045 A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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Get ready to contemplate the nature of reality this week with Julia and Victoria and a special guest as we read A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, the author’s award-winning third novel about two women on different continents in different times connected by a single story.

Follow along as they discuss their theories on what happened to Nao, empathize with the characters’ struggle against existence, and marvel at Jiko the 104-year-old Buddhist nun. Also Julia manages to explain the concept of non-duality on the fly, so she’s pretty proud of that.

Mentioned in the Episode:

• Zen Buddhism

• Ruth Ozeki’s films

• Circe by Madeline Miller

• nonduality

• quantum computing

• ikigai and/or raison d’etre

What to Read Next:

• Get In Trouble by Kelly Link

• Wolf359 the narrative podcast

• This by Michael Gungor

• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

• Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano

• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

Things that Bring Us Joy:

• Haikyuu on Netflix

• Oh Hello the P’dcast

Next Week:

• The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida