My Book Reviews

I mmortality by Milan Kundera My battered copy of this novel The novel I am going to discuss in this short post is Immortality  by Milan Kunders, Faber and Faber, London, 1992, translated by Peter Kussi. This is an extraordinary book to say the least. If the reader is expecting the usual plot structure over a fixed period of time then s/he will be disappointed.  I don’t know quite how I would describe this novel, but it most certainly is postmodern plus a unique Kundera-esque take on fiction. Kundera, born 1929, is the Czech Republic's most recognized living writer. However, he has lived in exile in France since 1975 and has become a naturalized citizen in 1981. Somewhat like Ireland’s own Nobel Laureate, Samuel Beckett, Kundera sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores. The book that we are discussing here, with its imposing abstract and heavy title, Immort...

My copy of this book. As I type these words I have just been looking at the RTE weight loss programme Operation Transformation  and I was transfixed by the ongoing physical and emotional transformation that all the candidates/leaders have undergone.  It was wonderful to witness the joy of well-being that shone through from their eyes (sometimes with tears) as we watched.  Theirs was and still is a long journey.  The same type of courage is involved in our spiritual journey through life.  There simply is no easy path to well-being.  The title of these three posts is Inviting the Buddha Home , a title that is just that, an invitation.  That invitation can only be fulfilled when we have really committed ourselves to the path to enlightenment.  That path or that journey is indeed a long and a hard one.  There will be a lot of obstacles along the way both from within ourselves (our mind) and from without (others and society), but the first i...

Introduction In this post I wish to review another book on Buddhism which I read over the past several years. The book in question here is Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way to Change: A Positive Psychology for the West,  Continuum, London & New York, 2001. I notice I dated the book when I first purchased it on 10 June, 2003. I have read it several times since, and it remains in my top ten books, books which I continue to frequently dip into for inspiration. Perennial Polarities One of the oldest polarities is that between doing and being. Craig Harper, the Australian motivational speaker, facilitator, coach and business man has an interesting story on this dichotomy between doing and being on his blog. See  Harper . Here is a snippet of the reported conversation between a fictional business man and a fictional monk: Businessman:  But can’t I just  do ? Why do I need to…  be ? Monk:  Because if you’re always doing, you’ll never...

Introduction There is a traditional Buddhist saying that if you meet the Buddha on the road kill him.  This is an ancient Zen koan which warns us to be very aware of our own hubris or pride.  Or to put it in more Buddhist terms to be very aware of  simplistic attachment , i.e., believing in our idea of what or who the Buddha is as such an idea is but a shadow of what or who he really is. The early Christian theologians also had a similar belief or doctrine which stated something to the effect that no definition of God exists that can capture who he is as his reality is too far beyond our ken.  If we think we can know God in our finitude, then we are extremely naive. In a sense, the road to God, the road to enlightenment, the way to Truth, the path to the Ultimate Good is just that, a path, a way, a pilgrimage, a journey in which, strangely the path or way or journey may be more important than the destination, or even more mysteriously all there is...  Or...

I have always believed that reading biographies is an interesting way in which to engage with history. Similarly, autobiographies, though way less objective obviously, provide us with another avenue into history in the making. With that brief assertion out of the way, I wish to review Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, and it is certainly an ideal way to read about the history of the development of the personal computer literally blow by blow. Isaacson is a superb writer, who was personally sought out by Jobs to be his official biographer, seemingly after he had learned that given his diagnosis of cancer he would not have too long left to live.  Though that fact was initially unknown to Isaacson, or anyone else indeed, he eventually agreed to take on the task despite some initial misgivings. Isaacson, Jobs knew, was an accomplished, learned, and objective biographer who had already written acclaimed biographies of Einstein, Franklin and Kissinger. If you are int...

I wish to discuss the searingly moving book  Their Darkest Hour: People Tested To The Extreme in World War II by Laurence Rees, Ebury Press, UK, 2008.  This book is a good book to read in tandem with any standard history book of the period, and indeed with Jonathan Glover's Humanity: A Moral History of The Twentieth Century which is a tour de force on the moral and ethical implications of War, and which I reviewed in this blog here  Glover .  I can trace my interest in the topic of evil back to viewing as a boy in my late father's company the wonderful documentary series, which is still considered one of the greatest and most profound summaries of WWII, namely  The World at War.   This documentary was produced by Jeremy Isaacs , narrated by the famous actor Lawrence Olivier   and included a most moving and haunting score composed by Carl Davis .  As I write this piece I am listening to the theme music by Davis on YouTube World At War Theme ...

Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Self  As an erstwhile theologian and a current philosopher (of sorts) I have always been interested in making some sense of the enterprise of life.  Finding ourselves thrust or thrown into existence (that old Heideggerian "dasein") we seek to make sense of life, with the myriads of complex problems it throws at us, as soon as self-consciousness dawns.  The two books I wish to discuss briefly in this post are (i)  The Philosophy of Mind, by  Edward Feser, One World Books, Oxford, 2006 and (ii) Concepts of the Self, by Anthony Elliott, 2nd Edition, revised and updated, Polity, 2008. (i) The Philosophy of Mind   by Edward Feser My Copy of Feser's book In short, this book does exactly what it says in the blurb on the cover: it provides a wonderfully accessible introduction to the topic referred to as philosophy of mind.  The topics he covers in this short introduction to the field are: perception, ...