Reading

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.  Mortimer J. Adler

Book read

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Pure nostalgia: Enid Blyton

I cannot imagine my childhood without Enid Blyton. I started with Noddy, then moved on to The Secret Seven, and later to The Famous Five. These books absorbed me completely and became a constant part of my early life. They instilled in me a love of reading.

Fascinating facts about Enid Blyton

• She is one of the most prolific writers in history, having written over 700 books and thousands of short stories, poems, and articles.
• Her books have sold over 600 million copies worldwide, making her one of the best-selling authors of all time, translated into more than 90 languages.
• Blyton claimed she could write 5,000–10,000 words a day, often completing a full book in under a week.
• She said she did not consciously plan her stories, describing the process as one where ideas “came through” her, almost as if dictated.
• Despite her popularity, she was heavily criticised by literary critics, educators, and librarians during her lifetime for simple language, repetition, and moralising.
• For years, the BBC refused to broadcast adaptations of her work, considering them “unliterary” and unsuitable—while children adored them.
• Her most famous series include The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, Noddy, Malory Towers, and St Clare’s.
• She had a deep interest in nature, which strongly influenced the outdoor adventures, countryside settings, and seasonal rhythms in her stories.
• Blyton kept a strict daily writing routine, starting early in the morning and treating writing as disciplined work rather than inspiration-driven art.
• She was personally complex and controversial: acquaintances often described her as difficult, emotionally distant, and highly controlling, especially in family relationships.
• Her daughter later wrote a memoir portraying Blyton as cold and emotionally unavailable, sharply contrasting with the warmth of her fictional worlds.
• Many of her books have been edited, revised, or bowdlerised in later decades to remove outdated language, stereotypes, or corporal punishment.
• She rarely interacted with children directly, yet had an uncanny intuition for what children wanted to read.
• Blyton was once the most borrowed author in British libraries, a position she held for decades.
• She died in 1968, just before a major critical reassessment began recognising her cultural impact and storytelling genius, if not her literary elegance.

Pure nostalgia: Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew

After Enid Blyton, my reading naturally shifted to American mystery series—The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I loved the mystery and suspense these books offered. It later manifested as a love for movies with suspense, mystery and twists.

Fascinating facts about The Hardy Boys

• First published in 1927, making them one of the longest-running series in children’s literature.
• Written under the house pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon** by multiple authors.
• Originally created to appeal specifically to boys, as a counterpart to Nancy Drew.
• Early editions were substantially revised in the 1950s–60s to modernise language, shorten stories, and remove racial stereotypes.
• Frank and Joe Hardy were deliberately written as complements: Frank logical and serious, Joe impulsive and intuitive.
• The series helped popularise the amateur detective genre for young readers.
• Over 600 titles have been published worldwide across spin-offs and reboots.

Fascinating facts about Nancy Drew

• Debuted in 1930, during a time when few fictional girls were portrayed as independent or adventurous.
• Created by publisher Edward Stratemeyer, and written under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.
• Early Nancy was notably bold, assertive, and fearless, even by modern standards.
• Like the Hardy Boys, many early books were rewritten mid-century to soften language and update social norms.
• Nancy Drew became an unexpected feminist icon, inspiring generations of girls to see themselves as capable and intelligent.
• The character influenced later pop-culture detectives, from TV to YA fiction.
• More than 500 million copies of Nancy Drew books have been sold globally.

 

Non fiction books read (2025)

• Rational Mysticism  (John Horgan)
• The Grand Illusion (Steve Hagen)
• The Outer Limits of Reason (Noson S. Yanofsky)
• The Web of Life ( Fritjof Capra)
• Mysticism: Value and Validity of Mystical Experiences  (Antti Pilola)

Non fiction books read (2024)

 Self-illusion

• The Ego Tunnel (Thomas Metzinger)
• There is No You (Andrew Halaw)
• Seeing no Self: Essential Inquiries  that Reveal Our Nondual Nature (Katrijn Van Oudheusden)
• Beyond Illusion: Exploring the Six Illusions that Cause  Our Mistaken Belief in a Separate Self (Katrijn Van Oudheusden)
• Selfless Service  (Katrijn Van Oudheusden)
• The Ego Tunnel (Thomas Metzinger)
• There is No You (Andrew Halaw)
• What Am I? A Study in Non-Volitional Living (Galen Sharp)

Idealism

• The Grand Biocentric Design (Robert Lanza)
• Being Myself (Rupert Spira)

Left versus right brain

• The Matter with Things  (Iain McGilchrist)
• The Master & His Emmisary (Ian Gilchrist)

Other books

• The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact  (Colin McGinn)
• God is Nothingness  (Andre Halaw)
  
  

Non fiction books read (2023)

Idealism

• Dreamed Up Reality: Diving into the Mind to Uncover the Astonishing Hidden Tale of Nature  (Bernardo Kastrup)

Metaphysics

• Reality + (David Chalmers)

Non fiction books read (2022)

Advaita Vedanta 

• Advaita - Tools for Spiritual Unity (Merlyn Swan)

Idealism

• Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture (Bernardo Kastrup)
• The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality  Bernardo Kastrup
  
  

Non fiction books read (2021)

Consciousness

•  The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters  Jeffrey J. Kripal

Idealism

• Rationalist Spirituality: An exploration of the meaning of life and existence informed by logic and science  (Bernardo Kastrup)
• Why Materialism is Baloney (Bernardo Kastrup)
• More than Allegory (Bernardo Kastrup)

 

World as Simulation

• The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game (Rizwan Virk)

The illusion of the separate self (ego)

• No Self, no Problem (Chris Niebauer)
• The Self Illusion (Bruce Hood)

Advaita Vedanta

• The Greatest Secret: (Rhonda Byrne)

Death and Near Death Experiences

• The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU (Mike Dooley)
• 500 Quotes From Heaven: Life-Changing Quotes That Reveal The Wisdom & Power Of Near-Death Experiences (David Sunfellow)
• The Purpose of Life as Revealed by Near-Death Experiences from Around the World (David Sunfellow)

God

• Mind, World, God: Science and Spirit in the 21st Century (Tam Hunt)

Bernardo Kastrup

I learned of Bernardo through Rupert Spira. He is a wonderful philosopher who makes a very convincing argument for  idealism, the theory that reality is mental rather than physical. I read most of his books and listened to many hours of him very eloquently discussing this theories on Youtube.

Books that inspired me

Quotes

• Physics is a science of perception. We start with perception and then start to model the behavior of those perceptions. Bernardo Kastrup
• Science does not say what things are. It only says how they behave. Bernardo Kastrup
• Experience is already mind in motion. Bernardo Kastrup
• All of reality is a phenomenon of, and in, mind. Bernardo Kastrup
• The brain is like a whirlpool in the stream of mind. Bernardo Kastrup
• All reality is in mind, including your body and brain. Bernardo Kastrup
• We are all multiple personalities of a cosmic consciousness.  Bernardo Kastrup
• How can consciousness arise from something truly unconscious. Bernardo Kastrup
• Death causes us to remember all that we already know but cannot recall. Bernardo Kastrup
• Every whirlpool represents the subjective world of its respective human being. Bernardo Kastrup
• If you can be sure of anything at all, it is that your conscious perceptions exist. Bernardo Kastrup
• The whirlpool represents a partial localization of the flow of experiences in the stream. Bernardo Kastrup
• The whirlpool of mind ‘filters out’ of itself most subjective experiences unfolding in nature. Bernardo Kastrup
• The brain is like a whirlpool in the stream of mind that filters in our experience and filters out all else. Bernardo Kastrup
• Localized points-of-view become seemingly amnesic of everything that doesn’t fall within their respective vortices. Bernardo Kastrup
• According to idealism, all of reality – the entire universe – exists in mind, although not all in your egoic mind alone. Bernardo Kastrup
• In a sense, we have been deputized by mind at large to look back at itself and try to make something out of what we see. Bernardo Kastrup

Non fiction books read (2020)

Evidence for God

• How To Know God Exists (Ray Comfort)
• How Science Reveals God: What Every Thinking Person Must Know (Stephen Martin)
• The Experience of God (David Bentley Hart)

Spiritual narratives

• Rethinking Our Story: Can We Be Christian in the Quantum Era?  (Doug Hammack)

God and Science

• Soul Search, A Scientist Explores the Afterlife (David Darling)

Metaphors for God

• God Reflected: Metaphors for God (Flora A. Keshgegian)
• God the What: What our Metaphors for God Reveal About Our Beliefs in God (Carolyn Jane Bohler)
• Wearing God (Lauren F. Winner)