5 books that helped me find success
The world can be overwhelming, but historic books tell us that one person can make a difference.
The sharing of history is a way of encouraging mutual respect and thus creating a society which is not frightened by differences.
I have read many stories that are riveting, inspirational and moving. Most people have a more difficult journey that mine has been.
We all have a story, worth sharing, worth reading, worth living...
Reading helped me to improve relationship, to share history and to value cultures.
Reading taught me never to judge people and I realized most people who are malicious act out of ignorance. It gave me compasion.
Mans's inhumanity to man is an awful thing. Jealousy, rage, lust, gluttony are all parts of most of us.
Exploring our more negative qualities through reading can help us to accept our whole selves.
A writer, who has travelled far and wide and has immersed himself in other cultures ...
...can draw on a wealth of accurate detail and information to broaden our horizons.
By reading we can discover that people from all over the world share the same dreams.
Reading about someone else's life makes me contemplate about my own. Do I think this was a short pitiful life because it did not parallel my own?
When I close the book I realize the love she received was wide and deep, the dreams, the visions she had...
...the journeys she took made her life as compelling, as rich, as valuable and probably more blessed as mine.
I realized that it is my own misfortune if I do not know in my long life what the heroine in the book knew every day of her short one.
I get emotionally attached to characters, but I prefer books with multiple focuses, no one thing is more important the any other.
No viewpoint is more important that any other. And heroe's subjectivity doesn't govern the feel of the resolution.
Every story about people in our modern times also looks at communication, at the problems of technology, in how we get technology to bond to nature, without exploiting it or injuring it, as it presently does.
Many stories are associated with the irrational, with dreams, intuition, instinct, emotion. It is a level we compute at all the time, but a level that is strongly denied by conventional science.
Reading makes this level accessible to everyone. A novel where the main character can save the day, or the world..
open a door for us...give us hope...
One day it may be us...
When I was a little girl
sitting next to fire
on a cold
dark
winter night
my Grandmum handed me
an old book
of ancient Slovak legends.
"Think of your life as a journey,"
she said.
From the time I started to read
I knew
a journey is too slow
whereas
you can make your own adventure.
When I moved to Australia
and left my native country,
behind
I was lost,
colours so sharp
sunlight pours fire
into the kaleidoskope
hot, fluffy sand
with dry
salty crust on top.
My father,
I met for the first time,
handed me a new book
by Adriane Wildencamp
called
'Seasons of Love
in Australia
and Germany.'
Rocks meeting water
sand meeting grass
blue meeting blue
on the horizon
human meeting perfection
holding the special
book
close to my heart.
"Only love is stronger than pain.
And when the pain is immeasurable,
the healing love needs
to be infinitive
and the rest is tears."
I repeated the words
of the heroine
and I knew what my Father
wanted to say.
'The English Patient'
by Michael Ondaatje
was the book
I gave
to my Father.
Just like the main character,
he was born in one place
choosing to live elsewhere,
fighting to get back
all his life.
Giving birth and dying
need time and space
a rhythm that goes
in waves
surrender
and they carry
you
ashore.
'River Boy'
by Tim Bowler
was the first book
I have read to my son,
who loved
the dark and secret river,
a river not yet tamed,
full of strange time,
without realizing
is for ever
flowing by us
to the sea.
When my Father
was dying,
he wanted me
to read
'The Spotted Skin'
by Rowena Ivers
one passage
especially:
"As the early dragonflies
of the dry
chase each other,
Cressida catches one.
She cannot feel a thing.
As it attempts to escape,
there is not escape,
she tells it,
and crushes it."
We knew that everything
around us
would pass
away
some day,
trees would wither,
rocks would crumble,
and even the stream
would
one day
dry up.
Yet these things
felt permanent
and that feeling
gave them comfort
now.
My Father told me
to take one day
at a time.
After his death
I felt emptiness,
pain
and love,
not angry pain,
not reproachful,
not desperate,
pain and love,
as in birth,
as in death,
in the beginning
and at the end,
there is only love,
all that matters is that our heart is open.
Becoming a new Australian
I realized
my adoptive land
has bloody history.
Tasmania
is a classic case
of how the white colonisers
came along
and exterminated
just about every indigenous member
of the island,
destroying
wisdom
from the Earth.
There is so much
to be learnt
from Aborigines
the world's
oldest continuous
living tradition.
'My Place'
by Sally Morgan
helped me
to understand
the value assigned
to every person
in traditional
Aboriginal society
regardless of sex or age.
5 Books that helped me find success,
end of summer,
early autumn,
warm afternoon sun of mid-life,
season of fullness and harvest.
Grandmum was right,
life is a journey.
I am coming home
to myself.
I am worthy
not because of 'how much I achieve,'
I am worthy because I am.
The English Patient
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Seasons of love in Australia and Germany
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Amazon Price: $21.00
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River Boy
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Amazon Price: $2.73
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Amazon Price: $5.00
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Rowena Ivers
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Amazon Price: $122.00
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Sally Morgan
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Amazon Price: $6.19
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Amazon Price: $6.56
List Price: $15.50 |
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