49-50: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Buddha and the Terrorist

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

49: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

I get the feeling I'm the last person in the Western Hemisphere to read this book (a feeling I'll presumably get again when I finally get round to reading Dreams From My Father). It's an astonishingly vivid, moving and eloquent memoir of Angelou's childhood in the 1930s and 1940s, mostly in Arkansas with her hard-working, principled, and deeply religious grandmother, but also in St Louis and San Francisco with her mother. a glamorous figure with a practical approach to life and a somewhat hands-off parenting technique. Every page rings out with the truth of her experiences, sometimes joyful, sometimes painful, sometimes merely puzzling; it's a riveting read.

50: The Buddha and the Terrorist: the story of Angulimala by Satish Kumar

Satish Kumar, founding editor of Resurgence magazine (one of the best magazines on sustainable living and alternative economics you're ever going to find, if not the best) recounts a story from the Buddhist scriptures that tells how the furious murderer Angulimala ("finger necklace") met the Buddha and transformed into Ahimsaka ("the nonviolent one"). A story of finding peace by refusing to fight fire with fire, which is both timeless and timely.

~~

I wasn't going to do a second 50 -- and considering I took a lot more than a year to do the first, that might be a sensible decision. But something interesting's happened: the other day I wandered into a bookshop that was having a sale and cast my eye over the discount books, and thought to myself "ooh, look, they have Starbook by Ben Okri and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See and The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, and... ohhh. I see what you did there, brain." So it looks like I will do another 50 after all. But I'm not going to approach the reading or the writing-up with the stern "this is a Duty" approach I sometimes took with this 50, because that's the perfect way to drain the pleasure out of anything. No, this time I'm just going to let myself enjoy it. And I will, I'm sure of that.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Congratulations!

:: "ooh, look, they have Starbook by Ben Okri and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See and The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, and... ohhh. I see what you did there, brain." ::

Hahahahaha! My brain did that, too. Also, my brain threw a temper tantrum: But I'm not done reading yet!! (Silly brain. No one threatened to take your books from you.)

I've gotten persistently behind in my writing-up -- I'm consequently trying to give myself permission to not make the writing-up a Duty.

[rydra_wong]

I'm consequently trying to give myself permission to not make the writing-up a Duty.

FWIW, I found it was surprisingly fun to post my list and then ask people to pick a book for me to write up in a comment.

That freed me up to write the "OMFG I have no words for this" responses and the "meh" responses, which I wouldn't have felt made a post in themselves, and generally made it feel less formal and less like "Here is my book report for class".

[sanguinity]

I'll keep that in mind. :-)

One of my problems is that the books talk to me -- they want to be written up, so that burbling can happen. I don't think they'd like to have to wait for year-end.

Although maybe what oyceter does, with monthly round-ups...

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, you're far from the last person to read "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".