We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour
Resisting Representation, Elaine Scarry
Violet Trefusis, John Phillips & Philippe Jullian (biography)
Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus (rr)
Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, Robert L.Stevenson
Practicalities, Marguerite Duras
War After War (City Lights anthol. of writing in response to Gulf War)
Letters of Mistress Henley Published by her Friend Isabelle de Charriere
Stories of Sickness, Brody
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, Sven Birkerts
Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Francoise de Graffigny
Protocols of Reading, Robert Scholes
Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi *
Gender, Ivan Illich *
To Begin Again, MFK Fisher
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as institution and Experience, Adrienne Rich
poetry: Charles Simic; James Merrill; Tess Gallagher, John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop
The Hurried Child
I'm OK You're OK (rr)
The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode
Horse Crazy, Gary Indiana
Bath, Edith Sitwell
Selected Essays 1934-1943, Simone Weil
Representations of the Intellectual, Edward Said
A River Sutra, Gita Mehta
Sa Femme, Emmanuele Bernheim
The Waters of Thirst, Adam Mars-Jones
The Origin of Humankind, Richard Leakey
Turnaround, Milos Forman
Crack Wars: Addiction, Literature, Mania, Avitall Ronell
Finding the Center, V.S. Naipaul
The Man of Jasmine & other writings, Unica Zurn *
Palais-Royal, Richard Sennet
The Ledge Between the Streams, Ved Mehta
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra
The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier: An Intimate Portrait of
Literary and Artistic Life in Paris Between the Wars, Richard McDougall
Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists & the Art of the Self, Anne C. Klein *
How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand *
Glimpse After Glimpse, Sogyal Rinpoche **
The Fetishist, Michel Tournier
Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts: Our Legacy of Violence Against Women, Anne Llewellyn Barstow
The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm (history)
short stories, Saki (H.H. Munro)
Astoria, Bob Viscusi *
Postmodern Genres, Marjorie Perloff
A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle (rr)
Primitive Rebels, Eric Hobsbawm
Passages, Elaine Sheehy
Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
How Your Child is Smart, Dawna Markova (cognitive learning modes)
Damascus Nights, Rafik Schami
There Never was a Rose Without a Thorn, Carla Harryman
The Play of the Eyes, Elias Canetti
The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity, Linda Nochlin
The Absorbent Mind & other writings, Maria Montesssori *
Everyday Sacred, Sue Bender
Consuming Passions: the Anthropology of Eating, Peter Farb & George Armelagos
Thinking Green, Petra Kelly
Teaching Montessori in the Home, Elizabeth Hainstock
Living My Life Emma Goldman (vol. 1 of 2) **
Minima Moralia: From a Damaged Life, Theodore Adorno (1951)
Jihad versus McWorld, Benjamin Barber
True North: a Memoir, Jill KerConway
Nowhere at Home: Letters from Exile, Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman
Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing, Thich Nhat Hahn
The Tenderness of the Wolves, Dennis Cooper
Jack the Modernist, Robert Gluck
Buddhist Yoga, Thomas Cleary
Money, Martin Amis
Human Diasporas, Luca Cavalli-Sforza *
My Own Country, Abraham Verghese
The First Buddhist Women, Susan Murcott
Collected Short Stories, Dorothy Parker
The Essential Tao (trans., Thomas Cleary)
Trees, Why Do You Wait: America’s Changing Rural Environonment, Richard Critchfield
Mindfulness in Plain English, Ven. Henepola Gunaratana ***
Faith & Practices: San Francisco Religious Society of Friends
Don't Just Do Something, Sit There, Sylvia Boorstein
Sabotage in the American Workplace, Martin Sprouse, ed.
The Prolific and the Devourer, W.H. Auden
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, David Abram ***
Flexible Bodies the Role of Immunity in American Culture: from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, Emily Martin
The Heart Sutra (trans. & intro. by Mu Soeng)
Michael Kasper (his own designed and written chapbooks. Great !)
The Buddhist Bible
Games at Twilight, Anita Desai
Beginners Buddha, Jane Hope
various British chapbooks
Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner
The Red Virgin, Fernando Arabal
Music and the Mind, Anthony Storr
Baumgartner’s Bombay, Anita Desai *
L’Alchimiste Paul Coelho [in French]
Essays, Margaret Visser
The Enigma of Arrival, V.S. Naipaul
Sacred & Profane Love Machine, Iris Murdoch
Quaker writings in Italian
Quatre Morceaux, Giulia Niccolai
Frost in May, Antonia White
The Painter of Signs, Narayan
The Italian Girl, Iris Murdoch
Love and Death in a Hot Climate, Naipaul
Behind the Waterfall, Chinatsu Nakayama
Native Realm: a Search for Self-Definition, Czeslaw Milosz
Heart of Understanding, Thich Nhat Hahn
The Visible and the Invisible, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde *
Migrant Souls, Arturo Islas
The World is Round, Iva Pekarkova
Restoration, Rose Tremain *
Guide to the Buddhist Path, Ven. Henepola Gunarata
To Meet at the Source: Hindus and Quakers, Martha Dart
Small Salvations & The Woman without Experiences, Patricia Dienstfrey
The Holy Man, Susan Trott
Life in the Rainbow, Richard Horan
Compassion for the Stranger, Nancy C. Alexander
Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, William Taber (PH306)
150 Freq. Asked Questions about Menopause, Ruth Jacobowitz
The Silent Passage, Gail Sheehy
Ways of Knowing: The Reality Club 3 (essays)
The Established & the Outsiders: a Sociological Enquiry, Norbert Elias & J.L. Scotson
Estrogen, Is It Right for You? Paula Dranov
Anatomy of Restlessness, Bruce Chatwin
Managing Your Menopause, Ruth Jacobowitz & Wulf Utian
The Menopause Industry, Susan Coney
Coming Through Slaughter, Michael Oondatje
Marina Tsvetayeva, Elaine Feinstein (biog.)
Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg
Portrait of My Body, Phillip Lopate
Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer
The Pyramid, Ismail Kadare
The Flora of Hawaii
Coming to Our Senses, Morris Berman
Angels Fear: Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred, Gregory & Mary Catherine Bateson*
Approaching Eye-Level, Vivian Gornick
Discipline with Love, Fitzhugh Dodson
New Italian Women (short stories)
Positive Discipline A-Z
Raising your Spirited Child: a Guide for Parents, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
Indian Thought and its Development. In relation to maybe working on film about the Gita Govinda, I'm comparing Octavio Paz's writings on India with Albert Schweitzer's earlier work. It's fascinating in its complexity and contrast with western philosophical tradition, especially as Vedic-Hindu thoughts forms the root and provides basic terminology for buddhist philosophy. And looking again at Satyajit Ray's trilogy with older eyes.
A Perfect Vacuum, Stanislaw Lem
Summer of the Great-Grandmother, Madeleine L’Engle
The Practice of Freedom, Joseph Goldstein
Hands of Light, Barbara Ann Brennan
Nowhere at Home: Letters from Exile of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman
Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Vikram Chandra
Talking Back to Prozac, Peter Breggin
House as Mirror of Self, Mary Marcus Cooper
The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron *
Secret Life of Plants, Attenborough
Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, Tom Athanasiou *
The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, Andrew Tobias
The Concert, Ismail Kadare
Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott
The Mistress of Spices, Chitra Divakarundi
Garden & plant books
Living a Mindful Life, Charles T. Tart
The Holder of the World
Book of First Wealth, A. David Silver
The White Castle, Orhan Pamuk
The Translator, Justin Ward
Complaints & Disorders: Sexual Politics of Sickness, Barbara Ehrenreich & Dierdre English
Sutra on Emptiness, Mikky
Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, Paul Rabinow
The Black Book, Orhan Pamuk
The Hollow Hills, Mary Stewart
Fear of Falling: the Inner Life of the Middle Class, B. Ehrenreich (rr) **
Voodoo, Kyle Kristos
Blind date, Jerzy Kosinski
Islamic Science: an Illustrated Study, Seyyed Hussein Nasr
Innocence, Penelope Fitzgerald
Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Kalu Rinpoche (rr) *
Time Space, and Knowledge, Tarthang Tulku
Start Where You Are, Pema Chodron
The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
The Measure of Reality: Quantification: Western Europe from 1250-1800, Alfred Crosby
Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick
Stories, Isaac B. Singer
Arranged Marriage, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hahn
Pitch Dark , Renata Adler
The Scent of the Gods, Fiona Cheong
Children/Discipline bks
Do What You Love: Discover Your Right Livelihood, Marsha Sinetar
Granta 57 India: the Golden Jubilee
Strange Invasion, Michael Kandel
The Sensitive Child, Janet Poland
India, Jean Filliozat (& other books on India)
Right/Left Brain hand book (title?), Lucia Picchione
Autobiography of a Generation: Italy 1968, Luisa Passerini
Delicious Laughter Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jellaluddin Rumi, version by Coleman Barks
Wisdom of the Idiots, Idries Shah *
The God of Small Things, Arundahati Roy
Culture Shock India, Gitanjali Kolanad
Entering the Diamond Way My Path Among the Lamas, Ole Nydahl
Starting Small Investing Smart, Donald R. Nichols
The Practice of Perfection: Paramitas from a Zen Perspective, Robert Aitken
Born Remembering, Elise Boudling (Quaker pamphlet)
Encounters with Transcendence, Scott Crom
Harnessing Pegasus: Inspiration and Meditation, Elizabeth Gray Vining
Words Wordlessness and the Word, Peter Bien
Hinduism, Louis Renou
Rain Forest in Your Kitchen: the Hidden Connection Between Extinction and Your Supermarket, Marvin Teitel (foreword Jeremy Rifkin)
The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald
Snakes and Ladders, Gita Mehta
The Woman and the Ape, Peter Hoeg
Reader’s Block, David Markson
Inter Ice Age 9, Kobo Abe
Karma Cola, Gita Mehta
Hotel Moenjodaro & other stories, Ghulan Abbas
Immediatism, Hakim Bey **
Gesture of Balance, Tarthang Tulku
Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes. Lovely descriptions of meals and remodeling details of an old house in Cortona.
Indian Thought and its Development, Albert Schweitzer (rr)
poems, Kamala Das
Secret Teaching of the Vedas
Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the new Business Age. An anthology of articles published originally in a highly obscure, neo-anarchist and absolutely brilliant periodical called The Baffler. Highly coherent and well-informed rants about ... well, the ravages of corporate global commodity culture, what else? Maybe there is a streak of anarchism in every Italian who doesn't have a streak of fascism, and vice versa?
Dharma Family Treasures: Sharing Buddhism with Children
City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World, Witold Rybczynski
The Necessity of Experience, Edward Reed. Succinct, jargon free philosophy.
books on investing & personal finances, etc.
Nietzsche in Turin, Lesley Chamberlin. Interesting if a bit long: it examines how the places where Nietzsche lived are reflected in and coincide with his ideas, books, moods, health and madness; she also argues, and to some extent shows, how Nietzsche's dovetailing with Nazi ideology was largely a mythology constructed by his sister, who was was left to manage his literary estate as she wished after his death and wasan Aryan supremacist.
Frozen Desire The Meaning of Money, James Buchan
Primordial Experience. Dzogchen Meditation
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton. Acute insights into human motivation and subtle character shifts. Like Henry James but much less turgid.
Jackson’s Dilemma, Iris Murdoch
Repeating the Words of Buddha
The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered World, Lucy Lippard
The Resurgence of the Real, Charlene Spretnak
Home: a Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynsky. Urban architecture and social change as well as the history of ideas like comfort, privacy or fashion; just the right amount of background and information.
Ama Adhe: The Voice that Remembers, Told to Joy Blakeslee by a Tibetan woman who spent 25 years in Chinese prisons. *
Meditations on the Six Realms and Five Dakinis, Ken McLeod
Venice and the Grand Tour, Bruce Redford
Making Waves, Mario Vargas Llosa essays
The Last Barbarians, Paul Peissel. A French-British explorer searches for the sources of the Mekong river among the peaks of Tibet. He also discovers living horses, once believed to be extinct, that resemble the ones painted inside the caves at Lascaux.
Basic Buddhist Concepts, Ken McLeod
Good Natured: the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans & Other Animals, Frans de Waal * Fascinating primate studies on the behaviour that de Waal believes underlies the capacity for morality. Very well written.
The Romans Their Lives & Times, Michael Sheridan
Damascus Gate, Robert Stone. A political thriller set in 1980s Jerusalem. Looks at the mystical strain in all religions and people's search for and adherence to the visions. (Sex, drugs, jazz, political intrigue and religious fanaticism, what more could you ask for?)
The Others: How Animals Made Us Human, Paul Shepard Beautifully written poetic philosophy (what used to be called "natural history".) Shepard was a highly respected biology professor. I first saw this book on Scott Fisher’s bookshelf in San Francisco
The Silent Duchess, Dacia Maraini. This novel by a major Italian feminist writer (she was also Pasolini's pal and Moravia's lover (just to be precise, here) is about a Sicilian duchess in the 17th century who is deaf-mute (and a bit of a mind-reader.) It turns out this is as a result of being raped by an uncle when she is 5 years old. Her father takes her to witness an execution when she is 8, hoping, apparently, that the 2nd trauma will un-do the first. It doesn't. Then he marries her at age 13 to that same uncle, who is 40 years old. The inner mental world of the duchess, who becomes a scholar and writer, is incredibly vivid.
Your Inner Physician, Upledger (Craniosacral Therapy)
Being Nobody, Going Nowhere, Ayya Khema
Anatomy Illustrated, Emily Blair Chewning
Dismantling Reactive Emotional Patterns, Ken McLeod
The Owner of the House, Latifa Zayyat (novel, Egyptian)
books on investing & personal finances, etc.
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation, Isaac Asimov
The First Man, Albert Camus
International Book of Trees, Hugh Johnson
The 37 Practices of Boddhisattvas, Geshe Sonam Rinchen
Human physiology, Guyman & others
Bodhgaya Interviews, Dalai Lama
How to Buy a House in California
The Difficult Child, Stanley & Leslie Tucker
Interviewing how-to book
Celestine Prophecy
Shooting Gallery and other stories, Yuko Tsushima
Open Heart Clear Mind, Thubten Chodron
Haiku of Richard Wright
Mornings Like This, Annie Dillard
Understanding Wall Street, Little & Rhodes
Being There:Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Andy Clark
I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops, Hanan al-Shaykh
Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness, William Irwin Thompson
The Drowning of an Old Cat & other stories, Hwang Chun-Ming
Silk, Alessandro Baricco
Dreams of My Russian Summers, Andrei Makine
The Luneburg Variation, Paolo Maurensig
Stuff: The Materials the World is Made of, Ivan Amato
The Fall of a Sparrow, Robert Hellenga
Travel books on Greece and Turkey
The Flame and the Light, Hugh Fausset
The Ottoman Empire, Lord Kinross (rr)
Music in A Foreign Language, Andrew Crumey
The Hostage, Zayd Mutee Dammaj
Displaced Person, John Clellan Holmes
Tropical Classical, Pico Iyer
Pfitz, Andrew Crumey
Thought Contagion: The New Science of Memes, Aaron Lynch
Meditation the Buddhist way of Tranquility & insight, Kamalashila
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso *
Women’s Work: the First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber **
Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu Bresson Dryer, Paul Schrader
Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry, Maya Turovskaya *
The History Atlas of Asia, Ian Barnes & Robert Hudson
Ingenious Pain, Andrew Miller
Laws of Media, Marshall and Eric McLuhan
Eight Months on Gazzah Street, Hilary Mantel *
What the Buddha Taught, Walpola Ruhala
The Giraffe, Marie Nimier
The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of 20th Century Thought, William Everdell
Annam, Christophe Bataille
Brother of the More Famous Jack, Barbara Trapido
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, V. Kandinsky
Idiots First, Bernard Malamud
Book of Memories, Peter Nadas
The Ground We Share, Robert Aitken & David Steindl-Rast
Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard
Living Buddha Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hahn
Handwriting, Michael Oondatje
Dzogchen on Tibetan buddhist practice
Italian Education, Tim Parks
Gesture of Balance, Tarthang Tulku
Italian Fever, Valerie Martin,
A History of Reading, Roberto Manguel
Requiem for a Spanish Village, Barbara Norman Makanowitzky
Contemporary Art in Southern California, Mark Johnstone
On Penelope's Island: A Sicilian Journal, Mary Taylor Simeti *
poems, Isabella Morra
American Eclipses, Flavia Pankiewicz
A Book of Fears, Lewis Turco poems
Living My Life, Emma Goldman 2 vols.
Rebel in Paradise: A Biog of Emma Goldman, Richard Drinnon
A Guide to Exiles, Expatriates & Internal Emigres, Mary McCarthy
(NY Review of Bks XVIII March 9, 1972)
Turkish Reflections, Mary Lee Settle
The Last Barrier, Reshad Field
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, Barbara Tuchman *
Noble Strategy, Ajahn Thanissaro
Simple Passion, Annie Ernaux
Pillars of Salt, Fadia Faqir (Jordan)
Dinner with Persephone, Patricia Storace *