Book 85: Wherever You Go, There You Are

Squeaking in under the wire before midnight on December 31 . . . .



I loved this book. I think I need to re-read it periodically, and I almost never re-read books. It's full of incisive insights about mindfulness that cut right to the heart of what we are doing in our lives. Kabat-Zinn also describes some practices that can help us develop mindfulness.

And that's a wrap for 2012! On to 2013!

Book 84: The Hobbit

I'd never read this before, and decided I ought to, since I do like the LOTR trilogy.



The audio performance was really well done. It was read by Rob Inglis, and he did all the voices and sang all the songs. I admit that when I read the LOTR trilogy, I skipped the songs. Doesn't everyone? But listening to them in The Hobbit was great fun. I found myself singing one of the the elf songs a bit around the house.

Book 83: Journeys on the Silk Road

I had read a book about the Silk Road earlier this year (China Road), so when I heard about this book, I wanted to read it.



This book focuses on Aurel Stein and the scrolls and other items he bought from the Mogao caves in Dunhuang, China. The most famous and remarkable of his finds was the Diamond Sutra, a woodblock print book printed in 868.

Stein himself was a remarkable person with a lot of admirable attributes; I can only hope to be as energetic as he was to the very end of his life. The question of whether China's treasures should have been removed from China and taken to England and India is complicated. The good news is that you can view the Diamond Sutra and many of the other scrolls online, and you'll get a better view that way than you would through a glass case in a museum: http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/sutra/sutra_broadband.htm?middle

Book 82: What the Dog Saw

I love Malcolm Gladwell. He could write about chicken poop and make it sound fascinating. Who else could write an article about ketchup, for crying out loud, that would make me want to tell everyone I knew about it?



My favorite chapters were one about the birth control pill and another about job interviews. Oh, and of course, the one about ketchup. I now know more about ketchup than I ever thought possible.

2013's 5/5 Challenge

I'm starting to think about what 2013 will bring with my reading. I am not sure I will reach 52 books because I'm starting a new job in January, but I think I can still enjoy some good reading.

One challenge I'm taking on is called the 5/5 challenge: to read five works in each of five different genres or categories that I might not ordinarily read, or read that much of. Here are my categories:

1. Classics. I only finished four classics in 2012!
2. Dramas. I don't think I've read a play since English 382: Shakespeare. And that was last century. 
3. Religious or inspirational books. I don't read that many of these, aside from the Standard Works.
4. Memoirs/Biographies/Autobiographies. I haven't read too many of these, and I really should read more.
5. "Best Books" or Bestsellers, such as those from the ALA list, or the New York Times.

All the gaps will be filled in with whatever else comes up along the way.

It makes me a bit nervous to constrain my reading this way, but hopefully it will be enriching and enjoyable.

Book 81: Banker to the Poor

After reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Bright Lights, No City, I wanted to read a bit more about poverty alleviation, specifically through microfinancing.



I figured I should start my reading essentially at the beginning of microfinancing with Muhammad Yunus and Grameen, his Bangladesh-based bank that began with a loan of $27 to a group of poor villagers. This is a great book, and full of hope. I got up from reading it one night after midnight and participated in another loan through Kiva, a worldwide microfinancing/social media organization.

Book 80: Back When We Were Grownups

Ho hum.



That's about how I felt about this. I've read other books by Anne Tyler and enjoyed them, and this one was ok, but it just didn't grab me. I felt like the ending was kind of unresolved, too: not that I wanted it tied up neatly happily-ever-after style, but I wasn't convinced by the ending at all.

Book 79: Behind the Beautiful Forevers

You know those books that are at once both incredibly good and terribly discouraging?



This is one of those. It's a nonfiction account of life in a slum in Mumbai. The people there show ingenuity to feed, clothe, and house themselves. But the corruption in institutions in India and among the non-profit foundations supposedly helping slum dwellers and orphans is so depressing.

Book 78: The Year of Learning Dangerously

I heard Quinn Cummings interviewed on NPR earlier this year and read a few reviews of the book. I'm also interested in homeschooling my delicate geniuses, so the subject matter caught my attention.




I enjoyed Ms. Cummings' discussions of how homeschooling worked for her and her daughter. The chapters in which she visited other types of homeschoolers (usually the most extreme types around) and their events were sometimes interesting, but never very in-depth and often kind of caricatured.

Book 77: Bright Lights, No City

This book was an unexpected gem. I picked it up because it's about Whit Alexander, the creator of the game Cranium, and I love Cranium. Strange reason to read the book, huh?




After selling Cranium, Whit started a business called Burro in Ghana, renting rechargeable batteries to people who have no or very limited access to electricity on the grid. Whit's business is based on, and the book discusses in some detail, the idea of creative capitalism. Bill Gates spoke about it at Davos in 2008, when he said,

In a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

The book is full of intriguing ideas about international aid and doing business in a developing nation. And it's just a fun story to read, too.