Courageous Dreaming

This is a book by Alberto Villoldo. It has a subtitle, How Shamans Dream the World Into Being.

I liked the way the book started off, but I liked it less as it progressed. To me, the author let his politics show a little too much as the book went on which was distracting and can take readers off focus.

That being said, the book does offer many points worth noting. I guess these might be summarized in that one should find his dream and break free of what holds him back. The practices of (real) truth, beauty and living today (in a good way) knowing that it could be your last are important to this process.

Let me know what you think if you try it.

The Secret of Scent

This is a book by Luca Turin on the science of smell and perfume chemistry as well. It is a sort of scientific companion more or less to Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent that I reviewed a while back; it isn't that scientific, so don't panic if you aren't great at science. Turin's work is a main subject in both books.

Turin's book gives a lot of background into the perfume industry, especially on materials in important smell categories. Perhaps the main focus is to demonstrate that the vibrational theory of smell makes sense as opposed to the shape theory.

Turin writes in an irreverent and amusing way. The book is somewhat technical, but never dry and boring. Give it a try if you'd like to know a little more about the science in this area without getting overly technical.