"Do you have a favorite sound?" little Yoshio asks. The musician answers, "The most beautiful sound is the sound of ma, of silence." But Yoshio lives in Tokyo, Japan: a giant, noisy, busy city. He hears shoes squishing through puddles, trains whooshing, cars beeping, and families laughing. Tokyo is like a symphony hall! Where is silence? Join Yoshio on his journey through the hustle and bustle of the city to find the most beautiful sound of all.
Ajahn Sumedho gives insights into some key Buddhist themes like awareness, consciousness, identity, relief from suffering, and mindfulness of the body.
An "elegant and eloquent" (New York Times) exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence, and the growing war between them. Between iPods, music-blasting restaurants, earsplitting sports stadiums, and endless air and road traffic, the place for quiet in our lives grows smaller by the day. In Pursuit of Silence gives context to our increasingly desperate sense that noise pollution is, in a very real way, an environmental catastrophe. Traveling across the country and meeting and listening to a host of incredible characters, including doctors, neuroscientists, acoustical engineers, monks, activists, educators, marketers, and aggrieved citizens, George Prochnik examines why we began to be so loud as a society, and what it is that gets lost when we can no longer find quiet.
'This book is a not-so-small joy in itself.' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Parkinson has the gift of making you look with new eyes at everyday things. The perfect daily diversion.' JOJO MOYES 'Always funny and frank and full of insight, I absolutely love Parkinson's writing.' DAVID NICHOLLS 'I loved this book . . . Parkinson's writing transports you to unexpected places of joy and comfort . . . these pages contain happiness.' MARINA HYDE 'The twenty-first century feels a lot more bearable in Parkinson's company.' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON Drawn from the successful Guardian column, these everyday exultations and inspirations will get you through dismal days. Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring the small pleasures of life. She revels in her fluffy dressing gown ('like bathing in marshmallow'), finds calm in solo cinema trips, is charmed by the personalities of fonts ('you'll never see Comic Sans on a funeral notice'), celebrates pockets and gleefully abandons a book she isn't enjoying. Parkinson's everyday exaltations - selected from her immensely successful Guardian column - will utterly delight. FEATURES BRAND NEW MATERIAL 'A compendium of delights.' OBSERVER 'Delightful . . . a love letter to those little moments of bliss that get us through the daily grind.' RED
Solitude is a universal experience. For some people, its connotations of loneliness and isolation are terrifying prospects. Others seek it out, sensing solitude’s potential for bringing depth and creativity to their lives. Even those who embrace it willingly, however, discover at some point that solitude, like nature, has its changing seasons. Why write a book about solitude? One answer: God. Those who are God seekers often turn to solitude to listen to God, to be present to God, to be attentive to God’s word, wisdom and Spirit. Embraced purposefully, solitude enables us to cultivate another way of seeing and being, to be more open to discovery of and exploration into those unfathomable riches we call God.
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.)
Now with a new afterword by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI! In a time when technology penetrates our lives in so many ways and materialism exerts such a powerful influence over us, Cardinal Robert Sarah presents a bold book about the strength of silence. The modern world generates so much noise, he says, that seeking moments of silence has become both harder and more necessary than ever before. Silence is the indispensable doorway to the divine, explains the cardinal in this profound conversation with Nicolas Diat. Within the hushed and hallowed walls of the La Grande Chartreux, the famous Carthusian monastery in the French Alps, Cardinal Sarah addresses the following questions: Can those who do not know silence ever attain truth, beauty, or love? Do not wisdom, artistic vision, and devotion spring from silence, where the voice of God is heard in the depths of the human heart? After the international success of God or Nothing, Cardinal Sarah seeks to restore to silence its place of honor and importance. "Silence is more important than any other human work," he says, "for it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and others so as to place ourselves humbly and generously at their service."
"14 Sounds of Love" has a special place in my heart as its my first articulation of feelings. Love can mean different things to each individual. It can be limitless expressions, emotions and actions punctuated and shaped by experiences and moulded by pain and pleasure. This composition is a symphony subsuming 14 expressions of love, which I am sure each one of us must have experienced in our lives but might have appreciated in a different manner in mind and soul. The lines here will most certainly rejuvenate the hidden love and need for togetherness, which we all dream to come alive with.
Love Wont Let Me Be Silent is a collection of writings, short stories, and poems, exploring the experiences and trials of parenthood from an African-American gay male perspective and sensitively chronicles Masons search for love and self-hood. These masterfully creative writings express candidly the views of countless gay African-Americans who are vibrant with the faith and energy of America's Black Church yet bristling with the pain and anger of America's racial and homophobic injustice. While many still speculate over whether Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have supported gay rights, Mason boldly points out that it is absolutely inconceivable that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would endorse anything that smacks of discrimination and bigotry against any group since it is opposed to everything he believed in as a humanitarian and Civil Rights leader. Mason is an extraordinary poet who eloquently expands and redefines the traditional idea of the love poem in creative and ingenious ways. Each poem, story, and article is suffused with restoration, history, love, and ferocious courage! He also gives us an honest glimpse into the life of a young Angel Mason who experienced the pangs of growing up in a not-so-tolerant world as an African-American gay teen. America has barely smoothed its feathers, ruffled badly last year by the California Supreme Courts initial decision to lift the ban on gay marriage, followed by a divisive election that reversed the decision and placed the matter again before the California Supreme Court for repeal. These chilling events led to an epiphany that compelled him to write Love Wont Let Me Be Silent. These electrifying writings are destined to make him one of the foremost voices of the African-American gay experience. We have no doubt that the artistry and enduring vision that Mason demonstrates in this inspiring book will cause a revolutionary awakening in America and continue to influence our culture, reshape our thinking, and touch our hearts and lives for decades.
Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
