Food for the eyes

Some stuff I've been reading recently: Niall Williams As It Is In Heaven. Novel by an Irish writer, which warms my Celtic heart. It's sad in places, but I mostly found it honest and hopeful. Deep, subtly spiritual, good characters and skillful use of language; I may have found a new favourite author. (Thanks Jen, for introducing me to him.)

It was a season of love in the afternoon; of slow time and long caresses, of strawberries...passing from mouth to mouth like the wet, ripe and softly bruised essence of pleasure itself...

http://www.niallwilliams.com

The Power Of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Branden, who apparently popularised the term. Light, short, but an OK skim. He reckons he's got the best definition of self esteem:

Self esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life. More specifically, self-esteem is...

1. Confidence in our ability to think and to cope with the basic challenges of life.

2. Confidence in our right to be happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants and to enjoy the fruit of our efforts.

The Courage To Write, Ralph Keyes' brilliant book about the fears that stop writers from writing, including the fear of not being good enough, the fear of being published, the fear of exposing yourself, the fear of what your family will think of you and more. Much better than most mass-market self-help manuals, lots of examples from famous writers, encouraging and a good read. Maybe I will finally start that novel...

But I'm currently a few chapters into C.J. Cherryh's Forge of Heaven, a Sci-Fi novel. She sets the scene and describes the planet very well, if she can tell a good story too I think I'm going to enjoy this.

I also finished another of Don Miller's books, Searching For God Knows What, the follow-up to Blue Like Jazz mentioned in another blog entry below. I know I enjoyed it more than BLJ, I remember it wasn't as funny, and I can't remember much else.

I'm still trying to bring myself to read the second one of Neil Walsh's Conversations With God, having not read any of this series where God really talks to this American guy and dictates books. Really. Sounds an awful lot like what used to be called "automatic writing" by the old spiritualists. So it could also be called a "channelled" book, i guess, but talking to the big G has gotta have more kudos than some 30,000 year-old dude called Ramtha, right?


listening to Still relying on the music in my head, currently a mix of Devo's NIN cover ("Head Like a Hole") and Front Line Assembly ("Pleasure consumes us"), whatever song that's from.