Proof of Heaven - Eben Alexander

 sub-title: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

My sister gave this to me.  It's the story of a doctor who had a near death experience after going into a coma from an infection.  It was a life changing experience that drove him to share his experience with others. I was moved by the transformation of his beliefs and his passion for sharing his experience.

Published: 2012  Read: May 2026  Genre: Memoir

Association of Small Bombs - Karan Mahajan

I enjoyed the writing in this book.  It tells the aftermath of a terrorist bombing in a market in India from the viewpoint of the terrorists, the parents of children lost in the attack, a survivor and the activist involved.  It's sad and enlightening, with all of the characters fleshed out.  I would recommend it.

Published: 2016   Read: June 2019  Genre: Fiction

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

Sub-title: A Brief History of Tomorrow

This was a heavy book, figuratively and literally!  Harari has a PhD in history and specializes in world history.  He wrote an earlier book on the history of mankind called Sapiens.  This book is a sort of sequel, describing the future of the human species.  He presents many provocative ideas based on the evolution of industry and technology in the modern age.  I was fascinated and fearful of some of his predictions.  Here are some quotes and snipets I wanted to keep:

Page 54 - "A baby was conceived using the mitochondrial DNA of a 3rd person so she has biologically three parents (this procedures was subsequently banned in the U.S.)"

Page 58 - "This is the paradox of historical knowledge.  Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.  But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses it relevance.  The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated."

Page 132 - "...the crucial factor in our [humans] conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another."

Page - 143 - "All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders.  These are set of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be a real and inviolable as gravity [examples, God].  As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the sames stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organize mass-cooperation networks."

When he talks of "imagined orders" he's referring to a belief that is intersubjective - a belief that depends on communication among many humans, money being an example.  He posits that religious and nationalistic beliefs are also intersubjective and cease to exist if we cease to believe in them.

He goes on from this explanation of how the species acts based on commonly held beliefs to describe "The Modern Covenant" - an agreement we have made "to give up meaning in exchange for power".  Religion and nationalistic beliefs gave meaning to human life but restricted their power.  By letting go of a belief in a great cosmic plan life has no meaning.  "The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause.  If modernity has a motto, its 'shit happens'."  From this, he surmises, humans can do anything we want. "On the practical level modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid meaning."

Page 304 - "If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable".

Page 350 - "Most scientific research about the human mind and the human experience has been conducted on people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies.  The study of the human mind has so far assumed that Homo sapiens is Homer Simpson."

Page 366 - "Modern humanity is sick with FOMO - Fear of Missing Out and though we have more choice than ever before, we have lost the ability to really pay attention to whatever we choose."

He ends with three challenging questions:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What's more valuable intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?

Published: 2015   Read: March 2018  Genre: History, Science

Brand Luther - Andrew Pettegree

I enjoy reading non-fiction and learning about things I knew very little about.  This is a different twist on the history of Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant faith.  The author describes the life of Luther and the rise of his movement as the evolution of a "brand" - a recognizable symbol for a product or service. He suggests that the success of Luther's teachings were attributable to the popularity of the pamphlets and other publications written by Luther that were printed and published across the German empire in the language of the people and recognizable by the title page design that was tightly controlled and overseen by Luther himself.

 To start with, I didn't know it was so far back in time, the later 1500's.  It was fascinating to me how the popularity of Luther's writing created a printing industry.  The geography of the area also influenced the spread of the writings. As a marketing major, I found it a worthwhile read.

Published:  2016  Read: May 2016  Genre: non-fiction

Coincidence - J. W. Ironmonger

The perfect book to take on a cruise; philosophical yet not too heavy. A young woman comes to a professor who analyzes the probability of what seem to be coincidences, to assert her belief that she is predetermined to die based on the coincidences that have aligned in her life.

The professor takes on her case to disprove coincidences as a case for predetermination and the existence of a God.  The book explores the meaning of serendipity, luck, miracles and our tendency to look for non-randomness in a random world.

The woman advocates coincidences as evidence of someone being in control claiming that "everything happens for a reason but not always a good reason"and argues that he "can't dismiss my views simply because they make no sense to you".

The professor points out the lazy logic of claiming something was caused by something that happened before it just because the result occurred after the initial event; the Latin being "post hoc ergo propter hoc" literally "after this, therefore because of this".

There's a lot of strange happenings in the woman's life and the story gets messy and runs down some dead ends making for a sloppy path to the end.  The professor falls in love; he confesses that someone must be in control of everything but finds it hard to believe.

My take away was that we are all responsible for our own problems or at least the attitude we take toward them.

Published: 2014  Read: October 2015  Genre: Fiction, Philosophy

ISBN-13: 978-0062309891

The Anchoress - Robyn Cadwallader

I love learning about obscure pieces of history that reveal so much about the times and lives of the people who lived in the times portrayed.  This is the story of a young girl who chooses to live in a cell, called an anchorhold, that is attached to the outside of a church.  She is nailed in, never to leave the cell again, to practice a life of devotion and servitude.  She has a narrow angled window in the church wall, called a squint where she can see the altar in the church to view the sacraments being shared.  There is another window draped in a heavy curtain through which a maid servant cares for her needs.

This was a common practice in medieval times.  The story is set in 1255.  Sarah is deeply sadden by the death of her sister and chooses the life of the anchoress to shield herself from the world.  She finds however that the world still penetrates her isolated existence.

The author is a scholar of medieval history and her knowledge is woven into the life of Sarah and her reactions to her choices.  Highly recommended.

Published:  2015   Read: October 2015  Genre: Historical fiction

ISBN:  9780374104252

A Grief Observed - C. S. Lewis

This memoir of an experience of grief has been on my TBR list for a long time.  I think I'd postponed looking for it because I thought it would be long and heavy reading.  To my surprise, its less than 100 pages.  It 's essentially Lewis' journals written after the death of his wife of less than 5 years from cancer.  They had married when he was well into his forties,  She was divorced, with two boys.  She brought them to England to be near Lewis who she had corresponded with from America and become a close friend and admirer.

C.S. Lewis was a well-known Christian apologetic, someone who defends Christian beliefs with reason and logic.

My edition had an introduction by Madeleine L'Engle, author of "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Two Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage", and a fellow Christian writer of Lewis's. She was critical of the book which put me off initially - if you read it, skip her introduction until after.

The book is a journey through grief and loss and coming to terms with a crisis of faith.  His "observations" are universal.

"This is important.  One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness).  One only meets each hour or moment that comes."

A good part of the book is about him questioning his faith in God and questioning his own doubt.

"Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language.  What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, 'good'?

"From a rational point of view what new factor has H.'s [his wife's] death introduced into the problem of the universe?  What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe?  ...If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.  The faith which 'took these things into acocunt' was not faith but imagination".

In the end, he recognizes he has been on a journey and his faith has been with him all along.

"My jottings show something of the process[toward getting through grief] but not so much as I 'd hoped.  ..like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight...when you first notice them they have already been going on for some time."

One quirky note, one of his friends actually gave him a copy of the book to read (it had been published under a pseudonym).


Published: 1961  Read: August 2015  Genre: Memoir