Books I Read In 1995

Books are listed in reverse chronological order

• How to Want What You Have: Discovering the Magic and Grandeur of Ordinary Existence, by Timothy Miller. Tim Miller's book is the only self-help book solidly informed by evolutionary psychology. Interestingly, it is also very spiritual. He suggests that wanting what you have can be accomplished by practicing three attitudes: compassion, attention, and gratitude.
• The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, by David Buss. Actually, I began reading this book last fall and put it down after three chapters, because I was already so familiar with the book's thesis: That men and women pursue activities that led to our ancestors' reproductive success, and that these activities often bring the sexes into conflict with each other. Buss does a superb job in supporting the thesis with both reasoning and empirical evidence. But I wish he had spent more time discussing ways of managing sexual conflict, as opposed to just understanding it. Nonetheless, I still recommend the book highly.
• Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, by Lawrence Sutin. My principle interest in this book was finding out more about Philip K. Dick's 2-3-74 experience. Clearly (to me, anyway) it is a case of mild temporal lobe epilepsy. On the other hand, there IS a reference to Robert Anton Wilson . . .
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick. Described as one of Dick's masterpieces, considered by John Lennon for a movie adaptation, this book lives up to its reputation. The key insight for me is that if a 'higher intelligence' began invading our realities, distorting our sense of time and identity, we would be hard-put to overcome the invasion.
• The Global Brain Awakens, by Peter Russell. He pushes all of the right buttons for me (the earth is a living organism, the Internet is part of Gaia's evolving nervous system, we are all One, etc.) but Russell doesn't integrate these ideas as well as I'd hoped. Particularly disjointed are Part 2, Evolution of the Global Brain, and Part 3, Inner Evolution through meditation. Also, his very best "insights" already appear in the Tao Teh Ching, although he has a very nice development of Alan Watts's analysis of the skin-encapsulated ego.
• Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. Ambitious exploration of what is, to me, the fundamental question: 'What does it mean to live in harmony with nature?' Follow this link for a concept summary of Ishmael.
• The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk. Sign me up for this commune. The earth has been nearly destroyed by male technology, but a gynocentric, nature-loving colony remains.
• A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick. This brought back many tragicomical memories of the druggies I used to know.
• Solar Lottery, by Philip K. Dick. I chose to read as my first Dick novel his first SF novel.
• In Search of Stones, by M. Scott Peck. Peck's surprising self-disclosures about his foibles helped me feel more self- accepting about mine.
• Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray. This book's dorky title almost kept me from looking at it, but I found the book to be insightfully accurate and helpful for understanding male/female differences in communication style. Interested in buying this or another book? Follow this link to a great virtual bookstore.
• You Just Don't Understand, by Deborah Tannen. Tannen is also a remarkably keen observer of sociolinguistic sex differences. Check out this description of a conversation between Tannen and Robert Bly.

November 26, 1995