On My Bookshelf

Yes, my bedroom wall is MANGO YELLOW.
And the orchids are all flowering madly. 

At home with a cold with time to blog! I have quite enjoyed the peace and quiet this week. It would have been better to have a few days off and NOT have a cold, but hey. I have been catching up on my reading this week, and realised I haven't updated my book list here for EVER. So without further ado:

The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby and Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis -  Two mad scientists, wonderful to read. Both authors are into DNA - Mullis won the Nobel Prize in recognition of his improvement of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, which allows the amplification of specific DNA sequences.

The Cosmic Serpent is anthropological, and studies how the wisdom of ancient people and primitive tribes has always explained that all life comes from twinned serpents, which looks exactly like our current understanding of DNA. When I finished that book I decided to learn more about DNA, so I bought Kary Mullis' book. *Disclaimer* - I didn't learn much more about DNA from Kary Mullis' book. But I was highly entertained and his writing, like Narby's, is thought provoking.

The biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life, by Gerald Martin. Anyone who loves Marquez' novels will enjoy this, as it is well written and will take you al over South America and Europe with some of the best Latin American authors. History buffs will like it too. I started reading this a few years ago, got about half way through, and then put it aside while life got complicated for a bit. I picked up where I had left off a few weeks ago, and it was like seeing an old friend again.

While life was complicated, I read two lovely stories by Melissa Westemeier: Kicks Like a Girl and Whipped, Not Beaten. These uplifting novels are fun and readable, and make you feel like everything's going to be ok in life and love.

Two Writers

Max and I are reading the final instalment of Skulduggery Pleasant together, and we GOT TO MEET DEREK LANDY!!!!! Max's tooth fell out while we were standing in the very long line and Derek said "OMG please don't let any more bits fall off here," was the exactly perfect thing to say to a boy who loves funny books about zombies.

This month I finished reading Goddesses: Mysteries of the Divine Feminine, by Joseph Campbell. I love, love Joseph Campbell, and this new collection of his Goddess lectures is wonderful. It makes me want to go back and re-read all the old fairy tales and myths.

And then, since I was in a myths-and-symbols mood, I bought 'The Book Of Symbols: Reflections On Archetypal Images'.

A friend lent me Zen in the Art of Archery recently, which helped me to understand the importance of ritual and the little things in life:

'As in the case of archery, there can be no question but that these arts are ceremonies. More clearly than the teacher could express it in words, they tell the pupil that the right frame of mind for the artist is only reached when the preparing and the creating, the technical and the artistic, the material and the spiritual, the project and the object, flow together without a break.' - Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

Zen in the Art of Archery is short, sweet and insightful.

I have also enjoyed That's Not It and How are You, Sugar? by the lovely Nancy Ellen Row - The first a novel and the second a collection of recipes and wisdoms from the past, and both set in the Southern USA.

And lastly, for laugh-until-you-die hilarity, there's Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson. Don't try to read this when other people are trying to sleep, your guffaws and screams of mirth will keep them up.

I've got quite a heap of other books to get through, so I won't be bored this winter. Have you read anything good lately? Tell us!!