About this product: Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, and Robert Lowell describes them as written by "hardly a person at all ... but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines." Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known. Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures (In "Fever 103°" she writes, "I have been flickering, off, on, off on. / The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss."). Pipes froze, lights failed, and candles were unobtainable.
As if these physical privations weren't enough, Plath was out in the cold in another sense--her husband, Ted Hughes, had left her for another woman earlier that year. Despite all this (or perhaps because of it), the Ariel poems dazzle with their lyricism, their surprising and vivid imagery, and their wit. Rather than confining herself to her bleak surroundings, Plath draws from a wide array of experience. In "Berck-Plage," for instance, clouds are "electrifyingly-coloured sherbets, scooped from the freeze." In "The Night Dances," the poet stands crib-side, reveling in her son's own brand of do-si-do: "Such pure leaps and spirals--Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your small breath..."
Though at times they present the reader with hopelessness laid bare, these poems also teem with the brightest shards of a life, confounding those who merely look for the words of a gloomy, dispassionate suicide. Plath rose each morning in the final months of her life to "that still blue, almost eternal hour before the baby's cry" and left us these words like "axes/After whose stroke the wood rings..."
About this product: Coral, a young mermaid in the royal orchestra, can’t seem to do anything right. King Triton’s birthday bash is coming soon and she keeps messing up in rehearsal. With help from her new friend, Princess Ariel, Coral decides that perhaps playing the cymbals isn’t for her. Find out about Coral’s musical surprise in this exciting padded and glittered hardcover storybook.
About this product: Ariel Levy’s debut book is a bold, piercing examination of how twenty-first century American society perceives sex and women. Writing vividly, she brings her readers to places she visited to make her assessment; the elevator of Playboy Enterprises with women auditioning to be Playmates in the fiftieth anniversary edition, a Florida beach where sunbathers urge a woman to take off her bathing suit for the camera crew of Girls Gone Wild, a San Francisco Italian restaurant where a lesbian worries she’s not dressed up enough for her date, a CAKE party in New York, with women grinding each other’s pelvises in time to pulsating dance rhythms, and outside a juice bar in Oakland where a beautiful high school student shares disappointment at her experiences with sex.
Levy cleverly leads us to explore the role models women aspire to emulate. We are not pursuing the confident, self-determined, powerful, free ideal the women’s liberation movement would have dreamed for its daughters. Instead, our icons are porn stars and strippers and prostitutes. Paris Hilton and Jenna Jameson flaunt their successes in the pornography industry, and in doing so seem to earn our adulation.
Levy relates our embracing of this raunchy culture to unresolved tensions thirty years ago between the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement, and amongst feminists; joy at discovering the delights of our clitoris conflicting with disgust at pornography’s objectification of women. She creates a convincing argument by analyzing a diverse spectrum of material; presents a fascinating palette of interviews with revolutionary women’s libbers, nouvelle raunchy feminists, and everyday women and men. Detailed facts and recurring names are sometimes cumbersome, albeit worth ploughing through for the ‘a-ha moments’.
The reality that we model ourselves on images whose "individuality is erased" is harsh, yet Levy’s work is imbued with hope – hope that women can celebrate their uniqueness instead of their ‘hotness’, explore their sexuality as delight rather than consume sex as currency, and succeed professionally because of their brilliant minds and personalities, not because of their brilliant bodies.--Megan Jones Ady
About this product: In a remote and dusty corner of the world, forgotten for nearly three thousand years, lived an ancient community of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic—the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers, humble peddlers and rugged loggers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
In the 1950s, after the founding of the state of Israel, Yona and his family emigrated there with the mass exodus of 120,000 Jews from Iraq—one of the world's largest and least-known diasporas. Almost overnight, the Kurdish Jews' exotic culture and language were doomed to extinction. Yona, who became an esteemed professor at UCLA, dedicated his career to preserving his people's traditions. But to his first-generation American son Ariel, Yona was a reminder of a strange immigrant heritage on which he had turned his back—until he had a son of his own.
My Father's Paradise is Ariel Sabar's quest to reconcile present and past. As father and son travel together to today's postwar Iraq to find what's left of Yona's birthplace, Ariel brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, telling his family's story and discovering his own role in this sweeping saga. What he finds in the Sephardic Jews' millennia-long survival in Islamic lands is an improbable story of tolerance and hope.
Populated by Kurdish chieftains, trailblazing linguists, Arab nomads, devout believers—marvelous characters all— this intimate yet powerful book uncovers the vanished history of a place that is now at the very center of the world's attention.
About this product: Book Two in a Four Book Series. The wizards and the vampires have forged an alliance based on blood and magic, hoping to turn the tide of the war against the dark wizards. A few wizard-vampire bonds are as successful as Alain Magnier's and Orlando St. Clair's, but some are much less so, leading to arguments, resentment, and outright fights between the allies despite their mutual goals. Following his best friend Alain's example, Thierry Dumont determinedly forms a partnership with vampire Sebastien Noyer, despite the wizard's discomfort with being so close to a vampire – a man – so soon after his wife's death. But they find that desperation may be the key to forming a covenant that works: Thierry and Sebastien are almost immediately devoted to one another's safety. With new strength behind it, the Alliance's leaders move to announce its existence to the whole world, hoping to rally support against the dark wizards who threaten to destroy life as they know it. Struggling to find its way in the expanding war, the Alliance discovers that despite its advantages, the partnerships are affecting the balance of magical power in the world, which may be an even bigger threat than the war itself.
About this product: Five very different young women sent to the woods to learn about Icelandic horses, beautiful, fluffy, stocky horses with an uncanny ability to survive harsh climates and dangerous terrain. But this summer camping trip reveals their true power the horses and their young riders must travel centuries into the past to save the village of their ancestors. Uncovering amazing abilities, girls and horses work together to challenge a ruthless enemy, rescue a young princess, and realize their destinies include a prophecy only they can fulfill. Will the girls develop the trust and friendship necessary to battle together? Are the horses going to survive a battle plan sure to end in disaster? Can the young princess be saved before the evil chieftain destroys her? Can true love cross the distance of seven hundred years? Their very lives will depend on the magic only the Ice Horses can provide, and the courage hidden within their hearts.
A heartfelt masterpiece for making your relationship last--from the internationally renowned speakers, workshop leaders, and lifelong soul mates
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An instant classic in the field of love and relationships,. this deeply profound book by self-help gurus Ariel and. Shya Kane teaches you and your partner how to have a successful. relationship in three simple steps. By learning how. to let go, let be, and fully commit to the happiness that. can only be found within you and each other,. you will rediscover the passion that first brought. you together and the magic to keep you as a couple.
About this product: Ariel Schrag captures the American high school experience in all its awkward, questioning glory in Awkward and Definition, the first of three amazingly honest autobiographical graphic novels about her teenage years.
During the summer following each year at Berkeley High School in California, Ariel wrote a comic book about her experiences, which she would then photocopy and sell around school. Some friends thrilled to see themselves in the comic, others not so much, but everyone was interested.
Awkward chronicles Ariel's freshman year, and Definition, her sophomore year. With anxiety in excess and frustration to the fullest, Ariel dives in -- meeting new people, going to concerts, crushing out, loving chemistry, drawing comics, and obsessing over everything from glitter-laden girls to ionic charges and the constant pursuit of the number-one score.
Totally true and achingly honest, with every cringe-inducing encounter and exhilarating first moment documented -- Awkward and Definition is an unflinching look at what it's like being a teenage girl in America.
About this product: Instant gratification junkies seeking self-awareness are bound to find the title of Ariel and Shya Kane's book extremely attractive. And seductive it is: who wouldn't like to discover enlightenment in a moment? The key, explain the Kanes, is getting to the moment: being fully present in the here and now without trying to manipulate or change what you see. According to the Kanes, "all problems are a projection towards the future of possible realities based on the past." Consequently, inhibitors to living life directly include the inability to let go of one's history--to forgive people and events from the past--as well as resistance to the circumstances of one's life, and repetitive, mechanical thoughts and behaviors. The essence of transformation is "a non-judgmental witnessing, viewing, or seeing of yourself and how you interact with your life," which stands in direct opposition to therapy's approach of working on one's history to bring about change. Here, awareness of a prejudice or pattern of behavior is--simply and immediately--enough to transform it.
Principles of awareness, self-realization, and enlightenment, of course, are nothing new, and the Kanes are careful to point this out. Some readers may wonder, then, why the Kanes refer to themselves as pioneers of a "revolutionary new technology," and whether Instantaneous Transformation(R) really requires a trademark. Nevertheless, Working on Yourself Doesn't Work is warm, anecdotal, and conversationally written, and includes general suggestions and pointers for the reader rather than rules to memorize. All in all, it is a gentle and potentially powerful invitation to enter a new and liberating state of mind. --Svenja Soldovieri
About this product: WHEN ARIEL WAS A VERY YOUNG mermaid, King Triton banned all music beneath the sea. What happens when King Triton learns of his daughter’s secret music club? Find out in this full-color retelling of The Little Mermaid III: Ariel’s Beginning, releasing on DVD in summer 2008.
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