Water flows through literature. There is the recurring motif of yearning for rain as the farmer looks at his sun-baked field and his hungry family. There is the intimate relationship of an individual or a community with a particular river or sea. But water in literature is also as a persona larger than a single entity. There is the beneficent life-giver, the nurturing mother-river in stories of fishing villages, and people who live off the sea or river as others live off the forest. To them, the water body that is an intimate part of their lives is not only the wise and generous mother, but also a goddess — complete with unpredictable whims and tantrums. She has to be propitiated with ritual, prayer, respect, fear, sometimes a life or two. But she also receives, without complaint, the burden of human imagination and the words and actions that spring out of it. Whether it is the water-myths peopled by both benevolent and malignant creatures, or the waterside ambience of human love (the season of amorous behaviour always rainy), or the ashes of a human body, water is big enough, and complex enough, to take it all in its flow. Lives in myth and literature emerge half-formed or fully formed from water. They also, at the end of their lives, often cross a body of water to the afterlife.
- Second Thoughts Githa Hariharan
Dragon slaying no longer has to be interrupted by blogging ... A dragon at their feet, an iron castle in their sight What elemental dragon are you?
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Book clubs discuss more than literature
The book is about the launching of homemade rockets by poor West Virginia boys in the 1960s. But like any story about the human experience, it's also a basis for conversation about larger issues. In Hickam's case, a central theme involves the father-son relationship.
I sometimes tell our children that if they go through life expecting certain actions on the part of others, they'll set themselves up for disappointment; it's not possible for us to control how others behave. However, we do have control over our own actions. Through his example, Hickam taught that lesson as well as anybody.
The image of water is at both beginning and end of the lifecycle in the universal memory. The sea means water, the giver of life and livelihood, as well as the end of life, and the world, as we know it. The sea takes away a life or an age ...
• Rocket Boys, on which the film October Sky is based [I’ve gotten several questions about how to get into the technical book writing business based on my posting from March 9th. This ended up being a bigger discussion than I expected. So I thought I’d blog it in the next three entries. The Book Writing Business, part 1 ; What is the meaning of the rise in popularity of philosophy? Julian Baggini thinks he has the answers The big issues ]
• · A large number of publishers will be heading to the offices of Trident Media Group over the next few days for confidential reads of a 56-page book proposal from Sharon Rocha, the late Laci Peterson's mother. According to a source familiar with proposal, it includes personal information between a mother and daughter that hasn't been revealed before. New Peterson Deal in the Making--And More ; Book Trade UK Honors Itself
• · · Only Stalin, Hitler, and Kirkus Reviews could hate a book this good The Blurb Project; The story of Frankenstein, with its enduring questions of science and religion still relevant Learning from literature
• · · · The LA Times files a long piece of Walter Mosley as the city prepares to begin its One Book One City program featuring his LITTLE SCARLET Easy writer: Like his protagonist Rawlins, Mosley is wary of labels; Shouldn't You Know What Publisher Liquid Lunch Knows? Subsequent to our initial report based on Franklin Electronic Publishing's disclosure to the SEC of the sale of their stock in e-reading software company Mobipocket to Amazon, Lunch has confirmed via Amazon spokesperson Patty Smith that the company has acquired Mobipocket outright. As to what Amazon might do with the technology and its potential relationship to their purchase of BookSurge, Smith noted the company is "maddeningly consistent" in "never speculating on what might happen." Confirmed: Mobi Is In Amazon's Pocket
• · · · · Fiction Blog Leads to Book Contract ;Self-Styled Teacher Doing It for the Love of Literature
• · · · · · Good books help make a civil society, however, what happens when good books dry up? Poetry is at the heart of literature and an understanding of poetry will help us understand how other literary forms work Why literature matters ; How a welter of stories emerges from a metaphor of water The Shores Of Literature