"Rules of Attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis

"The Rules of Attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis, although a great example of stream-of-consciousness writing and a shining example of an early-career work by a great author, is still just a college "fuck-drink" shocker novel.  It was probably the outlet of Ellis' college frustrations, where he wasn't exactly the coolest kid, coupled together with some naughty wishful thinking and fantasies.

The book can be summarized as "drink-fuck-drugs-fuck-drugs-drink-fuck-dostupidthings."  Towards the end it gets a bit more serious with Mary's suicide and Lauren's pregnancy and subsequent abortion, but the reader is so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of drugs, drinking and meaningless sex by that time, that he hardly can appreciate the gravity.

Ellis uses the expression "Terminally Numb" towards the last third of the book, and that expression by itself describes most of the characters, both male and female, including most of their interactions.  At times it seems that there's only one male and one female character, while all the different names seem to be like different moods of the same person.  Shawn and Paul and Rupert and Lauren and Mary and Victor and Jaimie, etc.

Ellis seems to be very adept at describing male homosexuality, as almost all male characters in the book are either bi-sexual or homosexual.  However, he lacks skill when describing female homosexuality, or female sexuality at all.  The one lesbian scene in the book is pretty unconvincing, and the author generally puts much more gusto into describing male sex perception , even if it is masturbation, than female-perceived sex. Mary's pre-suicide thinking is unconvincing, and Lauren comes across as too one-dimensional for what should be the leading female character. 

Ultimately, "The Rules of Attraction" is a wishful-thinking, of sorts, for all the debauchery and decadence (and the corresponding price to be paid) that one might have missed during one's undergrad days.  Fun, but no cigar.

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

This is not an easy novel to read, and many critics are complaining that it is tedious and monotonous and consists only of walking, walking, walking.  The author, however, has a distinct intention to evoke the feeling of the post-apocalyptic world where everything is covered in ash, ash floating in the air, the skies are just ash, the sun is never to be seen and all carbon-based life has gone extinct except for small bands of human survivors who descended into the lowest form of barbarism and cannibalism. "First they're gonna rape you, then they're gonna eat you."

We never learn what the disaster was that destroyed much of the North American continent, and, presumably, much of the rest of the world.  The unnamed father and son are struggling to go south, following 'a road', small leftover pieces from the once mighty highways, reach the sea and maybe find some lost warmth.  The father is terminally ill with lung disease and is counting the days until his death.  The boy was born after the disaster, and is around 9 years old.  The mother is mentioned in few brief paragraphs, as having shot herself, to escape the ultimate and inescapable fate of being raped, killed, skinned and eaten.

On "The Road", the father and son see horrible things.  Bands of cannibals, murderers and rapists, organizing themselves in groups, hunting other humans for food.  Tribes of cannibals organized in classes: warriors with spears made of scrap metal, slaves to pull the carriages and used as food and women kept for sex.  They find city-cannibals fortified into old houses, with locked trapdoors in the floor underneath which horrors lurk of humans kept as animals for food, cutting off limbs from them, one at a time, for dinner or lunch, while keeping the rest of the human trunk alive in order for the meat to be fresh.  Human babies, gutted and skewered, roasted over coals.

They reach the sea, but only more gray ash and coldness.  They find a wreck where The Man swims and gets some more supplies to last them for a while more in their shopping cart.  But the cart gets stolen by a starving thief.  They catch the thief, and The Man is so Angry he makes him strip and stand naked in the freezing weather, while The Boy begs him to spare him.  But The Man doesn't spare him.  He tells the boy 'we're the good guys; we carry the fire' but the boy asks how can they be the good guys if they kill other people or let them die, even if they don't eat them.

The Man dies of the lung disease near a house on the shore.  The boy is alone, but someone followed them: a man with a shotgun, home-made bullets and a woman and two children with them.  He invites the boy to join them.  The Boy asks if he is one of the good guys, if he carries the fire.  The new man says 'sure' and shrugs.

Heavy book.

"Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides

I really liked this book and enjoyed reading it, but then I was accosted by plenty of opinions that do not esteem the novel in the same light as me.  I read some reviews that say the book is actually two books: one about the Greek immigrant experience in America and the other about a hermaphrodite, or "Intersex" third-generation Greek-American boy/girl Caliope, or Cali, and later Cal.

The book starts in the 1920s, when the Greeks tried to materialize the "Megali Idea" or the "Great Idea" of re-conquering Byzantine lands in Asia Minor.  Cali's grandparents, Lefterios "Lefty" and Desdemona, a brother an sister, run away from their village of Bursa, north of Smyrna.  Lefty and Desdemona get on a ship first to Athens, then to America, Ellis Island, and play a number on the other passengers presenting themselves as two strangers who just met on the ship.  The brother and sister got married in the US and had two children.  Unbeknown to them, they were carrying a recessive chromosome for Hermaphroditus, which however skipped their children. 

To make things more interesting, the daughter of Lefty and Desdemona, Tessy, married her first cousin, Milton, and their second child, the daughter Calliope, was born with recessive hermaphrodite genitalia.  The life of Milton and Tessy is described and how they slowly melted into the American normal, even forgetting to write, and eventually even speak Greek.  Cali falls in love with a girl in her class when she reaches puberty, but when she does not get her period by 14 - her parents take her to a doctor and her hermaphrodite condition is discovered.  She runs away from the sex change clinic, since she feels a boy, not a girl and doesn't want to be a girl.  Eventually she ends working in a strip join in San Francisco and after the gig is busted she returns home to Detroit to find her father died in a car accident.

Thinking back, the book does lack a certain uniform strength, but it is nevertheless an enormously entertaining read.   

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini

This is a seminal book both in Psychology and in Marketing, Prof. Cialdini teaching at both departments at the University in Arizona.  I was assigned this book as a required reading for a Marketing course while doing my MBA, but I have to admit I only browsed through it, and only now (3 years later) I am giving it a thorough reading.

The book is written so well, it flows almost like a good novel.  Prof. Cialdini definitely has a flair for writing.  Both psychological theory and analysis and practical examples are provided amply and appropriately, mixed in the correct ratios, making the book a pleasure to read while assimilating the concepts and ideas easily.  I believe part of the attraction of the book is that most readers have already noticed the ideas and principles that Prof. Cialdini is exposing in their own lives, but never been able to espouse them in such a systematic and logical way.

Prof. Cialdini bases his theory of influence on 6 basic pillars:

1. Reciprocity.  Tendency to return favors and feel guilty when not returning one (internal pressure that has to be equalized)

2. Consistency (and Commitment).  Consistency with their own inner world is a great motivator for people to make less than optimal decisions.  Getting commitment is a first step towards consistency.

3. Social Proof. Tending to think what other people are doing or valuing must be the correct one.  This behavior is especially strong in new and unfamiliar situations or when people are unsure and afraid.

4. Authority.  Trappings of authority seem to have very similar effects to an actual authority in eliciting compliance from people. 


5. Liking.  Good-looking people tend to get more positive results (also for well-groomed and well-dressed).  We also tend to be more lenient and positive towards people we like or we perceive that are similar to us.

6. Scarcity.  What is perceived to be rare is valued more, even if the scarcity is not real.  A special case is when something abundant becomes scarce - produces larger behavior modification and perception of scarcity.  People tend to value more losing something they have then gaining something the never had. 

The main point Prof. Cialdini makes is that the above principles and the flawed behavior on which they are based are not necessarily negative.  These behaviors are necessary shortcuts in today's hectic and overwhelming world.  However, he makes a point of being aware of them and of the thousands swindlers, hecklers and hustlers (in whichever guise) that are trying to exploit them without our knowledge.

A recommended reading for anyone.

"The Balkans: A Short History" by Mark Mazower

I got this book as a present from my cousin at Yale, who apparently thought it is one of the best book on the Balkans.  Well, it is a pretty good book, but there are some omissions.  First, the early periods of the Balkan states and their development are very well covered.  The Roman, Byzantine (Eastern Roman) and the Ottoman periods are covered in vivid detail, emphasizing the little know facts of the empires being not based on nationality and ethnicity, but on religion and social/cultural cohesion.  This is very important, especially for South-East Europe where many "new" nations emerged from the nationalism in the XIX century and laid claims to much longer history. 

The main weakness of the book is in covering the last periods of the development of the Balkan States.  The turmoil in Greece in the '70s and the military dictatorship of "The Generals" is very lightly covered.  The development of Yugoslavia from a backward agrarian state to an industrial power with the 4th largest army in Europe and full domestic production of all weaponry and military equipment, is also covered very lightly.  The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the second wave of Balkan Wars in the 1990s is not covered almost at all. 

Mazower also throws a few 'curve balls' like calling the Bosniak and Macedonian nations 'newly created' after WWII in Tito's Yugoslavia, while ignoring the decades and centuries before of nationalistic movements and fight for national recognition in these countries and regions.  History has shown us, as in the Russian Moldavian example, that 'new' nations cannot be created without having some solid historical development on the ground.  Which is why, after independence, the Bosniak and Macedonian nations are continuing strong, but the "Moldavian" nation, has voluntarily reverted to the original Romanian nomenclature.  Such reversals have not happened either in Bosnia nor in Macedonia.

Overall, a good, entertaining read, but only to be seen as a piece of a larger puzzle; the other pieces to be identified and collected by the reader.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

I read this book back in high school, as it was a required reading, and I read it in translation, since I wasn't born in an English-speaking country.  Now, decades later, I read it in the original, and it is still amazing.  Notwithstanding the excellent movie with Henry Fonda, movies cannot quite catch the subtleties of the written word - the well written word.  Scout's words jump off the page as so lively as a real tomboy little girl in blue overalls is standing right in front of you.  Atticus Finch is a glorious character, the perfect father, just, controlled and measured, always having the best for everyone on his mind.  Jim and Dill are lovable characters, each showing their own strengths.  Calpernia must be one of the most lovable African-American nanny characters.

The Yules are probably the primordial white-trash family, of which every town in the South has some, and some have more.  They could have been the original Trailer Park Boys if born 50 years later.  Tom's unfortunate fate evokes much more sympathy today that in the 70s when the book was popular and the civil rights in the South still had a lot of work to do.

Although I've read critiques around the Web that the book is too culturally-narrow and that it cannot be fully appreciated by other nations than the Americans, as it has so much localized details.  But, in my humble opinion, that is the main strength of the book.  It gives even non-American an intimate and in-depth view of the complicated beginnings of the American nation and shows the evolution of values and societal mores that resulted in a much more multicultural and tolerant American society today. 

"Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradbury

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a book by TalentSmart, a company that works on identifying human potential and performance in a business setting.  The book, or booklet, which, although 270 pages, is in a small format and is usually accompanied by a course (which costs much more money).  An audiobook exists too, but I thought that this kind of subject is best internalized while reading it ink-on-paper. 

The book consists of 4 sections with 17 (very) short chapters each.  The sections are:  Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social-Awareness and Relationship-Management.  Each of the 17 chapters in the section talks about one useful technique that should become a part of everyone's repertoire.  Some of the advice seems very common sense, but that's because the hardest things to do/implement are usually the common-sense ones. 

Very easy to read and with lots of re-usability, this book reminds me of the famous Dale Carnegie books.  If Dale was alive today, this is probably the book he'd write on "How to win friends and influence people" as the subject matter is almost the same.  Recommended as a read, though don't expect anything earth-shattering (there's NO magic pill!).

"Contact" by Carl Sagan

    "Contact" is the only fiction  book that the great Carl Sagan has written and even as such should be on the reading list of every SciFi enthusiast.  "Contact" has much more scientific detail than most science fiction works out there since it was written by one of the greatest astronomers and scientists of our time.

    The book talks about a possibility of a contact with an alien civilization through radio telescopes based on the fact that once a civilization is sufficiently advanced it will produce radio and TV signals powerful enough to leave the planet's ionosphere and be detected by another civilization .  For our planet this happened during the 1930s Olympics in Berlin, during the rule of the Nazis.

   Ellie, the main protagonist, who's the director of the Project Argus, an array of radio-telescopes in New Mexico related to SETI engaged in listening for alien transmissions, receives a message from outer space which is the first confirmed contact of intelligent aliens with humanity.

   When the message is decoded, a transport machine is built which transports five chosen human representatives to the constellation of Vega, 26 light years away, where a federation of inter-galactic advanced alien civilization has one of their outposts, their main station being near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, with it's central mega black hole.

   I always found it very curious, and breaking with stereotypes, obviously on-purpose, that Sagan chose his main hero and protagonist to be a woman, and middle aged and unmarried, without ever having children (or wanting to).  That must have been too progressive even for the 1980s, when the book was first published.  Also, having the rest of the characters as a very international bunch (including women, and women of color, imagine!), without being the paper-thin stereotypes of other nations and races, makes this novel a social statement as well.

   The scientific accuracy of the plot is simply astounding.  From the message being encoded in the amplitude and frequency of the carrier wave, but also in its polarization, all the way to exhaustive quantum physics descriptions of the properties of black holes and wormhole tunnels. This might at times detract from the human drama going on, unlike, for example, Dan Brown's novels, where the drama never stops and cliffhangers are the norm, but then again, this novel is not just a passing entertainment.

   The film staring Jodie Foster is really good as movies go, but Jodie at that time is much younger than what Ellie should be in the book and several main components of the book were changed, like the international team that goes to Vega.  The book is still much better and has much more depth.

   In conclusion, a great novel, with original, scientifically-plausible plot, which should be part of every educated person's general knowledge.  The fact that it came from the mind of the amazing Carl Sagan just makes it a double-gem!

"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

I have never read this American classic until now, and it was an experience to be had.  Not as gripping as Murakami's works, nor as page-turning as Dan Brown's literary offspring, it is nevertheless an interesting and beautiful account.   The book depicts the Joad family as the move out of Sallisaw, OK to California along route 66.  Tom Joad, the eldest son, just released from prison for homicide is one of the most important characters in the book, though Mother Joad is a striking character on her own. 

The book depicts the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s, together with the Great Depression forced thousands of people from the south-east to move to California, mostly on promises of great climate and great jobs.  The promises vanish when families arrive in California.  Even though the family is cheated and hated during the entire trip to California, it is only when they arrive and pass the state police road block - that they realize the extent of hatred that exists in California towards the newcomers.  The local gas station attendants call the newcomers 'non-human' and 'animals' and 'different species' because of the lowly poor conditions under which they are forced to travel, eat and live, since their money was taken by the banks back east and everybody on the road tried to get as much money out of them as they could, regardless of the life and death consequences. 

Once in California, they realize that the evil local landowners cheated them into coming in huge numbers so they can manipulate the pay rate and pay next to nothing for hard labor, even down to 2.5 cents for a basket of peaches - impossible to even buy food on such wages.  Tom Joad gets involved with some local strikers, who are derogatorily called 'reds' by the sheriff deputies and the landowners.  Tom gets injured when trying to defend a preacher who gets killed because is helping organize a strike. 

At the end of the book Rose Sharon, the eldest daughter of the Joads, who had still birth, after her husband left her, gives her breast milk to a man dying of hunger in an abandoned barn amidst hellish downpours that lasted for weeks - in that wonderful land of California. 

"The Law of Success" by Napoleon Hill

This is one of the largest self-help books out there (or does it just feel that way because it is so boring?).  Hill was a vagabond child, then started and failed at many businesses (great learning experience though) until finally he decided to become a motivational speaker and a sort of a prophet of success (he never says that directly, but from all the hyperbolas, it is easily inferred).

This book was started with an interview with Andrew Carnegie, the Steel Baron of USA, that the Gen.X and Y-ers today barely know about, if at all, except by the names of a bunch of libraries and concert halls.  He gave Hill access to his exclusive group of top American businessmen, including Henry Ford, in order to figure out what it is that made them so successful,  despite many of them starting from dire poverty and modest beginnings.  Although The Hill Foundation makes an argument over and over again that the principles expoused are solid and timeless, many of the actual examples feel out of date and irrelevant in 2014, which is why about 50% of the audio book is a modern commentary explaining things in context.

The commentary is so voluminous (by necessity, as things aren't clear), that this 550 page book becomes over 1,000 pages when commentary is included.  The 17 principles (15 in the beginning, but then Hill added the metaphysical "MasterMind" as No.1 which is nothing more than re-stating of the occult "Egregore" and the "Cosmic Habit Forming" as No. 17 which is mostly mambo-jumbo) could be probably summarized in one paragraph each, with not too much of loss of clarity or usefulness, but that would not sell a voluminous correspondence course where each lesson was sold separately and embellished with numerous words of praise by seemingly important people, of whom almost no one is in the sphere of general knowledge today. 

The silly things like espousing telepathy and similar superstitions, instead of looking at 'cold reading' and the actual psychology of unconscious cues, detract even more from the perception of the book as a serious, scientific one.  It gives an impression more of a self-confirming bias (as Hill constantly claims that he tested everything he says many, many times) than a scientific study.  The long exposures on "Ether" as the medium of transference, which was proven wrong even before Hill was born (if he bothered to read scientific books), detracts even more from the reading experience.  Hill rightfully points out the great role of the subconscious in people's lives, but he is too lazy and too full of himself and his 'self-made' philosophy of success to bother with reading on the real science of the subconscious which was exposed by actual scientists like C.G. Jung, who was his contemporary and whose books were widely available.

Summa summarum, reading this book is mainly an exercise in patience and persistence, while the actual principles can be gathered just from their titles and short explanations floating around the web.... The rest is just pink noise.

"Iron John" by Robert Bly

Robert Bly is primarily a poet, if that sentence makes any sense, as who's a professional poet anymore? Thus, his work to resurrect ancient fairy tales about male initiation and man's role in life.  Because of Bly's poetic inclination the movement he jumpstarted in the early 90s has been called Men's Mythopoetic movement.  It was similar to the Men Groups that were formed around that time as a reaction to extreme feminism which seemed to wand a society without men, or only with castrate, feminine men, much to their own detrement born out of ignorance and hate. 

Bly used the Grimm Brothers collected tale about EisenHans or better known in English as Iron John, to get insight into the proper way of initiating men into society and adulthood while at the same time giving meaning to their lives and determining their place in society.  Bly points out that each element in the story is not accidental or random, but it is clearly meant to convey meaning and instruction, something like a mathematical formula where each element is indispensable for the correctness of the whole. 

Fairy tales have been used for centuries to glean wisdom from the past, as our ancestors, largely illiterate, but no less intelligent, preserved the main principles of organizing the life of men and women in stories.  Freud and Jung both have looked into fairy tales, with differing conclusions.  Bly's move adds poetry and mysticism to the Men's movement, which grows and falters in turns, but which is a clear sign of the realization that feminine men will not do for fulfilling the society's male roles. 

"How to stop worrying and start living" by Dale Carnegie

Another reading of the classic Dale C. hustling and bustling his way through human emotions.  The book is full of "grandaddy" advice with some pretty trivial things given as cures, like religion.  Maybe in the 1930s religion was still considered something to show off and be proud off, but in 2014 that is not the case.  Religion has been delegated to the category of mass hallucination or consensus deception, for some higher, societal reasons. 

The book reads, more or less, like a 12 step program.  "Surrender your worries to a higher power."  Hmmm, ok, but doesn't that mean substituting your worrying (not a good thing, of course) with a more dangerous delusion that is bound to have detrimental influence on your life unless you keep it extremely narrow and bounded (virtually impossible in the case of religion)?

Lenin used to say "Religion is Opium for the masses."  In this case Dale recommends one takes religion, not because one believes in some kind of deity, or for the inherent goodness of many religious principles, but simply as a 'magic pill' that will take your worries away.  I guess the same could be said about Opium, or other drugs.  And who is to say which is more harmful, having in mind how many lives have been ruined  by fundamentalist religion. 

The other advices is OK, but probably the same things you heard from your grandfather, and you never paid any attention to anyway.  One maxim that stuck in my mind was "live in day-tight compartments."  Never allow the worries of tomorrow to spoil today, as tomorrow those worries might still be there to worry about, or they might disappear, or something may happen to make them irrelevant (like you getting hit by a bus).

All in all, worry is a good motivator, but mostly a waste of time.

"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

Neural. Romancer.  Necromancer.  Neuromancer,  Gibson's genre-creating book still holds lots of undiscovered corners for me, and I go back to it's familiar pastures, once in a while.  This time the excuse was the .epub version I got for the iPad Air, and the beautiful rendering of fonts and typography in iOS 7.

I found sentences, and even paragraphs, that I completely missed before.  New plots opened up, that I completely overlooked before, especially in my audio book version listening.  This is the fourth time I am reading "Neuromancer" and only now I completely understand Rio's world, and when he says "when you live here, you live."

Wintermute. Steppin' Razor.  Chiba Night City.  Midnight in Rue Jules Verne.  Maelcum Righteous Dub.  Villa Straylight.  Molly Millions.  Black Leather and Chrome.  Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority.  The Screaming Fist. Console Cowboy.   Tessier-Ashpool.  He never saw Molly again.  

"Make Yourself Unforgettable: The Dale Carnegie Class-Act" by Dale Carnegie Institute

This book is re-hashing of Dale Carnegie's famous three books, while updating the examples and metaphors for the XXI century, including internet references and all that jazz.  If you've read the previous Dale Carnegie's books, this one would seem like a hacked up concoction quickly put together with some annoying jingles in order to extract whatever money is left to be had in the name of Dale Carnegie.

If you are a young reader, or never before heard about Dale Carnegie, this book can serve as a good overall introduction to the material covered in greater detail (but less accessible) in the actual Dale Carnegie books.  The book is divided in 12 lessons, each concentrating on a certain topic of what constitutes a "Class Act." 

The book begins by  explaining that in the modern workplace, it is not enough anymore just to be smart, well-educated and hard-working.  Many people today have those qualities.  However, very few people are "Class Acts," that is, have the soft skills to be socially successful and popular in their circles, which, in turn, is the basis for life success and overall happiness and fulfillment, according to the Dale Carnegie "System."

"How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie

The mother of all self-help books, published in 1934 for the first time (though the updated 1981 edition is the most widely read today).  Dale Carnegie was a hustler, let's be realistic.  He was a sly man who knew how to turn things to his own advantage, often without the other person noticing, but not always.  He would have made a great used car salesman, just like his more modern follower Jack Rosenberg/Werner Erhardt with est and the Landmark Forum.

The book contains very common sense truths.  Smile.  Don't be rude.  Don't be extreme.  Control your impulses.  All these things were taught to us by our parents and grandparents when we were children, but most children don't bother to listen.  This is my 3rd or 4th time reading this audio book (never read the paper version) and each time I marvel at how simple the truths are and yet how effective.  Why would something need to be complicated to be effective?

There are criticisms for the book, of course.  It is too simplistic.  We already knew all that (but why not use it then?).  The anecdotes are about (mostly) irrelevant today industrialists and businessmen from the early XX century.  There's too much "brownnosing," Dale trying to show his importance by association, dropping names, describing who he met and how he "handled" them, which comes across as bragging (even humblebragging).

None of the criticisms prevented me from re-reading it once in a while.  It is a very loose writing, so it is great for reading (listening) on the train and subway.  Even if you miss a sentence in the ruckus, Dale repeats himself so much, you're still fine with the comprehension.  Try that with William Gibson's novels - doesn't work. 

As one reviewer put it, the whole book can be summarized in one sentence: "Be a good listener, don't take the acute angle on issues, don't disagree violently, talk about things that make other people happy and use every trick in the book to make the other person feel important."

"Stairway to Subud" by Anthony Bright-Paul

"Stairway to Subud" is an auto-biography of Anthony Bright-Paul starting from his elementary education in Christian boarding schools, to living under J.G. Bennett in Coombe Springs and practicing Gurdjieff's system, to finally ending being "opened" in Subud and spending the rest of his life with this connection.  Although the book is primarily intended to describe the author's life in Subud, it contains probably the most detailed description of the life at Coombe Springs and the Bennett Gurdjieff group there, which consists of about 45% of the book.

The author describes the eventual stagnation under Bennett's leadership who himself did not know what to do next when Mohammed Subuh appeared from Indonesia through Hussein Rofe and became the new raison de vivre.  Although Bennett will eventually leave Subud as well, and embark on a series of findings of different gurus and teachings until his death, many other Gurdjieff students, like the author, will find in Subud what they always looked for.

The second half of the book explains some of the basic concepts of Subud like the Latihan Kejuwan, the spiritual exercise, the concepts of Jiwa and Nafsu, etc.  The spread of Subud outside the Gurdjieff circles until the Gurdjieffian roots became irrelevant, even a bother, is described in great detail, as well as some of the internal strife.  Towards the end the book becomes more autobiographical and describes mostly the author's life and meetings with old friends from Gurdjieff groups and early Subud groups.

The book is rich in many excerpts and voluminous quotations from other books on Subud and from the writings of Pak Subuh and J.G. Bennett.  It excels in presenting the daily atmosphere in Coombe Springs, of which this is the only detailed account, so it can be compared to the several accounts of the life at the Prieure under Gurdjieff himself. 

"Teachings of Gurdjieff - A Pupil's Journal" by C. S. Nott

CS Nott's book is well known for the wealth of information it provides, first-hand, that could not be otherwise found in other books when first published in 1961 by Penguin Arkana.  Nott's book is divided in three parts: the first part details his first stay at the Prieure at Fonteainbleu, the middle part is an extensive commentary on Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's tales to his grandson" as gathered from Orage's talks in New York City and the third part, and the shortest, describes the second stay of Nott and his wife at the Prieure during which the author experiences a sort of "enlightenment" which takes him to the "next octave" as expressed in the Gurdjieffian Method.

Nott's book is deeply colored with Puritanic ethical and religious references, peppered with quotes (some page-length) from "The Pilgrim's Progress" and the main protagonist Christian.  This may turn off some readers who are not familiar with the Pilgrim/Puritan/Protestant worldview, but others might find the references clear and familiar.

Nott describes himself as a physical worker, not a man of books of of philosophical inclinations.  This makes his perspective unique from those of the other contemporary pupils, many of which went on to write books about their personal experiences after Mr. Gurdjieff's death.  Nott dug a large amount of trenches around La Prieure and had his final enlightenment there after a prolonged digging spell.  Mr. G. adapted his method to suit the capabilities and preferences of the student at hand, as the main principles are the same whether approached through the purely physical, the emotional or the intellectual aspects.

There are lots of advanced concepts like "pondering" being discussed and the book has probably more value as a personal record than a teaching textbook.

"Gurdjieff Unveiled" by Seymour Ginsburg

I was very excited about this book, especially the first few chapters, which are probably the most straightforward explanation of some of the basic concepts of Gurdjieff's teaching.   Ginsburg sublimates much of Ouspenky's "In Search of the Miraculous" and extracts only the framework and practical exercises, while not including the humongous cosmology which boggles the mind at first reading.  The first few chapters are organized as weekly lessons for starting Gurdjieffian groups with weekly exercises, proposed discussions and other practical advice.

Problems appear in the second half of the book, the two major ones being the Theosophical bend and the obsessions with dreams.  The third problem, which raises its ugly head in the last few chapters, is Ginsburg explaining how the people in the Work are "special" and not like "ordinary" people, even goes so far to use the offensive word "moron."  Ego tripping is definitely a sign that the Work is not working.

Ginsburg seems to be a proud Theosophists, member and officer of the Theosophical Society, and often connects Gurdjieff's statements with those of Helena Blavatsky and Charles Leadbeatter (a known child molester, exiled from England because of his pedophilia).  He tries to justify his transgression by saying that Mr. G also read Blavatsky.  Yes he did, and he wrote that 90% of what Blavatsky was writing was pure fantasy and had no basis in reality.  He also made great fun of the Theosophists with their serious but worthless books and famously joked that Theosophists are only useful for their money.  It is true that many people in the Work have been Theosophists before, however they usually discarded that nonsense once they advanced.  Ginsburg goes so far as to connect Sinnet's "Mahatma Letters" with Gurdjieffian tradition, which is completely ludicrious, having those letters proven as fraud, and written by Blavatsky herself, already during her lifetime.

The dreaming and obsession with dream interpretation is another pointer that Ginsburg's is a devolving octave, not evolving.  Mr. Gurgjieff famously insisted many, many times, in no ambiguous words (which was a rarity for him) that dreams area garbage and a waste of time.  He claimed that it took him 20 years to learn how not to dream at all, and that should be the goal of every aspiring seeker.   Ginsburg makes weak connections with what Gurgjieff mentioned in passing to Margaret Anderson about dreams, but that is just one remark, even if it is true, as opposed to an entire body of work directing the reader to supress dreaming altogether.

The problem with Ginsburg mainly is that if you do the dream journals, dream groups, meditations, etc. etc. one pretty much ends up with a full life, full of activities that "seem" spiritual, but are actually just another product of the head-brain, invented to support an illusion of doing "something."  Gurdjieff's system main emphasis is on "shocks," that is insults, offenses, life dangers, humiliations, "rubbing against each other" and feeling the brunt of our animalistic mechanical egotistic natures.  With Ginsburg's advice everyone is sitting happily in a circle, imagining they are doing something and living in an imaginary dream world, none of which has any objective existence or value.