A Few Lines from A Few Good Reads

Sunday, Aug 31, 2008 7:53 AM

Posted By CoCo

A select few of the Good Finds that I’ve had the fortune to run across in the last few months by way of research, conferences, gifts, and even thrift store finds include:

When You’re Falling Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living Mark Matousek

“Survival, I came to understand, has less to do with cheating death than with living as brilliantly as possible” pg 10

The 1000 Journals Project by Some Guy

“This book is dedicated to everyone who’s ever said, “I’m not creative.” pg. 1

Keeping A Journal by Trudi Strain Trueit

“A journal can bring you closer to family and friends because when you are writing about people in your life, you are taking the time to reflect on your relationships.” pg. 27

When I Was A Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection

ed. Norman R. Yetman

“…I nursed for her and one day I was playin’ with de baby. It hurts its li’l hand and commenced to cry, and she whirl on me, pick up a hot iron and run it all down my arm and hand.” Delia Garlic, Age when interviewed 100, pg. 43

I Thought My Father Was God: And other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project ed. Paul Auster

“If you aren’t certain about things, if your mind is still open enough to question what you are seeing, you tend to look at the world with great care, and out of that watchfulness comes the possibility of seeing something that no one else has seen before.” pg. xviii

Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs ed. Smith Magazine

“ Hippie parents. Early independence. Surprising success.” pg. 47

Storycatcher Christina Baldwin

“The art of storycatching challenges us to believe that listening to and reading stories is time well spent, and to spend time speaking and listening, writing and reading.” pg. 32

Lighten Up Your Body – Lighten Up Your Life: Beyond Diet and Exercise- The Inner Path to lasting Change Lucia Capacchione

“The fact is, however, that outer change not accompanied by inner change will never last.” pg. 2

Journal to the Self: Twenty-Two Paths to Personal Growth Katheleen Adams

“There’s a friend at the end of your pen which you can use to help you solve personal or business problems, get to know all of the different parts of yourself, explore your creativity, heal your relationships, develop your intuition . . . and much more” p. 13

One to One: Self-Understanding through Journal Writing Christina Baldwin

“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.” pg. 18

The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

Lilly Koppel

“I am now ninety-two – my husband of sixty-seven years died last April – and I am fighting to keep my finger in the pie of life” Introduction

Close to the Bone: Memoirs of Hurt, Rage, and Desire ed. Laurie Stone

“Close to the Bone draws fuel from the erotics of knowledge: The ore we know about what makes us tick, the freer we can be to cop whatever joy we find.” pg. xxviii

What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self ed. Ellyn Spragins

“If you could somehow postmark a letter back through time to your younger self, what age would you choose and what would the letter say?” pg. xiiv

The Writer’s Journal: 40 Contemporary Writers and Their Journals

ed. Sheila Bender

“My journals allow me to integrate my ideas with who I am.” pg. 207

Risk, Courage, and Women ed. Waldron Brazil, Labatt

“First off, forgive yourself for the stupid things you’ve done.”

pg. 24 Maya Angelou

Partenering: A New Kind of Relationship Hal and Sidra Stone

“The questions to ask ourselves are: “Who is driving my psychological car?…” pg. 77

The Tao of Motherhood Vimala McClure

“To allow the Mother principle to work to center your family, take time for yourself. Otherwise, the self will be constantly grasping for its share.” pg. 46

Notes to Myself: My struggle to Become a Person, Hugh Prather

“When I made my first efforts to be true to myself, I felt trapped in a self I didn’t like.”

A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars, and Interviews of Anais Nin

ed. Evelyn Hinz

“The magic of story-telling lies in the enjoyment of a flight of language that takes you into another realm. We enter the realm of poetry or art and discover the pleasure of possessing the skill to fly.” pg. 183

Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds Deena Metzger

“In the process of writing, of discovering our story, we restore those parts of ourselves that have been scattered, hidden, surpressed, denied, distorted, forbidden, and we come to understand that stories heal.” pg. 71

Opening Up: The Healing Power of Confiding in Others Dr. James Pennebaker

“So what did we find? People who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding traumatic experiences evidenced heightened immune function compared with those who wrote about superficial topics.” P. 47

Mr. And Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and Into Legend Grethchen Holbrook Gerzina

“To the modern mind it seems a kind of moral schizophrenia, but to eighteenth-century whites it was the natural order.” pg. 73

Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling

Michele Weldon

“Author Alice Walker calls for the need to “witness” in her work and tell stories of her life and the lives of other people. For me, writing is witnessing my own life.” pg. 11

The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living

His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler

“…--right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.” pg. 37

Unwritten Letters: Letter Writing as a Way to Resolve the Unfinished Business of Your Life Ilene Segalove

“The simple act of writing a letter to a specific person, problem, or inanimate object opens the floodgates of backlogged confusion and unresolved emotions. It helps you clarify the way you feel and, in so doing, can change tour relationship with yourself and your world.” pg. 3

Voices of Saint Simons: Personal Narratives of an Island’s Past ed. Stephen Doster

“Sooner or later, everything becomes history.” pg. xiv

Song Yet Sung, A Novel James McBride

“Some historians contend that no black codes were used in the Underground Railroad, but fortunately, the musing of scholars never stopped writers from drawing plot, content, and character from disputed history to power the muscle of their imaginations.” Author’s Note pg. 357

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith Anne Lamott

“What a mess we are, I thought. But this is usually where any hope of improvement begins, acknowledging the mess. When I am well, I know not to mess with mess.” pg. 100

God, Dr. Buzzard and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island, Georgia Cornelia Walker Bailey with Christena Bledsoe

“My tale begins just before the rising of the sun, in that brief instant of time when the night clouds are being cleared away and the first rays of light are streaking across the sky.” 1^st sentence, pg. 1

Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast ed. Charles Colcock Jones, Jr

“But if deciphering an unfamiliar language is the biggest challenge one must meet in order to read Gullah Folktales, it is also one of the greatest pleasures.” pg. vxiii-xxiv

Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man Gopi Krishna

“Men have never been able to understand the surpassing efficiency which a man of genius brings to bear on his intellectual or manual creations, and still less are able to comprehend the mental condition of an ecstactic.” pg. 79

Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing

eds. Marita Golden & E. Lynn Harris

“If you bought this book you are an investor in the future of Black writing, and the stories are your immediate dividend.” pg. xx

Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey Jane Goodall with Phillip Berman

“...I climbed into the hills. And gradually I was able to penetrate farther and farther into a magic world that no human had explored before – the world of the wild chimpanzees.” pg. 71

Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths: Autobiography and the Making of the African American Intellectual Tradition V.P. Franklin

“Unlike the literary artists who were preoccupied with “shaping their public ‘self’ in language, many African American intellectuals and leaders turned to the autobiographical form of primarily for ideological and political purposes.” pg. 12

The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa of Avila translated Mirabai Starr

“Without humility, all is lost.” pg. 46

The Alchemist Paulo Coelho

“The world’s biggest lie is that our lives are controlled by fate and no one believes in their personal legends…when working toward your personal legend the universe will conspire to help you.”

The Power of Words: Social and Personal Transformation through the Spoken, Written and Sung Word eds. Mirriam-Goldberg & Tallman

“You tell stories or help others tell stories because you need to, because you know that the story can grow in the listener, and sometimes in the teller, new shoots of understanding, branches of connection, and a canopy of healing.” pg.3

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