One winter, after an enforced period of quiet, William Fiennes finds himself restless and yearning for adventure. Inspired by his reading about the migratory patterns of birds, he flies to Texas to find the million-strong flocks of snow geese and to follow them on their spring flight thousands of miles north to breeding grounds on the Arctic tundra. This mesmerizing book, already a classic, captures their journey with wisdom, humility and endless curiosity. It is a meditation on freedom of movement, on seeing the world anew, and on the joy of returning - indefinably changed.
Alex Clare-Young, the first out transgender minister in the United Reformed Church, says: Transgender Christian Human is the story of my life as a transgender child and adult. Trans is an imperfect label but labels are, to some extent, necessary - especially when we choose them for ourselves. For me, being trans means moving towards a gender that varies from my sex assigned at birth. It also means moving between genders and critiquing the rigidity of gendered systems. I believe that we are called to live in relationship and continual, open conversation not only with those who mirror us but also with those who are other to us. As a trans person, I have experienced that call as both blessing and curse; both injury and cure. I have lived through the pain of feeling that there is no one quite like me and I have lived in the joy of sharing differences and similarities with those who are open to talk about their amazingly diverse life stories. Parts of this book are incredibly sad. Others are full of joy. Some are even pretty funny. I hope that the result is an honest and authentic reflection of being transgender, Christian and human. I have included resources and activities at the end of each chapter to encourage individuals and groups to explore the subject. I hope the book helps you to understand yourself and your friends, colleagues and family a little better - and that it acts as a mirror to reflect a different way of being.
When long time trekker, writer, and anthropologist Beebe Bahrami made her first full 500-mile hike on the Camino de Santiago,via the Way of Saint James, across southern France and northern Spain, she met French and Spanish pilgrims who told her that the Camino was more than a Christian pilgrimage. They explained that it also was a great leyline, a path of earth energy that could transform one by walking it. They added that under the 1,200-year-old Christian pilgrimage road there was a more ancient, pre-Christian initiatory path that could take one deeper into spiritual experience and consciousness. A person engaged it by looking for signs along the way. Signs? Many, she learned, but that the most potent were those associated with the goose. The leyline idea made sense to her for she was already feeling it as she stepped along, an uncanny hum from the earth that seemed to supported her every step. But signs and geese? What did this have to do with pilgrimage, let alone spiritual initiation? She dismissed it as a wonky idea and dropped it quickly on the trail and forgot about it. But the goose would not leave her alone. It appeared as Bahrami walked, in village and landscape feature names, on medieval churches and monasteries, and most unusually, as a part of a massive inlaid stone board game, the Game of the Goose, in the Plaza de Santiago, the Spanish name for Saint James, in the Riojan city of Logroño. A popular European children''s game similar to Snakes and Ladders, in Logroño Bahrami learned that the Game of the Goose was intentionally set there by city planners and with church''s blessings to serve as a metaphor for the pilgrimage, as well as for life. She learned that the goose was seen as a creature of luck. But what else did the goose mean, beyond luck, signs, and children''s game? What really led it to become associated with spiritual initiation, pilgrimage, and the Camino? No one seemed able to give her a straight answer but by now, she was intrigued. It took Bahrami three returns on three more through-treks on pilgrim paths in southwestern France and northern Spain to unearth the answers, ones that were rooted in ancient, pre-Christian times and that had survived to the present in the seemingly innocuous form of the goose. As Bahrami pursued the mystery of the goose, part skeptic and part seeker, she encountered wise and humorous locals, quirky and questing pilgrims, and unusual evidence in stones, local stories, and practices that revealed that the way of the wild goose was indeed a real and vibrant pathway, a parallel universe to the Christian Camino de Santiago. She discovered that though the medieval Camino was officially dedicated to Saint James the Greater, under the surface still dwelled older native goddesses and gods who continued to influence the way. Most stunning, she found that the goose was very likely an ancient Eurasian earth-centered mother goddess who took many forms but the goose was among her most prominent forms or association. Ideas about the goose were crumbs, clues, and survivors of an older spirituality, ones that even found their way into stories of Mother Goose. In all this, what Bahrami did not anticipate was that the outer goose adventure would take on an inner twist, that way of the wild goose would pull her into her own initiatory journey. She began as a curious bumbling trekker and ended a seeker on a full-blown medieval adventure in modern times. This three part, outer and inner adventure of The Way of the Wild Goose is a travel narrative about wild nature, ancient roads, and mysterious lore that tells a modern story of initiation, challenge, trail magic, and deep personal transformation. Something of a cross between Bill Bryson''s A Walk in the Woods, Elizabeth Gilbert''s Eat, Pray, Love, and Dan Brown''s The Da Vinci Code, The Way of the Wild Goose is a travel narrative and a detective story unearthing an old mystery and unfurling with it a magnetically alive and meaningful long walk on the ancient roads in France and Spain.
Quicksand is a silkily nuanced novel of erotic gamesmanship and obsession. Sonoko Kakiuchi, an Osaka lady of a good family, married to a dully respected lawyer, tells a story of temptation and betrayal. Sonoko is infatuated with the beautiful art student and femme fatale Mitsuko, a woman so seductive and heartless she can even turn Sonoko's husband into her own accomplice. Filled with intrigue and treacherous romance, readers will be entranced by Tanizaki’s seminal novel. At once savagely funny and timorously exact in its portrayal of sexual enthrallment, Quicksand is “beautifully and mysteriously contrived.”—Newsday
Join the egg-stremely popular Duck and Goose, and friends for a springtime adventure perfect for an Easter read-along! Now an animated series, available to stream on Apple TV+! New York Times bestselling author and illustrator Tad Hills brings our favorite feathered friends out to celebrate spring in this sturdy board book. Duck & Goose have lots of ideas about how to find the Easter Bunny, but will they succeed? Preschoolers won't be able to resist this latest board book featuring Duck & Goose, lots of colorful eggs, and the Easter Bunny.
In the autumn of 2018 Stephen Rutt and his partner moved to a house near the Solway Firth in Dumfries. As they settled into their new home thousands of pink-footed geese were arriving on the Firth from the Arctic Circle to make it their winter home. The arrival of huge flocks of geese in the UK is one of the most evocative and powerful harbingers of winter; a vast natural phenomenon to capture the imagination. And so begins an extraordinary odyssey. From his new home in the north to further afield in wide open spaces of the south, Stephen traces the lives and habits of five of the most common species of goose in the UK. With an expert eye and clear, elegant prose he paints perfect portraits of these large, startling, garrulous and cooperative birds. But this is also a compact and beautifully written study of the place the goose has in our culture, our history and, occasionally, on our festive table. A vivid tour of the inbetween landscapes they inhabit and a celebration of the short days, varied weathers and long nights of the season during which we share our home with these birds.
Writer, anthropologist, and self-professing nomad Beebe Bahrami knows that walking and exploring are paramount to her sense of connection to the earth. One of her explorations took her to a small fishing village in northwestern Spain and a much-anticipated chance to walk once again but on new tributaries the pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago. But it was a side trip to Sarlat in southwestern France, a place called "the Frenchman's paradise" by author Henry Miller, that unexpectedly gave Bahrami much to explore and enjoy as the region worked its way into the author's heart. A travel narrative and memoir, Café Oc will delight readers with its tantalizing descriptions of French foods and wines, walks through the countryside, visits to the prehistoric painted and engraved caves, and the warm and welcoming people in the Dordogne region of France. It will also take them along a path of serendipity and magic, and a meditation into how we are pulled by the desire for home. Accompanied by photographs taken by the author, Café Oc is also a pictorial record of places, people, and events. Over time and several lengthy visits, Bahrami found a surprising desire to settle down, to leave her "tent poles anchored in place to that precious earth."
“A fascinating and detailed account of the German navy’s war, mostly covering U-boat activities” by the man who succeeded Hitler as Fuhrer (Damien Burke, author of TSR2: Britain’s Lost Bomber). This is the story of the last world war, as told by Grand Admiral Karl Döenitz himself. His memoir covers his early career with submarines in the First World War and follows both his successes and failures through the Second World War, with great detail on the way the U-boat campaign was waged, as told by the man who invented U-boat tactics. Döenitz includes details of the U-boat campaigns during the Second World War as well as the opinions, ideas and commentary on the period. Of particular interest are the comments regarding British and American conduct during the war. This is an important social document and an invaluable source for any student of the last war. After becoming the last Fuhrer of Germany after Hitler’s suicide in May 1945, Karl Döenitz spent ten years and twenty days in Spandau Prison having been convicted of war crimes following a trial at Nuremberg. “A very interesting book looking at the war in the Atlantic from the German side . . . one of the best accounts of the Battle of the Atlantic.”—UK Historian
