What Are You Reading Now

I figure this could work like a (slower) version of the What Are You Listening To Now thread.

Anything goes - books, short stories, work stuff, news stuff. Add a little synopsis or whatever, all good!

I'm just very nosey.

I will start. I have just sat down with:

The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King.

This is ostensibly about famed Florentine manuscript trader and book maker, Vesoasiano da Bisticci, but in reality it covers much of the intellectual trade and acquisitions, sponsorships and dealings of Florence in the late 1400s. It is informative, meticulously researched and actually quite funny. Recommended.

I figure this could work like a (slower) version of the What Are You Listening To Now thread.

Anything goes - books, short stories, work stuff, news stuff. Add a little synopsis or whatever, all good!

I'm just very nosey.

I will start. I have just sat down with:

The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King.

This is ostensibly about famed Florentine manuscript trader and book maker, Vesoasiano da Bisticci, but in reality it covers much of the intellectual trade and acquisitions, sponsorships and dealings of Florence in the late 1400s. It is informative, meticulously researched and actually quite funny. Recommended.

Who here likes A christmas Carol?

sounds interesting - have you read the swerve? It's about the rediscovery of Lucretius' de rerum natura and other classical texts and bookhunters and the whole Italian humanist movement
I'm reading Chariton's Callirhoe atm - it's one of the five canonical ancient Greek novels. Basically a romance adventure story but it's also about different types of political set up and rhetoric and courtroom drama and plot contrivances
And I've been listening to the phantom tollbooth cos I can't get a physical copy atm. I like the idea of it - about intellectual awakening - but don't know if I actually like how it's written yet. Sometimes 'children's books' are the most moving and poignant of all books. Like the little prince by saint-exupery

sounds interesting - have you read the swerve? It's about the rediscovery of Lucretius' de rerum natura and other classical texts and bookhunters and the whole Italian humanist movement
I'm reading Chariton's Callirhoe atm - it's one of the five canonical ancient Greek novels. Basically a romance adventure story but it's also about different types of political set up and rhetoric and courtroom drama and plot contrivances
And I've been listening to the phantom tollbooth cos I can't get a physical copy atm. I like the idea of it - about intellectual awakening - but don't know if I actually like how it's written yet. Sometimes 'children's books' are the most moving and poignant of all books. Like the little prince by saint-exupery

The Astavakra-Gita and Avadhuta-Gita. Just beautiful and so many ways at looking at the self and the non-doer that I had never considered.

what is the non-doer?

The state where you become an observer of your own body and actions and realise that while the body does this and that, that you are not the body and therefore you don't do anything.

but 'you' - your will/ mind - initiates the action - even if you're not the same as your body
the distinction doesn't seem that important or useful...

Ultimate non-doership doesn't involve the mind, it is the I am state.

I'm not reading anything at the moment, but I recently finished The Five People You Meet In Heaven, and I'm just about to start re-reading The Celestine Prophecy as I haven't read it for a few years and it's a truly excellent book.

hmm ok
so where is the self located if not the mind?

I couldn't get into The Five People You Meet In Heaven. Did you like it?

From what I understand according to ancient Indian texts and Vedic theology the Self just exists and everything occurs within the Self. And by everything I mean the universe, planets, stars, people. It's quite a difficult concept and I don't claim to have my head wrapped round it but I remember a quote from the texts I'm reading:

"The man of Knowledge is devoid of thought even though he is engaged in it. He is devoid of the sense-organs even though he uses them. He is devoid of intelligence even though he is endowed with it. He is devoid of the sense of ego even though he is possessed of it. Established in the Self - the Pure Consciousness, the seeker is beyond the realm of mind, intellect, senses and ego though he may appear to behave like an ordinary man."

It wasn't the most interesting book I've ever read in my life. It was readable, but I didn't think all that much to it really. At the end I was a bit like "is that it?"