Book #1 Update

Today I finished Man Seeks God - My Flirtations with the Divine. The author, Eric Weiner, is a former NPR correspondent who has had much success with his earlier work: The Geography of Bliss, a NY Times bestseller. Man Seeks God is Mr Weiner's account of searching for personal religion after realizing he might in fact need a god. This realization comes when Mr Weiner finds himself in the hospital, afraid something is fatally wrong and a nurse comes in to draw some blood.  While she is doing what she does, without much ado, she asks "have you found your god yet?" At this point our main character is sent searching, circularly, for himself. 

The author is painfully self aware, and writes about his internal state as much as he writes about his experiences attempting to be a whirling dervish or a Raelian. Mr Weiner becomes smitten with a certain practice in a particular religion (or the idea of a practice), he likes to underline books, and he often feels as though he is faking ritual participation (and often fantasizes about being discovered as nothing more than a fake). Throughout his encounters he asks simple and profound questions, something he asks the questions you are not supposed to ask, the questions that might pop in my own mind were I in a similar situation. He does this not with academic flaunt but with the worry that if he is having such questions, he might just not be getting it. 

This book interlaces many current and historic ideas as well as thinkers in comparative religion, and is accessible to those who may know very little about the religions he covers. While ultimately the book might not be more than musings in a travel diary, it is nice to know others are equally smitten and confused.