expand my knowledge

My non-fiction reading lately has been limited to academic stuff and critical theory but that’s fine with me. However, I really need to work reading the news into my routine cos otherwise I just don’t do it and feel really disconnected from what’s going on in the world.

Non-fiction books I’ve read in the last nine months:

Sorting Out your Finances for Dummies by Melanie Bien

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Getting Things Done by David Allen

How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallman

The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir

Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes (for the gazillionth time)

Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers

The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

So in the last nine months I’ve learned about finance, Afganistan, productivity, child psychology, Africa, feminism, the life of a musical legend, the life of a literary giant, managing fear, and meteorology.

So that’s two books related to science, which is good. The Seierstad and the Gallman are memoir/travel writing and the Dylan and the Oz capture specific places in specific periods in history (as well as being memoirs).

I’m doing pretty well when it comes to reading non-fiction books. But I’m still not reading the news every week. Bad me.

Non-fiction books I’ve read recently:

The Mechanics of Enlightenment by Anthony Campbell (a scientific look at the type of meditation I do, TM)

E=mc2: a biography of the world’s most famous equation by David Bodanis

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Conversations with God, book three by Neale Donald Walsch

Move your stuff, change your life by Karen Rauch Carter (accessible Feng Shui)

Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen M.D (archetypal psychology)

So all those cover biology, spirituality, physics, history, women’s studies, social history, literary theory, psychology and interior decor/self-help!

As a resident of Israel, I’m reading the news on a daily basis at the moment. Sadly, you kind of have to.

Well, I don’t know if I’ve been reading the news every week but I am reading it, read it yesterday in fact. Lots of interesting stuff about the Israeli elections I didn’t know before. The last couple of non-fiction books I’ve read were Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch and Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Yes, they are both spritual books and that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I thought about expanding my knowledge but, hey, these books encourage me to examine my own beliefs and develop my spiritual wisdom and that’s got to be at least as important as knowing how the British parliament evolved.

I’ve written several entries today, for various different goals and in each one I give the fact that I’ve been travelling for the last few months as an excuse for not pursuing my goal dedicatedly enough! And here I go again! The thing is that when you’re on a trip, the routines of your life are disrupted, the situations or people that you usually find challenging just aren’t there, and you generally feel so much more free and easy that the motivation to work hard on yourself is somewhat diminished!

Actually, thinking about it, travelling, itself, is a way of expanding knowledge so I refuse to feel guilty! However, one of my knowledge goals was to keep up with current affairs and I definitely didn’t bother with this while I was away. At one point, while on a teeny Thai island, my boyfriend and I were approached by an American guy who wanted our views on Ariel Sharon’s health problems and the future of Israel. Since we live in Israel, it was a logical question to ask us. Unfortunately, having not read the news in months, we had no idea what he was talking about! It was quite embarassing!

I also neglected to read more than one non-fiction book while I was away (the one I did read was about the Hindu gods and goddesses), but my excuse for this (and I think it’s a good one!) is that I didn’t have such a wide range of books to choose from and, in the end, generally went with novels that I wanted to read which were also fat and would therefore not necessitate the buying of another book so immediately!

But now I’m back and, as soon as I’ve finished reading The Cider House Rules, I’m going to get stuck back into the history of Britain that I was reading before. While I was in the mall the other day, I also went into the bookshop and made a list of the non-fiction books in English they had there. There were some interesting ones, including a history of witches by Julio Caro Baroja, The end of poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, The Science of God by Gerald L. Shroeder and also biographies of Frida Khalo and Ghandi.

So, no excuses now—and I’m off to read the news!

I’m a big reader and I know a lot about books but there are a lot of other things I don’t know anything about. I’ve decided to read more non-fiction books, maybe alternate between fiction and non-fiction. Books I’d like to read: that Bill Bryson one about the history of science (can’t remember what it’s called right now and can’t be bothered to look it up) and other more accessible science books – maybe something about the golden ratio, more books about historical periods that interest me plus 20th century and local history and lots more travel writing. I also want to read the news at least once a week ‘cos I’m not very good about current affairs either. At the moment I’m reading Britain – a short history by T. A. Jenkins which is interesting. I’ve read it before but dates and details never stick in my brain. Recently I’ve also read the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal ‘cos I’m going there in a couple of weeks and also Michael Palin’s Himalaya which is excellent, very informative and laugh-out loud funny.