Quote of the day

We have to trust in that perfect unadorned perception. The very mind that wants to control things is the mind that's caught up to begin with. When you're caught up, you have fewer possibilities. Your mind can manifest in more ways if you keep it from taking form. Technique is just a means for understanding that. Do you understand what it means to not let your mind take form? When you allow the mind to harden itself into a shape, a feeling, an intensity, technique, or strategies rather than allowing that clear, mirror like perception to arise, that is allowing the mind to take form.

The technique is something you do while you try not to let it interfere with the spaciousness of your mind. If you let your mind take form, it becomes localized. When you feel that happen, Return and come back to a formless state. The more that you can do that, the more you'll be your own person. The less you can do that, the more circumstances will dictate to you who you are at every moment.

(Takuan Soho, from unpublished transcripts, 1998)

Book review

Quill & Quire Online has a review of Wayne Johnston's new novel The Custodian of Paradise. Here is an excerpt of the review by Maureen Garvie:

"In The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, his acclaimed 1999 novel fashioned loosely around the life of Joey Smallwood, Wayne Johnston created a brilliant foil for the undersized premier in the towering character of Sheilagh Fielding. Apparently agreeing with many readers that she was unforgettable and too good to waste, Johnston gives Fielding her own story to tell this time out."

And the closing paragraph is a good summation of any of Johnston's works:

"By the book’s end, many mysteries have been laid to rest, only to be replaced with new ones. This raises the happy possibility that Johnston intends to return to the scene again."

Dutch reading campaign

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch libraries are giving away 575,000 copies of a 1973 bestseller in the hope of turning the nation into one big book group and getting more people to read long-term.

As part of a national reading campaign from Friday until mid-November, library members can pick up a free copy of "Dubbelspel" ("Double Play") by Frank Martinus Arion, the library association said.

The libraries are giving away free copies of just one title -- enough for one in 30 citizens -- so that as many readers as possible can discuss the book, inspired by the success of similar "One Book" projects in U.S. and European cities, where books became the talk of the town, campaign organizers said.

"Dubbelspel," first published to rave reviews in 1973, tells a story of four men on the island of Curacao, a Dutch dependency in the southern part of the Caribbean where the author was born.

"It's a novel you can read on several layers: an exciting and moving tale about friendship and betrayal, a political allegory and also as an atmospheric picture of the Netherlands Antilles in the 1970s," organizers said on their Web site.