Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree

Ajahn Buddhadasa was a pretty prolific writer, so if you hang around dharma circles long enough, you almost can't avoid hearing about his books.  This one came particularly recommended because it dealt with the always slippery concept of emptiness, or as the translator perfers, voidness.  In fact, though, Buddhadasa has not written a book on suññatā in order to treat some sort of special topic -- in his view emptiness is the very heart of the Buddha's teaching, and the only practice that really matters.  At first, coming from a Theravadan, this sounds surprising.  But as I've gradually learned more about the Thai Forest tradition, I've realized that the common denominator for this school is an emphasis on very open approach to the concept of 'direct experience'.  Unlike the much more systematic Burmese approach which gave us the now popular notion of 'mindfulness', the Thai Forest teachers I've encountered so far seem to be much less obsessed with maps of progress, and much less prescriptive of what you should find when you look at experience.  

Indeed, Buddhadasa's whole book is devoted to what you will not find in experience -- a solid and separate essential self.  For him, emptiness always means emptiness of self, though he makes clear that everything (including objects we don't normally think of as having selves) is empty of self.  The book then gradually unfolds level after level of how we can let go of the craving for "I" and "mine", the craving for self, that causes so much of our suffering.  It's really a wonderful simplification of the Buddha's method, and Buddhadasa's writing has a sort of renegade 'cutting though' edge to it that befits a guy who headed off into the forest to escape the bullshit of monastic politics.  So it's a straightforward book that you can hand to a beginner as a guide to making sense of all this emptiness nonsense.  But at the same time, the topic is so deep that I'll probably end up coming back to this one again for further inspiration.

The Lord of the Rings

I hadn't read Tolkien's epic adventure since I was 14, and as a result kind of thought of it as a kids book.  So I was a bit surprised when Ursula Le Guin waxed poetic about the quality of the writing.  And it turns out that while the Hobbit perhaps falls slightly on the young adult side, the remainder of the trilogy is not children's fare at all -- I simply happened to read it when I was a child.  Of course it's a fantasy action adventure novel with wizards and magical swords and whatnot.   But the writing is superb and sophisticated.  Tolkien is quite simply a master storyteller.  Le Guin remarked particularly on the rhythm of his prose at the level of the sentence and passage.  And there is something very pleasing about the lilt of the language that almost cries out to be read aloud.  But I was more struck by how well he manages the pacing and rhythm of the story overall.  These days, we expect that anything one might call a page-turner is apt to be just one long car chase scene.  Indeed, the films condense the novels in precisely this way.  Tolkien, however, really lets the plot breathe.  There are plenty of action-adventure scenes, but they are interspersed with long periods where the reader gets to rest and reflect alongside the characters.  The tension builds and releases, ebbs and flows on a variety of scales.  Even within the build-up to a dramatic battle, there are brief interludes of respite that heighten the contrast of the blow when it is finally struck.  The result is something that holds our attention in a much deeper way than just remaining at the edge of our seat.