through tribal African ancestry

Outliers is about absolutely everything, as it might pertain to remarkable (and even unremarkable) accomplishments. So it seems to me, but that is because I am dazzled. While Gladwell's subject matter is wildly diverse and unpredictable, Outliers is deliciously coherent. Hockey players, Jamaican slaves, commercial airline pilots, Chinese peasantry, geniuses, trigger happy Southerners, and Jewish lawyers gather in precise array to answer a well defined question. You can find the organizing theme of Gladwell's book in a single paragraph from the middle of the first chapter:

"Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play - and by "we" I mean society - in determining who makes it and who doesn't."

The Princess Bride (Goldman)

On my first time through "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure" I thought it was the greatest thing ever written. That was more than five years ago. The second pass was less amazing, but only because I knew the end from the beginning. When there is no foreknowledge, it's an intense little read. When you have memory for an oracle, the adventures of Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik and Inigo (oh, always Inigo) are less engrossing but still epic and hilarious. With some judicious editing it could make a cracking good bedtime story. But I have no kiddies, and so it is instead a most satisfying conclusion to the illicit novel binge.

Forward, then! First, a book fast so that I am forced to pay attention to my own affairs. (Yes, yes, we're purging. Call it reader's bulimia. I won't argue.) After about two weeks I'll dive back into books, hopefully confined to more enlightening fare. CS Lewis, my old friend, come to my arms . . .

The Seer and the Sword (Hanely)

Some people are chain smokers. I'm a chain borrower. One book went back to its shelf of origin in someone else's home, and The Seer and the Sword came back with me. My friend told me that this one belonged in her canon of all time favourites. Since she was right about the highland warrior, I gambled on the acuity of her judgement and gave another afternoon on her recommendation.

Her correctness is enjoying a streak of at least two. Hanley's novel is unpretentiously excellent. She doesn't try to be clever, she doesn't wrench at her audience's emotion, and her ideas aren't keyed to impress, bemuse and overwhelm. What we have here is a solid fantasy and a satisfying story. It has that elegant simplicity that never seems to find its way into adult fiction.

To change topic, this will be the eighth novel of the year and I'm only two months in. Clearly this is unacceptable. Once I finish The Princess Bride (>.<) we'll be off on the smart books again. For a couple of months at least. It'll mean I spend less time reading extracurricular books because works low in plot and high in thought density just don't go down so well in a single gulp. Reviews will take more thought, because it'll be a survey of what I learned and not these tedious little reviews. Net effect: I won't need to post so often. Every month instead of every week? Please yes.

Enchantment (Card)

Sleeping beauty in Russia with time travel and the most formidable and despicable witch known to folklore. Wheeee! The words leave my mouth raw, but Orson Scott Card has again produced something clever, original, convincing, and very intelligent. I don't want to like this man, but he delivers. Just remember the standard Card preparations: realize that while he is LDS (was LDS? I don't know anymore) you are still liable to trip over the harsh, the crude, and the sickening; understand that he can make you approve of his characters even when their actions are unlovely or offensive; and prepare to be charmed by hints of whimsy even when they buried under plenty of grit and decay. And, above all, be wary because you're going to enjoy the book to your shame.

Maybe that's enough dancing around my confession. Here it is unadorned: I devoured that book, squirming heedlessly through the nasty bits because I was hooked, and now I feel that Card has gotten the better of me once again. That miscreant. I need to stop seeking him out.

My only consolation is that I didn't buy the book.

Elantris (Sanderson)

Here's that rare thing, a fantasy that recreates the genre. I have never before read a novel quite like this. There are fallen gods, an imploding city of the damned, ploys to fill the throne, religious war and conquest, unrequited love, villains worth respecting, and plenty of death and sacrifice. It's political adventure dabbling in the supernatural. I really hate political intrigue stories. I really liked this one. Sanderson has got it going on.

A Fistful of Sky (Hoffman)

Commenting on this yarn might be pointless. There isn't so much for me to say. The basics,then.

Did I approve of it? Mm. Not really.
Did I enjoy it? Sort of. Hard to say.
What was it about? A late blooming daughter in a family of witches. Ho hum, rum dee dee.

It was generic and had none of that delicious sparkle that some authors can sink into any premise. If I had to pick a saving grace, it would be the excellent descriptions of obesity, food, clothing . . . everything, really. Here is a story without much to say and nowhere to go, but places, objects and people are beautifully drawn and warm to the touch.

Again, no sample because I'm done thinking about it.

Flash Forward (Sawyer)

I have yet another novel to report, because this is the rut in which I am squatting at the moment. This book hooked me with the premise. All of humanity simultaneously and inexplicably loses consciousness for about two minutes. For a lot of people it's a natural disaster. Planes drop out of the sky, there are innumerable traffic accidents, and staircases become death traps. For the survivors it's a supernatural event; most experienced a two minute jump of consciousness twenty years down their timeline. The book is fiction wrapped around a hypothesis. What would silly sentient bipeds do if they had some idea of the scenery down the road? How do they adjust to a known future?

It's a cold read, but the chill is somewhat offset by the exploration of various theories for time, the observer effect, and predestination. Don't we love physics at play?

A sample:

"A standard argument in favor of the many-worlds interpretation is the thought experiment of Schrodinger's cat: put a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that has a fifty-fifty chance of being triggered during a one hour period. At the end of the hour, open the box and see if the cat is still alive. Under the Copenhagen interpretation - the standard version of quantum mechanics - until someone looks in, the cat is supposedly neither alive nor dead, but rather a superposition of both possible states; the act of looking in - of observing - collapses the wave function, forcing the cat to resolve itself into one of two possible outcomes. Except that, since the observation could go two ways, what MWI proponents say really happens is that the universe splits at the point at which the observation is made. One universe continues on with a dead cat; the other, with a living one."

Much Ado in the Moonlight (Kurland)

This was a novel I pilfered from a friend's shelf and read over a weekend. It was nothing spectacular, and certainly not life changing (except for the mysterious disappearance of a weekend). That said, at least it was pleasant. Some parts made me laugh, and for a romance it was less repulsive than I might have expected. (And clean! Oh happy day. When my friend assured me that it was lacking in moral trash I assumed she meant that in a strictly relative sense. After all, the back cover makes explicit mention of a "gorgeous Highland warrior". I doubted with reason.)

Would I recommend it to all my friends? Certainly not. It took me at least four chapters to fit myself to the writing style and then some extra patience to wait out the handful of characters that Kurland keeps around so they can do nothing much over several pages at several locations in the plot. That said, it isn't without merit. For those already converted to the genre, this one's a solid pick.

No sample because I'm not paging through it to find one. :)

Ever (Levine)

Some fiction is written in lush, rococo prose. Details crowd together and the story swells into a clotted mass of sensation. It could be an approximation of how we usually experience life. At any one moment there are dozens of details that pile together to shape our experience of that minute, those seconds, this splinter of awareness. The more detail an author can provide, the closer we can come to living in their story. Without description you have a sparse summary of events, a newspaper article. Or maybe you have something worse - Passage to Zerahemla, for instance. We already know we're never going there again.

Ever is another species of literary animal. There is no layering of detail, and yet neither is it dry fact presentation. Rather, Levine demonstrates the discerning use of detail. She crafts brief and simple sentences, offers frugal descriptions, and somehow creates a world all the more vivid for its few colours. For extra kick, Levine laces her story with wry humour. This novel is an example of story telling done well. I very much liked this one.

A sample:

"I see Puru's fingers for the first time. The god of destiny bites his fingernails."

Passage to Zarahemla (Heimerdinger)

Um. There was this silly thought that too many "idea books" creates a certain staleness, and that I needed to read something light and fun to keep me fresh. Right now I'm slogging through a book about genocide, and ergh. It is not filling me with light, love, and buoyancy. So I picked up a novel by Heimerdinger hoping for adventure and stupid characters who get a clue somewhere before the end pages. This is, after all, what he's good at.

Now I'm on the hunt for another novel, because I still feel stale. The book read like a flat description of a film. I consider it a serious tactical error to approach prose in this way. The boon of books is that they have the space and time to be something other than surface. They can show you more of the characters and get you further inside another's skin than any movie. Movies are limited to sight of beauty, colour and motion. Books can transmit touch, smell, and sense of beauty along with all the other things. They lack only music. This piece flunked everything. I was happy to snap it shut when it tediously pottered to a close.

A sample (because I will not be alone in my torment):

She studied him for a long moment. "It can't be good," she began finally. "I mean, I don't think it could ever be good to feel so much hate."

The statement seemed to irritate him. "Hate is all I have right now."

"But you can't change things," said Kerra. "You can't change what happened. Maybe you should let it go."

He bristled. "Those are the words of a coward. I will change things. I will fight for my people."

"That's not what I mean. I mean . . . Wow. I'm sorry. It's just . . . Nothing lasts, Kiddoni. Especially things like love. You can count on it."

Kiddoni's face softened. "Do you believe in nothing?"

"Not really." Kerra shrugged. "Not much."

She could feel tension building inside. Finally she leaped to her feet. "Ahhh! This is all so crazy! It isn't right. It's not real. You're not real. Everything -- this miracle -- it could all go away at any instant, and I'd never see you again."

Kiddoni reached out one more time to take her hand. "But it's here now. We're here."

Kerra pulled away. "I have to go. They'll start looking."

Do you see what I have endured? And now you think I am an idiot.

Fair enough.

And There Was Light (Lusseyran)

Now and then the flood of fractured happenstance curves a little aside, and there floating on its crest is a thing so beautiful that there is very little to say. You can describe it perhaps, you can summarize, but all your accounting cannot stretch around the object you describe. Nothing you can say will explain why it is lovely. And so, to keep it whole, it is best to say nothing. Only show where it is and then let it describe itself.

Read the book, if you have any curiosity. I will not introduce it because it is too far above me to be sketched with my words. But let me say this: the book gave me a thirst for fire and a yearning for the bright darkness described by its blind author. It painted the strength of kindness and the wisdom of faith. I felt lighter and more full because I read it. If I could find a stronger recommendation I would give it also.

A sample:

"And now, in conclusion, why has this Frenchman from France written this book in the United States to present to his American friends today? Because today he is America's guest. Loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him and reaching beyond all boundaries.

The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us, even if we have no eyes."

The Anatomy of Peace (Arbinger Institute)

Someone was reading this book on the bus a few years ago and I was intrigued. Later I heard it was written by the Arbinger Institute and was less intrigued. Their book Leadership and Self-Deception presented some sound ideas but was irritating to read. It was an idea book masquerading as a novel. Philosophy wrapped around a fictional framework that pretends to be a story but is really an obedient usher . . . Something about that gets up my nose. The Anatomy of Peace resorts to the same sad tactic. It's still worth reading, but that doesn't make it a joyful undertaking. Ignoring the eerily complicit characters, then, here are some of the more engaging thoughts:

• Saladin was a great military leader because of his compassion and respect for his enemies.
• Conflict often becomes collusion as both parties cooperate to maintain a mutual antagonism.
• Normally we assume that conflict is best resolved by forcing the other side to change, which is why conflict persists.
• In any situation we may choose to see those around us as objects or as people with a worth equal to our own.
• One way to influence someone you want to help is to form relationships with people who are important to that person.

Perhaps the most satisfying section was the page about Rene Descartes. I don't like that man. He was the one behind "Cogito ergo sum," or "I think therefore I am." From this foundation he argued entities that could not display an adequate complexity of thought were not in possession of a soul. It was a short, slithering sidestep from there to animal vivisection. Apparent pain in something that doesn't have a consciousness of self must be counterfeit. So he reasoned. Ugh.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger disagrees with Descartes. His counterargument is outlined on pages 78 and 79 of The Anatomy of Peace. To summarize, Descartes formulated his thoughts and his theory using borrowed language. Perhaps he existed, but entities outside himself donated the tools with which he built his proof. That he existed was true, but more important was that he existed with others. What is the self without the fact of non-self? The most fundamental principle of being is not the individual but the individual as he relates to others. Tolerance of the dry and contrived plot extracted a large payment in units of patience, but these pages alone justify my expenditure.

A sample:

"A contemporary of Heidegger named Martin Buber, whom I mentioned this morning, agreed with Heidegger that way of being in the world is what is most fundamental to human experience. He observed that there are basically two ways of being in the world: we can be in the world seeing others as people or we can be in the world seeing others as objects. He called the first way of being the I-Thou way the the second the I-It way, and he argued that we are always, in every moment, being either I-Thou or I-It -- seeing others as people or seeing others as objects."

Think and Grow Rich (Hill)

This one is supposed to be a classic, a landmark book. The dust jacket says it set the standard for motivational thinking, which is currently something of an epidemic. It was published back in 1938 and it's still kept in stock at Chapters. Either this book panders to the vanity of man in a way not duplicated since, or it has something important to say. You know those recurrent books? The ones you never read but see everywhere, hear about constantly? Napoleon Hill's best seller has been chipping away at me for the last five years. I gave in reluctantly. It sat on my shelf for several months after I bought it.

I wish I had read the thing sooner. Some of it is weirdness incarnate (An entire chapter on "The Mystery of Sex Transmutation"? Really? But why?) but some of it is gloriously illuminating. It is a book about desire and obsession, faith and revelation, hallucination and reality. There are chapters devoted to decision, persistence, think tanks, and social graces. It touches on dozens of topics (including telepathy, the American Constitution, and choosing a spouse) while staying in tight orbit around the main theme, which is, say it with me now . . .

No. Not money. Mr. Hill has a distinctly mercenary tone; he returns to wealth as the supreme object again and again. But these principles are not limited to the accumulation of a staggering fortune. You could pick them up and point them at anything. Probably you could say the book is about success, but I don't know about that either. For me it was a handbook on the method of making thoughts powerful, entities that do more than just flutter about and then collapse like ancient tissue butterflies. It was a call to take risks and explore the sharp, swiftly moving, brightly flashing whirlwind that lives in your head. It was a challenge and a rebuke. It said that you get from life what you demand from life, so why not demand something extraordinary?

I am a mouse. I do not make demands. I make half formed requests in a wispy voice with my face hidden in my hands while beginning the shuffling retreat. Creeping through life is not rewarding or exciting, so this year I am conducting an experiment. I am going to follow Napoleon Hill's advice and deliberately cultivate an obsession. It might be another way of choosing madness or it might be an escape from the madness that is fear.

A sample:

"Gandhi wielded more potential power than any man living in his time, and this despite the fact that he had none of the orthodox tools of power, such as money, battleships, soldiers and materials of warfare. Gandhi had no money. He had no home. He didn't even own a suit of clothes but he did have power. How did he come by that power? He created it out of his understanding of the principle of faith, and through his ability to transplant that faith into the minds of 200 million people."