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Title: The Second Journey: The Road Back to Yourself
Author: Joan Anderson
ISBN: 9781401303396
Publisher: Hyperlion/April 29, 2008
Pages: 224/Hardcover
I then sat down with a book, I had started earlier. I had received this for review purposes. The Second Journey is written by Joan Anderson and is about unexpected changes, which somehow come out of nowhere. That stops us on suddenly from whatever path out lives has been taking at that moment. and we are left to take stock of it before it is too late. It is about choosing. Whether to stay in the same rot or move to another direction. Most of us dislike change and do nothing. In a way that is detrimental for our life. We need to try to rearrange our life so that it is more fulfilling.
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Nearly a decade after the debut of her bestselling, life-changing classic A Year by the Sea, Joan Anderson is busy. When she's not on the road helping groups of women search for their true selves, she's working on her latest book. And when she's "not working," she's taking care of her husband, her grown children, her grandchildren, and her ninety-one-year-old mother. Joan is stretched so thin from being all things to all people that she doesn't even realize how out of control her life has become. Ironically, she finds she needs to listen to her own advice more than anyone else does. It takes a serious intervention--from her best friends, her doctor, and her husband--before she finally wakes up.
The Second Journey chronicles Joan's quest to restore her own equilibrium and find herself again. Suffused with her characteristic humor and warmth, this is a book for any woman who wants to know how to awaken her own independent spirit and set herself on a new path. Joan shares her musings on love, marriage, growing older, family, aging parents, and spirituality as she casts a watchful eye on her own life and helps readers find peace and inspiration within their own lives. She offers reassurance that the best is yet to come, and empowers other women to come of age in the middle of life.
The call to a second journey usually commences when unexpected change is thrust upon you, causing a crisis of feelings so great that you are stopped in your tracks. Personal events such as a betrayal, a diagnosis of serious illness, the death of a loved one, loss of self-esteem, a fall from power are only a few of the catalysts. A woman caught thusly has no choice but to pause, isolate, even relocate until she can reevaluate the direction in which she should head. Should she stay the course or choose another path? The goal is to come of age in the middle of life rather than live out our days lacking purpose and energy. It's all about rearranging our lives in our own image. "
Today I got around reading The Black Island: The Adventures of Tintin written by Herge. I think I finished the whole series in my high school days and now I have forgotten the stories. It was a pleasure to go through one of my collections. I just picked this out randomly.
The Black Island is the seventh book in the series and the only one to be published in three major editions, in 1937, 1943 and 1966. With additions and deletions. Mine is a Magnet published, 1984 reprint of the 1966 edition which was translated into English and was published by Methuen.
Tintin is walking with Snowy in the countryside when he sees a sees a small plane make an emergency landing in a field. When he offers help to the pilot, he is shot at and lands up in a hospital. When the detectives tell him about a similar plane crash in Sussex, he gets away from the hospital to go there and is arrested in the train for robbery and mugging by Thomson and Thompson. He escapes from there and after much chasing finally follows the trail of counterfeit money to Scotland. Tintin is much intrigued about The Black Island after he hears from the natives that a monster lives on the island and those who travel there, never come back. But Tintin has to go there. He meets the good old villianish Dr. Müller and his cronie, Ivan. Also meets the deadly Gorilla, Ranko.
As usual after much fight, Tintin overcomes the enemies and all is well again. Ranko is sent to a zoo.
Snowy is shown to be a glutton here who is after bones, then he drinks Loch Lomond whisky! All the while being very loyal to Tintin and saves his life from the fire when the doctor's house is gutted.
It might not be the best but sure is one of the funniest Tintin adventures. I loved re-reading it.
Title: The Notebook
Author: Nicholas Sparks
ISBN: 0446605239
Publisher: Warner Vision Books/1997
Pages: 213
The Notebook was a gift from one of friends. I have read it before this. I re-read it again as I have not been able to concentrate on reading any other book although I have started quite a few.
This is not a book one can read and forget. The story has stayed with me. Still I wanted to re-read it. One reason might be, I am getting forgetful and scared that I might altogether lose my mind to nothing. One very frightening thought. I was standing in front of my bookshelf and simply reached for this,subconsciously.
The Notebook starts with Noah reflectiong on his life. At eighty years of age, he has a lot to think over. As he himself says, his life is not easy to explain, although he is an ordinary man with common enough life, who has loved with his heart and soul. And at the age of eighty, he waits for a miracle to happen.
Noah Calhoun(31) never could forget Allie whom he had met more than a decade earlier. Now at 29, Allie is engaged to be married. However, she too cannot get Noah out of her mind and comes to visit North Carolina, maybe searching for him. When they meet again, it is as if they had never been apart. They rediscover the love they had shared with each other as teenagers. They reach out for each other's soul and try to build a life with each other.
After forty plus years of enduring love, tragedy strikes in the form of Allie slowly losing her memory. In the beginning, it is by flashes. In her lucid moments, she pens notes for Noah, so that he can read those when she has finally lost it all. When she is diagonised with Alzheimer's, Noah is heart broken but does not give up hope. For him, she is still the Allie, he has always loved. When she finally loses it all to the degenerative disease, he is devastated but he moves to a home along with her. He gets a stroke and she has no memory about him. She even shouts at him when he visits her.
The Notebook is beautiful in the sense that Noah is prepared to fight against all odds, he has immense faith in his all enduring love for her. He keeps reading letters from her to him and his to her. And also reads out poetry to her. He is told by the doctors and nurses that she is not going to get any better. He does not believe that. On their forty-ninth wedding anniversary, he gets an unexpected gift. Did love triumph over tragedy? Love has the power to create miracles..the kind of love he had for her. And she had for him. We must not forget that Allie too loved him with all her being before she had Alzheimer's.
Re-reading it has made me understand that memory loss , however small, is a terrible thing. We just need to have patience with those near us, who have lapses of memory. My mom is getting forgetful, and so am I. I am not speculating Alzheimer's for either of us. Nonetheless, I am trying to understand it.
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This has been wonderfully reviewed by Sage.
Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??
And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….
Title: Twelve Red Herrings
