april 2018 – good to read

Galen Strawson
The author might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly – in other words, he is a true essayist. This book gathers three of them: “A Fallacy of Our Age”, “The Sense of Self” and “Real Naturalism.” “Galen Strawson’s Things That Bother Me is, despite its title, no collection of complaints. Rather, Strawson invokes the notion of being bothered in the largest sense, engaging with the ideas, or conditions of living, that will not leave him alone…” (Ian McEwan) Drawing on literature and life as much as on philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder.
Series: New York Review of Books, March 2018

Dean Radin
The chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) turns a critical eye toward such practices as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. Are such powers really possible? Science says yes.
According to the bestselling author of The Conscious Universe magic is a natural aspect of reality, and each of us can tap into this power with diligent practice. The author, who worked on the US government’s top secret psychic espionage program known as Stargate, has spent the last forty years conducting controlled experiments that demonstrate that thoughts are things, that we can sense others’ emotions and intentions from a distance, that intuition is more powerful than we thought, and that we can tap into the power of intention. These dormant powers can help us to lead more interesting and fulfilling lives.
Harmony, April 2018

Aida Edemariam
In this fascinating memoir that recalls the life of her ninety-five-year old grandmother, Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam tells the story of modern Ethiopia—a nation that would undergo a tumultuous transformation from feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution to democracy over the course of one century. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, Yetemegnu was married and had given birth before she turned fifteen. Over the next decades Yetemegnu endured extraordinary trials: the death of some of her children; her husband’s imprisonment; and the detention of one of her sons. She witnessed the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia and the subsequent resistance, suffered Allied bombardment and exile from her city; lived through a bloody revolution and the nationalization of her land, and much more.
Harper/Collins, March 2018

Stephen Ball
This book shares instructions and rituals for using the oracle with dice or other divinatory tools. You will also find a list of meanings for every possible elemental combination, and explanations of how Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Sun, and Moon manifest in this divination system. When you explore the oracle’s patterns and correspondences, you gain insight into the challenges and concerns that we all face. With just three dice, you can receive answers to basic questions or initiate a deeper interpretive journey. Based on elemental forces that have been consulted by healers and sages for thousands of years, this dice oracle will inspire you to see yourself and the world with a whole new perspective.
Llewellyn, March 2018

Ian Buruma
A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical city that shaped him. With his signature acuity, Ian Buruma brilliantly captures the historical tensions between east and west, the clash of conflicting cultures, and the dilemma of the gaijin in Japanese society, constantly free, yet always on the outside. The result is a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic, and sexual. And so a child of European privilege wound up vamping in a red jockstrap, doing a whiskey ad with Akira Kurosawa, and having affairs with women and men. Most astonishingly, he left six years later with the same girlfriend, his future wife.
Penguin/Random House, March 2018