Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I wanted to read something different and decided to read this book.  In a nut shell this is the story of a man that is raised the son of a Brahmin Priest and feels disillusioned, moves to the mountains to be a monk, get's his fill of that, goes to learn about love from a lady that runs a love garden (not graphic about this, thankfully) and then eventually ties all together and learns the meanings of life from a river and old boatman that runs a fairy there.  Of course I left a lot out, but that is the gist of it.

I absolutely loved this book.  It made me think and helped me to look at things differently.

For instance, here is a lesson from the river; the water that is right in front of you is only in front of you for an instant.  The water that is up-stream is coming fast and is hard to see.  The water downstream lasts the longest and eventually cycles through and ends up coming around again.  Therefore, if we make our decisions more based what we want to have done, rather than what we want to be doing now, we will make better decisions and be happier people. 

I am currently training for a half-marathon and I have tried to have this mentality in my training.  There have been several times that I have been tired and wanted to quit.  Instead of focusing on how I was feeling at the moment, I decided to think about how I would feel having had done it instead.  It really helped!

I would absolutely recommend this book.  It was different than anything I had ever read and I would like to read more books like it.