Book Reviews - Non Fiction

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Topic suggested by Ravi on Fri Aug 14 17:24:11 .


Reviews of biographies, collection of speeches or essays, histories, popular science etc.

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i have read a book called 'Zen and the Art of Motocycle maintenance' by Robert.M. Pirsig. It is one of my all time favourites.

I don't want to review the book. But,how about sharing your thoughts with me about this book ? how it has affected the way you think or something along those lines.

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Anybody here a fan of Carlos Casteneda ? (who recently passed away)

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"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig is my alltime favourite. He writes just brilliantly . Incidentally, he has stayed in Benares and studied Hindu philosophy. Later he came out with Lila. This was also good.
I like reading books by Scott Peck. Who has not heard of Dale Carnegie ?
I've heard of Castenada. I have not read any of his books.

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I have enjoying reading popular science works. Excellent recommendations are Chaos by James Gleick, The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav,Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden (Pulitzer Prize Winner?),Sagan's Cosmos,Richard Restak's The Brain,Stephen Weinberg's The First Three Minutes,Jared Diamond's The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee,books by John Gribbin.

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Review of"In Light of India" by Octavio Paz.
Octavio Paz served as Mexico's ambassador to India for six years. He made some long-lasting friends during those years and also kept in touch with the Indian Government right up until Rajeev's assassination.

He recollects his experience in India with shining intellect and impartial curiosity as opposed to the snooty V.S. Naipaul in "India: A million mutinies now".

Paz is such a rarity; he's a world-class intellect with third-world modesty and empathy. In his words I don't even sense a struggle to hold onto objective reasoning. This man can not but think objectively. Maybe his is the height of knowledge: wisdom. He does not spare his commentary on any sacred issue. He combines his overwhelming knowledge of world history and the astonishing clarity of purpose that is to convey the objective truths of religion, politicians, culture, art, and society. His commentary is based on his observations, which are enough to make this a great read, but he has also read every book on the subject that he takes up (be it music or sculpture or architecture) and shares that knowledge with the reader too.

This essay book's size is deceptively small but every page is filled with amazing observations and the warmth of a soul that relentlessly pursued the true state of things. We should all be so lucky to achieve such an objective curiosity in our minds. Paz recently passed away and it feels like a library was burned down. I highly recommend this book to everybody, especially Indians.

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I am a newcomer. I wish I had known about this web page earlier. I can not wait to go the bookstore to buy "In light of India" reviewed by Udhaya.

One of my favorites is Allan Watts. Anybody wants to share thoughts on his " The Wisdom of Insecurity" ?

Ramji

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Udhaya:

Bought Octavio Paz's " In light of India ", started reading it. Thanks for the review. Will get back with my reaction after finishing it. I have already started reacting positively.

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Ramji, I'm so happy for you. I hope more people discover this book and the writer.

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the recent nobel laureates in lit like Paz and Dario Fo are not known outside a circle. but those who know them do have a lot of respect for them. when paz died, not much media coverage was given in the indian media, though he was an ambassador to india some time back. instead, when kiran desai's book "hullaballo in a guava orchard" which is just pages of rubbish and superficial writing( i was unfortunate enough to read it), high media coverage was given to it. just because rushdie endorsed it and it was given space in TLS.