I’m about to finish this lenghty book by Dr. Jonathan and now I’m looking for a new book to read. I have three options:
1)
Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Arabic: حي بن يقظان “Alive, son of Awake”; Latin: Philosophus Autodidactus “The Self-Taught Philosopher”; English: The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan) was the first Arabic novel and the first philosophical novel, written by Ibn Tufail (also known as Aben Tofail or Ebn Tophail), an Arab philosopher and physician, in early 12th century Islamic Spain. The novel was itself named after an earlier Arabic allegorical tale and philosophical romance of the same name, written by Avicenna (Ibn Sina) in early 11th century,](http://www.paklinks.com/gs/#cite_note-2) though they both had different stories.
Ibn Tufail’s Hayy ibn Yaqdhan had a significant influence on Arabic literature, Persian literature, and European literature after it was translated in 1671 into Latin and then into several other European languages.] The work also had a “profound influence” on both classical Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy,](http://www.paklinks.com/gs/#cite_note-Toomer-218-5) and became “one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution” and European Enlightenment. The novel is also considered a precursor to the European bildungsroman genre.
2)
**Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine **
Physician Dossey (Medicine and Meaning, 1991, etc.) continues to probe links between medicine and spirituality in this popular study of the healing power of prayer. Prayer heals? Hardly news in the religious world, where Hebrew Bible and New Testament alike attest to prayer’s medicinal effects. But for science, it’s a revelation, one confirmed by dozens of laboratory experiments that Dossey cites. Prayer can help with high blood pressure, asthma, heart attacks, headaches, and anxiety; moreover, it can alter enzyme activity, blood cell growth, and the germination of seeds. Dossey rejects the traditional Judeo-Christian notion of prayer as a relationship to a transcendental God, offering instead his own quasi-pantheistic view of prayer as a genuinely nonlocal event'' directed to the Absolute’’ in all things. In any case, prayer apparently works: Even unconscious or dream prayer, it seems, can be effective. At the same time, prayers often remain unfulfilled, and Dossey blasts New Agers for preaching that illness is the patient’s fault and that physical health always reflects spiritual health, pointing out that many saints have suffered from terrible physical or emotional maladies. An attitude of reverence and optimism is the best approach, he says, to spiritual and physical well-being. Not likely to sway hard-core materialists, especially when Dossey dips into the deep end by asserting that patients can rewrite their medical histories by ``intervening in subatomic processes in the past.‘’ Nonetheless, this raises new questions (Should you ask permission before praying for someone else? Should a physician pray for his patients?) about an old but little-studied phenomenon. – Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
3)
The Story of My Life by Giacamo Casanova (Casanova’s Autobiography)
Which one should I buy and read first?
You can also recommend other books as long as their genre is not modern fiction.