Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude
(Neal Pollack, 336pp)
I'm a fan of the man, and I also enjoyed reading this. But the book was sadder than I expected, since Pollack's trying to be his nicest self. His interpretation of what that entails has all but negated the sharp lampooning humor that first drew me to his work. As a self in progress, he documents his efforts to be wiser, more tolerant and compassionate. Larry Shainberg's Ambivalent Zen manages, while being super funny, to cover a deeper set of questions about spiritual ambition.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Mindless Eating
(Brian Wansink, 6:26)
This is my second time reading this rewarding analysis of the behavioral cues that make us feel full or hungry. Get smaller plates now!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

My passion for design
(Barbra Streisand, 320pp - skimmed)
A joke book, really, that I picked up at the public library on my way to the Stanford d-school. Her sense of "design" is rather curatorial, basically buying pretty things and arranging them in her mausoleum homes.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Born to Kvetch
(Michael Wex, 10:30)
I had a lot of data entry to do for tracking mishloach manot, and this was a delicious snack to revisit. A biography of a language lends itself to aleatoric jumps between passages.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Living a Mythic Life
(Menachem Creditor, 5:19)
Not as muscular, and the audio quality is inferior, to Dynamic Judaism. Still, the themes engaged me entirely.

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Collected Ficciones
(Borges, 5:14)
Too skimpy, too many boring stories, but some gems as well. Many of my favorites were not included.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

How to Sell
(Clancy Martin, punted before 2 hours)
Written by a UMKC prof, and commented upon for its sneaky deployment of philosophy, this demonstrated that I need more hooks to hold onto a story about family jewelers