I Am A Strange Loop - by: Douglas Hofstadter (2007)

By the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach (the Pulitzer Prize Winner), this book claims that consciousness is no more than "a hallucination perceived by a hallucination" (p. 293). Or, as Edgar Allen Poe puts it, "a dream within a dream". But, surprizingly Hofstadter makes no reference to Poe's famous poem even though the poem itself is a succinct expression of everything this book expounds on (i.e. an ultimately meaningless reality). My answer to Poe's poem, "What Poe Didn't Know", answers this book as well as it does Poe's poetic inquery - and it does so in a way that exploits Hofstadter's own methodology of symbolic feedback (loops) of analogy.

Dog Eat Dog - by: Edward Bunker (1996)

This is one of the most realistic "crime fiction" books I have ever read. Not surprizingly it was written by the same author who wrote Animal Factory, which was later turned into a movie that he also wrote the screenplay for and helped direct. I saw the movie while I lived in Fargo, North Dakota, and told many people that it was the most realistic "prison movie" I had ever seen (far more realistic than popular shows like, "Oz" - which I never watched because of how fake and contrived it was). Bunker served time at McNeil Island too, but long before I ever got there.

(Note: The image of a black man screaming at the end of my "What is reality?" video, on U-Tube, was actually taken from the Animal Factory movie; so now you know what several people on another blog about my crimes couldn't figure out.)

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology - by: Ray Kurzweil (2005)

Kurzweil predicts that by the year 2045 machines will be "one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today". He says humans will then be able to live "as long as they want" and in any kind of body they want. But, Kurzweil sidesteps the consciousness problem (i.e. can a machine really be conscious?) claiming that the question of consciousness is not important. I beg to differ. I think the question of consciousness is the most important question we will ever face. And in the face of that question all of Kurzweil's materialistic (and humanistic) dreams will stall for a long time coming.

Even though this book doesn't pretend to be a philosophy book, it does raise a lot of really interesting (and pressing) philosophical questions; like, what exactly does it mean to be intelligent, or even human for that matter, in the face of modern (and imminent) technology?

Full Dark, No Stars - by: Stephen King (2010, 2011)

An interesting study, on King's part on the twisted mind's of murderers (several short stories).

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram - translated by: Andrew X. Pham (2007)

The diary of a young and pretty Vietcong doctor who was shot and killed by American soldiers during the Vietnam occupation. The diary is unique in that it was salvaged (illegally) by a US intelligence officer from papers that were supposed to be destroyed as having "no military value". Only recently (in 2005) did that officer return the diary to Thuy Tram's family, and had it translated and published (without Vietnamese censorship) as well. It became a best seller in Vietnam instantly, and a valuable insight into the "war" for anyone interested in seeing past both Uncle Sam's and Uncle Ho's version of things.

Homecoming - by: Cynthia Voight (1981)

Fiction. The story of four children who are abandoned in a mall parking lot by their mother and learn to fend for themselves as they search out on their own for someplace to call home.

As I read, I kept thinking, no siblings would ever love each other like these four do, not in the real world. But that's just my old "experience" talking. I never saw anything resembling this kind of sibling love in my own childhood, but when I saw it for the first time in adult life, it changed me for ever. It was this kind of love that Shasta had for her brother Dylan (and all of her brothers for that matter) and that caused me to stay my hand when it came time to kill her (note: Dylan loved Shasta as well, but I was not yet ready to accept this truth before I murdered him).

I teared up at the end of this book (even though I tried really hard not to).

2012: The War For Souls - by: Whitley Strieber (2007)

Science Fiction: Garbage. The only real surprise about this book is that I actually read the whole thing without intellectually puking (opps, I just did).