Breathe, Smile, Relax is the self-evident exercise that Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das promotes in his new book, Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now. It’s a meditation that, as he puts it, “can help us collect ourselves and reconcentrate our energy and attention. Learning how to do this prevents the cupful of golden vitality poured into us at birth from being continuously drained away.”
Book reviews
2011
July 25, 2011
Bright Waters, Shining Tides: > Reflections on a Lifetime of Fishing, paintings and essays by Kib Bramhall, Vineyard Stories, Edgartown, 2011. 96 pages. Hardcover, $29.95.
I know of three painters who are also enviably good writers, all of them Vineyard men by birth or choice.
July 18, 2011
BEARING DRIFT: A Story of Tragedy, Heroism and How Thirty-Four Sailors Rescued the U.S. Coast Guard. By Peter Sloan Eident. Pirate Press. 350 pages, $29.95.
July 7, 2011
AN UNSPEAKABLE MISSION. By Judith Campbell. Mainly Mystery Press, 2011. 262 pages. $16.95 softcover.
June 30, 2011
“Never put anyone out of your heart,” the late Hindu holy man Neem Karoli Baba told his disciples, among them writer, lecturer, and holy man in his own right, Ram Dass, and his friend, regular travel buddy, writer and photographer, Rameshwar Das. These two men share many affinities, among them a decades-long passion for Eastern philosophy coupled with an ability to purvey these ideas to a similarly fascinated American public.
June 16, 2011
MY SIDE OF THE CAR. By Kate Feiffer, illustrated by Jules Feiffer. Candlewick Press. Somerville. April 2011. 32 pages, illustrations. $16.99 hardcover.
In their new book My Side of the Car, author and Oak Bluffs resident Kate Feiffer and her father, Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning illustrator Jules Feiffer, hand the reader the quintessential and timeless story of the father-daughter relationship. Written with the purity of childhood memories and illustrated with graceful humor, the Feiffers have hit the nail right on the head.
