[TSS] Tibetan Love

My main focus over the last week has been a book titled "the Joy of Living" by a Tibetan Buddhist monk with the tongue twister of a name Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Yongey (Rinpoche is a title, equivalent to PhD in the west, not a last name) here writes about Tibetan Buddhist meditation, as well as the similarities between western science, and Buddhist teachings. I have about 75 pages left in the book, so will probably be finishing it today.

In other unrelated news: You will notice that "the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay" has disappeared off my currently reading list. I love the book, its a blast, but its taking so long to get through that I'm feeling a bit of burn out, loosing the push to read it. With all the stuff I have to read, and want to share with you guys, I've decided to set Chabon's book aside for a while.

[TSS]: Mormon Fundamentalism and Vietnam in Space!

I've been reading a rather amusing duo of books lately. Under the Banner of Heaven was written by Jon Krakauer in the mid '90's. Its about Mormon Fundamentalism, and a rather brutal murder of a mother and her infant daughter by two brothers who were Mormons, and believed that God had told them to kill this woman and her innocent infant. Its a pretty chilling look into faith gone wrong, and the horrible things people do to each other in the name of religion.

The other is a book titled the Forever War. Take the Vietnam war, and combine it with Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie), throw in some relativity theory, and you've got the Forever War. Its about a war between humans and a race of aliens from a far off galaxy, but thats really oversimplifying it. The book won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel of the year when it was published, and from what I've read so far, it deserves both. I'm reading the author's preffered edition, whihc I'm not sure about the availability of, as it was a gift from a friend, but I suggest you buy it if you can locate a copy, as the other two editions apparently contain major deviations from the original (the author's preffered edition).