"Immersion in the life of the world, a willingness to be inhabited by and to speak for others, including those beyond the realm of the human, these are the practices not just of the bodhisattva but of the writer." --Jane Hirshfield

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Psychological Journeys

That is, books about them. Now we're talking. This is what I read for, although I'd add spiritual journeys as well.

Top Ten Books for Psychological Journeys, from the Guardian.
Among them:

Children of Violence Quintet by Doris Lessing
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jnr
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

I found the fifth book in Lessing's quintet, The Four-Gated City, to be moving and intense.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So true! It's the golden opportunity to truly live, or at least rent a room, in someone else's mind. Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting" does it for me.