I f'ing love this book. If I could, I would have this as required reading for every school-aged kid (not just this country, every country). Well, no, I'd have it required reading for everyone, not just kids. Yeah. That.

I read this book a number of years ago after having it recommended to me by Tom Croucher. He had a stack of them at his place, and would hand them out when someone asked him for recommendations for books on how to meditate. I read the book, enjoyed it, practiced a bit, but wasn't nearly the student of the process that Tom is. Not then, likely not yet.

But when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. I've been more than a bit lost these last few years. I had the luck of being at the right place at the right time to help a friend through a rough patch, and he's returned the favor, reminding me that I will change only when I choose to change. And so, I picked up this book again.

Love this book. Highly recommended.

As is my way recently, parts of the book that caught my attention. This was hard, as pretty much the whole book had my engrossed attention.

It allows you to blow aside the illusions and free yourself from all the polite little lies you tell yourself all the time. What is there is there. You are who you are, and lying to yourself about your own weaknesses and motivations only binds you tighter to them.
MISCONCEPTION 7: MEDITATION IS RUNNING AWAY FROM REALITY. Page 25 · Location 424

Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pellmell down the hill, utterly out of control and helpless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not. So they still feel relatively comfortable. That does not mean that they are better off. Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation.
What to Do with Your Mind, Page 75 · Location 1080

You must remember that you practice loving friendliness for the purification of your own mind, just as you practice meditation for your own attainment of peace and liberation from pain and suffering.
UNIVERSAL LOVING FRIENDLINESS > Page 93 · Location 1335

We humans are very odd beings. We like the taste of certain poisons, and we stubbornly continue to eat them even while they are killing us.
Dealing with Distractions II, Page 135 · Location 1903

Related: sugar.

This is a collection of short stories by Scalzi. Unsurprisingly, I will read most anything this man writes, and this book is no exception. The man, and the fact they are short stories, of which I have a fondness, means I will read it.

Most of the works have been published before. All are pure Scalzi.

A quick, fun read. Normally, I'd be more inclined to seek out the stories elsewhere than buy the book, but I really want him to keep writing, and that means buying the things he writes, so, yeah, bought. Read. Entertained. If Scalzi is your thing, recommended.

Unrelated, my book reviews have to be a minimum number of lines long to format nicely on my site. As a result, I find myself padding some reviews to get to the minimum lengths.

Really, I should fix the design so that this isn't required.

Also unrelated, this sentence brings this review to the minimum. Sigh.

I haven't read a Stephen King book in a long while. I really enjoyed King's Eyes of the Dragon when it was released in the late eighties (alas, my copy was in a box of my favorite books that I stored in student summer storage at Tech, and it disappeared, along with my childhood copy of Where The Red Fern Grows), and delight in King's non-horror fiction. While I don't recall where I picked up this book in paperback, I enjoyed it. In typical King fashion, the reading is fast and easy, the plot straight-forward, and the emotional parts appropriately hit you in the gut.

The book is about Devin Jones, who works at an amusement park for a summer. There was a murder at the park four years before. The ghost is said to still roam the park. Devin has a summer, makes friends, wears the mascot costume a lot, meets his neighbors, has an adventure, lives a life. The book is a quick read. I recommend it, yes.

Unsurprisingly, I nicked a number of pages while reading.

When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.
p.47

"Son, do you know what history is?"

"Uh... stuff that happened in the past?"

"Nope," he said, tying on his canvas change-belt. "History is the collective and ancestral shit of the human race, a great big and ever-growin pile of crap. Right now we're standin at the top of it, but pretty soon we'll be buried under the doodoo of generations yet to come. That's why your folks' clothes look so funny in old photographs, to name but a single example. And, as someone who's destined to be buried beneath the shit of your children and grandchildren, I think you should just a leetle more forgiving."
p 70

"We do it the way they do in the navy -- see one, do one, teach one."
p. 73

But the mind defends itself as long as it can. After the first shock of such news dissipates, maybe you think, Okay, it's bad, I get that, but it's not the final word; there still might be a chance. Even if ninety-five percent of the people who draw this particular card go down, there's still that lucky five percent. Also, doctors misdiagnose shit all the time. Barring those things, there's the occasional miracle.
p. 93

You start to worry, then you start to get it, then you know. Maybe you don't want to, maybe you think that lovers as well as doctors misdiagnose shit all the time, but in your heart you know.
p. 95

"Maybe your parents are getting a divorce. Mine did, and it damn neared killed me..."
p. 104

I think so but can't say for sure, because passing time adds false memories and modifies real ones.
p. 110

We could see other fires -- great leaping bonfires as well as cooking fires -- all the way down the beach to the twinkling metropolis of Joyland. They made a lovely chain of burning jewelry. Such files are probably illegal in the twenty-first century; the powers that be have a way of outlawing many beautiful things made by ordinary people. I don't know what that should be, I only know it is.
p. 117

Money mattered to him. I never got the sense it completely owned him, but yes, it mattered to him a great deal.
p. 122

I would argue that -- fantasies aside -- the majority of men are monogamous from the chin up. Below the belt-buckle, however, there's a wahoo stampeder who just doesn't give a shit.
p. 127-128

It's hard to let go. Even when what you're holding onto is full of thorns, it's hard to let go. Maybe especially then.
p. 144

"I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world," Mrs. Shoplaw said. "Religion is supposed to comfort"
p. 183

On this, I would begin to argue that this statement isn't necessarily true for religions other than that of the mono-theistic Judeo-Christian-Islam type. Maybe not even for the Judeo and Islam part. Of note, see Hays' comment on Christian Atheism and the problems it's caused since its founding.

"Young women and young men grow up, but old women and old men just grow older and surer they've got the right on their side. Especially if they know scripture."

I remembered something my mother used to say. "The devil can quote scripture."

"And in a pleasing voice," Mrs. Shoplaw agreed moodily.
p. 183

Page 183 had a lot of quotes that struck true.

I remembered something Mike had said to her in the hospital parking lot: It doesn't have toe be the last good time. But sooner or later the last good time would come around. It does for all of us.
p. 266-267

"Some people hide their real faces, hon. Sometimes you can tell when they're wearing mask, but not always. Even people with powerful intuitions can get fooled."
p. 301

The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what is bright and good. You hold on for dear life.
p. 307-308

All page numbers are from the paperback. I'm looking now to see if a hardback was published.