A Few Words About My List Of Ten Books + 1

Many of us have read hundreds of books. So, when friends asked what ten books stand out from top of mind, I found out that there is a reason for our choices apart from hoarding these in our book shelves. 

The first on my list is the Human Agenda by Dr. Roderic Gorney. From this book, I learned the mantra that happiness is a result or a derivative of a zestful engagement with love, work and play. In this book, I saw the biological sciences as the cupcake and the social sciences as the icing. 

           Picture credit: Title Wave (a Facebook page)

Then, from Wind, Sand & Stars, the voice of Antoine de Saint Exupery, who also wrote the The Little Prince, has stayed with me. This pioneer pilot was stranded in the desert and these lines are worth quoting,"Here I possessed nothing in the world. I was no more than a mortal strayed between sand and stars, conscious of the single blessing of breath. And yet I discovered myself filled with dreams....and shutting my eyes I gave myself up to the enchantment of my memory."

In the non fiction Fear of Fifty, Erica Jong, who wrote the bestseller Fear of Flying, looks at life in anticipation after the age of fifty: our feminism, sex, love, marriage, getting older and the writing life. My favorite is the chapter on "Dona Juana Gets Smart, or A Good Girl's Guide to Bad Boys." I have used some wisdom here in counseling women whose husbands have cheated them. A few lines from that chapter: To the wife: "You can realize it has nothing to do with you. He does it for his manhood, not against your womanhood." And then, of course, Polyamory is another philosophy or state or books, altogether. 

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. This novel using the social upheavals of the 60's and the 70's as backdrop is a poignant tale of a successful businessman who just wanted an idyllic pastoral in New Jersey then suddenly finds his daughter caught up in political activism and terrorism in protest of the Vietnam war and this single incident shatters the imagined perfect American life. This daughter, as told by the narrator in a high school reunion, stands to inherit great wealth but choose to  live in squalor in the slums of Newark & continued to set off several bombs. American Pastoral is one of 100 "all time greatest novels" by TIME.

American Pastoral is now a 2016 movie: 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/13/american-pastoral-ewan-mcgregor-roth-review

I am fascinated by the life of Michael Crichton who has a degree in Medicine from Harvard & went on to be one of our bestselling authors who wrote Jurassic Park, Sphere, etc. His book Travels is a non fiction and chronicles his travels as a way of finding a facet of oneself in a different setting. 

From America to Africa: Voices of Filipino Women Overseas & edited by Lorna Kalaw -Tirol is a reader on diaspora & the life of the Filipino woman who is found all over the planet. My favorite chapter is Setting The World's Women Free and written by lawyer Emelina Quintillan. 

A sequel to Passages, the book by Gail Sheehy on the predictable crises of adult life is New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time. A good reading of real life stories and of new chances and options at second adulthood called the retirement age and what we fondly call the "seasoned senior citizen" years. 

For my international course on Sexuality, our reader is Culture, Society & Sexuality by Parker & Aggleton edition. This is a book on sexuality discourses and its socio-cultural & historical underpinnings that can guide us on how to proceed to do more research & training & as an aid in crafting policy instruments. 

On Writing by Stephen King explains how writing proceeds from words to paragraphs & elegant language; why writing is a solitary pursuit and why writing as art is done always away from the noise of life.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway is set in Paris and provides great tips for writing; and even on how to end addiction immortalized in these words, "....By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But, if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better...." 

             Picture credit: Title Wave (a Facebook page)

Finally, I hope you will have access to my chapter (Chapter 6)  from our new book published by Springer and the title is The Sociology of Sharia: Case Studies from Around the World. 

Latest edition: 1st appeared online: April 11, 2023 

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-27188-5_8?fbclid=IwAR1jFfmkrVvpWsZ4YZ0orCEpNADUA8ZTpmjpmsesrbyJ_UpLI5ONOEAkuwg  

Our tagline in promoting this book: "the first book that is sociological and that provides a global analysis of the phenomenon that goes beyond the usual dichotomy of the ‘West versus the rest’. On top of this, the choices of case studies in Muslim minority countries are not exclusively located in the West (e.g. South Africa, China, Singapore and the Philippines)."  

http://www.springer.com/new+%26+forthcoming+titles+(default)/book/978-3-319-09604-9

http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319096049