Tag Archives: Book Review

BOOK: “Ma” ed. by Ken Rodgers & John Einarsen

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Ma: The Japanese Secret to Contemplation and Calm: An Invitation to AwarenessMa: The Japanese Secret to Contemplation and Calm: An Invitation to Awareness by Ken Rodgers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Tuttle

Release date: October 27, 2025

My introduction to the concept of ma came as a young martial arts student, where it was thought of as distancing, but not distancing in a static sense — rather in a way that incorporated timing as well [so, more of an interval in space-time.] I would later hear the term applied to domains such as joke telling in which perfection of pause could be as critical to a laugh as the words that comprised the joke. This book expanded my understanding to numerous realms I’d never much considered before such as architecture, photography, and gardening. (Incidentally, this book does contain a chapter addressing the martial arts aspect of ma, though not the comedic ramifications of the concept.)

I haven’t seen any other books that focus entirely on this concept. Ma is often mentioned in books on Japanese philosophy and aesthetics but rarely with such depth and singular attention. If there are other books that drill down into the concept in this way, I doubt they are as readable as this one (that is, I suspect such a book would be intensely philosophic and scholarly.) So, this book seems to have a solid niche.

There were a couple chapters that took my thinking on the subject to entirely new places. One was on ma in the domain of virtual reality. This raised interesting metaphysical considerations. Another was about the Heart Sutra and how the translations used have led to longstanding misunderstandings of that work.

If you are interested in art and or philosophy, I’d highly recommend this book.

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BOOK: “Gut Feelings” by Gerd Gigerenzer

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Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the UnconsciousGut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Website – Penguin

Like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Gut Feelings explores the circumstances under which intuitive decision-making has been shown to outperform rigorous and systematic reasoning. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

The central idea of this book is that our brains have evolved to engage in intuitive decision making, and that sometimes what looks like sloppy thinking has underlying benefits. Take – for example – the fact that many times people are asked a question that they don’t know the answer to, but they exploit their selective ignorance in a way that allows them to not only outperform those more ignorant than they, but also those less ignorant. Gigerenzer uses the example of students asked whether Milwaukee or Detroit has a bigger population. Often those who’ve only heard of one of the cities will guess that the one they know is bigger, and this tends to be right more often than not. Students familiar with both cities (but not knowing the precise answer) are more likely to stumble.

The book suggests that we tend to decide based on one key factor rather than the full “pros and cons” list for which many teachers and leaders advocate. The book has a fascinating chapter on how this all applies to healthcare decision-making. It provides insight into why the American healthcare system is so screwed up (high cost, low health outcomes.)

If you are interested in decision-making and the divergence between what we are taught to do and what most of us actually do most of the time (and why,) I’d highly recommend this book.

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BOOKS: “Startlement” by Ada Limón

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Startlement: New and Selected PoemsStartlement: New and Selected Poems by Ada Limon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Milkweed Editions

Release: September 30, 2025

This is a Greatest Hits from six of author’s previous collections, plus twenty-one new poems. The poems are clever, personal, and often whimsical. They range from short to intermediate length and employ varied approaches to free verse poetry (with a few prose poems.)

This was my first time reading Limón’s work, and I enjoyed her poems tremendously. I’d highly recommend this book for poetry readers.

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BOOK: “The Life of an Amorous Man” by Ihara Saikaku [Trans. by Chris Drake]

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The Life of an Amorous Man: A Novel of Love and Desire in Old JapanThe Life of an Amorous Man: A Novel of Love and Desire in Old Japan by Ihara Saikaku
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Tuttle

On sale October 14, 2025

Original Title: 好色一代男

As the title suggests, this novel is presented as the biography of a man who is — shall we say — a horndog. Actually, it would be more correct to say that it is the story of the man’s sex life, as it begins with his sexual awakening as a boy of seven and tells stories of his relationships and dalliances throughout his life until he reaches the age of sixty and is no longer physically capable of the act. Of course, the novel does describe non-amorous life events such as the protagonist’s (i.e. Yonosuke’s) brief time as a monk and as (what in modern terms would be called) a “trust-fund kid.” Yonosuke is from a wealthy merchant family, though his inability to keep his mind on task sees him disowned for many years. So, he leads lives both rich and poor, but never without lust in his heart.

Given that the book focuses on Yonosuke’s interactions with geisha and varied sex workers, one might expect that it is a work of erotica (or even pornography.) It is neither. There is no graphic description of sexual activities and often those events are glossed over altogether. This book will be of much more interest to those interested in what life in Edo Period Japan was like, and particularly how sex work operated as a regulated industry with licit and illicit domains, than to anyone wishing to read erotica for sensual or prurient purposes.

The book has a series of illustrations (one per chapter) that were drawn by the author and appeared in the original (1682) edition. There are also poems (tanka and haiku) sprinkled in here and there, many of which were invocative in their own right.

If you are interested in historical Japan and / or its “floating world,” you’ll find this book to be an interesting read. It’s highly readable and entertaining.

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BOOK: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

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The Adventures of Tom SawyerThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available Online – Project Gutenberg

This is Twain’s best-known and probably most beloved work — though arguably neither his best nor most impactful piece. It tells the tale of a mischievous but warmhearted boy, Tom Sawyer, and a series of formative events in Sawyer’s youth from learning how to trick other kids into doing his chores to being trapped deep in a cave with his sweetheart. While there is a plot throughline involving the closest thing the novel has to a villain, Injun Joe, for the most part the story is episodic. That’s for the best because if too much weight were placed on that throughline, it’s resolution would feel flat. As it is, we see Sawyer and his friends, particularly Huck Finn, subjected to trials and challenges (often of their own making) that present moral dilemmas and the need to steel themselves for the occasion.

It’s often been said that this book isn’t as powerful or influential as its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which this book sets up nicely I should point out. It is probably true that Huck Finn is more profound. That said, Tom Sawyer could be said to be a cleaner read in that Huck Finn gets a bit muddled, particularly toward its end.

I’d highly recommend this book for all readers.

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BOOK: “Seven Animal Postures” by Jeogun [Trans. by Dowon]

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Seven Animal PosturesSeven Animal Postures by Jeogun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Information – Sunmudo Daegeumgangmun Foundation

I bought this book in the gift shop of Golgulsa Temple [i.e. Stone Buddha Temple,] in the countryside outside of Gyeongju, South Korea. Golgulsa is a fascinating place. It’s sort of the Shaolin Temple of Korea, teaching martial arts and qigong (energy work) alongside meditation and Buddhist philosophy. The Korean Buddhist martial art is called Sunmudo, and I’d never heard of it before traveling to Korea.

At any rate, this book is a 35-page guide to a set of qigong practices known as the “Seven Animal Postures” (or Yeongdongipgwan.) It’s a set of exercises that are similar to qigong practices like the Eight Pieces Brocade, and not greatly dissimilar to yogasana (i.e. yoga’s postural practices.) [FYI: The animals of these exercises are Tiger, Dragon, Deer, Monkey, Bear, Turtle, and Crane.]

The book offers a little bit of background on Sunmudo and the benefits of it, but is mostly a guide to the movement, breath, and postural details of these seven exercises. It has line drawings to help elaborate upon the text. My only gripe would be that the paper the book is printed on to make it more visually interesting has blocks of darker color that make it a little harder to read than is necessary.

If you are interested in qigong or yogic practices that are a bit more off the beaten path, you may find this one interesting.

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BOOK REVIEW: “New Story of the Stone” by Jianren Wu [Trans. by Liz Evans Weber]

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New Story of the Stone: An Early Chinese Science Fiction NovelNew Story of the Stone: An Early Chinese Science Fiction Novel by Jianren Wu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Columbia University Press

This book is presented as a sequel to the Chinese literary classic (alternatively) known as Dream of the Red Chamber or Story of the Stone. The central character is a scholarly traveler by the name of Baoyu. The first part of the book is set in China around the time of the Boxer Rebellion, an event that features in the story. Throughout this portion, the book reads like historical fiction. However, Baoyu’s travels eventually bring him to a hidden realm, a technologically advanced utopia within China. It is here where Baoyu’s adventures get fantastical and otherworldly, and the book ventures into the domain of Science Fiction.

The setting of the book reminds me a little of Marvel’s Wakanda from Black Panther. Perhaps both instances of worldbuilding were motivated by the humiliated colonists’ fantasy of being more advanced than those who pull the strings for once, or of showing their (respective) lands to be places of “crouching tigers and hidden dragons” (i.e. where great talents exist but remain unseen.) (Note: While China wasn’t on-the-whole colonized by a Western country, its interaction with England and other Western nations left it forced to accept terms unfavorable and undesirable to China (not to mention the outright colonized enclaves such as Hong Kong and Macau.) While the publisher has emphasized the science fiction aspect of this work, it is an anticolonial work through and through. The book can come across as xenophobic and nationalistic in places, but this only reminds the reader of how such positions might be arrived at under the boot of foreign influence.

The book is readable though philosophical and is well worth reading for those interested in developing a deeper insight into Chinese perspectives.

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BOOK: “White Teeth, Red Blood” by Various

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White Teeth, Red Blood: Selected Vampiric VersesWhite Teeth, Red Blood: Selected Vampiric Verses by Lord Byron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Pushkin Press

This anthology gathers poetry with at least a vaguely vampiric theme. About half of the poets fit into the category of well-known to a general readership (e.g. Goethe, Byron, Coleridge, Tennyson, Yeats, Dickinson, Kipling, Baudelaire, Millay, etc.) and the others will be less familiar to most readers — either by virtue of being modern poets or having a body of work that didn’t age as well, on the whole. Even the pieces from familiar poets don’t tend to be among those artists’ most anthologized works by virtue of the specialized theme of the selection. Most of the pieces are older works, but there are modern poems included as well, and it follows that most of the works are rhymed / metered, with free verse mostly seen among the newest poems.

The twenty-nine poems in the anthology are arranged between three sections. The first is the longest part, taking up about 3/4th of the book, and consists of nine poems (including a few excerpts of book-length narrative poems,) all of long format. The second section includes eleven shorter poems (between one and a few pages long,) and the last section contains nine poems, most of which are quite short (as short as a quatrain.)

There is a brief introduction by Claire Kohda, but otherwise there is no ancillary matter. That was fine by me. There is no padding, and — even though there are fewer than thirty poems — the poems fill out the book because so many of them are long pieces or excerpts.

I enjoyed this book and its varied selection of poems. While I read poetry extensively and have read my share of vampire fiction, this was the first work I can remember reading at their intersect. This meant that, for me, there was a good amount of unfamiliar material (despite there being relatively few recent poems.) If you’re in the same boat, you’ll probably enjoy this anthology.

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BOOK: “The Pocket Rumi” ed. / trans. by Kabir Helminski

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The Pocket Rumi (Shambhala Pocket Library)The Pocket Rumi by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Shambhala

This is a selection of writings (mostly poetry) of Rumi (formal name: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī.) Rumi was a mystic of Sufi Islam, and so the poems tend toward the devotional — though with more reference to the experience of intoxication than one might expect from a 13th century Islamic poet.

This selection consists of three sections organized by poetic form, each section progressively longer than the preceding one. The first section is ruba’i, the second is ghazals, and the last is from Rumi’s Mathnawi.

The “Pocket” of the book’s title and series is figurative as the paperback is too big of both format and thickness for any pocket I own, personally, but the point is that it’s a quick read at only about 200 pages of (mostly) poetry [meaning white space abounds.]

I enjoyed reading this selection. I can’t say how true to message the translations are as I have no knowledge of Persian. I can point out that the translators opted to abandon form in favor of free verse. Hopefully, this gave them the freedom of movement to approach the message and tone of the originals.

If you are interested in a short, readable English translation of Rumi’s poetry, this book offers a fine place to start.

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BOOK: “Masala Lab” by Krish Ashok

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Masala Lab : The Science of Indian CookingMasala Lab : The Science of Indian Cooking by Krish Ashok
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Penguin

Many books have come out in recent years that explore the intersection of science and cooking, but this is one of the few that I’ve seen take on the sub-theme of science’s role in a particular cuisine — in this case Indian. Indian food, while broad and diverse itself, does present a unique palette of considerations. Few cuisines can make claims to the same level of complexity as Indian with all its spices and such. Also, Indian food tends to use heat to a different extent / in different ways than other cuisines, which is partly why, while Indian food is as tasty as food gets, aesthetically it tends toward a visually unappealing gloopy-gloppyness.

Ashok examines what applied heat does to food and why, how flavors are balanced and enhanced and why, what acids do and why they are essential, what value added is gained by pressure cookers and other specialty equipment, and how an experimental approach can be taken in lieu of a recipe book? The book takes a few controversial stances, such as in favor of sodium bicarbonate and MSG, but to a large extent is a straightforward discussion of how science informs culinary technique and ingredients.

The author maintains a light and readable tone throughout the book. I’d recommend this book for readers interested in the intersect of science and food, doubly so if one has a particular interest in Indian food.

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