The Publisher Says: In a time of great division and discord, our capacity to listen deeply and with compassion is paramount tReal Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In a time of great division and discord, our capacity to listen deeply and with compassion is paramount to solving pressing issues—across the realms of global politics, interpersonal relationships, and our own hearts and minds.
In How to Listen, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh demonstrates how deep listening is a fundamental building block of good communication. But perhaps more fundamentally, listening is central to our practice, a basic ingredient to strengthen our capacity for mindfulness, concentration, insight, and compassion. Learning how to listen with equanimity to life itself, we generate insight into the true nature of our deep connection to all things. And from this place of understanding—when we know that we aren’t separate—our capacity to listen deepens even further.
With clear and gentle guidance from Thich Nhat Hanh, we learn how truly listening—to ourselves, to each other, to Mother Earth, and to the many “bells of mindfulness” that are available to us in each moment—is the foundation of our practice, an expression of love, and a solution to our deepest and most urgent large-scale conflicts.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself," said Tolstoy, and that truth has never faded or lost relevance.
When confronted by disagreement, wisdom says to listen first, then react. As a goal, that is very admirable, but largely unattainable, I hear everyone saying. I said it, too. Truth is it's hard, it's challenging, and you will fail in practicing it.
Zen practices are the butt of many jokes in the Western overculture, unsurprisingly. Google "zen koan" and imagine being presented with it sans context or preparation for the simple existence of a context where this is not intended to be humorous. Mindfulness is not natural to homo sapiens occidentalis. We're fed a constant media diet of covetousness, triumphalism, and valorized ignorance. These are the antithesis of mindfulness, its very opposite both in worldview and in the practices promoted therein.
The author was a vocal peace and mindfulness advocate most of his near-century of life. This book, charmingly illustrated by Jason DeAntonis, offers up practical steps towards a practice of mindful listening. In reading the ideas I was forcefully struck by the way they could be read: I've been at the mindfulness game for quite a while now, and began my own journey from a more or less Buddhist perspective. (My sexual preference has always been "more," so Buddhism, with its emphasis on renunciation, and I were destined to part.) These pages are full of advice for practices that can be read and applied by the novice through to the student of Buddhism. No one is left out of the benefits because there is no presumption of an expert audience.
So I hope, like the departed author, that you'll start a journey to becoming a real listener by reading and heeding his words. From the 1975 publication of The Miracle of Mindfulness through to this posthumous publication (he died in 2022), he's been making steady inroads into US and Western culture with his interlocking message of listening as a practice, and mindful existence in the modern world, in place of mere passivity and disengagement.
There is no better way to transform one's experience of the world than to be fully present in it. Starting here is not a bad idea at all....more
The Publisher Says: Bec Robertson is starting over. She's broke, recovering from breast cancer, and lives in a PEARL RULE #003 @ 85%
Rating: 2* of five
The Publisher Says: Bec Robertson is starting over. She's broke, recovering from breast cancer, and lives in a rundown cabin in northern New Mexico. Her husband is deployed in Afghanistan as a chaplain, and can't stand to touch her.
The people she meets, her villagers, are batty if not wacko, and her hawk Amelia can't keep up with the mice. She lives next door to a dubious veterans' center. As if she hasn't invented enough problems for herself, she has a love/hate connection with an unstable Marine. Being Bec is tough, but survival is in her bones—and she lives under the numinous skies of New Mexico.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: That is not a typo above. Nor am I a complete nutter. I threw in the towel at that late, late date because it was clear that Bec was a man-centered fantasy girl, one whose marriage being sexless was hurtful to her so she starts a sexual relationship with a wholly inappropriate man. One whose damaged mental health should have warned her off ANY intimacy. More especially since she is involved in the care home he is living within.
CWs for past rape, PTSD, breast cancer used as a Plot Point only.
Merged review:
PEARL RULE #003 @ 85%
Rating: 2* of five
The Publisher Says: Bec Robertson is starting over. She's broke, recovering from breast cancer, and lives in a rundown cabin in northern New Mexico. Her husband is deployed in Afghanistan as a chaplain, and can't stand to touch her.
The people she meets, her villagers, are batty if not wacko, and her hawk Amelia can't keep up with the mice. She lives next door to a dubious veterans' center. As if she hasn't invented enough problems for herself, she has a love/hate connection with an unstable Marine. Being Bec is tough, but survival is in her bones—and she lives under the numinous skies of New Mexico.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: That is not a typo above. Nor am I a complete nutter. I threw in the towel at that late, late date because it was clear that Bec was a man-centered fantasy girl, one whose marriage being sexless was hurtful to her so she starts a sexual relationship with a wholly inappropriate man. One whose damaged mental health should have warned her off ANY intimacy. More especially since she is involved in the care home he is living within.
CWs for past rape, PTSD, breast cancer used as a Plot Point only....more
The Publisher Says: Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history. Expect the unexpected . . .
A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions—a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her—because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth.
As the net closes in, we discover a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I'm a man. An old, white one.
I'm sorry to disappoint those who now expect me to whine about "ruining Shakespeare" and "making up feminism ahistorically" and suchlike nonsense, but I myownself think this novella is telling not only a cracking good story, but bringing a long-ignored reality to light. Women, modern, medieval, or ancient, were and are not passive, pointless victims or tiresome termagants. They are, were, and always have been people with agency, possessed of skills and ideas that motivate and support changing their world.
Every story that supports this reality, presents it without a dingy scum of patriarchal judgment of those women for exercising their power, gets my enthusiastic support. Queen Macbeth is no exception.
Riffing on the great stories of history and mythology is currently very much à la mode. The trend picked up steam most recently after The Song of Achilles appeared early in the teens. It was never exactly ignored, after all...John Erskine wrote Arthurian retelling Tristan and Isolde: Restoring Palamede in 1932; Thorne Smith wrote modern satires with horny, drunken Greek Gods until his death in 1934; Tolkien remixed Anglo-Saxon epic poetry to some modest success in the 1950s. The urge to put one's own stamp onto the greatest stories of the culture is never absent. Imagine all the lost Iliads wrought by bards before writing was reinvented! (Side note: why has Jodi Taylor not sent the disaster magnets back to record some of those?) The great plays of Athens's Golden Age retold the myths, too, and that was six hundred years before the common era is reckoned to have begun.
So a Scottish crime writer revisiting Lady Macbeth's truly awful characterization at Shakespeare's hands is unsurprising. Make that Scot an outspoken feminist lesbian and, well, go figure that she would find this retelling irresistible. I wish I'd loved it instead of simply, and inevitably, admiring it. Using her widely lauded storytelling chops to re-center the Bechdel-test failing character as a powerful ruler in her own right is delightful; the way she contextualizes her choice in her Author's note made me almost giddy with anticipation.
Then came reality swinging her mace of office.
Choosing to use Scottish words...well, okay, you're Scottish, the story's Scottish, but the huge majority of the world's readers have never seen, and don't care to see, those words. Climbing the hill with a Glossary is fine; putting said glossary at the end of an ebook is a worse idea than in a tree book. In the ebook, a hyperlink to the entry with that word is possible; links that take you there and back are possible; neither was made. I did not use the glossary once during the read and lost not only fine nuance but faith that I was being considered as a guest in this world. It feels very much like the divisive, arrogant attitude regrettably common...in every sense of the word...in internet discourse about cultural identity: "I don't owe you an explanation of my culture/language/art/thing under discussion!"
Then you do nor care if I, or any "outsider," understand you? Okay. Then you'll mostly get ignored.
Author McDermid and/or publisher(s) just put a hard limit on how many people will slug it out with unhelpfully untranslated Scottishness. The tree book might be a better choice than an ebook for those who can't or won't simply skip past wotds they don't know.
Pity, that; Gruoch as reimagined is a kickass character. Her struggles matter....more
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