WHAT AM I READING?

A People's History of the United States

I have a feeling this is going to be one of the best books I have ever read.  It just has that feel even after only two chapters.  Okay maybe not the best, but truly informing and en lighting. I am truly going to try to get my teenage son to read this also.  I think it would be a great informant to go along with what he learns in school.  I can't believe I haven't come across this sooner.

I really am intrigued by this tribe described in the following:

"In the land of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common.  Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families"

"...Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common."

"When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's things outside the door."

"The woman attended the meetings, stood outside  the circle of men who spoke and voted, and removed the men from office if they strayed too far from the wishes of the women."

"Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. they were taught equality in status and the sharing process."

Once I have finished this book I think i am going to have read more about the Iroquois tribes.  I find them fascinating.

This books starts out with Columbus's "discovery of America" and goes up through the Clinton administration.  I'm excited to read every page.

WHAT AM I READING?

THE HIPPIE TRIP

“A new, colorful, and fascinating drama has emerged on the American scene. The action involves ‘love,’ ‘spiritually free sex,’ dope as a religious sacrament, and a new work ethic.” And so sociologist Yablonsky begins his novel, giving the reader an opportunity to join him on his “hippie trip”. Yablonsky delves into the hippie movement as a sociologist, a “hip” interviewer/reporter, and as an involved person. This book includes experiences and perceptions from all three of these integral facets of Yablonsky’s personality.

Yablonsky combines an extensive, coherent report on hippie life with a thorough look at the movement in relation to the wider societal issues of the time. The book begins with aPreview, an introduction into the scene, and then moves onto The Trip, Yablonsky’s actual journey. Part III, Analysis, examines the hippie movement in its own right and within the framework of American society. Part IV, The Appendix, is a presentation of data from questionnaires filled out by over seven hundred hippies. And there is, of course, a Glossary for all of you readers who may not be familiar with the terminology of the psychedelic movement.

WHAT AM I READING?

Amazon.com Review

By melding love, science, and religion into a primer on personal growth, M. Scott Peck launched his highly successful writing and lecturing career with this book. Even to this day, Peck remains at the forefront of spiritual psychology as a result of The Road Less Traveled. In the era of I'm OK, You're OK, Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task." His willingness to expose his own life stories as well as to share the intimate stories of his anonymous therapy clients creates a compelling and heartfelt narrative. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Psychotherapy is all things to all people in this mega-selling pop-psychology watershed, which features a new introduction by the author in this 25th anniversary edition. His agenda in this tome, which was first published in 1978 but didn't become a bestseller until 1983, is to reconcile the psychoanalytic tradition with the conflicting cultural currents roiling the 70s. In the spirit of Me-Decade individualism and libertinism, he celebrates self-actualization as life's highest purpose and flirts with the notions of open marriage and therapeutic sex between patient and analyst. But because he is attuned to the nascent conservative backlash against the therapeutic worldview, Peck also cites Gospel passages, recruits psychotherapy to the cause of traditional religion (he even convinces a patient to sign up for divinity school) and insists that problems must be overcome through suffering, discipline and hard work (with a therapist.) Often departing from the cerebral and rationalistic bent of Freudian discourse for a mystical, Jungian tone more compatible with New Age spirituality, Peck writes of psychotherapy as an exercise in "love" and "spiritual growth," asserts that "our unconscious is God" and affirms his belief in miracles, reincarnation and telepathy. Peck's synthesis of such clashing elements (he even throws in a little thermodynamics) is held together by a warm and lucid discussion of psychiatric principles and moving accounts of his own patients' struggles and breakthroughs. Harmonizing psychoanalysis and spirituality, Christ and Buddha, Calvinist work ethic and interminable talking cures, this book is a touchstone of our contemporary religio-therapeutic culture.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Road Less Traveled

I am about half way through this book, and I wouldn't say that I agree with everything that is written.  I would say it is a book I will be picking here and there a few things from it to apply to my life.  

WHAT AM I READING?

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fiancé, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.

Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands.
But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation.
source: Amazon

WHAT AM I READING NOW?

Six degrees of Johnny Depp.

From the writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the outrageous outspoken crude tell it like he sees it Hunter S. Thompson.



Get your own copy, read reviews, and look inside.....HERE

WHAT AM I READING?

This book is funny, are you a Loner, Polit, Neo-Crunch?


It does have some good music and reading recommendations.

WHAT AM I READING NOW?

"Despite the ranting of religious extremists, life coaches and jaded psychologists, it's okay to have a good time."



Look inside...HERE

READ

LOVED IT!

WHAT I'M READING NOW?

Get On the Road.....HERE

On the Free People blog Book Club
they just started for their first book they are reading this. I decided to join in.

BROKEN OPEN

Posted What I'm Reading Now earlier.

Here is a little snippet from the book:

"We are all half-baked experiments-mistake-prone beings, born without an instruction book in a complex world. None of us are models of perfect behavior: we've been known to be egotistical, unreliable, lethargic, and stingy; and each one of us has, at times, awakened in the middle of the night worrying about everything from money, kids, or terrorism to wrinkled skin and receding hairlines. In other words, we're all bozos on the bus.
This, in my opinion, is cause for celebration. If we're all bozos, then for God's sake, we can put down the burden of pretense and get on with being bozos."

So far I am digging this book.

WHAT AM I READING NOW?

I haven't really been reading much lately. Just kind of been more into crafting lately I guess. I do got some new (old novels) coming from eBay (yeah eBay is my friend) so I will probably be reading more now. I found a sight about the best novels or novels you should read before you die or something like that so I got a bunch of books coming. Can you say HELLO WINTER READING?

I picked this book up at the grocery store. It just caught my attention & my mood.

Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. I'm only about 4 chapters in, but I find her very intriguing.

WHAT AM I READING NOW?

Whip It