On-Words

Micro Summaries of The Books I Read On My Trip Around the World

The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle

One-Sentence Takeaway: The present moment is all we’ve got, thus should be the primary focus of life.

Read it if…you like to hang out in the past, the future, or your own head.

Quote: “I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami

One-Sentence Takeaway: Running, like writing or living, requires a clear mind, positive attitude, and the drive to take one more step.

Read it if…you like running, writing, or sushi.

Quote: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.”

The Beach Alex Garland

One-Sentence Takeaway: Seek out your personal “beach,” but let the process of finding it be and end in itself.

Read it if…you are about to backpack South East Asia, you have a thing for Leo.

Quote: “If I’d learnt one thing from traveling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.”

Siddhartha Hermann Hesse

One-Sentence Takeaway: Wisdom, unlike knowledge, cannot be communicated — it has to be attained through experience.

Read it if…you’re about to embark on a journey, you’re in a freshman year English class.

Quote: “When someone is seeking, he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he has a goal, he is obsessed with his goal.”

The Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac

One-Sentence Takeaway: Meditating and reveling aren’t mutually exclusive.

Read it if…you have buddhist inclinations or you don’t want to be put in a box, man.

Quote: “Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig

One-Sentence Takeaway: You can be a scientist (appreciate the individual parts) as well as a mechanic (appreciate the end result).

Read it if…you like road trips, philosophy, your father. Opinion of motorcycles — negligible.

Quote: “It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”

Wild Cheryl Strayed

One-Sentence Takeaway: Blind will can get you very far.

Read it if…you like figuring things out on your own, hiking, Reese Witherspoon.

Quote: “Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves…”

Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein

One-Sentence Takeaway: Many qualities, which often seem inherent to the human condition, are in fact learned.

Read it if…you like sci-fi, new religions, Martians.

Quote: “The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up.”

Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer

One-Sentence Takeaway: As much as we prepare, mother nature always has the final say.

Read it if…you like pushing your body to the limit, non-fiction, mountains.

Quote: “Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.”

Vagabonding Rolf Potts

One-Sentence Takeaway: Vagabonding is an attitude, not a lifestyle or a trend.

Read it if…you are about to embark on a solo journey, you want to become a travel blogger.

Quote: “The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamos you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countires.”

The Buddha Walks into a Bar Lordo Rinzler

One-Sentence Takeaway: This isn’t your grandmother’s book on meditation.

Read it if…you consider yourself “spiritual, but not religious,” you want to meditate in the morning and then have a beer in the evening.

Quote: “You do not have to wait until you’re englightened. You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. You just have to offer yourself ,as you are, and allow your vulnerable heart to transform the world.”

Shantaram Gregory David Roberts

One-Sentence Takeaway: At the end of a lifetime or 1,000 pages, it’s still all about love, yo!

Read it if…you want to get lost in an incredible (really really long) story, you are interested in India.

Quote: “Sometimes we love with nothin more than hope, sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson

One-Sentence Takeaway: Dope can be awesome, dangerous.

Read it if…you want to feel like you’re on drugs while staying sober, vegas, baby!

Quote: “Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or musi or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”

Brave New World Aldous Huxley

One-Sentence Takeaway: Think different.

Read it if…you like swimming upstream, you believe in the revlution.

Quote: “if one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.”

Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda

One-Sentence Takeaway: It takes a lot of pages to become a yogi.

Read it if…you want to get closer to yoga at the source, you can read while doing a downward dog.

Quote: “Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself……”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan

One-Sentence Takeaway: Beware! Everything comes from corn.

Read it if…you want to learn where you’re food comes from, you are what you eat.

Quote: “So that’s us: processed corn, walking.”

The Alchemist Paulo Coelho

One-Sentence Takeaway: Follow your personal legend.

Read it if…you want to believe in destiny, you have an afternoon to start and finish a book.

Quote: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Invisible Cities Italo Calvino

One-Sentence Takeaway: There will always be cities beyond our wildest imaginations.

Read it if…you’re a dreamer, explorer, or prose poet.

Quote: “Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

May All Beings Be Happy Beop Jeong

One-Sentence Takeaway: Happiness above all else.

Read it if…you want to keep your ego in check, you need a reminder of the greatness of human potential.

Quote: “When you do not own anything, you actually own everything in the world.”

The Flight of the Eagle Jiddu Krishnamurti

One-Sentence Takeaway: There is no “us” and “them.”

Read it if…you want to sludge through some thick philosophy.

Quote: “To be free is only possible in becoming aware of one’s relationship, not only with human beings, but with ideas, with nature, with everything…”

The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides

One-Sentence Takeaway: The plot’s in the title.

Read it if…you like the suburbs and the first person plural.

Quote: “In the end, it wasn’t death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.”

Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert

One-Sentence Takeaway: Priority check!

Read it if…you like pasta, yoga, Julia Roberts.

Quote: “To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced
life.”

Red Notice Bill Browder

One-Sentence Takeaway: The Russian oligarchy is fucked up.

Read it if…you like thrillers, fuh-nance, Russian Dolls.

Quote: “If I’m killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know.”

Freedom Jonathan Franzen

One-Sentence Takeaway: Everyone has a story

Read it if…you want to dig into the trenches of a “normal” American family.

Quote: “Nice people don’t necessarily fall in love with nice people.”

Walden Henry David Thoreau

One-Sentence Takeaway: We can do it alone

Read it if…you feel at home in the trees with your thoughts

Quote: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

The Saint, The Surfer, and the CEO Robin Sharma

One-Sentence Takeaway: The “airplane movie” of Self-actualization

Read it if…you want your hand held through a self actualization book.

Quote: “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”

Slow Sex Nicloe Daedone

One-Sentence Takeaway: Didn’t giggle nearly as much as I expected

Read it if…you want to read a sex book and say someone told you to.

Quote: “Increase attention, not pressure.”

High Fidelity Nick Hornby

One-Sentence Takeaway: What guy/music lover can’t relate?

Read it if…creating mix CDs are a great source of pride in your life.

Quote: “People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands — literally thousands — of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”