The Five Most Important Books for Diane A.

I found this in the last issue of Newsweek. And I found the perspective of Diane A. so refreshing that I was marveled on the spot... her perspective on life, on nature, on spirit, her mix of poetry, genuine mysticism, subtle sensuality... well, but I have the feeling that you would ask me, who is Diane A.?

Diane Ackerman wrote An Alchemy of Mind, presented by her as a poetics of the brain based on the latest neuroscience. Newsweek considers the book as a rhapsodic work of philosophy.

She wrote also Deep Play, which considers play, creativity, and our need for transcendence. Says Mrs. Ackerman, the spirit of deep play is spontaneity, discovery, and being open to new challenges.

Well, she wrote also some other books, kind of essays witnessing a poetic feeling of some scientific facts. Life appears in her books as a flow of unexpected marvels: she has a sensuous feeling of nature and of spirit.

The most recent book of Diane Ackerman is The Zookeper's Wife: the true story of a zookeeper who hid 300 Jews from the Nazis. It resulted a tale of people, animals, transcendence, and subversive acts of compassion (you can read an excerpt in Newsweek).

Here is Diane Ackerman's list of five most important books (the list appeared in Newsweek):

• Benedictus, by John O'Donohue, a lark-tongued Celtic poet who understood the power of poetry in a mutilated world.
• My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir, a wandering mystic who wrote with luscious detail.
• The Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot, poems about time, impermanence and the glory of everyday life.
• The Phantastes, by George MacDonald, a magically strange and sapient book, with a sense of the wondrous present.
• Life With Swan, by Paul West, a novel full of all those exotic games couples play and don't want people to know about.

And a book that you always return to: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda, romantic sambas, magical imagery, it's perfect to share with a sweetheart.


(A Life in Books)