The Influencing Machine, Brooke Gladstone (How could you not love this book? And Gladstone’s On the Media has long been my favorite radio program.)

along with a number of books on Buddhism & Meditation

Since mid-2011, I really began to become more earnest in reading about Buddhism and meditation, though I had been curious about it and occasionally dipped a toe in here or there a handful of times before.

Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, Robert Pogue Harrison (This book is remarkable.)

A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece, edited by Jane Jacobs (I picked this up at the Strand Annex closing sale, the Alaska connection and Jane Jacobs involvement made me buy it. It’s a great story, a remarkable portrait of the people who fulfilled America’s Dreams in the new territories.)

And many more…

“But, after all, plans were the worst. They drained you of every bit of present life, until all you were was a containment building, and the ghost of yourself was lost on the vapors of the future, waiting to exist. Enough of that. Better to give up all personal qualities, all hopes, all plans, all dreams. Better to exist in a permanent startle, moments lighting up like sparks and flashing out, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.”
-Jane Smiley, Horse Heaven

“The author has final say among his or her own characters, but to control the interpretation of the story as it will be registered by the audience, the author can only persuade, manipulate, cajole, wheedle, intimidate, solicit, insult, flatter, bully, harangue, coax, shame, or otherwise appeal to or provoke the readers.”
-Joseph Carroll in an essay for the book, The Literary Animal