> The book I discovered later in life
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist, published in 2009. In this and his later book, The Matter With Things, McGilchrist investigates the extraordinary difference between the characteristic modes of perception, cognition and response of the two hemispheres of the brain. It’s like coming across an entirely new colour.
This book sounds interesting, brought to mind The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_...). This year I saw this book at Half Price Books and, primed by Westworld quickly bought and read it. It wasn’t good: interesting premise argued in a just so way without much substantive evidence.
> The books I am currently reading
… Dick Davis’s translation of the Shahnameh
Shahnameh had and continues to have enormous cultural influence not just in Iran but in all neighboring cultures, perhaps akin to the Bible in Western tradition. Davis’s new translation converts the couplets in prose, with some parts kept in poetic form, is highly accessible and praised (https://www.npr.org/2006/03/29/5309016/new-translation-of-pe...). I suggest complementing the reading with miniatures of key scenes you can find by googling or you may forego a full translation and go with the abridged but fantastically illustrated book by Hamid Rahmanian (https://www.amazon.com/Shahnameh-Persian-Kings-Illustrated-S...)
This book sounds interesting, brought to mind The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_...). This year I saw this book at Half Price Books and, primed by Westworld quickly bought and read it. It wasn’t good: interesting premise argued in a just so way without much substantive evidence.
> The books I am currently reading … Dick Davis’s translation of the Shahnameh
Shahnameh had and continues to have enormous cultural influence not just in Iran but in all neighboring cultures, perhaps akin to the Bible in Western tradition. Davis’s new translation converts the couplets in prose, with some parts kept in poetic form, is highly accessible and praised (https://www.npr.org/2006/03/29/5309016/new-translation-of-pe...). I suggest complementing the reading with miniatures of key scenes you can find by googling or you may forego a full translation and go with the abridged but fantastically illustrated book by Hamid Rahmanian (https://www.amazon.com/Shahnameh-Persian-Kings-Illustrated-S...)