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BOOKS

Books were my first true love, still are and always will be. Traveling as constantly as my family did usually meant there was little for me to do without causing a problem that resulted in danger for me, one way or another. Add to that the median age of my parent's friends (45), and you'll find a little girl plopped down in settings where reading was the single best escape. I usually carry a book (and a journal) with me wherever I go even now...you never know when you'll find a few unoccupied minutes. At the moment my reading is pretty varied, as no one genre has held my attention for some time, though I am almost always game for another post-appocalyptic book or some other form of utopian (or dystopian) escapism, as long as the main focus isn't the millitant crap of men with guns. I generally don't read about war or anything that builds a vision in my head of misery. Phooey to that, gimmee something that engages my mind and allows me to dream peacefully.

I'm not going to waste time recounting the dozens (literally) of books in the two bedside bookcases AND on the floor in heaps. When something new makes it to the current stack, it'll replace the top-most entry in the "Current" column below.

Current	Ongoing	Recently Read
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman Dragon-maker's Handbook by Dan Reeder The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks A Walk In the Woods by Bill Bryson Accordian Crimes by E. Annie Proulx When You See The Emu In The Sky by Elizabeth Fuller The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell Ladies Of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers by Barbara Hambly The Red Leather Diary : Reclaiming A Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel.	Walking Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion by Gregg Bradden The Unfolding Self by Ralph Metzner (another chapter in my ongoing study of Entheogenics) The Places That Scare You - A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön (calms the head noise) Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck. More of my entheogenic studies. On his companion website, Mr. Pinchbeck says, "...expands into subjects ranging from the socio-political (corporate globalization, new technologies) to the mystical (Western esotericism, Buddhism, gnosticism, alchemy, 2012) that I hope to explore in future works. My perspective is that all of these subjects are inextricably related, and that the contemporary situation drastically confirms Andre Malraux's dictum, "The 21st Century will be mystical, or it will not be.	Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist by William R. Maples and Michael Browning Design Outlaws On the Ecological Frontier by Chris Zelov The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting by Alice Miller The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac Technically, It's Not My Fault: Concrete Poems by John Grandits Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others by Marco Iacoboni Pictures At A Revoloution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

One last thing. In anticipation of shedding a good half (at least) of my mega-library, I have been using LibraryThing. com to catalog my personal library. *sigh* Barely a dent has been made in the piles and boxes, but I slog on nonetheless. How do you eat an elephant...?