Mortal Follies
Mortal Follies

Author: William Murchison

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2010-10-29

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1458778118

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It's not that the dignified and rarefied old Episcopal Church quit believing in God. It's that the God you increasingly hear spoken of in Episcopal circles is infinitely tolerant and given to sudden changes of mind - not quite the divinity you thought you were reading about in the scriptures. Episcopalians of the twenty-first century, like their counterparts in other churches of the so-called American mainline - such as Methodists and Presbyterians - seem to prefer a God that the culture would be proud of, as against a culture that God would be proud of. While they work to rebrand and reshelve orthodox Christianity for the modern market, exponents of the new thinking are busy reducing mainstream Christian witness to a shadow of its former self. Mortal Follies is the story of the Episcopal Church's mad dash to catch up with a secular culture fond of self-expression and blissfully relaxed as to norms and truths. An Episcopal layman, William Murchison details how leaders of his church, starting in the late 1960s, looked over the culture of liberation, liked what they saw, and went skipping along with the shifting cultural mood - especially when the culture demanded that the church account for its sins of heterosexism and racism. Episcopalians have blended so deeply into the cultural woodwork that it's hard sometimes to remember that it all began as a divine calling to the normative and the eternal.

Wise Follies
Wise Follies

Author: Grace Wynne-Jones

Publisher: Headline Accent

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1429494492

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Why waving goodbye to Mr Wonderful may be the wisest folly of all... Alice Evans has got a GSOH, GFCH (gas-fired central heating), a cat and a Mitsubishi colour portable. People have told her she can look pretty if she tries. She's thirty-eight and single, so will someone please pass the message on? What Alice thinks she needs is Mr Wonderful. A man like her pottery teacher, James Mitchel, who's warm and wise and gorgeous. But as one long, hot summer disappears with no sign of her snaring the man of her dreams, Alice is forced to consider the alternatives. Should she settle for Mr Mediocre, her dull but dependable ex boyfriend Eamon, and spend the rest of her days trying to like golf? Or could there be another way for a woman to ditch all the longing - and really start living her life?

The Brooklyn Follies
The Brooklyn Follies

Author: Paul Auster

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1429900091

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From the bestselling author of Oracle Night and The Book of Illusions, an exhilarating, whirlwind tale of one man's accidental redemption Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore—a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances—not to mention a stray relative or two—and leads him to a reckoning with his past. Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others. The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.

Perplexities of Consciousness
Perplexities of Consciousness

Author: Eric Schwitzgebel

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-01-28

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0262295083

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A philosopher argues that we know little about our own inner lives. Do you dream in color? If you answer Yes, how can you be sure? Before you recount your vivid memory of a dream featuring all the colors of the rainbow, consider that in the 1950s researchers found that most people reported dreaming in black and white. In the 1960s, when most movies were in color and more people had color television sets, the vast majority of reported dreams contained color. The most likely explanation for this, according to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, is not that exposure to black-and-white media made people misremember their dreams. It is that we simply don't know whether or not we dream in color. In Perplexities of Consciousness, Schwitzgebel examines various aspects of inner life (dreams, mental imagery, emotions, and other subjective phenomena) and argues that we know very little about our stream of conscious experience. Drawing broadly from historical and recent philosophy and psychology to examine such topics as visual perspective, and the unreliability of introspection, Schwitzgebel finds us singularly inept in our judgments about conscious experience.

The Blue Salon and Other Follies
The Blue Salon and Other Follies

Author: Vernon Katz

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2008-08-27

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 146532612X

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The Blue Salon and Other Follies vividly recounts the 1930s childhood of Vernon Katz in Lippe, Germany. Through the eyes of an observant young boy, the author reveals how Jewish life in a country town gradually eroded as the Nazis came to power. With a dry wit, the author recaptures his childhood and family life through light-hearted anecdotes and pictures, as well as dramatic events, including his mothers escapes from imprisonment and death by the Nazis. The title, The Blue Salon and Other Follies refers to the inability of Vernon Katzs parents in the early years of Nazi rule to comprehend the dangers that lie ahead. Rooted in German soil and having built a successful brush factory together, they think it is all a passing phase. Fifteen months after Hitlers rise to power, when a tribute to Vernon Katz father appears in a German business journal, his mother joyfully redecorates the house and creates the luxurious blue salon. When the Nuremberg Laws are enacted, the situation darkens. Vernon Katz, at age ten, is stoned, persecuted and terrified by his Nazi teachers. Ultimately, on Kristallnacht, the authors father is imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. The family doctor sends Mrs. Katz to a mental institution to protect her from the Gestapo. As the Nazis grow even more insidious, the family must take desperate measures to try to save themselves. The Blue Salon and Other Follies lovingly recreates small-town Jewish life in Germany before World War II and dramatically depicts the persecution, struggles and ultimate survival of one Jewish family. A literary gem and an unforgettable read,The Blue Salon and Other Follies will make you laugh and cry. It is a universal coming-of-age tale in which a boy fights adversity with courage and humor.