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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9569.Villa_Incognito?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Villa Incognito" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166031051m/9569.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9569.Villa_Incognito?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Villa Incognito</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/197.Tom_Robbins">Tom Robbins</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14452673?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>His newest book (I think) takes place mostly in SE Asia (Laos and Thailand) and is centered around 3 former Vietnam POWs and the international opium ring they run. It is, however, written by Tom Robbins so there is plenty of sarcasm, beastiality, spiritual dialogue, biblical badmouthing, circuses and tanukis. As always he is fun to read, but this wasn’t as good as Skinny Legs and All. I did enjoy it though and would recommend it. <br/>Good Quotes: <br/> <br/>“Trees are a damn sight more useful than people, and everything in the world knows that except people.” <br/>Maybe he had a point. Trees do generate oxygen; men just breathe it up, stink it up, and generally misuse it. Trees hold the soil in place; men are constantly displacing it. Trees provide shelter and protection to countless species; men threaten the existence of those species. When in sufficient number, trees regulate atmospheric temperatures; men endanger the planet by knocking those regulations askew. You can’t rest in the shade of a human, not even a roly-poly one; and isn’t it refreshing that trees can undergo periodic change without having a nervous breakdown over it? And which has more dignity - the calmer spiritual presence – a tree or a typical Homo sapiens? Best of all, perhaps, what maple or cypress ever tried to sell you something you didn’t want? <br/> <br/>“Men live by embedding themselves in ongoing systems of illusion. Religion, patriotism, economics, fashion. That sort of thing.” <br/> <br/>“…for curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.” <br/> <br/>“Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can’t we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine as in some ’ol anthropomorphic Sunday school boom daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe?” <br/> <br/>“…every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.” <br/> <br/>“We only rise above mediocrity when there’s something at stake, and I mean something more consequential than money or reputation.” <br/> <br/>“Ambiguities and contradictions, that’s what biblical guidance is made of.” <br/> <br/>“In the life of an individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one.” <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/816373?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>