And I just heard about an upcoming PBS documentary about a harrowing Everest climb that did not end well. Sounds exciting. Thank goodness I just read the last post and I really can go to sleep now. I hope.

Ummm. I really like to study. I am usually reading about 4 0r 5 books at the same time. However within this would be only one fiction. Can’t seem to read more than one fiction at a time. Now I’m reading EXIT GHOST by Philip Roth as my fiction. Non-Fiction: VIOLENT POLITICS BY William Polk; THE END OF AMERICA, by Naomi Wolf; IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS, by James Longley; CONSUMED: HOW MARKETS CORRUPT, by Benjamin Barber I read about 5 books a week. The fiction I read well, many of the non=fiction I survey, but well. All the time I am reading Cornell West, anything. And I have BOOKS I re-read every few years: Rollo Mays COURAGE TO CREATE, and a book of SUFI STORIES, and I survey Big Dragon every couple of years to see if Burstein and DeKeijzer got it right. I usually have one country I am studying also, in depth. I’ve finished up Tibet and don’t know where I’m goin’ next. Done China, Russia, Europe, Israel, Australia over the last few years. Probably to Africa which really sparks my curiosity. Think I’ve been fed alotta bull about Africa over the decades. Gonna find out. I use both books written and maps and atlas. Like to find out what the natural resource is or was exactly that causes the G-8 multinats to take us all to war all the time. Often need an atlas for this to figure it all out. Fun really. Roth isn’t entertainment for me as most Jewish writers aren’t. For me anyway. But he makes good observations in this small book. I reread almost all of Taylor Caldwell’s books except when she went to religion. She was uncanny in her ability to write in the 30s and now see it unfold. She’s layered usin’ a lifing thing to layer family, markets, politics, greed, games, etc. and make all the connections. Her style isn’t the prettiest but her visionary abilities are outstanding. She speaks in a way I expect a woman to speak. I like being current and responsible. Think it’s my job as a plantarian, but I like knowin’ how I got here also, along with everyone else. I hate going into a play in the middle. I LOVE a good fiction that just takes me far far away into it. They are becomin’ harder to find with all this genre’ stuff where each book is just like the last one. I’m not a fad reader. And if I read to tune out (fiction) it is usually because I want somethin’ in it to tune in to. I love love love good story and think I’ll copy the Whoopies list. Gotta feelin’ her stuff ain’t fluff.

I’m in the middle of Ken Follett’s “World Without End” and am just lovin’ it. It is the follow up to “Pillar’s of the Earth” which I was so thrilled with I had to read it three times over the years. In both books it is the characters who drive the story and it’s such rich history so artfully put on the page. I’d love to write: Hey, it’s only rearranging the 26 letters of the alphabet in different ways, what is so hard about that? :-)

I recently read Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope. A lovely book. And one of the few books I can read over and over is Lolita by V. Nabakov. Despite the distastefulness of HH’s pedophilia, it really is a funny, well-written book.

“After the Floods” by New Orleans author Bruce Henricksen. Breathtaking.

Read every single one of those Patrick O’Brian books and loved the movie! Almost every one of the Everest climbers in that fated 1996 climb wrote a book about it afterwards; those who survived, that is, of course. I read them all, and many others besides. Have every video and DVD ever made about climbing that mountain. Feel I could climb it over and over in my mind. Have no intention of actually trying it! I recommend David Breshears and Jon Krackaur on Everest, as well.

This compilation of contributions today is so enjoyable! I will now be quite engrossed for the next year or so. Thank you everyone. BTW, where is Mugsy today? Hope you are well, dear. The one book I adore, and read time and again, is My Descent into Death by Howard Storm, which is an autobiographical account of a near death experience and its aftermath. Truly one of those books which can (and may!) change the reader’s life. Thank you, Anne Rice, for helping bring out this book. A must read, sisters! You may have to order it at a local bookstore, but it is worth the wait.

If I were to recommend books for the U.S.A.an to read that I think they NEED to read, and are easy to get through and high interest and help to understand where we are and why I would recommend: CONFESSIONS OF A PROFESSIONAL HIT MAN, by John Perkins: He an insider lets us know what the corpies and politicians are doin’; OVERTHROW:AMERICA’S CENTURY, by Stephen Kinzer, gives a history of how we took what we got; DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MYTHOLOGY, by Kenneth C. Davis, he takes mythology and does a historical outline up to Christianity and you end up really really understandin’ ‘religion’ and the ‘politics’ that produced religion real well without havin’ to learn the names of the ole gods and goddesses or specific country. It is so so excellent and certainly produced my thinking is a much broader yet cohesive direction. He’s writes it for mythology dummies, which is why I bought it. Other important, I think, reading is William Mosley, to get a better internalization of the African Americans journey within this Democracy thus all of ours. I’m findin’ the best teachers of the democracy dream we hold are the African American writers. Such scholars! Such ability at language! Tavis Smiley’s books are good too. And when we actually think about it, who the hell would know it better than the African Americans desended from the slave trade? Also in reading African American scholars let’s us know they’ve been becomin’ scientists, professors, businesspeople, physicists, inventors, accountants, engineers, etc. all along while the TV and media in general been tellin’ us somethin’ else. Time to open our eyes and read for pure pleasure but also what we need to read, I think. My support of African American scholarship does not mean I do or do not support Barak Obama —who did not rise up from the decendants of slave trade. There is, I think, and must be I think, an inherent difference in MindSet. An important difference as to our Democracy and our love affair with it.

Thanks Frank, it is written down, so it shall be!

I’m loving reading these lists - they are inspiring me for future reads. For the most part, I read more non-fiction than fiction. Currently, I am reading A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. I started it, left it somewhere, got another - picked up where I left off and then my son came home from Iraq on leave and he heard me absolutely howling out loud while reading, and the next thing I know, he has borrowed it. Well, needless to say it is in Iraq right now, so I have picked up another copy to finish it. Starts a little slow, but the comedy of errors with all these New Orleans characters just makes me laugh. I love Cormac McCarthy and the The Crossing is waiting for me when I finish Toole. I love the wide dry open expanses his characters live in. One of my all time favorites since college is Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of Waves. There is nothing to add to it, or nothing to take away from it that would improve it. Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar - on the science of happiness. Warped Passages by Lisa Randall (Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions). She is a physicist - this one I take in small doses. It makes me think a lot. One of my all time favorites is How The Irish Saved Civilization by Cahill. Haven’t read it in a while, but pick it up now and then. Started to read Eckhart Tolle, but it is real obvious that he has studied one of my teachers extensively (Joel Goldsmith) - you can tell by how many phrases of Joel’s that Tolle uses. Joel passed away in 1964 so it is hard to find his books. Someone has started to re publish them, but they are not quite the same.