Staring At The Sun

Written in Irvin Yalom’s inimitable story-telling style, Staring at the Sun is a profoundly encouraging approach to the universal issue of mortality. In this magisterial opus, capping a lifetime of work and personal experience, Dr Yalom helps us recognise that the fear of death is at the heart of much of our day-to-day anxiety. This reality is often brought to the surface by an 'awakening experience' — a dream, a loss (such as the death of a loved one, a divorce, or the loss of a job or home), illness, trauma, or ageing. Once we confront our own mortality, Dr Yalom writes, we are inspired to rearrange our priorities, communicate more deeply with those we love, appreciate more keenly the beauty of life, and increase our willingness to take the risks necessary for personal fulfillment. This is a book with tremendous utility, including the provision of techniques for dealing with the most prevalent kinds of fears of death — especially by living in the here and now, and by embracing what Dr Yalom calls ‘rippling’, the influence and impact we all have that has a life beyond our own.

Written in Irving Yalom's inimitable story-telling style and capping a lifetime of work and personal experience, Staring at the Sun is a profoundly encouraging approach to the universal issue of mortality. At the age of 74 best-selling author Irvin Yalom turns his attention to one of the great human questions: our fear of death. He suggests that what he calls the 'awakening experience' can help us acknowledge, accept, and make use of our fear of death in a positive manner. These awakening experiences often follow a loss, a trauma, or the death of a loved one, illness or just growing old. Yalom shows us how such an awakening can be the turning point for a more meaningful life. This is a practical and tremendously useful book, including methods and techniques for dealing with the most prevalent kinds of fear: that anxiety which is hidden and appears to us as other problems in our lives. Dr. Yalom argues that once we confront our own mortality, we are inspired to rearrange our priorities, communicate more deeply with those we love, appreciate more keenly the beauty of life, and increase our willingness to take the risks necessary for personal fulfilment.

Jean Serjeant, the heroine of Julian Barnes’s wonderfully provocative novel, seems ordinary, but has an extraordinary disdain for wisdom. And as Barnes—winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending—follows her from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, he confronts readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalog of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed). Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original. “Brilliant. . . . A marvelous literary epiphany.” —Carlos Fuentes, The New York Times Book Review “Barnes’s literary energy and daring are nearly unparalleled.” —New Republic

In a timely, even prophetic, portrait of Asia's rise and the magnitude of its challenge to the West, Fallows demolishes the myth that Japan is a capitalist country built on the Western model. He demonstrates instead how Japan's economic system treats business as an instrument of national interest while casting aside the traditional Western values of individual enterprise and human rights.

From New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin comes another thrilling story in The Raines of Wind Canyon series. It’s not in bodyguard Jake Cantrell’s job description to share his suspicions with his assignments. Beautiful executive Sage Dumont may be in charge, but Jake’s not on her payroll. As a former Special Forces marine, Jake trusts his gut, and it’s telling him there’s something off about a shipment arriving at Marine Drilling International. His instinct is aroused…in more ways than one. Drawn into a terrifying web of lies and deceit—and into feelings they can’t afford to explore—what Jake and Sage uncover may be frighteningly worse than they ever imagined. Originally published in 2012.

Kate is desperate for a new friend - a soulmate - to fill the emptiness inside her. Then Sara starts at school and Kate can't seem to get enough of her. Forcing Kate into a relationship with her brother Glenn, Sara is furious when she falls pregnant by him, and that's when things turn nasty.

For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel

“A wonderfully readable account of Chicago’s early history” and the inspiration behind PBS’s American Experience (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). Depicting its turbulent beginnings to its current status as one of the world’s most dynamic cities, City of the Century tells the story of Chicago—and the story of America, writ small. From its many natural disasters, including the Great Fire of 1871 and several cholera epidemics, to its winner-take-all politics, dynamic business empires, breathtaking architecture, its diverse cultures, and its multitude of writers, journalists, and artists, Chicago’s story is violent, inspiring, passionate, and fascinating from the first page to the last. The winner of the prestigious Great Lakes Book Award, given to the year’s most outstanding books highlighting the American heartland, City of the Century has received consistent rave reviews since its publication in 1996, and was made into a six-hour film airing on PBS’s American Experience series. Written with energetic prose and exacting detail, it brings Chicago’s history to vivid life. “With City of the Century, Miller has written what will be judged as the great Chicago history.” —John Barron, Chicago Sun-Times “Brims with life, with people, surprise, and with stories.” —David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of John Adams and Truman “An invaluable companion in my journey through Old Chicago.” —Erik Larson, New York Times–bestselling author of The Devil in the White City

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

Also available in an open-access, full-text edition at http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/86080 The black sun, an ages-old image of the darkness in individual lives and in life itself, has not been treated hospitably in the modern world. Modern psychology has seen darkness primarily as a negative force, something to move through and beyond, but it actually has an intrinsic importance to the human psyche. In this book, Jungian analyst Stanton Marlan reexamines the paradoxical image of the black sun and the meaning of darkness in Western culture. In the image of the black sun, Marlan finds the hint of a darkness that shines. He draws upon his clinical experiences—and on a wide range of literature and art, including Goethe’s Faust, Dante’s Inferno, the black art of Rothko and Reinhardt—to explore the influence of light and shadow on the fundamental structures of modern thought as well as the contemporary practice of analysis. He shows that the black sun accompanies not only the most negative of psychic experiences but also the most sublime, resonating with the mystical experience of negative theology, the Kabbalah, the Buddhist notions of the void, and the black light of the Sufi Mystics. An important contribution to the understanding of alchemical psychology, this book draws on a postmodern sensibility to develop an original understanding of the black sun. It offers insight into modernity, the act of imagination, and the work of analysis in understanding depression, trauma, and transformation of the soul. Marlan’s original reflections help us to explore the unknown darkness conventionally called the Self. The image of Kali appearing in the color insert following page 44 is © Maitreya Bowen, reproduced with her permission,[email protected].