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Musings of a Book Addict
I'm married to a scavenger of sorts and he often totes home rescued boxes of books that I paw through with shiny, hungry eyes. I pull out the odd and interesting and add them to my teetering stack.
Currently reading
The Hound of the Baskervilles
E.B. White: A Biography
Murder on the Orient Express
There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate
Living Buddha, Living Christ
No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger
The Snare of the Hunter
Paintings of Henry Miller
Dreamways of the Iroquois: Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul
Pentimento (Back Bay Books)
The Pleasure Prescription: To Love, to Work, to Play - Life in the Balance
There were parts of this book that I LOVED and other sections I could barely get through. In the end, Paul Pearsall's message is one of delight and joy and pleasure and I love that. It's also really wonderful to find a very "Health at Every Size (HAES)" approach in a book that does not label itself officially as "fat-friendly." I did feel a bit oppressed by his many "questionnaires" that were designed to show us, the readers, how woefully empty of pleasure our lives are. The on-going message in the book is that if you are not of Polynesian-descent, you never really will "get it" but you can try harder by using the techniques shared in the book. This felt a little dated and a bit too much of the "Holy Native" paradigm. Polynesian people are just as complex and complicated as any other group of people. Can we learn from the spiritual tenets of their culture? Yes, absolutely. So this book is a bit of a mixed bag but worth a read if just for the reminder of how joyful our lives can be if we just get out of our own way and reach out and connect with our fellow human beings.