About this product: Anna Gagliano Gordon, who died in 2002 at the age of 94, was the personification of the culture of the mid-century American Catholic working class. A hard-working single mother – Mary Gordon's father died when she was still a girl – she managed to hold down a job, dress smartly, raise her daughter on her own, and worship the beauty in life with a surprising joie de vivre.
Bringing her exceptional talent for detail, character, and scene to bear on the life of her mother, Gordon gives us a deeply felt and powerfully moving book about their relationship. Toward the end of Anna's life, we watch the author care for her mother in old age, beginning to reclaim from memory the vivid woman who helped her sail forth into her own life.
About this product: In this triumphant return to nonfiction after two critically acclaimed works of fiction, Mary Gordon gives us a rich, bittersweet memoir about her mother, their relationship and her role as daughter.
Anna Gagliano Gordon, who died in 2002 at the age of 94, lived a life colored by large forces: immigration, world war, the Great Depression, and physical affliction--she contracted Polio at the age of 3 and experienced the ravages of both alcoholism and dementia. A hard-working single mother--Gordon’s father died when she was still a girl--Anna was the personification of the culture of the mid-century American Catholic working class. Yet, even in the face of these setbacks, she managed hold down a job, to dress smartly and raise her daughter on her own, and though she was never a fan of the arts which so attracted Mary, she worshiped the beauty in life in her own way, with a surprising joie de vivre and a beautiful singing voice.
Gordon writes about Anna in all of her roles: sister, breadwinner, woman of faith and single mother. We discover Anna’s wry and often biting humor, her appreciation of life’s simple pleasures, her courage in breaking out of the narrow confines of her birth. Toward the end of Anna’s life, we watch the author take on all the burdens and blessings of caring for her mother in old age, beginning even then to reclaim from memory the vivid woman who helped her sail forth into her own life.
Bringing her exceptional talent for detail, character, and scene to bear on the life of her mother, Gordon gives us a deeply felt and powerfully moving book.
About this product: Who couldn't use a little encouragement from time to time? In this delightful collection of stories and life lessons, you'll discover how you can experience hope, joy, and peace even in life's most trying times. In chapters such as "When the Fountain of Youth Has Rusted" and "I Know I'm Lost, but the Scenery Is Spectacular," you'll find the encouragement you need to shoo away any buzzards and face life's difficulties with the security of knowing that God is in control. By mixing humor with poignant truths and practical methods for finding hope when life gets tough, Stan Toler will have you boldly laughing in the face of difficult circumstances.
About this product: Highlighted by thousands of illustrations, photographs, and maps, a continent-by-continent tour of the nations of the world provides a close-up look at each country's history, politics, economics, religion, culture, and daily life.
About this product: In the harsh, forsaken landscape of Western Tibet, a holy mountain rises up, the legendary center of the world. Sacred to Hindus and Buddhists alike, Mount Kailash had been in professor and popular writer Robert Thurman's mind for some time when he finally decided to organize a group and go--across the Chinese border, where he has always been persona non grata. Writer Tad Wise decides to tag along and put the adventures on paper. While recording Thurman's dharma lectures, Wise comes face to face with the magic of the mountain, its myths and its people, and haltingly transforms from cynical skeptic to tear-streaked pilgrim. Wise's writing leans toward the quirky, pushing ordinary sentences to their lapidary limits, and Thurman, as usual, tosses off tantalizing Buddhisms like "mind-body bubble" and "supreme orgasm of bliss-void-indivisible." For a book that's effectively about walking 32 miles over rubble around a remote peak, Circling the Sacred Mountain succeeds in drawing you into a mandala of swirling ideas and experiences, nudging you toward your own realizations. --Brian Bruya
About this product: An inspiring memoir about a grown daughter's coming to terms with her mother's life - a life of physical affliction and one that is historically significant in its context. Absorbing and candid.
About this product: In 15 short stories, Amanda Davis takes the raw emotions of love and loss and throws them into surreal perspective. Sometimes the stories are explicitly fantastic and dreamlike, like the romance with the "boy who chased freight trains" in "Chase." Sometimes the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred--the high school protagonist of "Faith or Tips for the Successful Young Lady," for example, has a "fat girl" companion that only she can see, a mocking chorus that forces her to recall the traumatic incident that led to her suicide attempt. And sometimes the surrealism comes from slowing a "realistic" moment down to closely examine its various perceptual components, as in "The Very Moment They're About," which captures two adolescents just before their kiss. Or in this scene from the title story, when a jilted lover jumps off the Williamsburg Bridge:
Later it is the air she will remember. The sharpness of it as she inhaled: crisp like paper. She could have been breathing paper. There was a rush of sound, like a train passing, or maybe like she was the train. Thick colors swirled and time became molasses as her legs slowly tumbled around behind her and then over her head. She thought that it was like being inside a spin-art toy. She was the blob of paint spreading thinly every which way, spindling in all directions, pulled flat, slow and hard. That was how she tumbled and then time caught up with itself and she dropped.
That intricate dissection of a moment's sensual and emotional register comes through in even the most naturalistic of these stories ("Red Lights Like Laughter," "The Visit"). Circling the Drain reveals Amanda Davis as a skilled crafter of character and tone, and marks her as an author to watch for some time to come. --Ron Hogan
About this product: In Knee to Knee, Eye to Eye Cole addresses text, organization, management, assessment, and the tremendous amount of learning that occurs through the powerful, engaging combination of books and talk.
About this product: CIRCLING THE DATE is a cautionary tale about a commitment-phobic, sexually-compulsive, thirty-year-old manboy and the equally neurotic woman desperate to marry him. It is a peek at psyches fractured by absent and distracted parents; an ethos for a generation of adults woefully unprepared for the gift of intimacy. CIRCLING THE DATE is literary commercial fiction that is companionable and humane, lighthearted and...surprisingly touching.
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