Book Description
It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the author of The Good Women of China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet an oddly dressed woman who had just crossed the border from Tibet into China. Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet.
Shu Wen and her husband had been married for only a few months in the 1950s when he joined the Chinese army and was sent to Tibet for the purpose of unification of the two countries. Shortly after he left she was notified that he had been killed, although no details were given. Determined to find the truth, Shu Wen joined a militia unit going to the Tibetan north, where she soon was separated from the regiment. Without supplies and knowledge of the language, she wandered, trying to find her way until, on the brink of death, she was rescued by a family of nomads under whose protection she moved from place to place with the seasons and eventually came to discover the details of her husband’s death.
In the haunting Sky Burial, Xinran has recreated Shu Wen’s journey, writing beautifully and simply of the silence and the emptiness in which Shu Wen was enveloped. The book is an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love loss, loyalty, and survival.
Customer Reviews:
Sky Burial.......2007-09-02
Amazing story - I didn't want it to end as you can't beleive the committment shown.
I was skeptical.......2007-06-11
A friend of mine whom I lovingly refer to as the Uberlibrarian once recommended a book to me that I thought was a total stinker. So when she began to rave about Sky Burial, I was skeptical. After all, the last book she was very enthusiastic about was The Smoke Jumper--which was the aforementioned stinker. Could she be trusted again?
Oh, yes. This is a very slender volume of a woman's search for her husband who was reported dead by the Chinese government shortly after their marriage. As they were both doctors, the woman left her home and volunteered her service to the Chinese army, traveling to Tibet in search of her love, hoping he was not dead. Abandoning the army (in a hopeless situation of invasion and occupation), she was adopted by a Tibetean family, changed her way of life and along the way found the truth about his remarkable fate, so much more than the Chinese government had even known. Her journey--which took nearly three decades--is not to be missed. It is a great story written by a female journalist who met this amazing woman and took her story down over the course of two days.
Might I add: this is a fantastic book if you are traveling. It is slender and can be read in full on a cross-country flight. You will be so engrossed you probably won't notice when they ask you for coffee or tea or peanuts or whatever.
A Small Novel -- as Big as the Sky!.......2006-08-13
This sweeping love story takes place in a terrain of harshness. That landscape/political climate reflects the angst of love and closure that is being pursued. Excellent.
Fantastic!!!!.......2006-06-21
Xinran's book is as good as a fictional classic! it protrays death, love, and hope wrapped into a short non-fictional novel. There is no comparison to this incredible book.
A married woman's husband is sent to Tibet, but her connection by post is cut off, and she is informed of his death. Due to the manner in which she was informed of his death, this woman leaves China to search for her husband, and finds herself living with a Tibetan family for over twenty years. in war torn Tibet, she finally discovers the honorable sacrifice her huband made for the truth, that many lose in the face of war.
Awesome journey : amazing destination.......2006-04-04
This is one of the most moving books I have ever read. It is a story of great love, and of enormous sacrifice. It can be read as a form of social commentary but to read it solely this way diminishes the story.
The prose is sparse, but elegant. Like life in Tibet itself, there is little waste, and many answers reside in the questions.
Read it as a search for answers, read it as offering a window into a largely foreign life, but recognise it as a triumph.
Book Description
It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the internationally acclaimed author of The Good Women of China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet a woman who had just crossed the border from Tibet into China.
Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet. In Sky Burial, Xinran has re-created Shu Wen’s journey, painting an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love, loss, loyalty, and survival.
Customer Reviews:
In this book the Chinese invaders are not the bad guys.......2007-03-19
I've always been interested in reading books about Tibet. And so I gladly embraced this 2004 novel by Chinese journalist Xinran. A mere 224 pages, it is a fast read and a romantic adventure. Supposedly based on a true interview the author had with an old Chinese woman who spent 30 years in Tibet, this is the story of Shu Wen, a newlywed in 1958, whose young doctor husband was reported dead in Tibet. The details of his death were not clear and Shu Wen wanted to find out the truth. And so she signed up for the Chinese Communist Army, one of the few females in the group who traveled to Tibet under spartan military conditions with the hope of finding out what happened to her husband.
It took her 30 years to find out the truth. But that was only after she spent most of those years living with a family of Yak herders and befriending a former wealthy Tibetan woman who taught her to survive in the harsh landscape. I loved the part of the book which introduced the family and the Tibetan lifestyle. It also gave humanity to the Chinese invaders who saw themselves as bringing a better life to the people who seemed backward to them and much too steeped in religion. This made interesting reading. The author's language is simple and its clarity had the perfect tone to describe Tibet through this Communist Chinese woman's eyes.
In this book, the Chinese are not the bad guys. And the theme made their conquest of Tibet inevitable. Less effective was the plot because it's hard to believe. There are just too many coincidences. And it's much too romantic. But then again, this is a novel.
Sky Burial's point of view was rather refreshing because it didn't demonize the Chinese. And for that reason think it will best be enjoyed for those who can view it in context.
Sky Burial.......2006-11-03
A fasinating love story. Brings you into the Tibeten world & culture. A must read book!
A Must Read.......2006-08-23
I picked up Sky Burial in a book store and started to read it and couldn't put it down. I bought the book, brought it home and read it all in one sitting. I thought it was a wonderful book! It is well written, full of passion, love, feeling, harsh reality. It is a must read!
An amazing tale of friendship, vast lands and sorrow.......2005-05-20
Now here is an epic story of love, friendship, courage and sacrifice. Set in Chinese-occupied Tibet and based on a true story, Xinran's extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world's most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, Shu Wen, a young woman and doctor learns that her beloved husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died while serving in Tibet not even a hundred days after their marriage. Unwilling to accept this as fact, she sets out to find out what happened to him by joining his regiment in Tibet. For over twenty years she walked, searching for her husband on a life-changing journey through the Tibetan countryside that leads her to a deep appreciation of Tibet in all its beauty and brutality. Sadly, when she finally discovers the truth about her husband, she must carry her knowledge back to a China that, in her absence, has experienced the Cultural Revolution and changed beyond her ken. Xinran has done an amazing job in depicting the vast Tibetan landscape to us. Surely you too will cry as I did when nearing the end of this amazing must read!
Book Description
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull-- A decree giving the endorsement of the church to the inquisitors of the day who hunted, tortured, tried and ultimately murdered those accused of heresy-- especially the practice of WitchCraft. Modern day Witches refer to this dark period of history as "The Burning Times."
Rowan Gant returns to face a nightmare long thought to be a distant memory. A killer armed with gross misinterpretations of the Holy Bible and a 15th century Witch Hunting Manual known as the Malleus Maleficarum has resurrected the Inquisition and the members of St. Louis' Pagan Community are his prey.
With the unspeakable horrors of "The Burning Times" being played out across the metropolitan area, Rowan is again enlisted by Homicide Detective Benjamin Storm and the Major Case Squad to help solve the crimes-- All the while knowing full well that his religion makes him a potential target.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent - They get better.......2007-08-12
Another exciting Rowan Grant mystery. This time he is rattled by a religious serial killer who believes he is ridding the world of evil by killing the Witches of St Louis. The book is a little more graphic than the previous book and it still has the obsessive descriptions of his wife's hair colour, but the story is strong and a reader can easily overlook all that. Like the first book I kept reading to the end even at the expense of other more productive things I should have been doing. I liked the fact that the ending was not so neat and tidy and most mystery thrillers. Rowan gets more human in this book, which added to his character. HIs wife was not really in this story at all.
Another great pagan fiction book
Wonderful, again & again.......2006-11-06
M.R. Sellars follows up Harm None and the Rown Gant investigations in style. He portrays witches & pagans truthfully and explores all the traditional misconceptions about them. He gives us a history lesson and makes it fun. He gives us a mystery to figure out, and takes us for a wild ride. M.R. is a great teacher, a great man, and a heckuva funny guy (I've had the pleasure of meeting him and taking a class he taught with Dorothy Morrison.) Well done & keep them coming, M.R.!
I want more!!!.......2006-09-11
Sellars' mystery series takes a few new twists in this second book. Once again we have a serial killer, but this time s/he's targeting pagans in the St. Louis area. Worse yet, whoever it is has decided that The Malleus Maleficarum is holy writ.
As before, Sellars gives us good views of who his characters are as people--and how they deal with increasing weirdness, such as the stigmata-like wound on Rowan's arm that resembles the same symbol the killer leaves at the scenes, and Rowan's increasing detachment from reality and into the alternate world of the spirits of the murder victims. These details rather push the limit of the realism of Wicca presented in the book, but it still beats flying fireballs and physical portals into the Otherworld.
Sellars leaves us with a cliffhanger of an ending, which of course led me to run and get the next book from the shelf so I could find out just what happens next. I'm really enjoying this series thus far, and I'm glad to have a good series of fiction to relax with.
We aren't that far from Salem afterall..........2006-01-07
Rowan Gant is a software consultant working out of his home office. He's also a practicing witch and is called on whenever the St. Louis police have an occult related crime. In Never Burn a Witch, the burning times have returned. There's someone in St. Louis using the Malleus Maleficarum to identify, torture, condemn, and kill witches. I find it appalling that this premise is so believable in our supposedly enlightened times and the story has the feel of a true crime in many respects. Rowan Gant gets bleeding mark on his arm whenever a victim is killed. He can link with the victim after death and experience their dying but he can't see the killer. He's finding it harder and harder to keep himself centered and safe as the death toll mounts.
This is the second book in the Rowan Gant Investigation series, the characters are so well drawn they feel real. You understand their problems, inter-relationships, and can tell by a written mannerism what's going on. The setting is more every city even though I'm sure the author made it St. Louis. But when a reader doesn't know the city it's easy to forget it's not their city. I only remembered it was St. Louis when they mentioned the Arch. Rowan's talks about the craft and wicca have the weight of truth about them from what I know of the religion and I was really pleased to see an positive spin on witchcraft for a change.
The mystery is engrossing and while the reader picks up clues that the characters miss it can get very irritating. I found myself wishing I could reach into the book and give them a good shake and talking to. What do they want neon signs pointing to the clues? But nonetheless I enjoyed the book and it's ambiguous end.
On the edge of my broomstick........2004-11-29
Keeping the light on for us, M. R. Sellars has done it again.
His cast of characters keep us not only entertained, but genuinely enthralled. Great storyline and pacing will grab you by the short hairs and hold you there until the last page, gasping for more.
Customer Reviews:
Mind Opening.......2002-10-31
I loved this book. Short and sweet, it's an ingenious example of a writer who likes to experiment in unusual perspectives. With creative abandon, LeGuin speaks to you as a tree, animals, and people from the future. In this book and others, she shows her ability to develop rich characters while going as far from "realism" as she can get. This book includes poems that are each short, meaningful, and awareness-building; if you're a writer they will inspire you to think outside the box. "The Wife's Story" is a must read, very intriguing! She is my favorite write by far!
The sense of "otherness"........2001-06-09
This is amazing how Ursula K. Le Guin can write. When you are reading about her character you can feel their thoughts - you get new sense which enables you to live the life of the book. In "Buffalo Gals..." you learn about animals and you can take a look at the humankind from outside. Poems in the book show rather unexpectable aspects of what they describe - this is another great ability of UKL. But I recommend this book to the poeple who want to meditate about things, not just to read it.
Average customer rating:
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Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences
Ursula K. Le Guin
Manufacturer: Roc Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary
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LeGuin, Ursula K.
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General
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ASIN: 0451454340 |
Average customer rating:
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Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences
Manufacturer: New American Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Literature & Fiction
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ASIN: 9993130222 |
Average customer rating:
- Tiny book huge treasure
- Learning - reformed!
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Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora
Moshe Feldenkrais
Manufacturer: Frog, Ltd.
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Binding: Paperback
General
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| Health, Mind & Body
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Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation, and Learning
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Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion
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The Elusive Obvious or Basic Feldenkrais
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The Feldenkrais Method: Teaching by Handling
Accessories:
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RESPeRATE Blood Pressure Lowering Device
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Airborne Effervescent Health Formula, Original Orange, 10 Tablets (Pack of 3)
ASIN: 1883319080
Release Date: 1993-12-20 |
Book Description
Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora is Moshe Feldenkrais' classic study of his work with Nora, a woman who has suffered a severe stroke and lost her neuromuscular coordination, including the ability to read and write. Feldenkrais uses rational and intuitive approaches to help his student relearn basic motor skills. One can observe here the groundwork of Feldenkrais' extraordinary insights which became known as the Feldenkrais Method. We follow his detailed descriptions of the trial and error process which led him to see the ingredients that were needed to help Nora reshape her attention, perception, imagination and cognition.
Customer Reviews:
Tiny book huge treasure.......2003-12-05
"The Case of Nora" is titled, or subtitled, in some languages "A Journey in the Jungle of the Brain". In fact, this book, modest in its dimensions, allows us to take a tiny little but invaluable journey into Feldenkrais' brain, so to say. For anyone interested in how this unusual man was thinking, it is a rare pearl among the Master's books. The text is so condensed that if you want to highlight key sentences you better get yourself a couple of markers, because you are going to highlight almost everything. Poor me, trying to review it: those of you who have read my other reviews of Moshe's books know that I try to reflect the uniqueness of each book mainly by quoting. Thus I hope my reader can get a substatial hint of what the book is about. But here - two thirds of the text are worthy of quotation in a review, so were to begin? Alas, I have already wasted too much space in this foreword... I hurry to the (Hebrew) text. The following will be almost as good as quoting (while translating), but of course I hope you will go to the origin. Moshe's own text is soooo beautiful.
The most important kind of learning is that in which quantity becomes a new quality... Often we even don't notice this kind of learning... As if without purpose... and suddenly a new form of activity emerges as if out of nowhere... Repeating and learning by rote, preaching, reward and punishment are of no use...
While waiting [some days or weeks] I thought about her [his client] a great deal, as I always do with my clients... I have no stereotype technique... Is is contrary to the principles of my theory... I gradually explore all the body functions. Structure and function are tightly connected... I imagine the nervous systems involved. I imagine a part of the body sending a stream of liquids, sometimes electrical sometimes chemical. After many transformations it ends in muscular action which results in an observable action. When my imaginary picture of the flow is stuck in one point... I ask myself: is it diffusion? Soft obstacle? Deviation? Loss of swing? Break in the continuity? Or perhaps one of the transformations was disabled?
Try to put on your shoes in every impossible way and you will be surprised to find out how unlikely is a success by chance is... How wonderful and complex is our usual way of action.... Have you asked yourselves why relaxation and reducing tension were needed prior to this kind of instruction? What is simple and well known is not always easy to understand...
In the enabling the adult's learning process it is crucial to guess the age into which the client regressed. Growth means order. It is impossible to reverse this natural order. Had I not learned to perceive minute changes I would not have been able to endure the endless repetitions required in instruction.
Spacial Orientation is an abstract concept and as such I can not treat it. I don't know how to correct the function "Spacial Orientation" but I do know how to help a person distinguish between right and left.
As long as people [who were unable to perform a certain action for many years] are not able to do it at home at their own initiative they do not feel that they have "recovered". Recovery is the reversal to the exact state to the state of functioning which satisfied her before the trauma. But life is a process, indeed - a process which can not be reversed. Improvement, unlike recovery, is knowledge acquired by us and which allows us freedom of choice, the main and special privilege of 'homo sapiens'.
THIS, I THINK, CAN GIVE YOU a hint of the nature of this book. Sometimes when reading his books it seems to me that Moshe was so overloaded with multidimensional thinking, that he had a sense of needing to compromise painfully in order to unfold his ideas on the flat dimension of a written text. In this unique book he seems to opt for a practical solution of the dilemma: he presents an introspection of a completed process, and sort of recaptures his own deliberation in retrospect.
Here he is very personal and honest. For anyone interested in his method, either as a student or as a practitioner, the specialty of the book is the "tour of the backstage" here presented. It is an excellent remedy against the illusion that there might be a handbook, or a guide, to the Feldenkrais Method. Rather, what we can try to follow is an orientation, a way of thinking, an attitude. And (have I already mentioned it?) a glimpse into the subtle issues of the "workshop" - hints about what was going on behind the "magic" of the Master's effectiveness. Surely - much of it is indeed magic, but it was magic conceived by careful, untiring and perceptive deliberation.
Learning - reformed!.......2001-04-06
The great educator, Professor Moshe Feldenkrais, describes his work in "An Adventure in the Jungle of the Brain" (Abenteuer im Dschungel des Gehirns) as this book is titled in German. And it is an adventure. A sixty year old business women wakes up one morning and cannot understand what has happend to her world. She discovers that she can neither read, get out of bed properly, cannot differenciate between her left and right slippers, bangs into the wall instead of passing through the bathroom door nor can she speak when she wants to express her irritation. Feldenkrais describes in detail all the steps he takes to discover how he can facilitate her brain to reajust and regenerate her capabilities to cope with the world again. He discribes his investigations, the mistakes and successes. This book is really a description on how we learn to learn and how we need to embrase our mistakes for only due to them we develope the facilities to learn. Gábor, Feldenkrais Movement Educator
Books:
- Sotheby's: Bidding for Class
- South of the Border, West of the Sun: A Novel
- Spencerville
- The Black Angel: A Thriller (Charlie Parker Mysteries)
- The Boys and the Bees
- The Candlestone (Dragons in Our Midst, Vol. 2) (Dragons in Our Midst)
- The Dew Breaker
- The Drowning Tree: A Novel
- The Gilded Chamber: A Novel of Queen Esther
- The Hot Kid: A Novel
Books Index
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The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Red Poppies: A Novel of Tibet
Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet
Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.)
