The Adyar Project


I've always been a fan, on paper, of the organised reading project. There are many of them about on the internet: read the Penguin Classics, read Meiji-era literature for a month, read the Booker shortlist, finish Proust in a year...I've never joined any of them, simply because I know I wouldn't be able to keep my end up - I am just too easily distracted. Actually, I did join an on-line Proust reading group back in the dark days of the internet, circa 1999, but after the first book I kinda fell off. I'm hopeless. That's why I could never join a book group - after the first couple of months I would begin to resent the set books, and set about reading anything else but.
So I thought to myself, "Why not create my own reading project - something in line with my own interests, persuasions and area of academic research?" And so I conceived the Adyar Project.
Adyar Bookshop is Australia's oldest new-age bookstore, a fascinating place where I actually worked, on and off, for many years. So I contacted an old friend there and asked him to let me know what their top sellers for the past year have been. I would then set about reading the Top 5, blogging about them, and seeing if they have had any influence on my life (that is, after all, the major claim of all of these books: They will change your life). So this is my little project - I hope you'll find it interesting.
To let you know what I'll be reading (and I have no idea how long this will take - I plan to take it slow), here is Adyar's Top 5 Bestselling Books for the past year:

1. The Vortex - Esther & Jerry Hicks
2. The Body is the Barometer of the Soul - Annette Noontil
3. The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
4. Journey of Souls - Michael Newton
5. A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle

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