reading notes

The Psychology of Optimal Experience
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
ISBN: 0060920432
Generally speaking, I am too judgemental and practical a person to invest much energy or belief in ideas which, when written in book form, can be found in the self-help section of a bookstore. But people who didn’t strike me as flaky recommended this book, and the general [...]

John J. Muth, illustrator
ISBN: 0439339111
Stillwater is a giant panda, something of a Zen master. He meets three children when his umbrella is blown into their yard — and as he befriends each one, he tells them a classic Buddhist story.
Muth depicts Stillwater and the three children with watercolors: spare, color not too intense but not [...]

Stories That Are Mostly True
by Tony Earley
ISBN: 1565123603
This book is a collection of personal essays, though Earley isn’t entirely comfortable with that description. Personal, these days, often means a “predisposition toward narcissism” and that really isn’t an attractive idea to a good writer. Also, what he wrote here doesn’t follow the definition of essay he [...]

by David B.
ISBN: 1894937783
I’d keep hearing good things about David B.’s work Epileptic (L’Ascension du Haut-Maul in the orginal French) but I could never find the beginning issues, so I wouldn’t read it. Yes, I’m one of those comics readers — if I can’t start from the beginning, I just won’t start. So when I [...]

from the Phaidon 55 Series
Photography by Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Edited by Judith Keller
ISBN: 0714841129
The 55 series aims to make great photography available in small paperbacks at low prices. In other words, they think there is interest in and a whole new market for photography books that aren’t coffee-table tomes priced upwards of thirty bucks.
This five inch [...]