By Eric Valentine<\/p>\n
In his Eightfold Path To Enlightenment\u2014the Buddhist prescription, if you will, for ending suffering\u2014the Buddha says \u201cRight Mindfulness\u201d is one of the first things that must be achieved. How one defines \u201cmindfulness\u201d can vary, but at the end of the day it has a lot to do with what we choose to fill our mind with.<\/p>\n
When writing about the story of the Bellevue Elementary staff who put together \u201cFree Little Libraries\u201d\u2014small book repositories from which toddlers to pre-teen kids can take and keep books\u2014I found myself wondering what books I\u2019d place inside if I were leaving them for teens and young adults. Well, here are my top five:<\/p>\n
\u2014Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t let the title or the length of this 670-page tome throw you off. It\u2019s captivating reading. Paglia is an Ivy League-educated art and literature historian who has made a career teaching at a humble arts school in Philadelphia. Her book explores human belief systems and male-female behavior by analyzing the art and literature we create, from the dawn of Western civilization to modern day. Her default worldview is that society is mankind\u2019s reaction to nature and that nature remains mankind\u2019s supreme moral problem. Her writing is bold, witty and sometimes mind-blowing.<\/p>\n
\u2014Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond<\/p>\n
Before fad diets became a dime a dozen, two nutritionists\u2014Harvey and Marilyn Diamond\u2014set out to write a book that focused less on calorie counting and what you can\u2019t eat and more on how and when to eat the things you want to eat. The book has a lot of hacks for substituting the less healthy, processed foods in our diets with healthier, more natural alternatives, but it\u2019s not about rigid, unsustainable health kicks. The main takeaway: Fat = stored nutrients; and by combining the foods we like in the most digestive-friendly way, we give our body time to use those nutrients rather than store them.<\/p>\n
\u2014Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix<\/p>\n
There are a number of theories\u2014and poems\u2014about the nature of love. Hendrix takes a look at some of the leading theories and how they fail to explain a lot, such as why we fall in love with people who are bad for us. Hendrix uncovers how, in so-called traditional couples, the resolved and unresolved relationships between ourselves and our opposite-sex parent are at play.<\/p>\n
\u2014Daemon and Freedom Trademarked by Daniel Suarez<\/p>\n
OK, this is two books, but they are sequeled. Shortly after The Matrix captivated our imaginations with what could go wrong if artificial intelligence took over humanity, Suarez focused instead on something more likely: what could go wrong when a small set of humans took over artificial intelligence to take over the world. In the novel, the world\u2019s foremost computer programmer has created a \u201cdaemon\u201d (a computer program that runs in the background) that scours the Internet for his obituary. Once found, it begins to hack computers and lives in an attempt to establish a new world order. By the time you get through the second book, the story offers up a complete paradigm shift that will make you question the trajectory of current society and culture.<\/p>\n
\u2014The True Story Project by yours truly<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right, if I get to select a book that will get into the hands of young readers, you bet I\u2019m going to select mine. It\u2019s a simple, self-published collection of about a dozen short stories. All of them are true, all of them are told from the heart, and I\u2019d be honored if you ever gave it a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Eric Valentine In his Eightfold Path To Enlightenment\u2014the Buddhist prescription, if you will, for ending suffering\u2014the Buddha says \u201cRight Mindfulness\u201d is one of the first things that must be achieved. How one defines \u201cmindfulness\u201d can vary, but at the end of the day it has a lot to do with what we choose to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-commentary","7":"category-lifestyle-commentary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}