A Mystery and a Road Trip

I think I get around to writing something about maybe one in five books I read.  And I only finish reading about one in five books I want to read! 

Anyway, a couple of good books I finished this past week: Breakfast With Buddha by Rolland Merullo.  I particularly enjoyed this book because I’ve been meditating regularly with other folks in a local Buddhist Sangha (community) for about 10 years now, and it’s always fun to find a good fiction book that does a decent job of sharing some of that perspective.  It’s sort of like a fictionalized dharma (teachings) talk.  This book is based on an actual road trip the author made from Bronxville, New York, to Dickinson, North Dakota, in the summer of 2006.  In Breakfast With Buddha, Otto makes such a trip with Volya Rinpoche, and the fictional Rinpoche’s ideas are from the author’s “thirty years of reading across the religious, philosophical, and psychological spectrum and meditation retreats at Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, and nondenominational retreat centers and monasteries.” 

Dead Heat by Dick Francis and his son Felix Francis.  I first started to read Dick Francis because he was one of my sweetie’s favorite authors.  He’s become one of mine, also.  I love the complexity and humanness of his characters, and his plotting, shared information about the horse racing world, and use of the language add much also.  This is his second book since his long-time co-author, his wife, died.  Having a co-author seems to help tighten, and make flow better, the writing and plot, and I’m glad he has his son with him on Dead Heat.  Dead Heat is not his typical racing mystery.  The main character in this book is a chef, not a jockey, although some of the plot and setting is around racetracks and polo matches.