i read some rubbish.

12May09

i often find that when you’re travelling and things are a bit complicated, catching buses and trains and stuff, the best books are ones that are simple – i mean dead simple. for example, once i read the autobiography of wwe wrestler kurt angle, it’s true! it’s true! and surprisingly enjoyed it. it had a bit of an element of those parts of films where things get built, like in robin hood prince of thieves where they build the village in the trees ready for battle, man stuff i guess.

the first book i read here was the giants by j.m.g. le clezio. i must admit to not really getting the point, maybe i should read it again.

next i read the handmaids tale by margaret atwood. it was good, it was an easy read and one of those books, as so many do, that predicts certain elements of the present time so closely it’s scary, even 30 years ago.

then i read a book called middlesex about a haermaphrodite born with a missing chromosome resulting in him being brought up as a girl until age 14. it features lots of historical facts as it traces the origin of the gene back through his family until him, starting mostly with his grandfather and grandmother who are brother and sister. it was also good, very factual, but i lost interest a bit towards the end as the story seemed to lose it’s truth and become a bit sensational.

so i’d read those serious books, i wanted a book about something more uplifting, inspirational. i quite like biographies about people who’ve achieved amazing things like climbed mountains or ran around the world, but the book shop didn’t really have them so i ended up with a book called surfing the himilayas: a spiritual adventure. now i wouldn’t even be telling anyone about this had i not just read the wikipedia entry about the author, frederick lenz. this book charts his meeting with the last surviving truly enlightened buddhist monk, who has foreseen his meeting with a snowboarding californian to which he will pass on his spiritual knowledge. i definitely had my doubts about this one at the point when the monk took to floating from the bottom of the mountain to the top. granted, it did say not everything in the book was true, but it said based on truth. i think what really made this book stand out as a load of crap was all the hippy terminology scattered throughout, references to auras and mysticism, things i’ve never heard mentioned when referring to buddhism. i’m pretty sure it contradicted iteself a million times along the way but there was so much repetition and the writing style of a 9 year old it was basically impossible to figure out what the point was. suffice to say it was not the buddhist teachings i’ve heard before, not even similar.

one good thing about reading this was that if i ever stumble across some conman, cult leader type who happens to have written a book i’m always intrigued to read it but never do, but this way i stumbled upon it backwards-ly and have read the book of a deluded, drug-addled, nut who somehow convinced people to invest time and money in his ‘teachings’.

this is a crazy, crazy world…

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