OK, the "Blink"- based book counter challenge.

It's based on Amazon.com excerpts...

Yep. It's not judging a book by its cover, but by the Amazon content snippets contained on their website.

This is based on Pseudo-Polymath's "Challenge to Non-Believers." He requested responders to read one book; in return he'd read a book.

So my counter is: give me an Amazon.com excerpt, and in return you'll read some of my Amazon.com excerpts...

The reason I've come up with this counter to him is as follows:

1. I don't have time to buy books- that someone else recommends. I don't have time to read the ones that I want to read.

2. The Amazon.com stuff is free.

3. The Amazon.com content is very quickly read.

True, the exchange will be more USA Today than Harvard University's philosophy post- grad school, but OTOH, it will be more feasible, and suited to the nature of this medium, I think.

Here's some books I recommend, for starters:

The Politics of Experience by RD Laing.


Moon in a Dewdrop, by Eihei Dogen

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika by Nagarjuna, Jay L. Garfield


Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin, translated by Norman WADDELL


I have others...

(HT to Mr. Carter...)

Update:

The Talking Cure by Mike Feder...

That guy Feder can tell a story...