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Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619021420
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619021420
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Get Book Here
Book Description
A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1847081517
Category : Loneliness
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
A deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often neglected in the contemporary world.
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250059038
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
IN THIS AGE OF CONSTANT CONNECTIVITY, LEARN HOW TO ENJOY SOLITUDE AND FIND HAPPINESS WITHOUT OTHERS. Our fast-paced society does not approve of solitude; being alone is antisocial and some even find it sinister. Why is this so when autonomy, personal freedom, and individualism are more highly prized than ever before? In How to Be Alone, Sara Maitland answers this question by exploring changing attitudes throughout history. Offering experiments and strategies for overturning our fear of solitude, she helps us practice it without anxiety and encourages us to see the benefits of spending time by ourselves. By indulging in the experience of being alone, we can be inspired to find our own rewards and ultimately lead more enriched, fuller lives.
Author: Jonathan Franzen
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374707642
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619021366
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
An insightful, beautifully written study of how nature has influenced popular fairy tales like Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood—pairing 12 modern retellings with detailed histories of Northern European forests. Fairy tales are one of our earliest cultural forms, and forests one of our most ancient landscapes. Both evoke similar sensations: At times, they are beautiful and magical, at others—spooky and sometimes horrifying. Maitland argues that the terrain of these fairy tales are intimately connected to the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts, and perils. With each chapter focusing on a different story and a different forest visit, Maitland offers a complex history of forests and how they shape the themes of fairy tales we know best. She offers a unique analysis of famous stories including Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretal, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin, and Sleeping Beauty. Maitland uses fairy tales to explore how nature itself informs our imagination, and she guides the reader on a series of walks through northern Europe’s best forests to explore both the ecological history of forests and the roots of fairy tales. In addition to the twelve modern retellings of these traditional fairy tales, she includes beautiful landscape photographs taken by her son as he joined her on these long walks. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Maitland has infused new life into tales we’ve always thought we've known.
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Augsburg Books
ISBN: 9781451418170
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Book Description
Suited for individual reading or group discussion, A Joyful Theology makes a lively exploration of creation in order to learn more about the Creator.
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9780304354344
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
The playful spirit grows in these beautifully photographed gardens, which delight with the unexpected and visual enchantment. The unusual presentation of unique landscapes bypasses ordinary horticultural know-how and conventional design principles to delve into garden wit, illusion, and trickery. ..".whimsical...This literate, imaginative work may not lead you to create a witty garden, but it will certainly cause you to know one when you see it."--"The New York Times."
Author: Erling Kagge
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1524733245
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
What is silence? Where can it be found? Why is it now more important than ever? In 1993, Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge spent fifty days walking solo across Antarctica, becoming the first person to reach the South Pole alone, accompanied only by a radio whose batteries he had removed before setting out. In this book. an astonishing and transformative meditation, Kagge explores the silence around us, the silence within us, and the silence we must create. By recounting his own experiences and discussing the observations of poets, artists, and explorers, Kagge shows us why silence is essential to sanity and happiness—and how it can open doors to wonder and gratitude. (With full-color photographs throughout.)
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441158413
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
Sara Maitland's compelling human stories give voice to Chris Gollon's powerful contemporary sequence of Stations of the Cross (painted from life and reproduced in the book in high-res colour images): a unique and potent collaboration. The Stations were commissioned for St John on Bethnal Green, a visually prominent London Anglican church designed by Sir John Soane, the neo-classical architect who also created the Bank of England and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The church stands on the boundary between Hackney and Tower Hamlets and is therefore in one of the more deprived and multi-cultural areas of the UK. In 2001 the congregation made the extraordinary decision to commission a site-specific Stations of the Cross, the traditional 14 pictures of the last day of Jesus' human life, used from the Middle Ages onwards for meditation and prayer (and established in their usual form by St Francis of Assisi, who is also credited with introducing the better-known Christmas crib scene - the two come out of the same spiritual tradition). Perhaps unexpectedly, they chose a contemporary artist not best known for his religious works: Chris Gollon (see www.chrisgollon.com). The Rector described the reasoning: "The church of St John on Bethnal Green has had a long-standing involvement with people on the fringes of our society, the sort of people who often figure in Chris' paintings. His work contains many religious allusions and forms, which do not suggest conformity but challenge. These are the themes we wish to explore in this series of the Stations of the Cross and it is vital to have an artist who is not "safe" but perceptive and unsettling in interpreting the traditions. Chris has our confidence on all these counts." It was a risky commission for everyone involved because at the time there was no money to pay Gollon, and the stations have been paid for one by one by an odd variety of sponsors, including the parishioners themselves, public art bodies and various private donors. By Easter 2008 the whole series was completed; the sequence was first used on Good Friday when the pictures gained considerable media attention. The commission for the Stations has taken 8 years to fulfil and they have been widely featured in national broadsheets, arts press and all denominations of religious arts press. The paintings are now reflected in a sequence of stories: first-person narratives by a well-known author who has been closely involved with the project.
Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Comma Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
‘It seems probable that there are no more moss witches; the times are cast against them. But you can never be certain. In that sense they are like their mosses; they vanish from sites they are known to have flourished in, they are even declared extinct – and then they are there again, there or somewhere else, small, delicate but triumphant, alive. Moss Witches, like mosses, do not compete; they retreat….’ Each story in Sara Maitland’s new collection enacts a daring kind of alchemy, fusing together raw elements of scientific theory with ancient myth, folkloric archetype and contemporary storytelling. As the laboratory smoke settles, we are treated to a new strain of narrative: a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction, the atavistic and the futuristic. We’re also introduced to a weird and wonderful cast of characters: identical twins who fight bitterly day and night for purely quantum mechanical reasons; an expert on bird migration awaiting the homecoming of her lover on the windswept shores of the Hebrides. All the more remarkable is that each of these stories sprang from a conversation with a scientist and grew directly out of cutting-edge research. As befits their hybrid nature, each is also accompanied by an afterword, specially written by the consulting scientist to introduce us to the wonder behind the weirdness. Featuring: SCIENTISTS: Prof. Jim Al-Khalili, Dr. Rob Appleby, Dr. Melissa Baxter, Dr. Jamie Davies, Prof. Robin Dunbar, Dr. Charles Fernyhough, Prof. Robert Furness, Dr. Linda Kirstein, Gemma Lewis, Prof. Tim O’Brien, Dr. Neil Roberts, Dr. Jennifer Rowntree, Dr. Tara Shears, Prof. Ian Stewart.
