What I've been reading

Time Travel in Einstein's Universe
by J. Richard Gott

"Although scientists are not yet taking out patents on a time machine, they are investigating whether it is possible under the laws of physics. In Newton's three-dimensional world this would have been inconceivable. But with Einstein's theory of relativity a fourth dimension - time - enters the frame."

I found this in a free book exchange at a bus stop in Wales, where the standard of literature was far higher than I could have expected. It's quite a technical read and I couldn't possibly recount the arguments about the curvature of space time and physics of black holes, but essentially the case is made for the possibility of time travel albeit in very theoretical circumstances.

Facing Mount Kanchenjunga: An English Buddhist in the Eastern Himalayas
by Sangharakshita

"In 1950 Kalimpong was a lively trading town in the corner of India that borders Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. Finding a welcome in this town, nestled high in the mountains, were a bewildering array of guests and settlers: ex-colonial military men, missionaries, incarnate Tibetan lamas, exiled royalty and Sangharakshita, a young English monk attempting to establish a Buddhist movement for local youngsters."

This second volume of autobiography covers a number of years in Kalimpong, a town on the border of India and Nepal, when nothing much really happened except that Sangharakshita meets a lot of interesting people and goes on trips with casks containing the Sacred Relics of two of the Buddha's closest disciples. Despite the unpromising material, he's a good enough writer to make it readable, and I'm enjoying following the unusual journey towards the founding of a western Buddhist community.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera

"In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being' not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine."

Lent to me by the same friend who lent me the Annie Proulx book that I loved, I'm not as keen on this one. Lots of philosophising about promiscuity and the feelings of betrayal of wives, a fair bit of self-justification from the males, and not much more than silence from the female lovers. The setting of Czechoslovakia at the time of the Prague Spring and the subsequent invasion was interesting, but not the navel gazing that comprises the rest of the novel.