Shopping for Buddhas
A nice Jewish boy in Kathmandu seeks enlightenment on the path of the perfect Buddha. This book was recommended to me chiefly for its concise introduction to the Hindu pantheon, as my ignorance of Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma is embarrassing in Singapore. There's a lot of pedestrian writing here, and Greenwald is so eager to seem normal that he sometimes seems subnormal, but just when you are about to despair he'll uncork something lovely. And, since my pilgrimages to the American Southwest always includea quest for the perfect kachina (Coolidge Roy, meet Sidhi Raj), I feel a certain sympathy.