Other books that might interest you

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  The Miracle

  James M. LeBlanc

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  In this unflinching, touching memoir, James LeBlanc recounts his life as a bi-racial adoptee growing up poor among the upper-crust of Berkeley, CA. Abandonment, confusion, abuse and loneliness led to a life of addiction, homelessness and incarceration as he wandered from one coast to another in search of meaning. After surviving a prison riot, he realized he must change, or he would die. Full of resentment yet desperate, James began to seek God and what happened next was a series of events that led to The Miracle and a new life where he discovered the unbelievable story of his origin and the joy and gratitude that comes from second chances. 
  The Miracle will inspire anyone who desires to overcome the obstacles that block the way to peace. As readers travel through James’ journey, they will connect with him as the common emotions of pain, sadness and anger transition to acceptance, forgiveness and finally joy!

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  The Vision of the Dead Creole -...

  Lafcadio Hearn

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  Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. 
  His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings.  Life there was difficult for mother and son.  His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three.  He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.   
  After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati.  It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert.  He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law.  The marriage soon failed. 
  In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. 
  In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan.  Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan.   Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture.  Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.   
  In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. 
  The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.   
  Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State.  He was 54.

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  The Grief Cure - Looking for the...

  Cody Delistraty

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  “A wise and perceptive journey into grief and the ways we seek to assuage it. Incredibly powerful reading for all who have known, or who will inevitably know, loss.” —Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters 
  In this lyrical and moving story of the world of Prolonged Grief, journalist Cody Delistraty reflects on his experience with loss and explores what modern science, history, and literature reveal about the nature of our relationship to grief and our changing attitudes toward its cure. 
  When Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer in his early 20s, he found himself unsure how to move forward. The typical advice was to move through the five stages, achieve closure, get back to work, go back to normal. So begins a journey into the new frontiers of grief, where Delistraty seeks out the researchers, technologists, therapists, marketers, and communities around the world who may be able to cure the pain of loss in novel ways. From the neuroscience of memory deletion to book prescriptions, laughter therapy, psilocybin, and Breakup Bootcamp, what ultimately emerges is not so much a cure as a fresh understanding of what living with grief truly means.  
  As Delistraty created his own ad hoc treatment plan, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization gave extended, disruptive grief an official name: Prolonged Grief Disorder. A diagnosis, based on meeting several symptoms and contingencies, has opened innovative avenues of treatment and an important conversation about a debilitating form of grief, but it has also opened a debate as to whether this form of grief, no matter how severe and unrelenting, is best approached medically at all. 
  Braiding deep, emotional resonance with sharp research and historical insight, Delistraty places his own experience in dialogue with great writers and thinkers throughout history who have puzzled over this eternal question: how might we best face loss? 
  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

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  A Little Cloud - From their pens...

  James Joyce

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  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on the 2nd February 1882 in Dublin into a middle-class family, and the eldest of ten surviving siblings 
  Admired as a brilliant student he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools of Clongowes and Belvedere.  From there he went on to attend University College Dublin from 1898, studying English, French and Italian 
  In 1902, Joyce was now in his early twenties, and went to Paris to study Medicine but soon abandoned his teachings.  Back in Dublin to attend to his dying Mother he met Nora Barnacle. They bonded immediately into a life-long match. Together they decided to emigrate to Europe.  The couple lived in Trieste, Rome, Paris, and finally Zürich where Joyce pursued a variety of jobs and ventures to supplement his literary pursuits but none of these paid off.  
  After publishing a poetry volume, ‘Chamber Music’, in 1907, his short story collection ‘The Dubliners’, in 1914, helped establish his talent in the rapidly changing world.  
  Although far from home Joyce’s literary heart and works were set in his recollections of Dublin.  Characters are close resemblances of family and friends and indeed enemies.  His landmark work ‘Ulysses’, published in 1922, is set in the streets and alleyways of the city as it parallels Homer’s Odyssey in a variety of styles including its famed stream of consciousness. 
  His pen continued to produce classics of the order of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man’ and ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ together with several volumes of poetry and a play ‘The Exiles, in 1918.   
  On the 11th January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. The next day he fell into a coma. On the 13th after a brief period of lucidity in which he called for his wife and son he passed.  He was 58.

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  Roadhouse Blues - Morrison The...

  Bob Batchelor

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  Shrouded in mystery and the swirling psychedelic sounds of the Sixties, the Doors have captivated listeners across seven decades. Jim Morrison—haunted, beautiful, and ultimately doomed—transformed from rock god to American icon. With each successive generation of fans, the Doors become more popular and transcendent. Yet the band's full significance is buried beneath layers of mythology and folklore. 
   
   
   
  In Roadhouse Blues, Bob Batchelor presents an epic tale of one of rock's (and America's) most significant periods, as the Age of Aquarius gave way to a new age of mayhem, presidential misdeeds, and murder. Batchelor combines cultural history, musical and lyrical analysis, and a broad stroke of pop-culture mythos to give fresh perspective on a pivotal time. 
   
   
   
  Candid, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Roadhouse Blues is a biography of a man, a band, and an era that set the tone for the contemporary world. Beyond the mythology, the hype, and the mystique around Morrison's untimely death, this book takes listeners on a roller-coaster ride, examining the impact the band had on America as the nation veered from decadence to debauchery. 
   
   
   
  "We're gonna have a real good time!"

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  Beatitudes The: Oh the Joy

  Donna L. Young

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  The Beatitudes illustrate the ways of God. With genuine faith, true Christian disciples willingly embrace what many choose not to experience out of fear, conformity, or slothfulness. And in return for their desire to magnify God’s glory in a darkened world, God blesses them with His presence, peace, comfort, and encouragement, culminating in an abundance of heavenly joy! Oh, the joy that comes from living out the Beatitudes!

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