Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2017: Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey. Another book club book that I wish I'd finished in time to discuss -- this was AMAZING. A good TL;DR for my long review is this incredible interview with the author. Don't miss it if you loved this book. 
 I feel like I could read this multiple times and find new connections, layers, and dualities every time. Some were obvious -- Ruth Ozeki even does it with author/character, as one of her main characters shares her name, her living location, and her husband's name and occupation. Author Ruth Ozeki is even an ordained Zen priest herself. And of course there is reader/writer (Character Ruth/Nao), past/present, being/not-being (life/death and time slippage). And I saw a couple other things peek out -- like Muriel referring to her disappeared cat, Erwin. (view spoiler)[In the Appendix about Schrodinger (also Ruth's cat's name), it's mentioned that the scientist's first name is Erwin. Did Erwin become Pesto? Can both cats co-exist in the same universe -- at the same time? (hide spoiler)] 
 My friend Andrea's review pointed out something that I'd missed -- the importance of different types of writing: diaries, letters, computer coding, emails, and Ruth's unpublished memoir. This message-in-a-bottle story becomes a deep mystery tied up with climate change, isolation (the good and bad kinds), suicide (honor or shame?), Japanese mythology, quantum physics, and more. I don't know how it can hold all this, but it does. 
 More linkage: http://raforall.blogspot.com/2014/10/... 
 Favorite quotes: 
 "The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other." 
 "She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. As a novelist she needed this. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness." 
 "The measurement problem: by which the act of measuring or observation alters what is being observed (i.e., the collapse of a wave function; the telling of a dream?)" 
 "I don't think it was helping him find the meaning of life, but at least it gave him a concrete goal, which counts for something." 
 "Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose..." 
 "I really like drumming. While I'm doing it, I am aware of the sixty-five moments that Jiko says are in the snap of a finger. I'm serious. When you're beating a drum, you can hear when the BOOM comes the teeniest bit too late or the teeniest bit too early, because your whole attention is focused on the razor edge between silence and noise. Finally I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with now because that's what a drum does. When you beat a drum, you create NOW..." 
 "It's funny how time can make all the difference in whether or not you feel close to somebody, like when I moved away to a different time zone, and Kayla and I couldn't be friends anymore." 
 "You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the dream." 
 "Blessed Stars, please make this world into a place where we will never again be forced to kill an enemy whom we cannot hate." 
 (view spoiler)["So let's assume this Jungle Crow is your familiar, your totem animal, just like the cat was Oliver's." (hide spoiler)] 
 "I don't know any prayers, so I just make [the juzu beads] go round and round and say blessings in my head for all the things and people I love, and when I run out of things I love, I move onto the things I don't hate too much, and sometimes I even discover that I can love the things I think I hate." 
 June 2017 update: Got a print version. I think that will go better for me. :) 
 2015-ish attempt to read: Anyone trying the Kindle version? I don't know how to access the footnotes. The smiley faces take up half a page and the Japanese characters do not fit in the text. #ebookfails