Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I’ve decided to put my cell phone’s camera to use and show you all what’s on my bookshelf:

From left to right:

• Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. This paperback version has all three books (technically it’s six, two parts per “book,” you know) in one volume. I haven’t actually read this beast all the way through, but at least I was able to find a copy that did not have Viggo Mortensen on the cover.
• Gerber’s Vibrational Medicine. This was course reading for a class called Stalking the Wild Mind. If you’ve ever talked to me in person you know how much I loved this class. I retain a significant amount of skepticism for a lot of alternative medicine, but I figure it’s good to have on the shelf.
• Joseph Epstein’s Fabulous Small Jews. A Christmas present from a few years back. Take a minute to process the irony. It’s a collection of allegedly fictional short stories, all revolving around near-elderly Jews, almost always divorced. Epstein should really just drop the pretense and write an autobiography. It’d probably be a lot easier to read.
• Neil Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God, Part I. Please. Rowan gave it to me, insisting that I read this feel-good, generic, New Age amateur philosophy lesson. Well, Rowan, I never got more than a few chapters into it. Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death pretty easily invalidates every word out of Walsh’s (sorry, God’s) pen.
• Deepak Chopra’s The Way of the Wizard. Another present from a good friend. Chopra’s collected works are suspiciously hit or miss. He’s just as likely to write about spiritual fulfillment in the face of death as he is to write about the spiritual way to lose weight.