Customer Reviews:
Breathtaking nature walk.......2004-12-02
The Country Diary is a book arranged month by month of the writer/artist's nature walks and discoveries. Each month begins with a history of the month, related folk lore, and poetry. There is also wonderful art work that allows you to journey with Ms. Holden on her adventures. Her monthly entries details the world around her and draws you back to the pages of her journal over and over again. I first checked out this book from the library to get my children to begin their own nature journals as part of our homeschooling science class, but I found myself more captivated than even they could ever be. I have checked out her book so many times, that I finally bought my own copy. She has motivated me to sketch in my own journal and to look with new eyes at the natural world around me. In times where one is forced to stay in, you can still journey outside with Ms. Holden's book. Awesome!
a special find.......2003-03-13
found this book at an estate sale for 25 cents....truly a beautiful find.
This book is a special treasure.......2000-12-07
After a doctor's appointment in Houston I dropped by a small privately owned bookstore I thought looked interesting. As the owner and I spoke she said she could tell I would love this book because of my love of gardening,birds and nature--but that obtaining it would be very difficult. I asked them to put me on a search list and a few months later it arrived. The author's drawings and observations as she watches nature are captivating. Edith started this journal in 1906 and it was never shown to anyone until it was discovered on a shelf in an old country home and then published. There is a sweetness and innocence in the writing that's hard to describe. The pages are like a rather like a thick piece of manilla paper and if I had an extra copy of this book I would frame page after page. I purchased it sight unseen and consider it one of my great treasures.
a beautiful book of nature watercolours.......2000-12-03
This book was a bestseller when it was originally published in the 1970's, and there was a good reason for it. Edith Holden, the artist of this work was a very accomplished watercolorist. This book is filled with her views of the fruits, beauty and wonder of nature. It shows the flowers, birds and insects of the natural world as they appear over a year accompanied by appropriate poems and quotations.
The watercolours are simply breathtaking. The closest thing to this book that I have seen is illuminated manuscripts, but the effect here is quite different.
The publishers have been very wise with publication. You get a page-by-page facimilie in full colour, reproducing the original manuscript. They have not cluttered the book up by reproducing pages and putting their own text next to it.
If you run across a copy of this pick it up and let it take you away to another world.
The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.......2000-02-09
Magnificent! Beutiful! A piece of art
Customer Reviews:
A beautiful book.......2007-04-20
I had some of the stationary years ago, and didn't realize until I was at a second hand booksale the other day that the artwork was from a book. What a treasure of drawings!
And how wonderful to think that someone a)saved it and b) had the courage to reprint it exactly as it was, handwriting and all. Worth it just for the artwork, plus you get a view into the world of the women of that time. Having just seen the film "Miss Potter" and how hard it was for a woman to be taken seriously as an artist in England, this book is a delight to find.
what are your opinions on this book?.......2001-11-07
i have a reseach paper due on this book and i need to make direct quotes on it. please help! thanks.
The best nature notebook I've ever seen!.......1998-01-09
Charlotte Mason was an educator in England in the last century, and one of her main educational methods was to have every student keep a Nature Notebook or Nature Diary---a record of the natural world as the children observed it first-hand. The student's Nature Notebooks were filled with poetry, prose, line drawings and watercolors.
"The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" is the perfect example of a fully developed Nature Diary. The author went out amid the English countryside and recorded what she observed---the flowers, trees, birds, insects.
The artistry of the drawings and watercolors in this is absolutely breathtaking. If you're looking for an introduction to the idea of Nature Diaries, or you simply enjoy a book of true grace and beauty, then this is the book for you.
Book Description
In Tibetan spiritual life, body-based meditation is considered vital to our spiritual and physical well-being. In today's world, overabundant with stimuli and stress, Reggie Ray teaches, body-based meditation provides a powerful way for us to "digest" the events and experiences of our day. It allows us to open our awareness and deepen our sense of being so that our minds become clearer, our emotions more flowing, and our lives more grounded. On Meditating with the Body, listeners will learn to master a series of six Tibetan-based meditations to settle and calm the mind, channel vitalizing energy throughout the body, connect with the living, healing quality of the earth, and uncover the body's untapped powers of perception, intuition, and wisdom.
Customer Reviews:
These practices will transform your life........2007-09-03
This is a great introduction to Reggie Ray's bodywork techniques. I attended the first "Meditating with the Body" program taught by Reggie and I can say these practices changed my meditation and my life. I highly recommend this CD set as a place to start. If it peaks your interest you should consider attending one of Dr. Ray's retreats. Check out www.dharmaocean.org
Wonderful intros and lots of meditations too........2006-09-19
I love the format of this program! It is excerpted from a longer, 9 CD set, Buddhist Tantra, which offers numerous lecture topics.
In Meditating with the Body, the lecture is contained on 1 CD, and it provides a comprehensive intro to meditation, along with guidelines for gaining awareness, and exploring discomfort. Then, the remaining 3 CDs include 6 guided meditations (which each have their own intros). For me, this was a real fit - small amount of lecture and numerous profound meditation practices to choose from.
Consists of extracts from the TANTRA CD set.......2004-01-12
This CD set consists of extracts from the TANTRA CD set. DO NOT BUY THIS IF YOU HAVE THE TANTRA CDs. It is redundant.
Average customer rating:
- Outstanding
- Interesting setting, but much too long
- A glimpse of contemporary Tibet
- Minorities under Chinese Administration
- Amazing story
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Water Touching Stone (Inspector Shan Tao Yun)
Eliot Pattison
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
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ASIN: 0312206127 |
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Given the critical and commercial success of Eliot Pattison's Edgar-winning debut novel, The Skull Mantra, which painstakingly limned contemporary Tibet's harsh beauty and defiant fatalism through the stoic perspective of Shan Tao Yun, a Chinese bureaucrat imprisoned in a Himalayan labor camp, it's no wonder the author's second novel returns to this hauntingly scarred country. But Water Touching Stone also widens the author's geographical and social scope. Shan must find a killer who is stalking orphan boys in the high mountains and deserts of the Xianjiang Autonomous Region.
Gendun, the senior lama at the monastery that has given Shan sanctuary, announces to his student, "'You are needed in the north. A woman named Lau has been killed. A teacher. And a lama is missing.'" Though reluctant to leave the gentle presence of the monks who are balm to his crippled soul, Shan realizes he has no choice:
Gendun had told him the one essential truth of the event; for the lamas everything else would be mere rumor. What they had meant was that this lama and the dead woman with a Chinese name were vital to them, and it was for Shan to discover the other truths surrounding the killing and translate them for the lamas' world.
It turns out that Lau had taken upon herself the care of the zheli, a group of orphaned children from all corners of Xianjiang, and strove to help the children retain a sense of native identity in the face of the Poverty Eradication Scheme, which is Beijing-speak for the destruction of the herding clans and the transformation of the western steppes into a region of exploitable resources. Shan wonders whether officials from the People's Brigade (perhaps the "Jade Bitch," Prosecutor Xu Li), or the feared secret police "knobs" from Public Security decided to put a stop to her subversive activities. But when the children from the zheli begin dying amid horrific tales of the "demon" that came for them, bleak politics must grapple with darker imaginings.
The novel sports a practically Dickensian cast of characters, which might overwhelm the narrative by sheer numbers, yet Pattison manages to add depth to even the most minor of characters, and at the moments when the troupe threatens to become completely unwieldy, he deftly redeems the situation with moments of quiet poetry:
On they went, three small men in the vastness of the changtang, the wind sweeping the grass in long waves around them, the snow-capped peaks shimmering in the brilliant light of dawn. As they appeared over a small knoll they surprised a herd of antelope, which fled across the long plain. Except one, a small animal with a broken horn, which stared as if it recognized them, then ran beside them, alone, until they reached the road.
--Kelly Flynn
Book Description
An unlikely group of outcasts dash across the remote northern reaches of the Tibetan plateau, summoned by the news that a venerated school teacher has been murdered and an ancient lama is missing. The two old Tibetans are rushing to restore the spiritual balanced caused by the violent death. The sullen Tibetan resistance fighter is racing to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, the exiled former investigator from Beijing, just released from four years in the gulug, has set out to find justice, an elusive goal among the embittered and forgotten people of western China.Soon Shan finds himself in the dangerous world of the borderlands, populated by vengeful Chinese officials, corrupt soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, daring smugglers, hidden Buddhists and remnants of the proud Kazakh Moslem clans, as he follows the grim path left by the killer. One by one, young boys, all students of the dead teacher, are being murdered.Guided by a spirited young Kazakh woman, Shan begins to peel away the many layers of secrets that hide the true motives of the killer, stumbling across the body of a dead American in the local prison, being brought to the haunting ruins of an ancient buried city along the Old Silk Road, searching for an apparent infliltrator of the dissident movement, and discovering a team of foreign scientists clandestinely working to reveal the truth about the region's ethnic heritage.One moment experiencing the serene reverence of an ancient shrine, the next feeling the horror of being buried alive in the desert, Shan encounters the many faces of courage found among oppressed peoples. Ultimately Shan's answer can be found only by revealing still greater tragedies, and justice, in the rough form he has come to expect in Tibet, is available only if he is able to piece the hatred and distrust that has been bread by Beijing's rule.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding.......2006-11-11
This is a great story. I had to get Eliot Pattison's other books. The stories are so real.
Interesting setting, but much too long.......2005-05-24
This is an excellent story of the oppression of native peoples by the Communist Chinese and of human greed's role in the new China. However, it is also a murder mystery, and as such, the story could have been told in half the space, even with all the sociopolitical information. In addition, the number of characters and the complexity of their names and ethnicities is truly bewildering. I'm hoping that Pattison's later works are improved in this regard.
A glimpse of contemporary Tibet.......2003-02-11
This is a marvelous book, one that exposes the reader to an unfamiliar part of the world. The author informs without lecturing, tying together Tibetan Buddhist traditions and practices with contemporary Chinese attempts to stamp out "minority" cultures while at the same time proclaiming all that they are doing to improve the lives of those minorities. In the story, the Chinese implement a "Poverty Eradication" plan which involves the elimination of the nomadic way of life, and of course the only way such a plan could be implemented is with force. At the same time, the protagonist is trying to discover who or what has been killing young boys while protecting the naive and otherworldly Tibetan monks who have accompanied him on his journey. There are smugglers, archaeologists, talking mountains and discerning camels--not exactly your typical read, but completely engrossing. If you've not read Pattison's first book, "The Skull Mantra," you might want to start with it, but I urge you make sure that you read this series.
Minorities under Chinese Administration.......2002-10-12
Although this is a work of fiction, it gives the most intimate feeling for the sociology of minorities in territories administered by mainland China that I have seen. Better even than the tales the minorities themselves have brought out. Of course, as fiction, it is quite a story and a very good read.
Amazing story.......2002-06-11
This book is truly a great book. The interesting setting and the unusual hero would be enough, but Pattison manages to take you on a ride through the current situation i Tibet, the mystique of the mountains and the wonderful people that live there. As the mystery unravels (slowly!), you actually feel the frustration of the hero, Chinese inspector Chan, as he has to battle with his loyalties and emotions.
The plot is satisfyingly complex, and requires both an attentive and reflecting reader if you are to keep on top of things. Pattison avoids the trap of delivering finished solutions and encourages the reader to think for himself - something that is quite uncommon for best-sellers these days.
The ending is both sad and beautiful and I actually felt my eyes become wet as I finished the book on the bus to work. When was the last time a paperback move you to tears? Keep up the good work, Pattison!
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Touching Enlightenment
Reginald A. Ray
Manufacturer: Sounds True
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ASIN: 1591796180 |
Book Description
How is it that a person can meditate for five, ten, twenty years or more--and hardly change? Because they've reduced it to "a mental gymnastic," explains Reggie Ray. In Touching Enlightenment, the esteemed author of five books on Buddhist history and practice guides readers back to the original approach of the Buddha: a systematic process that results in a profound awareness "in our bodies rather than in our heads." Combining the scholarship he's renowned for with original insights from nearly four decades practicing and teaching meditation, Reggie Ray invites readers to explore: * The body as the ideal place for spiritual pilgrimage * How to cultivate imagination, deal with pain, breathe more naturally, and other essential skills * Why "rejected" experience becomes imprinted in the body--and the steps to release it "To be awake, to be enlightened, is to be fully and completely embodied. To be fully embodied means to be at one with who we are, in every respect, including our physical being, our emotions, and the totality of our karmic situation," writes Reggie Ray. Readers everywhere now have a map of unprecedented clarity and power for embarking on the journey toward ultimate realization in and through the body, with Touching Enlightenment.
Average customer rating:
- Touching Tibet - Niema Ash
- Wonderful
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Touching Tibet
Niema Ash
Manufacturer: Travellerseye Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0953057550 |
Customer Reviews:
Touching Tibet - Niema Ash.......2004-04-06
Niema Ash's "Touching Tibet" was one of the most beguiling and thought provoking pieces of literature published last year. Her skills lie in the way she personalizes her experiences and allows the reader to relate to her story. Her journeying in Tibet will be particularly at home amongst fellow travellers where there will be plenty of parallel experiences. Something I can empathize with is being underdressed in a cold place, usually en route to a hot destination. Sludging through thick Scandinavian snow in open-toed sandals and thin trousers was no fun, but I had the last laugh when a sweaty Santa decanted into Bangkok's 80% humidity! I have also demonstrated disco dancing to the Chinese.
Also like Niema, I have wept in Lhasa. I entered on one of the few organised tours allowed into Tibet after the Chinese clamped down on border crossings and made Niema's style of independent travel in Tibet a thing of the past. When she went, there had only been a handful of tourists before her. When I went, there was even a Lonely Planet Guide. Much of what I found was a result of the bastardization of the Tibetan people, their home and their culture. There was little of Tibet left. This is far removed from what Niema witnessed as the clinging vestiges of an oppressed country. I recognised that Tibet had lost against overwhelming might. And this is why I wept.
Niema's writing comes in three quite different styles; narrator, storyteller and political activist. As narrator, Niema's recollections resound wih the day-to-day trivia and props familiar to the global traveller; guidebooks, guest-houses and market-place bartering. But, beyond the mundane, her fascination with Tibetan Buddhism breeds an undercurrent of the supernatural; part hippy new-age, part ancient sorcery. These are islands in the flowing descriptive narrative which is also punctuated by stilted and contrived dialogue. For their comparitive secularism, more storytelling and politics would have been welcome. However, she does admit that "Touching Tibet" is not a "sociological, political or historical study of Tibet". There are plenty other sources for that, and Niema is not that type.
No, Niema is like the Tibetans - an aesthetic people. A people who recognise and cherish beauty. Her description of the Potala is exactly right, "The Palace and hill have become one in a fusion of nature, God and man". But this delivery does take skill to maintain clarity, and elsewhere Niema does drift infrequently into states of fuzziness. For example, a few pages later, and on the same subject, "preserving a formidable distance between God and men", contradicts her previous description.
Niema's descriptions of the open devotion at the Jokhang is unrecognisable to me. Only a short time after Niema's Tibet, the country was even further incarcerated by Chinese rule, making it quite impossible to express one's faith there. Sadder still is that Tibet will never again be recognisable to Niema, but at least we have this gift of her everlasting impression through her story.
J.F.Derry
02/04/2004
Wonderful.......2000-05-25
In the early 1980's, Tibet was briefly opened up to individual travellers. Niema Ash was fortunate enough to be there. Not having any previous knowledge of the situation in Tibet, she soon discovered that behind the smiles of the Tibetans were lives of pain, suffering & loss under the rule of Communist China. Despite this, the warmth, hospitality & good nature of the Tibetan people shines through.
Niema gives wonderful descriptions of the Potala, the Jokhang, the Tibetans & Lhasa in general. She was also priviledged with a rare opportunity of seeing a sky burial. Her visit to Tibet certainly touched her more than she expected.
Average customer rating:
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Touching Tibet
Manufacturer: EYE BOOKS LTD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GSB5SW |
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Spies, Secret Agents and Spooks of London
Natasha Narayan
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