Book Description
Revised Second Edition of Life Skills 101 is a comprehensive reference guide to the basic knowledge and practical information young adults need to know to live successfully on their own. Subjects include financial know-how, job search sucess, interview, social and dining skills, workplace etiquette, consumer savvy, home hunting and lease negotiaions. The book also provides the reader with essential advice on maintaining their home, car, laundry, time and well-being.
Customer Reviews:
Very Cute for Teenagers.......2007-01-09
This product is very cute for teenagers that are about to go to college or get there first apartment.
Whether you are leaving home to live on your own.......2001-08-27
for the first time, or simply feel you have missed a few points along the way, this is the book for you. Tina Pestalozzi writes in a positive, matter of fact style about important matters such as financial planning, social skills, setting up a first apartment or home, and landing a job. I bought this book as a gift for a psychotherapy client who is planning on moving out of his family home for the first time. However in previewing it, I was reminded of some tasks I need to attend to in my own household: tightening up my long term financial plan and improving my organization skills, for example. This book is perfect for both young men and women who are starting off on their own. I can envision parents sitting down with their teenagers and going through the topics together. The book is set up perfectly for this kind of discussion. For those of you about to be on your own for the first time, enjoy! This is a time in your life you will always remember.
Master the challenge of living on your own.......2001-03-19
In Life Skills 101: A Practical Guide To Leaving Home And Living On Your Own, Tina Pestalozzi offers the reader a comprehensive, articulate, practical, sequential, and effective guide to the complete spectrum of skills required to successfully face and master the challenges of living on your own for the very first time. A complete spectrum of issues are addresses from consumer savvy, dining skills, and financial know-how, to job search success, money management, and workplace etiquette. Invaluable advice is offered on the necessities involved with maintaining a car, home, laundry, time, general well-being, and staying connected. Before leaving the parental home to strike out on your own, the most effectively beneficial preparation you can make is to give Tina Pestalozzi's Life Skills 101 a careful reading from first page to last.
Average customer rating:
- An important classic in adolescent psychotherapy
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Leaving Home: The Therapy of Disturbed Young People
Jay Haley
Manufacturer: TAYLOR & FRANCIS/ ROUTLEDGE
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ASIN: 0876308450 |
Book Description
Leaving Home presents a method of family therapy at the stage when children are leaving home. It includes a special classification of young people with problems, and tackles family orientation, the therapist support system, the first interview, apathy, troublemaking, a heroin problem, a chronic case, and resolved and unresolved issues.
Customer Reviews:
An important classic in adolescent psychotherapy.......1998-02-12
This book describes a strategic approach to dealing with very disturbed youth. Published in 1980, it remains a classic in the field.
Book Description
This book is the heart-to-heart talk every father desires to have with a son or daughter about to leave the nest. Just in Case I Can't Be There is a friendly chat around the campfire. In a manner that is wise, winsome, and practical, bestselling author and pastor Ron Mehl offers biblical counsel in thirty-four entertaining chapters. Dealing with diverse issues about faith and integrity ranging from choosing a mate to managing finances, the wisdom contained in these pages will offer encouragement, boost confidence, and provide guidance for years to come. This is the one book that no young person should be without.
Customer Reviews:
Invaluable.......2005-06-20
Written as counsel to a child leaving home, Ron Mehl's book is a superb collection of wisdom on a wide range of topics.
This is written from the perspective of a Christian father who wants to ensure that his thoughts on important matters are available to his children in case he cannot be. Mehl covers numerous examples of life's hard moments. This volume includes his thoughts on such topics as the following: the Bible, wisdom, humility, integrity, sin, prayer, and many others.
'Just in Case I Can't Be There' takes a look at the big picture from a spiritual perspective. It is a timeless commentary that any Christian parent would do well to provide to his/her children when they leave home, or before, or anytime. His wisdom is also valuable to parents and anyone else who is concerned about considering things from Christ's perspective. I highly recommend it.
God's wisdom & love.......2003-09-06
Ron once again does an unbelievable job of sharing what God's wisdom is for everyone, not just young adults leaving home for the first time. At the same time, in God's wisdom you can also see the extent of God's love for each of us.
Excellent book for the high school graduate.......2000-04-27
This book would make an excellent gift for a high school graduate. I bought it thinking it would have wisdom for throughout life, but it is aimed more at teens. Still, although it is different than I expected, still a great book.
Book Description
Why, after a childhood of emotional neglect and abuse, would a man move next door to the very parents who caused him pain? And how can a woman emerge from her mother's control in order to form healthy adult relationships?
Giving up family attachments that failed to meet our needs as children, David Celani argues, is the hardest psychological task an adult can undertake. Yet the reality is that many adults re-create the most painful aspects of their early relationships with their parents in new relationships with peers and romantic partners, frustrating themselves and discouraging them from leaving their family of origin. Leaving Home emphasizes the life-saving benefits of separating from destructive parents and offers a viable program for personal emancipation.
Celani's program is based on Object-Relations Theory, a branch of psychoanalysis developed by Scottish analyst Ronald Fairbairn. The human personality, Fairbairn argued, is not the result of inherited (and thus immutable) instincts. Rather, the developing child builds internal relational templates that guide his future interactions with others based on the conscious and unconscious memories he internalized from his primary relationship -- the one he experienced with his parents. While a child's attachment to parents who were neglectful or even abusive is not uncommon, there is a way out. Articulate, sensitive, and replete with examples from Celani's twenty-six years of clinical practice, this book outlines the practical steps to leaving home.
Customer Reviews:
review of Leaving Home.......2006-03-15
I found Leaving Home to be a very clear and helpful exploration of how difficult but necessary it is for adult children to separate from unhealthy family relationships. The book is relatively short and to the point without a lot of therapist/client conversations which I liked.
Still letting everything sink in.......2005-11-19
I've been in therapy for 4 years and it takes a long time to come to terms with things you never knew existed in your life until now. My whole life I've been pretty much either sad or depressed. Had overwhelming feelings of inferiority and never feeling loved. Except I could never identify the feelings or understand where they were coming from.
My therapist recommended this book, telling me that this book is really good at explaining neglect (emotional) and its affects. For me its done what 4 years of therapy could not do and that is really make me face and realize why I am the way I am. Its because of therapy that I can read this book and understand, but this book is kind of like the icing on the cake, just pulling everything together and making it very clear.
I think I'm still trying to understand the part in the book the previous reviewer was talking about which is the hopeful self and the wounded self, the hopeful self which needs to give up trying to get love from a parent that never was able to give love to you your whole life.
One thing I have to say is that although he does acknowledge that this book is not just about people physically living at home, but also using at a metaphor for people who are still emotionally tied or poeple who maybe have no contact w/ family but recreate this family w/ new relationships. I'm in the last category having felt that I had limited my relationship w/ my parent as much as possible and I don't harbor too much hope for love from her, but I feel as if I have recreated that relationship w/ other people. I wish he had talked more about this and not so much about people who are are tied to the home in more blatant, obvious ways such as living there or calling home everyday.
All I can say is that I read this book within one day. I've reread it twice. Its one of those books that you just need. Its clear and to the point. He doesn't make anything pretty for you and tells everything to you in a way that is like you are your own therapist and doctor.
Its a book that you will probably have the rest of your life.
I love how the previous reviewer said Just Get The Book.
I back her up 100 percent. Get it. It's like I can't even explain it, you just have to get the book and see for yourself and then you'll understand.
very helpful book.......2005-10-06
I devoured this book in one sitting. My situation seems to be exactly what he is addressing (although I do not physically live with my parents). If your parents have somehow refused to give you equal stature with them, and you are trying to work through how to be an adult, this book will help you alot. There are 2 children warring inside you. The first thinks it will all get better, and one day they will love you. (This is the same sort of thinking that sends abused women back to their abusers, the woman saying, "It will all be better now.") The other child in you is hurt and angry, and recalls quite clearly everything they ever did to hurt you. It wants revenge. Have you ever heard an adult child throwing verbal barbs at their parent? That's what was going on. It's ugly, and it will keep you tied to them, and stunted, until you can let go of it. Read the book.
Average customer rating:
- If you love Brookner, here's another one.
- To Be Swallowed
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- A Tale of Two Cities
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Leaving Home
Anita Brookner
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The Debut
ASIN: 1400095654
Release Date: 2007-02-13 |
Book Description
At twenty-six, Emma Roberts comes to the painful realization that if she is ever to become truly independent, she must leave her comfortable London flat and venture into the wider world. This entails not only breaking free from a claustrophobic relationship with her mother, but also shedding her inherited tendency toward melancholy. Once settled in a small Paris hotel, Emma befriends Fran?oise Desnoyers, a vibrant young woman who offers Emma a glimpse into a turbulent life so different from her own.
In this exquisite new novel of self-discovery, Booker Prize-winner Anita Brookner addresses one of the great dramas of our lives: growing up and leaving home.
Customer Reviews:
If you love Brookner, here's another one........2007-06-13
Since her Booker Prize for Hotel du Lac, Brookner has simply repeated her winning formula: lonely single Brit woman lives out her wretchedly monastic bookish life, in minute detail, page after page, making all the wrong, lonely sad choices (staying with the demanding mother; never leaving the family apartment, rejecting the suitor) so that you, the reader, can feel better by comparison. Read this on a rainy day. Or after you've been laid off. Or your boyfriend's left you. Brookner always makes you feel better, because you couldn't possibly be as miserable as her sad, lonely protagonists. When you're miserable, reading Brookner is like eating an entire bag of Mallomars. In bed. Alone. Except with, maybe, a cat.
To Be Swallowed.......2007-04-24
I don't always rely on an author's pedigree to suggest whether or not I should read a book, but marketers definitely know what they're doing when they put "Best Selling Author of..." or "Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of...", etc, on the front cover of a non-award-winning book by the same author. While perusing the New Books sections at my library with crooked neck, surveying the titles, the name Anita Brookner caught my eye. "Didn't she...?" I thought to myself, unable to finish the thought confidently. And then I saw it on the front cover, confirmation that I had indeed likely heard of her (though I had never read another book): "Booker Prize-Winning Author of Hotel du Lac." It could have been that recommendation, plus the personally attractive title Leaving Home, plus the prim and proper Portrait of a Young Woman in a Red Dress (Imre Goth, 1931) as the jacket art that all combined to convince me to spend a little time with Ms. Brookner. Overall, I'm glad I did.
The book is deceivingly thin, the text quite dense. Leaving Home is about Emma Roberts, a young twenty-something struggling less to to "leave" than to truly define "home." She lives in London with her lymphatic, widowed mother, whom she describes as "a woman so inactive, her days reserved for reading and thinking. I soon learned not to disturb either process." Emma herself is contrained to live a reserved and thoughtful life, always desiring to break through that shell, but never fully motivated to do so. She does defy the wishes of her mother and unlikeable uncle by leaving London to study in France. Her major of choice? Classical garden design. She explains, "I was in search of a symmetry, a place of excellence that I should recognize and somehow make my own. I had no way of attaining this condition myself, but I felt that here was a concept that inspired a standard of behavior far removed from the tame and unambitious customs that were my true inheritance."
While in France, Emma meets Francoise, a bright and energetic friend to contrast her own subdued demeanor. Their friendship, on the surface, is an unlikely one. Francoise frequently regales Emma with stories of her male conquests and displays little in the way of genuine concern for Emma's own inability to make intimate connections. Francoise is more curious than anything about Emma's remote personality. I enjoyed the many interactions between these two women, particularly the way in which Emma identifies their different roles in the friendship. She understands that she is to be patient and longsuffering with Francoise, that she is "safe," uncomplicated, no threat to the exuberant French woman (who, understandably, does not get on well with other women). Francoise, for her part, is meant to supply the adventures and irrepresible joie de vive that Emma herself can't muster. Emma becomes more aware of herself through this friendship, and though there is ultimately no significant change to her outlook on life, she make some interesting observations. "I deduced that my inclinations were fraternal rather than romantic, that I preferred this kind of stasis to the rapid conquests practised by those young women who had been liberated into behaving like men, and of whom Francoise was the perhaps the ideal representative."
I think Brookner does a wonderful job of creating a place in this book, or two places really - London and Paris. I know nothing of either of these two cities, but Emma make plenty of interesting connections between the two. "[In Paris] there was an almost palpable air of renewed enthusiasm in the steps of the passersby, in greetings to neighbours, to cafe owners, to waiters who appeared on the doorsteps of restaurants to sniff the air and extend the city's hospitality to their regular patrons. It was impossible to contemplate leaving all this for London, which I perceived as apocalyptic terms, grey, lowering, morose...." Not all is dandy in Paris, however. I enjoyed two of Emma's many reflections on the difficulty of French living: "But this was somehow part of living in France, doing the infinitesimal wrong thing. It was part of the bararism of being English" ~and~ "It's an eternal apprenticeship, trying to be like the French."
It is difficult to say if Emma really ever succeeds in "leaving home." She spends much of the book back and forth between London and Paris, each populated by an untraditional (yet completely fitting with her reality) version of a lover. It seems that the moment she's in Paris, she longs for London, but the moment she's in London, all she can think of is Paris. She concedes, "I was now rootless in two places." I think the least satisfying part of the book is that she doesn't undergo the kind of change I was hoping to see. It's Francoise, ironically, who undergoes the greatest transformation. Emma more or less excuses her lack of epiphany by closing the book with "Not everyone is born to fulfil a heroic role." While I had to raise a brow at that, I do like how the thought continues, "The only realistic ambition is to live in the present. And sometimes, quite often in fact, this is more than enough to keep one busy."
The Seattle Times wrote of Brookner's novel, The Rules of Engagement: "Every page has a felicity of wording that makes you want to...underline passages that you don't want to forget." I found that to be true of Leaving Home as well. Since it's a library copy, I kept with my post-its, but even then they littered the pages. If I had been more diligent, I would have placed different colored sticky notes at all the words I didn't know, and then looked them up in a dictionary. But I'm a mom, and sometimes it's a miracle that I find time to read books like this at all. I would like to go back through this some day, though, for I am certain to improve my vocabulary by leaps and bounds if I looked up all the words that were new to me.
Hopefully as a benefit to you, here are just a few passages I did mark:
*"Our minds, our feelings can be altered by the most random circumstance, symmetry and order reduced to a dull pattern by the display of the alternative, after which hard work will be needed to put the original values back in place."
*(regarding the book she is writing): "He probably regarded my work as the equivalent of embroidering a sampler...."
*(in reference to Paris): "...I arrived, smelt the coffee and the cigarettes, sidestepped the water thrown in an arc to sluice the morning pavements, bought my newspaper, and appreciated once more a lack of obligations...."
*"It takes a kind of genius to save one's own life."
*"We were as one, perhaps, in the knowledge that the future had failed us, that life had not proceeded in the straight line on which we had once relied. Such knowledge is not diserable, and is moreover impossible to impart to those untouched by it."
I'm not placing this novel in the "Chewed and Digested" category, because as I said, I was disappointed by the ending. I understand that in real life it's true that people rarely change as much as we'd like them to, but in fiction I demand a little more than that. Still, this is a fabulous book and an interesting tour through a tale of one woman and two cities.
And Going Nowhere.......2007-03-22
Classic Brookner. A reclusive, bookish, widowed mother. An introspective, timid, sheltered daughter. The little lives they lead enabled by lack of monetary worries and no real need to "do" much of anything save remain intropective. Emma wanders between Paris and London and falls into whatever situations / lodgings / friendships present themselves most conveniently to her. She's working on a book about classical garden design but remains oddly apart from anything lively and flourishing. She exists in a sort of gray vacuum. Boredom / ennui / lack of motivation is the theme. Even April in Paris can't jog Emma fully awake. Whatever. Reading Brookner is ultimately therapeutic. One's own little life always appears ever so much "more" after doing so. Thank you, Anita.
A Tale of Two Cities.......2007-03-06
The title and back cover of Anita Brookner's novel suggest that this is about the perennial adolescent drama of breaking away from parental influences and leaving the nest. But this is only a small part of it. Emma Roberts, though younger than most of Brookner's protagonists, is already in her mid-twenties, and her quest is more a search for home than the leaving of it. She begins by moving to Paris as a graduate student of landscape architecture, staying first of all in a horrible student hostel, then taking a room in a small hotel. Later, she buys her own flat in London, and alternates between the two cities, discovering more about herself, even if only by coming to accept what she is not. The one home that she really envies is a country house belonging to the mother of her vivacious friend Françoise -- although the world of the French haute bourgeoisie makes her feel unworthy by comparison.
I suspect that this novel is more autobiographical than most; it also has personal resonances for me, since I was working on my own art history thesis in Paris at a similar age. Although I am a man, while Brookner writes so tellingly about women, I treasure her insight into the female mind. It is true that she confines herself to women of a certain class and mental disposition but, for me, that only increases the sense of authenticity.
Not for nothing is Brookner's scholarly field the late 18th-century watershed between French classicism and romanticism. Her characters always brush shoulders with romance, but opt instead for the comfort and predictability of classic balance, a quality which is also reflected in the cool elegance of the author's prose. This novel is, in effect, an ANTI-romance, a book in which few things actually happen -- or sometimes happen only to be reversed a few chapters later. There is a situation late in the book in which Emma, who has left her own maternal home, suddenly finds herself in charge of Françoise's home and ailing mother, while the daughter appears to have broken away entirely. But a few pages further, the situation has been stood on its head once more.
Such delightful realignments within a basically static universe give me the same fascination as a Calder mobile: a limited range of elements moving in relation to each other, seen now in this configuration, now in that, but always maintaining an essential balance. This applies as much to the delicate rhythm of Brookner's prose as to the subtle push and pull of her emotional plotting. For those who, like me, take pleasure in her quiet aesthetic, her novels create a unique atmosphere: a closed world, perhaps, but one that is totally absorbing and not the least depressing. The title of this book notwithstanding, there is a special satisfaction in completing the emotional circle: coming home again.
Prescription for Sleep.......2006-12-06
Next time you have difficulty falling asleep don't reach for your dose of Ambien; instead read ten pages of Brookner's new novel. This soporific and tedious novel is guaranteed to give you a good night's sleep. Our heroine, Emma Roberts sets forth into the adult world leaving behind her reclusive mother in order to study the classical garden in Paris. Emma is about as interesting as her thesis topic. Not much happens in this novel. She gathers several acquaintences, Francoise a hip French girl whose mother wants to marry her off to a well to do fellow in order to keep their palatial home in the family; Michael a fellow student incapable of carrying on a conversation and Philip Hudson a successful doctor twice her age who can't get his act together several years after having been left by his wife. Emma bounces back and forth between her small London flat and her small Paris hotel room seemingly indecisive about what city she wishes to live in. Every character in this book is emotionally stilted and incapable of having a relationship with another human being. This is Brookner's point - to explore what goes on inside such people. But this is exactly what is the problem with the book. Such people don't make interesting characters. Emma cultivates the art of solitariness. She does everything possible to maintain emotional distance from people and push away those who attempt to get close. She prefers those acquaintances with whom she can retain an emotional chilliness. She does a lot of walking and thinking in this novel in an obsessive contemplation of her life and in how not to communicate with those she knows. She is disgustingly weak willed. Phillip muses, 'most of the people I meet are unconscious, properly anaesthetized, saves a lot of idle chatter'. Although Ms. Brookner can fashion beautiful sentences (thus the two stars) they lead nowhere. Please Ms. Brookner, next time you feel like putting your anaesthetized characters on the page, refrain and save some trees.
Book Description
The New York Times Bestseller.
"Dear readers: have I got a treat for you! Art Buchwald has written a book about his life . . . I guarantee 254 pages of pure pleasure." -- Ann Landers
"Strikingly honest . . . [Buchwald] grew up in orphanages and foster homes and never knew his mother who, shortly after he was born, entered a mental hospital and spent the rest of her life
there . . . . But instead of becoming a sociopath, Buchwald became a professional funnyman and a national figure whose columns skewer pretense and politicians . . . . Score one for humor as a means of survival." -- The Washington Post Book World
"
Customer Reviews:
A Classic Memoir from a Classy Man.......2006-06-13
O frabjous day when I found this out-of-print edition of Buchwald's 1993 "Leaving Home" in my public library. This laugh-aloud volume is a must-read for anyone like myself who has gone through the horrors of clinical depression and come through the better for it. A compelling storyteller, he recounts with candor and lack of embarrassment many tales that would make lesser folks shudder. Great anecdotes include his de-virginization, heroics & braggadocio as a Marine Corps air pilot, continual longing for women, his dreadful childhood in an orphanage for poor kids, the family secret that his mother was institutionalized after his birth for mental illness - he never met her - and his triumphant entrance into the publishing world via the Paris Herald Tribune. A truly brave model for those wishing to write their own memoirs.
Heart warming and beautiful.......1997-10-13
Mr. Buchwald's book is heartwarming. His narrative focuses on what is truly important in life: people's feelings. Whenever I need a lift, I open this book's pages. I remember what really counts to me, and who I really am. I strongly recommend this book to everyone.
Book Description
A wonderful blend of polemic, autobiography, travel adventure, and myth.
Customer Reviews:
Profound and touching.......2007-09-26
You wouldn't think it possible to say "this is Martin Prechtel's best book yet" because they are all so exceptional. If you are interested in current Mayan culture, indigenous peoples, love, life, Central American politics... this book is a tour de force. Martin Prechtel is one of the most truly amazing, talented, gifted, wise, insightful people you might ever hope to meet. On top of this, he is an extraordinarily gifted writer. Buy the book. Buy them all.
The One You Keep.......2006-11-16
TV, more than any other medium, has become America's storyteller. Sometimes that's not so bad; other times it presents shallow and false values to impressionable minds. When I'm hungry for ultimate truths, I've often found it best to go to other cultures and borrow their stories. One of the very, very best is "Stealing Benefacio's Roses." Within this story you will find your heart and be surprised at how strong and lovely it is. You will find your soul and come to know your true self. It's a story that works on the surface level of "Once upon a time . . ." yet also touches the deeper realms of mythology, spirituality, psychology, history and the many varieties of love. The writing is superb. Here's a quote: "Onto the floor I dropped to sleep, drifting on the tossing sea of my aching heart in a little canoe of Gustavo's friendship, into dreams filled with the unkillable perfume of Benefacio's roses." To understand and savor the last five words, buy the book and enjoy the revelations. This is the one you will keep to reread over time.
A suggestion.......2003-03-27
It might help readers to know that this book and "The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun" are written to be read aloud. When you do this the prose has a rhythm that is part of the meaning of the book.
The Great Story.......2003-03-27
"In much wisdom is much grief" says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, "and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow." There is much wisdom, grief, knowledge, sorrow, and finally joy in Martin Prechtel's new book. You don't have to read his previous three, *Secrets of the Talking Jaguar,* *Long Life, Honey in the Heart,* and *The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun* to understand and appreciate the message of *The Toe Bone and the Tooth* - but it helps.
This is a story about keeping the Great Story alive - "An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times: Leaving Home to Come Home."
It starts out with Martin's return to Guatamala in 1992 after many years in exile from his adopted country, where his village of Santiago Atitlan had been destroyed and 1800 of his friends and villagers slaughtered by American-backed death squads in the 1980s. He was picked up at the airport by three teenage boys (who had been small children when the devastation took place) and smuggled back to the village under a truckload of Mayan squashes. Along the way, the boys were eager to hear the story of the Toe Bone and Tooth that had been outlawed (as well as their language) by the various and many invaders of their country. Landmarks of the Story were everywhere (much as Australian Dreamtime stories are dependent on the land for the telling).
Martin was welcomed in Santiago Atitlan as the Shaman and healer that he was for many years. He had had a Mayan wife and three sons there (one son died) and his little family had barely escaped with their lives.
The ancient story of the Toe Bone and Tooth is inserted here - the Story of a mortal, Raggedy Boy, who fell in love with the Water Goddess, the story of her death after bearing him two corn children and being forgotten when her husband returned to the mortal world. When he did remember her through dreams, he had to re-member her, gathering her bones with the help of Coyote (who had the toe bone and tooth) and descending into the underworld to retrieve her heart. He was helped by an old magical couple. Re-membered, she became an ordinary woman and he became an ordinary man, and from them, all humans are descended.
The next few chapters chronicle the story of Martin's first arrival in Santiago Atitlan - how he'd been lost in a blizzard in his American homeland of Northern New Mexico in his youth, and how he was saved by a mare named Morningstar and an old Spanish lady who cured him of an almost fatal fever with bear grease and herbs. During his convalescence, he had 11 dreams of Santiago Atitlan and Nicolas Chiviliu Tacaxoy, who was to become his teacher, friend and mentor and who had called him through dreams for three years before he finally arrived in the village. Says Prechtel, "Though I was blond and born far away, we were the old and young generation of throwbacks from other times and layers of existence in which a humble dynasty of people in service to the remembrance of the Dismembered Goddess was continued from century to century."
Another chapter tells of Martin's defense of a young Mayan seminary student, Gaspar Culan, who was accused of worshipping idols because he had participated in an ancient Mayan sacred ceremony involving Holy Boy, whom the Catholic Church had branded as a devil but is actually a Christ figure. Martin (who speaks English, Spanish, and Mayan fluently) was to be Gaspar's advocate. Holy Boy had been called a Jew by the Church. Martin pointed out that they had dubbed the deity a Jew (and a devil) because Jews were at least considered to be human and therefore were subject to the 16th Century Inquisition. Mayans hadn't been considered people before that, so if their God was a Jew, the Inquisition could persecute and prosecute them. Martin won his case, and Culan was ordained as the first Mayan Catholic priest.
Several chapters are devoted to the Prechtel family's nothing-short-of-miraculous escape from Guatamala. Martin's teacher had ordered Martin to stay alive at all costs so that he might carry the seed of the story to the U.S. and preserve it for the Mayans whose history and culture had been outlawed.
When Martin got back to the U.S. and his old homeland in New Mexico, he and his family lived in poverty and difficulties for several years, but in Santa Fe he met a homeless couple who were like the old couple in the Story. Here, the narrative goes into the third person as the old couple tell Martin's story and do for him what he had done for countless people in his life - re-membered him for the holy amnesiacs (all of us). Martin's story mirrors the Great Story - "the story of ordinary people, extraordinarily in love and the story of the struggle of what it takes to be graced with such love is the story from which all humans are descended."
The author dedicates this book to the "deer-eyed daughter of the mountain, the mother of the great diversity" and to "all those peoples, plants and animals who have been and continue to be forcibly uprooted, rerouted, relocated, corralled, cut, branded, burnt out, burned down, burnt up, crushed, eradicated or driven from their homes in infinite diasporas of all types, to live where they may be unwelcome, while still trying to keep alive their seed capsules of cultural memory in hopes to regrow a home again. May their descendants be carved by the inherited grief of their ancestral loss to become feeders of what is holy in the ground, dedicated to something bigger than their need for justice and the pursuit of revenge."
This is a fantastic, exciting but true story, and in my opinion, this is a life-changing book. Read it!
Book Description
Parents have only one chance to raise their children. If they squander that chance, most will regret it the rest of their lives. As a financial counselor, my purpose is to help working mothers who want to stay home examine the decisions they must make, prepare for the inevitable changes that will come, and anticipate some of the problems that may result from their decision.' Outside influences are wreaking havoc on family values. Now is the time for mothers to find a way to spend more time with their children. Two-income families outweigh single-income families three to one. Home-based businesses are becoming the trend. Larry Burkett gives insightful, practical counsel on how to survive the cutback from two incomes to one.Larry thoughtfully deals with a wide range of topics. - Preparing to live on one income - Developing and living on a budget - Dealing with the lack of self-esteem - Coping with an unsupportive spouse - Creating income while staying at home - Being willing to make sacrifices - Reentering the workforceWomen who have made the transition from marketplace to home share honest, personal accounts of victories, setbacks, fears, and joys. If you desire to be a stay-at-home mom but fear financial disaster, Women Leaving the Workplace will help guide you in the right direction.
Customer Reviews:
It worked!.......2007-07-03
A good friend gave this book to me when I announced my pregnancy and my desires to stay at home once the baby was born...but was scared that we wouldn't be able to survive financially on one income. Within about 7-8 months... we were able to save a big cushion (at the advice of the author) ...we practiced living on one income (like the author suggested) all during my pregnancy...we started sacrificing financially immediately so we could get used to NOT having everything we wanted (material possessions or 'wants'). It worked!!! We were able to live off that saved income for one full year....still sacrificing many things...we didn't have cellphones, no cable, etc. etc. And again, I was scared I would have to go back to work when my son turned a year old...but God delivered. He provided another better-paying job for my husband, right when we needed it. So now, my son is almost 4 and I've been able to spend the entire time with him...and our finances are great!
It can be done. You just have to be able to really pick apart your budget snd see which things can be chopped out/or minimalized. Sell your car/trade it for a less expensive used car (pay cash in full from your trade so you don't have a car pymt)...or just have one family car -- yes, many families do this! no cellphones, no internet, no cable tv, garage sale/thrift store shopping, keeping our junky old car for 10 yrs instead of buying a new one!, taking mass transportation trains/buses to work -- We've done it all and it worked!! I was 9 months pregnant hobbling off to catch the train every morning and evening, but it was soo worth it to save the money we needed so I could stay home.
I was really encouraged by this book and it gave me some great advice to follow. When it comes down to it, it's like losing weight, you must sacrifice and change the way you live now....that's how you got out of hand in the first place (w/finances or weight)...it's an uncomfortable lifestyle change at the beginning, but then you get used to it and it's well worth it!
Good Perspective.......2003-11-07
I read this book while pregnant with my first child and it was helpful. Larry Burkett gives a good perspective on the pros/cons of being a stay-at-home parent. Initially, I wondered why a man would write this book since most stay-at-home parents are women. But once I began reading, I realized that he includes many true family stories as examples. Stories about faith AND practicality make this book authentic. He also includes information about personalities, including a personality test for both Mom and Dad. The budget section is gives a good basis for evaluating finances as well. Overall, a great read for parents/soon-to-be parents who are considering staying at home.
I was inspired.......2003-07-08
I enjoyed this book very much. I am considering becoming a stay at home mom. I bought this book and a non-christian book. They were both helpful. I was most inspired by reading what I considered to be God inspired Bible based information. I also like it that his stories were real and not intended to sugar coat the experience. I am making plans to resign my job soon with Gods direction. A bonus of this book to me is the emphasis on Godly managed finances.
Truly the Best! ..........2003-04-15
Opposed to others who view Larry Burkett in negative terms, I believe he has a lot to offer those who are "teachable" and willing to learn. That his is the only solution is not the point, but he speaks from a biblical viewpoint, and it is worth listening to.
In this book, he observes how outside influences are wreaking havoc on family values, and now is the time for mothers to find a way to spend more time with their children. Two-income families outweight single-income families, he says, three to one, although it might be higher at this writing. Home-based business are becoming the trend, and even so much more now, and Burkett gives insightful, practical counsel on how to survive the cutback from two incomes to one. This is "counsel," mind you, and if you are interested in counsel, this is the place to go.
Larry also discusses the four personality types, and whether or not you agree with this mode of character types, he explores how they relate to the home environment and includes personality tests in the Appendix for both husbands and wives.
This is a valuable resource guide for women who have made the transition from the marketplace to home, and they share honest, personal accounts of victories, setbacks, fears, and joys. If it is your desire to be a stay-at-home mother, but fear financial disaster, this book will help guide you in the right direction.
My family has taken counsel from Larry Burkett, and my wife did make the transition from marketplace to a "stay-at-home Mom," and she is enjoying every minute of it. Yes, she did have some of the same issues he explores, but now with our children, she can spend her every moment with them, instead of listening to others tell her how our children are growing.
A great book, and highly recommended!...
Not the best out there.......2002-02-11
I frankly don't know what the best book on this subject is but this can't be it. I love Larry Burkett but this book did not excite me. Don't get me wrong there are several chapters with great advice and very helpful testimonies but overall I was not very impressed. Sorry...
Average customer rating:
- Didn't work for me this time - maybe just my mood?
- A good light read
- The Price of Timelessness
- An accidental read......
- Lake Wobegon Favorites Gathered Here to Re-Read
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Leaving Home
Garrison Keillor
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Binding: Paperback
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Lake Wobegon Days
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Happy to Be Here
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The Book of Guys: Stories
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Love Me
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ASIN: 0140131604 |
Customer Reviews:
Didn't work for me this time - maybe just my mood? .......2007-03-06
I don't know whether I've changed or Keillor, but I didn't get as much pleasure out of this collection of Lake Wobegon vignettes as I have from other books. As ever with collections like this I'm probably more reflecting on the last few stories because I stretch my reading over several months. Maybe I've reached some sort of saturation point. There were some good moments, but rather than finding most of these stories whimsically touching I found them inconsequential. I didn't identify with any of the characters as much as I have in other books. I'm cautious about dismissing it - I wonder if in a different mood I would have liked it - but where I am now it didn't connect.
A good light read.......2006-03-17
I found this book at my school's library in the free book section. I had no idea what it was about or who the other was, but only grabbed it because it had the nicest cover in comparison to the other books. I was pleasantly surprised that I found a nice collection stories for the 'price.'
The stories all take place in Keillor's fictional, religious, small town in Minnesota, Lake Wobegon. The only things that I really know about Minnesota is that it's cold, the Twins play in the metrodome, and the state has a unique portrayal in Fargo (the movie). Leaving Home gave me a better picture of the state, and how strange and interesting the place and the people are.
It's not a very deep book, but its a fun read. It's perfect for when you're really bored and just want to read something. Some of the stories are actually quite funny. Some are so-so, whilst the others are forgettable. After finishing Leaving Home, I had a nice feeling the rest of the day. It's corny, I know, but that's how it made me feel. Check it out when you get that chance.
The Price of Timelessness.......2005-04-11
Garrison Keillor's literary devices have served him (and us) extremely well. Those who thought he was in danger of becoming a victim of his own success have been proved right. But we are victims, too.
As a fellow only a few years younger than Garrison Keillor, I, too, bemoan our culture's voracious appetite for "content." The universal availability of our culture cannot be criticized. That's like saying there is too much breathable air.
But, it has its consequences. We drown in words now. What used to be made precious by its limited availability in libraries is now everywhere. When we got what we wished and worked for - universal access to literature, art, music - we did not fully understand the scope of human ability to adapt to environment.
Something about "evil overlords" has been making its way around the internet recently. There are 100 top things a current-day evil overlord can do; here are the last two:
"99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size."
"100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access."
Drowning in thought, we lose the ability to think. Garrison left home, as he had to; we're all with him now.
An accidental read.............2004-11-05
As I was browsing through the library one day last month, after reading some Latin short stories, I came upon this book. I was intrigued by the cover at first. So I sat down in MY SEAT in the library. Then I began flipping through the pages. Man, was I surprised. I thought, in the beginning that these stories were fiction, but when I finished it, and read the last lines, my god, it's all true. The stories, not all, but most of it, hit you somewhere. It really does. It makes you say, "Hey, I know this.. This is...(name here-me?)." There's not much continuity in the chapters, like from TRUCKSTOP to DALE. Anyway, it makes the book greater. Again and again, the book is fantastic. Well, if you don't believe me, read the book. Then you'll realize that there is one more thing constant in the world... It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.....
Favorite Stories - Dale, The Ticket, Aprille, The Royal Family, uh, some more... Truckstop... hell, the whole book!!!!
Lake Wobegon Favorites Gathered Here to Re-Read.......2003-04-11
This has many favorites from PHC shows, including my favorite, "Pontoon Boat." Certainly, the original delivery of Keilor adds much to the presentation, but easily any of us who have heard these can still here his pace, and emphasis as we glide across the words. And, for those who haven't, this is still such entertaining tales.
"Hawaii" and the Usher competition is another fav. How about hand signals for such as "child removal" - "crossed arms and kicking motion?" Or "A Glass of Wendy" --- "if a horse got on the sauce himself, he might get mixed up, but usually they did hte job and if the sheriff came, all he found was a wagon and a horse with red eyes and bad breath."
Classic, good stuff to be cherished and shared.
Book Description
Each year, more than 1.5 million American families see their children off to their first year in college. It's a momentous day in the lives of high school graduates and their parents, and during this transitional time, parents' emotions include everything from anxiety to hope, guilt to pride, fear to relief.In She's Leaving Home, author Connie Jones chronicles two years in her own life, from the days when her daughter, Cary, fielded bids from more than a hundred colleges to her first year as a student at Smith College in Massachusetts. A story of spiritual journey and growth, the intimate, journal-like essays perfectly capture one mother's love and letting go of a daughter as she transforms into an adult.She's Leaving Home is a personal memoir that parents will relate to in the same way readers responded to Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Customer Reviews:
Book has a strong religious perspective.......2006-11-22
If you are not a Christian, just be aware that the book is very oriented to a Christian foundation. I am not making a judgment about that, simply highlighting the fact. Each chapter starts with a prayer to Jesus Christ. In none of the reviews I read was this mentioned. As someone of another faith, I was very taken aback when I received the book. It did not feel appropriate to my values and faith perspective and wish that this information had been clearly indicated before I purchased the book.
Great Seller!.......2006-08-25
Item arrived in condition as described.
Delivered on time.
No problems!
Must read for Moms with daughters.......2006-08-21
This is an amazing book which manages to capture and put into words the whole swirl of emotions that have been coursing through our house- and me! I have told all my friends with daughters that this is a must read! I was uplifted and comforted while reading and knew that we too would survive and celebrate our daughter's new life.
the perfect book for me. . ........2006-08-21
WOW!!! Even though I didn't discover this book until just weeks before my daughter left for college, it was wonderful to find that all our emotions normal. I felt as though I was reading my own story and wish I, too, had kept a journal. Fortunately, Connie Jones did precisely that for me! I think it's a must read, even if you are sending a son away because it's an emotional roller coaster no matter what your child's gender if you have a closre relationship. I have recommened this book to our high school guidance department and am going to share it with friends whose children are high school seniors this year! Thanks Connie Jones!!!! I will reread it before my son's senior year!
Great book for parents with kids going off to college.......2005-11-01
Connie Jones captures the feelings and emotions of all parents with kids going off to college. My wife and I found it amazingly similar to our own experience with our daughter that left for college 2 months ago. The book helped us to understand that most of what we are feeling is normal and shared by all parents. She also brings a great perspective of the bigger picture that all parents face in the journey from birth to college to death with our children. We really loved the book and recommend it to all parents with college age kids. Just a great book..............
Books:
- Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach (4th Edition)
- Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 4)
- Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living from the Inside Out: Every Woman's Guide to Real Beauty, Renewed Energy, and a Radiant Life
- Mark Twain: A Life
- Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany
- Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace
- Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets
- Navigating the Badlands: Thriving in the Decade of Radical Transformation
- New York, New York: Fifty Years of Art, Architecture, Photography, Film, and Video
- Object of His Desire (Indigo: Sensuous Love Stories)
Books Index
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