Iāve sat in many grief circles and listened to fellow grievers share their pain at being abandoned or misunderstood by their friends and families as they grieve. Often we suffer the secondary loss of community because our culture has not taught us how to grieve or how to be a friend to those in grief. My wife and I found some invaluable tools that helped us communicate our needs to our community, and keep them close on our grief journey. One of those tools is grief books. Iāve read dozens of them, and while everyone responds to grief books differently, I think these five books are the very best.
This book is a wonderful practical guide to grieving that is accompanied by charming illustrations from the author. This might make it sound child-like or cutsie, but itās not at all.
Welcome to the Grief Club--a place where one human who experienced a terrible loss, Janine Kwoh, is at the door to welcome other humans who are grieving. It is not an instruction manual, or a step-by-step playbook, or a memoir. It is, rather, a fresh, empathetic approach to all of the surprising, confusing, brutal, funny, and downright bizarre parts of grief. Combining her own experiences with grief--the author's partner died when both were in their late 20s--with what she learned from others in her "grief club," Kwoh uses brief writings and observations, hand-drawn illustrations, and diagrams to explore all theā¦
Else Roesdahl has a life-long passion for Vikings. She is emerita professor of Medieval Archaeology at Aarhus University, Denmark, and has travelled all over the Viking world and taken part in many excavations. She has also organized major international Viking Exhibitions and published academic as well as popular books, for which she has been awarded several prizes.
There is no better way to get to know the Vikings than by their own sayings and other contemporary descriptions and stories. This book is a carefully chosen and lively selection of extracts of such sources, from their own rune-stone inscriptions, intriguing poetry and historic writings to English, German and Russian accounts ā all set in their context and divided into topics such as āAll sorts of conditions for menā, āMyth, Religion and Superstitionā, āThe Heroic lifeā ā and āThe unheroic lifeā.
The Vikings are not known for their literate legacy. Little of what they once inscribed in runes on wood, bone, and stone has survived. However these runic inscriptions are a valuable primary source of information on the Viking Age. They alow us to see the Vikings from their own point of view, unlike the records of prejudiced observers who saw the Vikings only as savage invaders. Chronicles of the Vikings attempts to show the Vikings through their own writings: runic inscriptions left behind, poems of their official skalds, literary works that entertained them, the few prose historical accounts that deriveā¦
As a philosophy student at university, I stuck my nose up at Voltaire and his cynicism and blunt words. Now, in my wise old age, I not only realize the truth behind his aphorisms but I am also astounded by how accurately he speaks to life happening now.
History repeats itself is not a cliche, itās fact, and while reading this book, I found myself taken aback by Voltaireās wisdom. It highlighted so many present-day issues despite being written centuries ago and offered meaningful and groundbreaking approaches to navigating life. Iām so grateful I returned to Voltaire.
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, first published in 1764, is a series of short, radical essays - alphabetically arranged - that form a brilliant and bitter analysis of the social and religious conventions that then dominated eighteenth-century French thought. One of the masterpieces of the Enlightenment, this enormously influential work of sardonic wit - more a collection of essays arranged alphabetically, than a conventional dictionary - considers such diverse subjects as Abraham and Atheism, Faith and Freedom of Thought, Miracles and Moses. Repeatedly condemned by civil and religious authorities, Voltaire's work argues passionately for the cause of reason and justice, and criticizesā¦
A lot of the books I write are about science or history, and Mr Darwin just happened to be about both: it was a history of science, as science was in 1859. People say the world changed after Darwin published, The Origin of Species in 1859, but Origin was a symptom not a cause. My book is a history of science that looks at how the world was changing (and shrinking) in the year 1859, as new specimens, new materials, new technologies, and new ideas came into play.
I have had my copy since about 1972, when I was a penurious post-grad, and it lacks an ISBN, but it is based on a famous phrase that may or may not have been written by Sir Isaac Newton: āIf I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giantsā, and it is an uproarious and undisciplined history of that phrase. Merton calls it a Shandean postscript, because there are parallels with the style of Tristram Shandy.
I am afraid (or so two of my more literate editors have assured me), Merton infected my own style to an extent, but you can just tell that he enjoyed telling a story, almost as though it came from Falstaff himself. Any would-be understander of science needs to read it, but if you cite it, donāt make the mistake of Charlesworth et al., who, in Life Among the Scientists,ā¦
With playfulness and a large dose of wit, Robert Merton traces the origin of Newton's aphorism, "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Using as a model the discursive and digressive style of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Merton presents a whimsical yet scholarly work which deals with the questions of creativity, tradition, plagiarism, the transmission of knowledge, and the concept of progress. "This book is the delightful apotheosis of donmanship: Merton parodies scholarliness while being faultlessly scholarly; he scourges pedantry while brandishing his own abstruse learning on every page. The most recondite and obscureā¦
Ī have a passion for critical theory since I was intrigued by the idea, which originates in Marxās Capital, that what limits our freedom and democracy is not the apparent personified power hold by the state and politicians. On the contrary, real power lies in capital, that's in abstract labour, which is the labour that must succumb to the standards of time is money, that runs through each one of us. Therefore, in my postdoctoral research in the last 13 years, I have attempted to follow this idea in the history of political philosophy. During my research, I realized that the mainstream reading of Marxism and critical theory is far from what it should be.
Nietzsche demystifies the idea that the state provides stability and certainty in our lives and, as a result, the concept that is necessary. He has a dialectic between phenomenon and essence, for which the state is the social form that corresponds to the alienation we experience in our everyday life in capitalism. Thus, as a corresponding social form to the mass culture, it reiterates our unfreedom. Nietzsche holds a concept of fetishization that brings him much closer to critical Marxism than previously thought.
This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first (now Volume I) appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale's distinguished translation (originally published in the series Cambridge Texts in German Philosophy) with a new introduction by Richard Schacht. In this wide-ranging workā¦
I am an aficionado of lost objects, lost time, afterlives; of writing which never āfittedā its era. Examples would be that of John Aubrey, Herman Melville, Fernando Pessoa, Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Hardwick, Ralph Ellisonā¦ the list goes on. I look for writing that has stood the test of time, not celebrated for the fame and bling of the moment. I look for the futile products of those who possessed genius, but who never earned enough readers until decades or centuries later, once they were released from the prison-house of genre. I look for the posthumous brilliance of language; the phosphoric glow of its offerings and of the buried treasures found therein.
Joubert (1754-1824), was not published until 114 years after his death. These notebooks are neither diaries nor memoirs, neither essays nor aphorisms, but enigmas worthy of much ponder. He was uncompromisingly seeking an afterlife for the source of his writing and language, and he pretty much discovered that in the cracks of insight. For example: those who make laws canāt plant crops. One has to apply names to things: I have many forms for ideas, but not enough forms for phrases.
He is a writerās writer, since he insists on close and silent and above all, slow reading.
Iāve always loved books about outsiders and stories that make you palpably feel what others do. In real life and fiction, the characters that interest me most are often outsiders. Because characters on the outside of social groups and norms are often isolated and lonely, there is something so powerful about works that can bring you inside their experience and relate what their inner life is like. Interiority is the great strength of literature, and stories that convey the inner architecture of outsiders have always attracted me. I love books that make me feel deeply connected and that linger in my subconscious long after Iāve read them.
The title story, A Hunger Artist, affected me in such a stunning and mysterious way. It just floored me and got under my skin. I felt distraught for several days. When I first read this story, I had just begun my MFA in creative writing at the Bluegrass Writers Studio in 2014, and I was interested in examining why certain works had an impact on me as a reader and how I could learn the writing craft from them.
I re-read the story several times to try and figure out the source of its power but could not. The title storyāand the rest of the stories in the collectionāare written in a direct, matter-of-fact way that doesnāt draw attention to their style. But these stories involved me directly in a deep, mysterious, and emotional experience.
'In recent decades, interest in hunger artists has greatly diminished.'
Kafka published two collections of short stories in his lifetime, A Country Doctor: Little Tales (1919) and A Hunger Artist: Four Stories (1924). Both collections are included in their entirety in this edition, which also contains other, uncollected stories and a selection of posthumously published works that have become part of the Kafka canon.
Enigmatic, satirical, often bleakly humorous, these stories approach human experience at a tangent: a singing mouse, an ape, an inquisitive dog, and a paranoid burrowing creature are among the protagonists, as well as the professional starvationā¦
I hold the chair of Old Testament at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Munich University in Germany. My main area of expertise is Semitic languages, though, which is also the field for which I previously held a chair at Leiden University in the Netherlands for fifteen years (eventually, however, Munich made me an offer one cannot refuse). Hence my main occupation concerns the interpretation of ancient texts in exotic languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, and others, mostly at the baseline of individual words, grammatical forms, and syntactic constructions. Despite the seemingly dry, specialized character of my work, it is, in my view, a lifestyle rather than a job.
Academic institutions are competitive environments governed not only by the zest to enrich and transmit knowledge, but also by politics, vanity, and caprices. In many respects, they resemble life at a royal court as described by the seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit philosopher Baltasar GraciƔn. His Pocket Oracle is chock-full of advice, in the form of maximally compact yet hauntingly beautifully written maxims, on how to penetrate through the appearance of things. Imbued in the art of discernment of St. Ignatius of Loyola, he repeatedly singles out the essential qualities that make possible successful choices in academic life as well, such as taste, judgment, and an eye for talent. One of his aphorisms (no. 4) is particularly dear to me: scholarship and courage make immortal, because that is what they themselves are.
A unique collection of advice for life, Baltasar Gracian's The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence is a philosophical gem, and perhaps the first 'self-help' book ever written. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Spanish with an introduction by Jeremy Robbins.
Written over 350 years ago, The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence is a subtle collection of 300 witty and thought-provoking aphorisms. From the art of being lucky to the healthy use of caution, these elegant maxims were created as a guide to life, with further suggestions given on cultivating good taste, knowing how to refuse, theā¦
I wear many hats in my life, but none matter as much as the hat: mama. As a clairaudient medium who works first-hand with mothers on their spiritual journeys, I feel as though I know what spiritually conscious parents hope to find and be moved by in the books they read because I know what my spirit needs during this wild and overwhelming adventure called motherhood. It can be an isolating path to walk, and these books not only felt like a helping hand during the rockiest moments but also like a warm hug when I needed it most.
This was the very first spiritual motherhood book I found shortly after discovering I was pregnant and, let me tell you, Iām glad it was this book!
Sacred Pregnancy is divided into weeks. The experience is like consuming profound aphorisms, ideas, and reflective journaling activities that will nourish both you - fatigued and very pregnant mama - and the child you will be raising very soon.
Not only did I become excited about every new week along my pregnancy journey, I looked forward to every new week diving into this book, with its informative and transformative content. I loved it so much that I bought the corresponding oracle deck to continue my weekly bonding with my unborn child.
In today's western cultures, the typical pregnancy focuses on the baby to the exclusion of the woman herself, so that the entire experience has become more about preparing for the baby's arrival than looking closely at oneself to prepare emotionally for all of the changes that creating a new life brings. Sacred Pregnancy was written to help the pregnant woman journey within herself to prepare for the birth of her baby.
Sacred Pregnancy is a gorgeous four-color book especially created for mothers-to-be to reflect on the many personal milestones of the full gestation period of a pregnancy. With beautiful professionalā¦
I am an aficionado of lost objects, lost time, afterlives; of writing which never āfittedā its era. Examples would be that of John Aubrey, Herman Melville, Fernando Pessoa, Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Hardwick, Ralph Ellisonā¦ the list goes on. I look for writing that has stood the test of time, not celebrated for the fame and bling of the moment. I look for the futile products of those who possessed genius, but who never earned enough readers until decades or centuries later, once they were released from the prison-house of genre. I look for the posthumous brilliance of language; the phosphoric glow of its offerings and of the buried treasures found therein.
Someone once said that novels were for light summer reading by bourgeois ladies. W.G. Sebald may have shared this opinion. The latter preferred letters, notes, fragments and diaries. Similarly, Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born, of Sephardi ancestry, German-speaking and winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for literature, only ever wrote one novel. But his aphorisms, both long and short, are remarkable. He unearths forgotten writers, important ones that he had met, and he meditates on literary gossip and the remaining time in his life. Hereās an example: Klaus Mannās last proposal: a mass suicide of writers (of the great names).
From one of the preeminent intellectual figures of the twentieth century, a highly personal testimonial of what Canetti himself chooses to term "notations," bits and pieces: notes, aphorisms, fragments. Taken together, they present an awesomely tender, guiltily gloomy meditation on death and aging.
" A mosaical portrait of an old body's mind determined to do its exercises and not lose a step--and fascinating for that." - Kirkus Reviews