I'm only about 1/3 of the way through it; purchased it on deep discount. It appears to be a sequel to the author's earlier book The Wild Heart.
Basically Eldridge seems to be spelling out, with broad strokes, 6 stages in a man's life: Beloved Son, Cowboy, Warrior, Lover, King, and Sage. Much autobiographical material, which I enjoy. Many references to outdoorsman sports, which I would guess might be off-putting to men readers, who aren't into hunting, etc. To his credit, Eldridge seems to anticipate this criticism, given this passage on pg. 103:
quote:So, yes, I am saying that an encounter with the natural world--the world God set us in--is essential for masculine initiation. I'm not saying that every man needs to love to fish and hunt.... Does this mean that a man who loves the city cannot enter into masculine initiation and maturity? Not at all. C.S. Lewis was not an outdoorsman. He spent his days with books, in the academies of England. But I find it important that he felt his day was never complete without a walk outside. Not a fifty-mile backpacking trip. A walk in the woods. Time spent in the field. It's worth a try, and I'll guarantee God will meet you there, if you'll let him.
I'd recommend this book, based on the 1/3rd I've read, to readers, male and female, who enjoy the male psyche, masculinity, and the importance of men having godly male mentors and bonding times. I may add to this review, after I finish the book.
------------------------------ The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief. ~ Leslie Weatherhead Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy--fully armed too, as it's a highly dangerous quest. ~ Flannery O'Connor
Stumbling Upon Happiness. It's brilliant (well the first 3 chapters, at least.)
It provides scientific reasoning for why humans never seem to be happy. It also proposes that it not possible to define happiness. Very interesting. I'm sure with all the quotes we've collectively read it's possible to use someone else's words to define happiness.
Thanks,
CLee
Posts: 2 | Location: New York | Registered: 02-25-09
Atlantis Rising - The Struggle of Darkness and Light by Patricia Cori
Second volume to Sirian Revelations, describes the unrecorded history of humanity, with a particular emphasis on how and why the great Atlantean Civilisation was manipulated by an Alien culture, leading to its demise.
It is time you recognise your planet as a deity, for Gaia is, indeed, a celestial being and she thinks, she feels and aspires in ways that are similar to your own thoughts, emotions and dreams. -- Patricia Cori, from Atlantis Rising - The Struggle of Darkness And Light, Pg. 22, Authors Choice Press, 2001
*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~* ~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~ We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Posts: 5736 | Location: India | Registered: 07-03-01
Ananya - that sounds fun! May try it. 'The Tenderness of Wolves' - when it seemed to hit popularity a couple of years ago, I didn't particularly get drawn to it - but it is quite a beautiful story with wonderful characterisation.
The MAYAN CALENDAR and the TRANSFORMATION of CONSCIOUSNES by Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D
This book reveals the Mayan Calendar as a spiritual device that enables a greater understanding of the nature of conscious evolution throughout human history - and how it provides the concrete steps we can take to align ourselves with this growth towards enlightenment. Using empirical research, the author shows how the Mayan cosmic pryamid (representing the nine levels of consciousness or nine Underworlds) can explain matters as disparate as the common origin of world religions and the modern complain that time seems to be moving faster, as we transition from the materialistic planetary underworld that governs us today to a new higher frequency of consciousness - The Galactic Underworld.
There is hope for humanity, not because we will all suddenly choose to change for the better, but because the consciousness of humanity is subject to a cosmic plan that cannot be manipulated. -- Carl Johan Calleman, from The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, Inner Traditions, 2004
*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~* ~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~ We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Posts: 5736 | Location: India | Registered: 07-03-01
Recently picked up at a bookstore closing Gwen Wilkerson's book The Cross and the Scalpel. Gwen is the wife of David Wilkerson, who wrote The Cross and the Switchblade, in which he recounts his Christian encounters with Hells' Angel gangmembers during the roiling 1960s. Gwen recounts how she and David nearly divorced because of her burning bitterness against him and his ministry to troubled teens. She says in the preface it was never her desire to write such a memoir, but she was encouraged by friends and acquaintances who knew her story and believed her testimony would encourage others to hope and persevere in troubled marital waters. She and David miraculously reconciled. Intermingled through the marital ups and downs, she narrates her 9 bouts of surgery, some severe (hysterectomy, cancer). Several excerpts:
quote:
Right then I gave David back to God. I realized that in wanting to have first place in his life, I had actually been trying to separate him from his Lord. The result was that I nearly succeeded in separating him from me. (p. 113)
quote:
I am blessed! I am loved! And by His [God's] grace, I live one day at a time -- abiding in His strength. (closing thought of book, p. 198)
------------------------------ The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief. ~ Leslie Weatherhead Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy--fully armed too, as it's a highly dangerous quest. ~ Flannery O'Connor
The Golem's Eye - Book Two of the Bartemaeus Trilogy by JONATHAN STROUD.
The trilogy makes for great comical reading in the magic genre. I love Stroud's style of writing, especially love the footnotes on every page, that details out unnecessary titbits about anythings everything in the book.
Do we really need another book about magic? Well, in this case we do. This is a hilarious read with a stroppy young wizard whose demons, Bartimaeus, is funny, cynical and totally out for himself. -- Review from Observer, UK
*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~* ~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~ We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Posts: 5736 | Location: India | Registered: 07-03-01
So far it is about the arbitrary way "success" is determined by society. From an early age kids who test slightly better are singled out, separated, and offered a better experience. Years of a better experience add to their advantages they are offered opportunities to succeed. Their “beings a little better” when they were young has a direct correlation to birthdays and subsequent maturity during the selection process. Kids who were less mature and unable to perform as well are labeled as failures and have to carry that weight all through their formative years.
He lists data about most professional hockey players are were born in the first months of the year. Most kids singled out for advance schooling also are more mature than other students during the selection process. Most professional baseball players were born in a certain time of year as well.
Its about the ridiculousness of how we "cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we chose to write as a society don’t matter at all."
I recommend it.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: eagleandchild,
----------------------------- "In all of our hearts lies a longing for a Sacred Romance. It will not go away in spite of our efforts over the years to anesthetize or ignore its song, or attach it to a single person or endeavor." Brent Curtis
Posts: 583 | Location: CA, USA | Registered: 11-12-07
And now parents keep their kids back a year to help them succeed in athletics. Suburbia is a funny place.
Anyway, I've been reading a lot of McCarthy and Vonnegut lately. Reading The Road now. McCarthy's brutal, but fair. One of the few great contemporary writers, I think.
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” - Harry Schoell, Cyclone Power Technologies Inc.
The word “sonar” is an acronym for SOund, NAvigation, and Ranging. It was developed during WWII as a means of tracking enemy submarines. With sonar an electrical impulse is converted to a sound wave and transmitted into the water. When this sound wave strikes an obstacle it rebounds.
Sound travels 4800 feet per second in water, more than four times as fast as sound travels in air.
Page 640
Posts: 2564 | Location: The Volunteer State | Registered: 06-25-03
IF : Questions for the SOUL by Evelyn McFarlane & James Saywell.
Its got an awesome synopsis that says, "If you are looking for the answers, then here are the questions."
Thee questions serve excellent as ice-breakers, after-dinner games, and a platform for intensifying relationships with one's friends', lovers and most importantly ourselves. This book is a phenomenal collection of questions that will help you begin your own soul search . The questions have always inspired me, guided me and challenged me to understand the depths of myself and all around me.
I've figured that rereading the book is even more better. My answers to some questions have changed over the years, and it allows me to see how I've grown. I highly recommend this one.
IF you found out you DID have a guardian angel, what would you name it? IF you were to name the emotion that you waste the most time on, what would it be? IF you were to list three things that you would most like to reform in your religion, what would they be? IF you had to control the destiny of any one person, who would it be? IF you decided today to do some serious soul searching, what would be the first question you'd ask yourself? -- some of my favourite questions from this book.
*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~* ~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~ We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Posts: 5736 | Location: India | Registered: 07-03-01
Well I’ve been a-reading The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. It is a well written story written in formal English about the great train robbery in England in 1955. One would think that Mr. Crichton is a full blooded Englishman by the way he writes. The book is not half bad.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Crichton’s realistic tales of technological crisis are admired for their scientific insight and spell binding suspense. Born in Chicago in 1942, Crichton graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. After publication of his novel The Adromeda Strain, he quit medicine to devote himself full time to writing.
(as written in the back of the book)
Posts: 2564 | Location: The Volunteer State | Registered: 06-25-03
I love her books... so when I saw the opportunity I took it. The book tells a story of about a group of thieving kids, led by the Thief Lord and a disguise-obsessed detective traversing into a magical world in the streets of Venice. A mysterious man hires the Thief Lord to steal a wooden wing, which the kids later learn has broken off a long-lost merry-go-round said to make "adults out of children and children out of adults."
Cornelia Funke writes award winning children's fiction in German, the books I am reading are english translations of her original works. I also liked the fact that the writing is quite detailed and descriptive, and Funke doesn't skimp on the descriptions of how gorgeous Venice is.
Look, if children are in trouble, it's usually because they've been misled or used by adults. You should lock up the parents. -- Ida, from the motion picture "The Thief Lord"
*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~* ~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~ We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Posts: 5736 | Location: India | Registered: 07-03-01
At this very moment I am reading The Great Gatsby. Somehow, I managed to avoid it through college but finally got around to picking it up the other day. Have to say though that I am pleasantly surprised how delightful a read it is turning out to be. As a novel, The Great Gatsby has it all – adultery, obsession, bootlegging millionaires, lies, deceit, and organized crime! And through it all, Fitzgerald mocks the idea of the ‘American Dream’ and what it stands for. Really cool stuff – get a copy for yourself soon!
NORDIC RUNES - Understanding, Casting & Interpreting The Ancient Viking Oracle by Paul Rhys Mountfort
The book addresses three major areas - Runelore, Runestaves and Runecasting. Its interesting to see that Runes have resonated greatly within the Northern pagan world of god's and goddesses, giants, dwarves, warriors and wizards... greatly influencing the work of J.R.R. Tolkien among others.
I thought this book was worth mentioning on the Lit Forum, cause its peppered with fantastical quotes and a whole lot of Old English Poems that are a delight to read.
My personal interest is to understand them for a board game I am trying to script. Fantastic book if I may say so.
You will find runes... and read staves rightly the strong magic the mighty spells that the sage set down, that the great gods made, wisdom of Odin. -- HAVAMAL (Sayings of the High One), from Poems of the "Elder Edda"
*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~* ~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~ We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Posts: 5736 | Location: India | Registered: 07-03-01
