Komodo and The Journey East...

We signed ourselves up for a multi-day boat voyage from Lombok to Flores, with stops in Komodo, Sumbaya and the occasional desert island along the way as our post-diving adventure. The trip started not long after sunrise with a boat back to Lombok, a walk to the bus station, then bus to Sengiggi, the bustling capital of Lombok where we joined with the other twenty odd travellers we would be sharing quarters with on our thirty food wooden boat. Mostly Dutch, mostly young, and thankfully mostly not a boatloa of drunken Australian and British backpackers. We'd actually expected mostly Aussies here in Indo, but mostly it's been 90 % Dutch. Funny how westerners tend to travel to their old colonies- Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Morocco are positively lousy with French, while India was crawling with Brits, and Cuba was full of Spaniards, and here in Indonesia, this part anyway, it's all friendly, perfect English speaking Dutch folk. No matter... We started our trip with an extended visit to the Mataram mall, which, if you've ever wondered what an Indonesian shopping mall is like, wonder no more. All I can say is it was like every other developing world mall I've been to- blue glass and all, except that smell of rotten milk pervaded the whole thing, even from the parking lot. It took us a while before we realized that was the Durian fruit for sale inside the mall. No interesting stories from there though, except for the one gigantic beetle that flew out of my pocket when I reached in to grab money to buy peanuts.
Onward to the requisite stop at the "traditional authentic genuine indigenous craft village," where the Sasak people, descendants of Burmese sailors from centuries past, made ceramics from the volcanic clay of Lombok. (Exit through the traditional indigenous authentic gift shop...) we crossed Lombok, skirting volcanoes and rice paddies, stopping briefly to watch boatbuilders at work before boarding our own vessel. A lovely stop and snorkel (where the current nearly carried us away!) at a New Yorker cartoon style tiny palm tree desert island, where we also enjoyed a barbecue, campfire songs and 60s hippie guitar singalong classics as sung by our Indonesian guides, and headed back to the boat beneath the incredibly dark sky, crystal clear southen hemisphere constellations and the streak of the milky way above.
Thanks to our friend Mira, we opted out of a cabin and slept on deck. This was a great fresh air option until the waves started crashing over us around midnight, and our companions on deck fled for the main room belowdecks filled it up, and chaos ensued as foreigners of all languages scrambled for decent spots as the waves crashed overboard, the wind swept away bedsheets, and the boat pit hex and yawed in the pitch black of night. One netherlander was tossed by a lurch into the mast, and was screaming and crying. Chaos ensued. Somehow we made our way to the rear deck where we found a dryish spot to 'sleep' until sunrise, my childhood fantasies of sleeping on boat decks, stoked by one too many fantasy novels, brought to an end by a firm reality check.
The next day was a few more small island stops, as we chugged past Sumbawa, a small-by-Indonesia-standards island that was probably the length of New York state. Toward evening we stopped at a small village there, and wNdered ashore to meet villagers unaccustomed to white faces. In this weird postmodern world however, we all kind of awkwardly stared at each other, the white folks mostly too ashamed with their white liberal guilt to photograph the native types, while the indigent indigenous silently stared and smoked while filming us on their cell phone cameras. Did not however, get a chance to see this infamous indonesian kid: We wandered around past their elevated bamboo huts, past goats and by cows so skinny I actually thought they were deer, as some of the Dutch played soccer with the kids to the sound of the evening call to prayer. Though Indonesia is not especially devout and is in fact quite liberal in Interpretation of Islam, a few women covered their heads with scarves and men wore sarongs and Muslim caps, though the Religion is apparently quite intertwined with animist beliefs, spirit worship and goat sacrifice.
That nights rest was far better than our first- we managed to secure ourselves a cozy corner of the rear deck as we sailed onward to The Island of Komodo. Sunrise woke us of course, as we made our way through smaller scattered islands, these drier and more strangely featured than the first islands. We arrived in Komodo harbor, plunked down our camera fees and tromped through the brush in search of the infamous dragons. Two hours of hiking in the dry heat, a multi-day boat voyage and twenty odd hour flight to see the great poop of the infamous Komodo dragon. Dejectedly, we returned to the gift shop cafe and sipped coffee, only to encounter a few roaming beasts seeking scraps behind the kitchen. They really are crazy creatures, basically like landbound alligators, with forked tongues and apparently feast on the local deer, monkey and chicken population (though no humans since an unfortunate Swiss tourist went missing, and all that was found were his sunglasses. The beasts eat the bones of their prey.)
Got our few photos and were back to the boat via dinghy, (which the crew kept referring to as the "dingey"), with a brief stop at the inappropriately named "red sand beach"'and then into Labuanbajo, Flores's main harbor, by nightfall. Thankfully, we found a place to stay and a flight home four days later, which allowed us to escape more boat time. We settled in at the Bajo Komodo Eco Lodge a short ways out of town, and relished the first hot showers we'd had in well over a week.

Boat/ark, sinking reality...

Gilis and Beyond...

Getting to the Gilis was less of a hassle than initially anticipated. The gillis, I should explain, are three tiny (1 sq km ) islands off the coast of Lombok, the Connecticut sized islamic island neighboring Bali. Generally they are renowned for their isolation, pristine beaches and incredible diving. It was here that we decided to get our Scuba certification and do some beach lounging. After setting out from Ubud to a small port town on the East coast of Bali, we boarded a rickety "fast boat"- basically the standard Indonesian bamboo boat with six outboard engines crammed onto the back, and headed across the channel to toward the intimidating smoldering volcanos of Lombok (10000ft high!) accompanied by numerous severely hungover and/or still drunk Australians and Brits. From Lombok it was a quick boatride to Gilli Trawanagan, where, mercifully, the Aussies left us for "the party Gilli" and we caught another boat, with only a pair of Austrian lesbians, to the quieter Gili Air.

Right off the boat it was a much quieter vibe, and a two hundred foot walk to our charming bungalow and from there a short commute to our dive school (oceans five). We took a sunset stroll around the entire island in about an hour, listening to the chants of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer across the water, through coconut groves and past families working on their wood and bamboo fishing boats. Not a motor on the island, not even a motorbike, just donkey carts humping their way around the sandy paths. Not a big party scene either thankfully, although we did see an Indonesian carrying an enormous bag of ecstasy, apparently Indonesia as an Islamic nation does not drink (although alcohol is everywhere) but does indulge in the use and manufacture of MDMA, and is the worlds biggest exporter of the stuff. We settled into a decent meal at one of the beachfront restaurants where you pick a fish or lobster from the display and they grill it over coconut husks for you. Not a half bad way to start the beach portion of the trip.

Day two we got to work at our dive school, under the expert, if indecipherable tutelage of one Cockney accented South Londoner who I could understand about 75% of what he said. Thankfully, Olivia works in London regularly and could translate. Sample quote- "so we'll just pop downstairs chum-chum, you and the missus are looking like a right well pucker bird and geezer down there..." etc etc.

And the dives were, well, incredible. I won't bore you non-diving types with the details, but it was damn beyond the best diving I've ever done- reefs that extended for miles, green sea turtles nesting in barrel sponges the size of thirty gallon drums, lionfish, angelfish, parrotfish, wrecks, moray eels thicker than my thighs, just truly truly spectacular stuff. Great instruction, great dive shop (although you may not want to go right now- we watched as the whole island came running to put out the fire that -was- their power generator.) and overall a phenomenal experience. And really incredible to head to dives in traditional boats that are made of wood and bamboo, with these crazy outriggers than make them look like giant waterbugs (see photo).

Bali

Bali really lives up to the promised hype of being beautiful, mystical, and tourist-trodden. The streets of Ubud are lined with incredible Balinese architecture, which is basically to say that everyone's house looks like a crazy red and black Hindu temple, and you cant walk down the street without accidentally stepping on a perfectly arranged offering, usually an immaculately folded banana leaf with rice, cookie, flowers and incense burning, or a woman carefully placing one out on the sidewalk or upon a wall somewhere. It also smells like college- the comingling scents of clove cigarettes and incense pervade everything (and the distant dischordant sounds of Gamelon don't hurt either (Sorry y'all, Wesleyan in-joke)). Flowers spill over walls, and the people are some of the most genuinely friendly I've encountered anywhere. Sure, they want to sell you batiks and carved buddha figurines, but they are not in the slightest bit pushy about any of it.

Our charming Jati Homestay in Ubud, is pretty great. Our room is set on our own little palm-filled rice paddy, with its own flock of ducks, which generally wake us up when they start fighting with the chickens and roosters, which then wake up the monkeys, which awaken the Australians next door, and then us. The jetlag is fairly insane at 12 hours. Breakfast is decent and the grounds of the house are beautiful and fascinating to watch the Balinese traditional life of the women sewing and assembling the mornings offerings, the kids playing, and then men... smoking and tinkering with their motorbikes.

So we wandered down Monkey Forest Road to the Monkey Forest, where AGAIN I was immediately attacked by a monkey-

I swear, I have monkey attractant on (see last summer's monkey attack incident). This time I didn't even have any food on me, but the monkey climbed up my leg, hoisted itself up my shirt to perch on my head and literally do the

monkey-sitting-on-my-head-and-cover-my-eyes thing while he pulled ferociously at my hair and tried to eat it, which hurt like hell. Olivia helpfully got a few pictures of the incident, to be uploaded later...Rest of the day was more wandering, hiding from the crowds of Dutch and Australians, and trying to find charm in Ubud between the t-shirt vendors, Starbucks, and Ralph Lauren.

Day Two:

We found the charm in Ubud. It is found by leaving Ubud. Preferably by bike. We signed up for a bike tour, which turned out to be spectacular, and began at the rim of Bali's largest volcano, something close to 10,000 feet high. At the volcano outlook, peering out across rice terraces, villages and volcanic lakes, someone asked when the last eruption of the broken peak was, to which our guide responded 1986, before being whispered a correction. "I'm sorry it was actually last week, and killed all the fishes in the lake" oh well, glad we were now headed away from the mountain, and so our downhill descent back began.

It was an incredible ride, and not just because it was mostly downhill. We zipped through small villages, high-fiving little kids, outrunning stray dogs and chickens while narrowly avoiding topless old women laying out rice to dry in the sun, or balancing impossibly large baskets on their heads. We paused briefly to see a small home and learned explanations of the architecture, shrines and different living areas in the Balinese living compounds, where multiple interrelated intergenerational families shared meals and more, saw men training their roosters for the nights cockfighting festival (the winner lives to fight again, the loser... Satay), while women stripped bamboo and wove it into mats to make walls for their homes, spitting red betel juice out of their stained mouths. Through alleys and dirt paths we saw kids creating and flying incredible kites, filling the skies over the terraced rice paddies with kites ten to thirty feet long, and I managed to dodge two young men carrying a whole palm trees, 100 feet long down a small country road. Past the traditional occasional Asian gas station- aka a bamboo rack of absolut vodka bottles brimming with golden gasoline, glimmering in the tropical sun.

It was a great way to see village life, and actually felt a little more authentic than most of the tours I've been on. We also stopped at an allegedly organic farm in the countryside, where we saw the spices that first made these spice islands valuable colonies worth fighting over between the Brits, Dutch and Portuguese. Vanillapods and football size and shaped cacao beans were growing next to peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom, along with ginseng, ginger, turmeric and other medicinal roots. Coffee bushes were everywhere, and the small plantation even had it's share of caged civets to which they fed coffee. "why?" you might reasonably ask? To make the world (in)famous civet poop coffee, without the use of "poophunters" as our guide delicately explained. For those who don't know, the civet cat has an appetite for the coffee bean and certain enzymes in it's stomach that ferment the raw coffee in a way that allegedly enhances and complexifies (is that a word?) it's flavor. Their beans are not digested, sonthey are picked out of it's poop, thoroughly (allegedly) cleaned, roasted, and brewed for the pleasure of your author and his companions. A delicacy prized by coffee fanatics the world over. And the verdict dear reader? Yeah, tastes like coffee.

Day Three:

The next day, we met up with Tova and her mother, and enjoyed a long walk through villages north of town, far more pleasant than the endless Eat-Pray-Lovers and tourist shops selling all manner of bamboo crap, alternating storefronts with spas offering Bali massage, foot massage, Thai massage, hot stone massage, milk bath, spice bath, herb bath, tea bath even fish bath (in which you get in a tub with tiny fish that chew off all of your dead skin!) More amazing rice paddies, and the strange and wonderful pleasure of visiting with a friend completely out of context on a continent thousands of miles away.

April, May Books

The Upside of Irrationality- Dan Arielly

Quirky neuro-ecconomics forever! I love this stuff, my favorite parts being the experiments about work and learned helplessness, which I plan to use in my own next book. Much more of the same kind of fun stuff as in "Predictably Irrational," but I just can never get enough. Very interesting stuff.

My Stroke of Insight- Jill Bolte Taylor

I enjoyed this quite a bit- the memoir of a neuroscientist who struggled to recover from her own stroke, after knowing enough to know that she was having a stroke. The whole thing was fascinating, though occasionally somewhat dry. The last chapters in particular were interesting, especially to anyone with an interest in mindfulness, and pre-verbal states of awareness. A great book to assign (and probably is regularly assigned) for a brain and behavior 101 kind of class.

Real Happiness - Sharon Salzberg

Ladies and gentlemen, I have my new go-to recommendation book for patients and people who want to learn a little about meditation. HIGHLY recommend this to any beginner. Just enough humor, just enough science, just enough spirituality, and plenty of heart and wisdom to make this an easy read, crystal clear book for anyone who wants a book about meditation that is also highly simplified and straightforward. Seriously, cant recommend this enough. Comes with guided meditation CD too.

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters - Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa

Kinda goofy evolutionary psychology book, with some great ideas and theories, and some, well, rather dubious ones. The whole thing is by nature rather essentialist especially as it relates to the sexes, but some fun theories that may or may not be totally legit. Like, why do men like large breasts, long blonde hair, blue eyes, and and certain other attributes? Amusing evolutionary explanations for these and other questions.

The Ape in the Corner Office - Richard Conniff

MORE evolutionary psychology- this one with a focus on worklife. A lot of the same references as my favorite pop quirky psych stuff (Paul Ekman, Franz DeWaal, John Gottman etc), but a pretty fun read nonetheless. Interesting ideas about social dynamics, and humans evolving to be part of tribes and tribal culture, and the evolution of social behavior. Worth a quick read if you're into that sort of thing.

The Four Hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss

Ridiculous title aside, okay, and ridiculous ideas aside... I dunno, this book was weirdly inspiring, I found Ferriss’s energy and enthusiasm for living life simply infectious... In a good way. Although some chapters veer into hypersepcific (ie, efficiency with product orders) other chapters on setting up a lifestyle (his mantra is “lifestyle design”) that you love, and for minimal work and money is inspiring. And actually, not minimal work, just a lot of work smarter not harder kinds of strategies for negotiating work from home, taking more time off now and enjoying life rather than deferring everything until retirement is sort of the name of his game. Just the chapters on importance of and how to travel, combined with the chapters on being more productive at work and getting over procrastination by simplifying and slowing down were worthwhile. If you’ve got a travel bone or an entrepreneurial bone in your body, definitely give this a read.

Made to Stick - Chip and Dan Heath

Another social psych-ish book on why ideas from marketing campaigns or urban legends, are “sticky,” and how to make ideas stick. I particularly liked the sections on writing, teaching, and spiritual ideas, but the whole thing is chock full of fun and engaging case studies and straightforward explanations of useful principles for advertisers, marketers, public health advocates, or anyone trying to get their ideas to "stick."

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua

Where to even begin. You've probably heard the controversy- domineering Chinese mother writes memoir about near abusive treatment of kids to raise perfect Ivy-leaguers, and been horrified by the highlights (lowlights) of the book- ripping up child's insufficient mother's day card, locking 3 year old outside, calling daughter human garbage, etc, and yes, these were deeply disturbing and well treaded ground for the outrage. What I found bizarre as well though, was her self-satisfied smug tone, her sadism seemed directed not only at the kids but at the reader, to the point that I felt claustrophobic, boxed-in and judged. I felt like she dared me to judge her so she could accuse me of racism, and the whole thing came off as utterly contemptuous of both Western and Eastern culture, and I suppose most contemptuous of herself. Strange to so forcefully choose to perpetuate such negative stereotypes of so many groups. I'm left both deeply puzzled and deeply disturbed.

The Social Animal - David Brooks

Okay, where to begin with genre here- nonfiction novelization of an intro psychology textbook? As written by a well-known political journalist? That about captures it. A nonfiction narrative story of an imaginary couple and their backgrounds and relationship, that basically draws from all old and new psychology, mostly developmental and social psychology research and describes said research. Kind of an interesting idea. Definitely a fun and interesting book. Were I teaching developmental or social psychology, or even psych 101 I'd probably assign this book, as it is really fun, a helpful way to make real and memorable a lot of the scientific principles and studies that are usually pretty dry. Funnily enough, it directly cites all of these favorite kinds of books I've read- Nudge, Predictably Irrational, Networked, How We Decide, Overall, a fun read. Recommend this.

February / March Books:

Thrive- Dan Buettner

The social psychology of positive psychology... Is it possible to socially engineer a happier society? This book explores a few cases studies of the world's "happiest places" - Cities and towns in Costa Rica, Singapore, Mexico, Denmark, and San Luis Obispo CA to explore what the people and their local governments are doing right to encourage and maintain the greatest happiness and life satisfaction for their people. An interesting addition to the positive psych canon, and I'll likely reference it a lot in my next writing project.

Life- Keith Richards
After coming off Dylan's indulgent "Chronicles vol. 1" I was a little doubtful, but then found myself extremely engaged and fascinated- not just with the life of vice, but the music, the historical aspects of the book. Learning about post-war England and then the slowly changing world in the 1960s, understanding the roots of rock and roll in African American Blues and other historically black traditions that were co-opted, and then just hearing the good old gossip and degeneracy of Keith and The Stones was a real kick. Fun, fascinating stuff.

Let The Great World Spin - Collum McAnn

Straight up, this is the only book I can think of where each chapter was worse than the preceding one. Starts out incredibly promising with great characters and the plot and writing go downhill from there. One of those "everything is interconnected" multigenerational stories (that are usually in the form of Hollywood movies about LA, cf: Short Cuts, Magnolia, Crash), I so wanted to like this book, especially after the lead-off, and then just found myself struggling to get to the end. I see why people like it, but I'd be happy to debate anyone on its larger merits.

Spark- John Ratey

John Ratey (Ned Hallowell's old ADD writing partner) on the benefits of exercise for: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, hormonal issues, concentration, and more. Basically takes the reader through the research while offering up case studies and practical how-to's, as well as solid scientific underpinnings to why and how exercise changes the brain. I suppose really all one needs to read is the first chapter which lays it out- its gets a little repetitive, but still, as a mental health practitioner I always appreciate learning of other treatments for mental illness besides drugs and psychotherapy. The most important thing I learned in all the redundancies were that pushing yourself is very important- a few sprints during a cardio workout are important, as well strength training being added in, and exercise that requires brain power and fine motor work (yoga, tennis, etc)...

January Books

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami

I LOVED Wind-up Bird Chronicles, both as a book and a piece of literature, and this was recommended by some as even better. I enjoyed it, and found it thought provoking, though not nearly to the degree that I like Wind-up Bird, which had a lot more depth and nuance to it. The plot was hard to engage with, although I was pretty taken by the second half and thoroughly enjoyed it, in spite of it being a distant second.

Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Not sure if I'm necessarily the ideal target audience for this, I do like to think of myself as pretty tolerant, pluralist, and interested in a lot of spiritual traditions. But I did feel like I learned a lot about religions I knew little about, their common overlaps, and I like how inspired he was by seeing pluralism in action in India, past and present. I also appreciated that he called out scientists and secular humanists to join the respectful dialog as well, encouraging mutual respect between religions and science.

Chronicles, vol. 1: Bob Dylan

I'm a Dylan fan- not a hyper-obsessed Dylan fan to be sure, but I enjoy and appreciate songwriting and creativity. This book though... I dont know, part of the problem may have been that I did the audiobook, which had an insufferable reader who would drop his g's and try to sound like Dylan, but even that aside the metaphors were flimsy and overdone- disappointing for such an amazing writer, and the tone so affectedly reeking of the most self-indulgent of Dylan's self-invention, and the narrative just so... boring, that it was hard to get into. Furthermore, and I don't know if I'm the first to make this observation about the book, but I think what I really was interested in was an biography of Robert Zimmerman, and what I got was an embroidered memoir of Bob Dylan.

White Teeth- Zadie Smith

Granted, this book was good, and had all the elements of a good book- intergenerational immigrant family drama, well drawn characters, humor and warmth, sophisticated ideas about race, gender, ethnicity, religion and identity with a subplot about genetic ethics that offers a modern take on these questions, and yet... I just couldnt get into it. As much as I liked it and appreciated the ideas, it felt like a bit of a chore to pick up, figure out which characters I was reading about, and push through a little further. It has all the elements of a good book, a great book even, but for my taste, not enough elements of a good read.

Beautiful Boy - David Sheff

I've been meaning to read this book for a while now, and keep putting it off. Its now been almost ten years sober for me, a young man who surely put my parents through hell when I was using, and a recent conversation with a devastated parent kind of pushed me toward finally reading this book, as shitty as it might make me feel. And yeah, I don't feel good thinking about times in my life, but it feels important, personally and professionally, to examine a little bit of the perspective of those who love someone who is an active addict. From the start of the book I was hooked. Sheff is a great writer, and his opening description of a relapse and moving from there toward the motivation to write before delving into the story of his son from birth on could have been a cheesy way to start, but turned out to be immensely powerful in really capturing the horror of watching someone turn into the golem that addiction makes them. It treads the standard addiction memoir ground, though again from a fresh perspective, and integrates science and stats in ways that feel helpful, not pedantic, all the while conveying the hopeless confusion and hellish ups and downs of living with someone in active addiction. Can't recommend this enough. Anyone with an interest in addiction, and certainly anyone in mental health should read this.

Tweak - Nic Sheff

The foil to "Beautiful Boy" this addiction memoir written by the meth-addicted son described in "Beautiful Boy." Well, it suffers from all the problems and perks of a good addiction memoir- addictive to read with some solid debauchery and despair followed by some really astute insights into addiction and recovery, with writing that was mediocre to poor, although the guy wrote the thing half when he was using and have when he was barely sober, and all when he was very very young, so given those constraints and complaints aside, its pretty impressive.

The Power of Less: Leo Babuata

The guy who does "Zen Habits" blog did this book about productivity and personal organization, that may well be the best book on that topic I've read. Simple, straightforward concrete advice about how to organize yourself, set and achieve goals, beat procrastination and be happier at work and home. I think a lot of the material in here isnt new, but is presented well and may well be going into my next book. Definitely recommend this book if you are looking for help organizing your life and getting things done!

The Four Agreements: Don Miguel Ruiz

Bizarre, circularly hypnotic writing style and some very odd metaphor choices in this quickie self-help book from the 90's. Damn I read a lot of these things, this one was recommended by a patient. Some solid ideas about being careful with how you speak, not taking anything personally, and the level of self-respect you have being parallel to how much you will tolerate in others, but overall didnt really speak to me. Interesting uses of Mesoamerican mythology to frame the ideas, I'm guessing this is sort of marketing toward Latinos or people with an interest in Native American traditions and ideas.

After the Ecstacy, The Laundry - Jack Kornfield

Silly title aside, this book is really amazing. Like, in my opinion, all of Jack Kornfield's books about Buddhism and spirituality. This one is based on conversations with spiritual leaders and their struggles with trying to be perfect and spiritual in the face of life in all its complexity and imperfection. Not that I'm a great spiritual leader, but as a therapist it can often feel tremendously difficult to tolerate people's projections on me that I am wise, knowledgable, or have my life together when I know my own perfections and can feel like a fraud. Chock full of wonderful quotes and anecdotes, folk tales from around the world, it was both inspiring and engaging.

November/December Books

Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Junot Diaz

Really effective, surprising and engaging book that I just loved. Turns the tired tropes of the first-generation immigrant narrative on their heads with humor and grace, and is a pure pleasure to read. This, the multigenerational story of an Dominican family surviving the dictatorship of Trujillo, then the new traumas of immigration and family dynamics. Overflowing, at times overwhelming, with its sex and violence, but never gratuitously. Can't recommend this one highly enough. And so good it got me to re-read...

Drown: Junot Diaz

Yeah, amazing short stories by Diaz, some better than others, but still an amazing short story collection about Dominican families in New York and New Jersey.

Goodbye Columbus:

The Human Stain - Philip Roth

Yep, the Philip Roth kick continues ever onward. I found this dragged a little more than American Pastoral which I read last month, although I still enjoyed it. The more Roth I read though, the more his own unhappiness, bitterness and misogyny starts to leak through. Still, an interesting study of identity, identity politics, sexuality, academia and the second half of the twentieth century.

Goodbye Columbus - Philip Roth

After the few darker Roth novels I read this year, this love story novella was a breath of fresh air. Capturing the conflicts of class and the confines of the era's conformity (1950's/60's America), this was a wonderful adolescent love story of passion and heartbrake. Star-crossed lovers I suppose, but not a tragedy in the classic sense. Surprisingly sweet for Mr. Roth, but I suppose it was his first book...

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth

Are we sensing a theme this fall?

Okay, so I really enjoyed this, and found it fascinating as it is so damn famous, and wow, there really is a lot of masturbation in this book. Funny probably to read it so late after publication, and I can understand its impact at the time, and though hilarious at times, it didn't do a ton for me reading it now. In fact, it kind of made me feel icky in the way that reading Bret Easton Ellis will make me feel like taking a shower in bleach after I read one of his books. Further, it really continued to reveal to me the depths of Roth's bitterness and anger toward the world. My thought process "Wow, he really hates shiksa women... oh, I guess actually he just really hates women in general and is a misogynist... oh, now I can see that he just really really hates people."

Shopclass as Soulcraft - Matthew Crawford
A meditation/manifesto on the value of certain manual labor- craftsmanship to be most specific, over being an intellectual or physical cog in the larger production/consumption machine. Crawford himself is a PhD who became a motorcycle mechanic, and speaks of the joys, creative stimulation and good income that comes from craftsmanship, not to mention the self-esteem and self-efficacyt that emerges from problem solving work. Sure, he gets a little moralistic and rigid at times, but overall a solid critique of what we currently call capitalism and its soul-destroying nature in the American corporate version of it. In a lot of ways, he's speaking to and for the very same ideology of a book like "Fight Club," just in a less angry voice, and without the more problematic gender politics of that book. I'd highly recommend this to anyone in education, or in mental health for that matter, as it does tell us something about why our world as we know it is so unsatisfying.

Sway- Ori & Rahm Brafman

Yep -the standard book I love to read, pop social psychology stuff. However, this one had two sections I would recommend be mandatory reading for anyone becoming a therapist- one on theories behind the bullshit rise in bipolar diagnosis (and not a corresponding rise in suicide and bipolar behaviors at the epidemiological level) and another on the depressing/fascinating neurobiology of greed- yep, making money gives people the same rush in the reward centers of the brain as cocaine, and leads to similarly immoral behavior. And we wonder why ethics crumble in the face of money...

The Invisible Gorilla: Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

Do people know about the Invisible Gorilla study? Now a classic of psych 101 (but not when I took it 15 years ago!). Amazing experiment about attention, "inattentional blindness" and how we are deceived by perception. The book covers that, and then branches out into more generally how to not draw conclusions from data. It would be great for an intro psych course, also explaining why recent grads of med school overdiagnose pathologies (pay attention fellow early career shrinks!), explains the most egregious attribution errors in scientific research and how we stumble into them and how to avoid such pitfalls of trusting intuition over hard-headed analysis, and takes a few swpes at malcolm gladwell along the way. Anyone teaching psych 101 or with a passing interest in psychology, check this one out.

The Dharma Bums: Jack Kerouac

So, I'm revisiting a lot of books I should have read while in college, when I... had some different priorities. The point is, I'm a little older and wiser now than at the peak time I probably would have enjoyed some books more. Which is to say- although there was a lot to like about The Dharma Bums, its sort of a fundamentally adolescent book, and although there is nothing wrong with that, I just would have liked it more when I was younger or in a different place in my life. Would I recommend it? Yes, but more as a document/artifact that a pleasure read or anything enlightening about Buddhism or as literature. All told though, it was a fun read, and I do understand why its so beloved.

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Christopher Germer

* * * * *
When I was in grad school for psychology, I very nearly wrote my dissertation on the history of self-help books, before writing about meditation with kids and teens. (a much better choice) I still have a place in my heart for self-help books, crappy and otherwise, and their anthropological value. I went crazy with some recent classics not so much in the self-help, but self-improvement realm recently:

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

Um, wow- I get why this is a classic. Its really really good and helpful tips on succesfully living in the world of people, whether you are a business person or parent or just someone who has to interact with people. Also unrelentingly positive, and articulates so many basic principles from Ancient Eastern and Western thought, or that could easily be articulated in today's positive psychology. Good stuff. I'm going to start throwing it a my shy and anxious patients.

48 Laws of Power - David Greene
Hot on the heals of Dale Carnegie I decided to check out the polar opposite self-improvement book, partly out of sheer anthropological curiousity about this Machiavellian update and apparent hip-hop bible. Verdict? This book is seriously godawful, not because of the amorality, but the atrociously hammy writing, and embarrassingly, hilariously enormous oversights where it directly contradicts itself (ie, court attention at all costs- any publicity is good publicity, and guard your reputation its priceless). Anyway, again, why did I read this? I guess it was a moderately amusing glimpse of what second-rate wanna-be MBA types fancy to be intellectual reading and keep prominently on their faux-mahoganey shelves. I kept imagining the Christopher Moltisanti's lackeys from the Sopranos.

How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less- Nicholas Boothman
Yet another book in the self-improvement anthropological study this month, this one an apparent classic in the annals of "neuro-linguistic-programming." Kind of ridiculous in its purported science of following people's speech, body language and other preferences to communicate more effectively, it was kind of interesting, if kind of bullshit. It is however, a great title for a book.

10 Qualities of Charismatic People: Tony Alessandro

Yeah, I don't know, really just more of the same as these other three books above...