Must read books (part 3) - What Better Things to Do on a Sunday

What better things are there really to do on a Sunday other than reading books?? After you are done with everything and you also don’t want to go out because it’s a Sunday; catching up on a book is really the best way to make great use of your time. Besides that reading is a great way to finally give rest to the body and give the mind the space to move around freely. The mind is free to wander through the pages of a book which could be anywhere in space and time. There is really no restriction to what the mind can create and journeying with different minds is also an exhilarating experience that only the written word can provide, I mean after the real adventures of course. So here are three books about journeys that people have had.

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar: This book is a critically acclaimed biographical account of one of the greatest mathematicians, perhaps, of the 20^th century. It is a wonderful read - all about the journey of a man who was only recently recognized for his contributions to Game theory, which is the mathematics behind modern economics in many ways. John Nash spent his years in obscurity despite being one of the greatest of his time mostly because of schizophrenia and despite that the man still battles his demons on a daily basis.

The book follows Nash through his early years to the time he was finally awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1994. A film of the same name has also gained a lot of popularity and although the film is really well made, I had the fortune of reading the book before the film and it has been my personal favorites since a really long time.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey: This book was first published as a memoir in 2005; it is the story of how 23 year old Frey finds his way through six weeks of rehab after a short life full of drug and alcohol abuse. Although there was some controversy over the fact that some events described in the book did not really happen at all, the book is still a wonderful read.

The author has his own way of telling his story which is deranged to a certain extent if you ask me, but for me it works wonderfully well. The robust writing style with a lot of irregularities has also been often criticized by many but it is something that really brings about the story to life for me.

Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander: Near Death Experiences are often dismissed by most people as post traumatic delirium and a lot of skeptics will also come out and say that any such accounts are fabricated. The author of the book, Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who was always skeptical of such phenomena. His life had been a pursuit of science and his views on the existence of divine influences of any kind were almost always dismissive. His life changed dramatically when he contracted a very rare form of brain infection which is usually fatal but in his case was life altering. 

The author describes his experiences when he was in a coma, his consciousness was somehow awake. That he transcended the limits of body or mind, space or time and went on a journey that changed his perception of reality as it exists. The story has many revelations for the author and for people who don’t really think about the collective nature of our consciousness.