Book of Longing

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Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. The artwork mostly falls into two categories: unflattering self-portraits and naked ladies. As someone who has drawn the occasional unflattering self-portrait and a naked lady or two, I enjoyed them very much. If you’re a Cotton Mather-type, however, you may not. Miller and co-screenwriter Augusta Gore have adapted the 1994 novella The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by AS Byatt, and the resulting movie, for all its assumed worldliness and gnomic wisdom about the stories humans tell themselves, is almost childlike in comparison with other, darker and more adult Byatt feature adaptations, such as Philip Haas’s Angels and Insects from 1995, and Neil LaBute’s Possession in 2002. Tilda Swinton plays a nerdy and bespectacled academic called Alithia Binnie, who specialises in the field of narratology and gets to travel the world participating in literary conferences about the structure of narrative and how it is embedded in various cultures’ languages and mindsets. (There is of course something mythic about this globalised activity that shows the now forgotten influence of campus novelist David Lodge.) You are right, Sahara. There are no mists, or veils, or distances. But the mist is surrounded by a mist; and the veil is hidden behind a veil; and the distance continually draws away from the distance. That is why there are no mists, or veils, or distances. That is why it is called The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. It is here that The Traveler becomes The Wanderer, and The Wanderer becomes The One Who Is Lost, and The One Who Is Lost becomes The Seeker, and The Seeker becomes The Passionate Lover, and The Passionate Lover becomes The Beggar, and The Beggar becomes The Wretch, and The Wretch becomes The One Who Must Be Sacrificed, and The One Who Must Be Sacrificed becomes The Resurrected One and The Resurrected One becomes The One Who has Transcended The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Then for a thousand years, or the rest of the afternoon, such a One spins in the Blazing Fire of Changes, embodying all the transformations, one after the other, and then beginning again, and then ending again, 86,000 times a second. Then such a one, if he is a man, is ready to love the woman Sahara; and such a one, if she is a woman, is ready to love the man who can put into song The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Is it you who are waiting, Sahara, or is it I?”

Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen | Waterstones

After spending ten years in an Indian prison, Plato relishes the taste of fresh ginger. It is sharp, like the irony of being free in exile... Sitting in this garden, watching a hibiscus sun set over an emerald-green archipelago, leaves the couple unsettled. It forces them to swim in the solitary world of thoughts, preoccupations, and visions. Yet it doesn't feel lonely. I love books which have strong characters, ones who stay with you long after you've finished reading the book. Girija Prasad, Chanda Devi, Mary, Plato, Thapa, Apo, Ghazala and Bebo are such gratifying characters! I personally learnt a lot about the Andaman history, the Karen community, political uprisings in Burma, the colonials and the opium trade! References to Savarkar and Tilak won me! The geological details were so insightful! Reminded me of my summer vacations where I used to pore over books which had information about mountains, oceans and volcanoes, about the time I had almost decided to be a Geologist! Latitudes of Longing left me reeling, weighted under the sheer beauty of its prose. It swept me off my feet and left me breathless. And now is the time for my favorite, though there were a lot I liked, this one became my best THERE FOR YOU, I wanted to post a few lines of it but couldn't choose, so...

Sue Monk Kidd, the brilliant, beloved storyteller who gifted us with The Secret Life of Bees, has done it again. Her most recent treasure, The Book of Longings, is the first book that has literally taken my breath away. As I read, I had to close it and breathe deeply, again and again. Islands, intuitively speaking, made the perfect canvas for practicing the art of nomenclature. The heightened isolation would cause species to become endemic, sooner or later, demanding a unique name. The only exceptions to the rule were the British themselves. They had broken most laws of nature by leaving their island to multiply on others without losing any of their original characteristics--only their marbles.

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd - BookBrowse Reviews of The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd - BookBrowse

Dr Alithea Binnie, played by Tilda Swinton with a northern accent and school-marmish glasses, specialises in "narratology", which sounds like an academic field made up for The Da Vinci Code, but is actually the study of narrative structure. She is at a conference in Istanbul when she buys a stripy glass bottle from a shop in the Grand Bazaar, and then polishes it with her electric toothbrush in her hotel room. Before she can say "Aladdin", a djinn appears, as played by Idris Elba with pointed ears and furry legs – and once you see Elba towering over Swinton, with his rumbling voice and his sweet mixture of authority and self-doubt, you can't picture anyone else in the role. The woman speaks so softly, a breeze could fly off with her words, scattering them among the snow peaks of the Hindu Kush.... I’ve been a fan of Leonard Cohen for a very long time so it was no surprise that the Book of Longing, containing poetry, lyrics, and illustrations ruminating on love, sex, aging, spirituality and more that all display his customary wryness, really floated my boat. I’m not normally a particular fan of poetry – I’d much rather listen to a song – but the fact that it was Leonard’s words I was reading helped me to give it more of a chance, while the fact that each piece lasted no longer than my shattered attention span could manage certainly helped to make my lunch breaks much, much better.Their marriage unfolds with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, James and Simon, and their mother, Mary. Here, Ana’s pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to the Roman occupation of Israel, partially led by her charismatic adopted brother, Judas. She is sustained by her indomitable aunt Yaltha, who is searching for her long-lost daughter, as well as by other women, including her friend Tabitha, who is sold into slavery after she was raped, and Phasaelis, the shrewd wife of Herod Antipas. Ana’s impetuous streak occasionally invites danger. When one such foray forces her to flee Nazareth for her safety shortly before Jesus' public ministry begins, she makes her way with Yaltha to Alexandria, where she eventually finds refuge and purpose in unexpected surroundings. As ancient as some stories will feel, the longing will grow, it won’t die, it will give roots to lifetimes endured in hopelessly dejected enthusiasm of the Apo’s love for Ghazala, it will precede the unconditional acceptance.

The Book of Longings Quotes by Sue Monk Kidd - Goodreads The Book of Longings Quotes by Sue Monk Kidd - Goodreads

Snow Desert, is set in the Karakoram Mountains, in a remote village, and follows the story of Apo, the ’Grandfather of the entire village, a man who ’feels that…the past is real and the present is a half-baked memory Sometimes, the past is an incomprehensible beast and the future its unrealized shadow. He spends his time trying to preserve, share the myths, legends. The history of the Andamans, World War II, the colonials, the political struggle in Burma, the opium trade and so much is covered in this book. I'm all for variations on a theme, but in Book of Longing Cohen beats his readers to a bloody pulp with repetition, turning the pale willow wand of romantic and sexual love into a knobby oak cudgel and covering it in the blood and brains of his victims. By the end of this volume we know three things about the author: he was a bad Zen monk because all he thought about was women; he loves sex as much or more than life itself; and because he can't grasp the subtleties of meter he resorts to a childish sing-song rhyme that makes already stale subject matter unfit for the mice and flies circling the lower depths of this bare cabinet of a book of poems. It didn't matter if his eyes were open or closed, lucid visions rose before him. The constellations came swirling down from the absolute darkness of space into the twilit skies. The Poet witnessed the river of stars flood into the prison's passage, dissolving chains and fetters with its brilliance. He saw the constellations reimagine themselves to fit the emptiness within. The stars lived and breathed inside him. They replaced the cells within and without. For it was him they sought. The mental health picture of someone trying to cope with life and family in a secluded island. I feel like the character was kept imprisoned by the author as opposed to the many facets of the island life as presented in the first one third of the book.Leonard Cohen’s ‘Book of Longing.’ Written by the famous folk singer and poet, is a unique and artful collection of work.