Book of Longing

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Exceptional. Clear yet steamy, cosmic yet private, both playful and profound. . . as soulful a credo as he has ever put on paper' New York Times As ancient as some stories will feel, the longing will grow, it won’t die, it will give roots to lifetimes endured in hopelessly dejected enthusiasm of the Apo’s love for Ghazala, it will precede the unconditional acceptance. Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. In the 90s, Leonard Cohen went to live in a Zen monastery for a fair share of the decade, during which time, he grew extremely horny. This book is the product of it. Swarup debuts withan inventive novel in stories that features a multigenerational cast in search of love and worldly purpose. . . . By integrating magical elements—talking glaciers and yetis appear—Swarup eschews conventional love stories to focus instead on many forms of desire, while zigzagging across time and place. This offersbeautiful depictions of humanity through a successfully experimental form.” — Publishers Weekly

Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup: 9780593132562 Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup: 9780593132562

Discuss the title of the novel. Ana is a character defined by her longings and aspirations. She is passionate about the power of writing, of narratives, of having a voice, as well as lifting up the voices of other women. How does the novel's theme of finding and expressing one's authentic voice unfold in the story? What forces work to silence contemporary women and what emboldens them? However, like all (book) babies, it develops its own character traits and personality. This review scratches only the surface of everything and more that this novel is. One of the best lessons I learned from this book is to just let go and write, not worrying if it's going to be "good" or not. Don't get me wrong- there is incredible poetry in here (along with often very astute drawings) but there is also a lot "I promised myself I would write something". Some of it is inspired, some not. as a collection, the poems aren’t his best; a little indulgent, a little scattered, a little forced, like someone poeticizing their diary, and some of it is straight-up bragging It's a shame because Swarup can write beautifully: there are influences of Rushdie and Arundhati Roy in her use of figurative language, and the way she creates a vision that melds the individual with political, cultural and ecological forces. Overall, she seems to be heading towards some kind of vision of unity - sadly, the fractured stories after the first one work against, rather than towards, her goal.this book...basically, when he was in his sixties, leonard cohen went up a mountain to live and study in a buddhist monastery, and during the five years he was there, he was really horny and wrote a bunch of poems about it. My testament begins in the fourteenth year of my life, the night my aunt led me to the flat roof of my father's grand house in Sepphoris, bearing a plump object wrapped in linen.

Book of Longing - Wikipedia

I loved the characters- the feel real and easily relatable. These characters have acclimatized to the terrain they live in and somehow their lives are intertwined to these lands intricately. Their idea of living in places other than these habitats is unimaginable and quite impossible- they wouldn’t survive, they don’t know how to. In 2007, the American composer Philip Glass premiered his work Book of Longing. Song Cycle Based on the Poetry and Artwork of Leonard Cohen, in which he set 23 of the book's poems to music. Some poems included Cohen's spoken word. The work was co-commissioned by Luminato Festival under the artistic direction of Chris Lorway in Toronto Canada, Australia's 2008 Adelaide Festival under the artistic direction of Brett Sheehy, and Barbican Centre in London, and premiered at Luminato in 2007. It was subsequently performed at various venues in the United States, Australia, United Kingdom and Europe. At the Barbican Centre in London in October 2007, Cohen joined Glass onstage for a pre-concert discussion. The double-CD was released in December 2007. Charles Bukowski talks with Leonard Cohen about his book of poetry, Book of Longing. Both wrote a lot of books of poetry and fiction. Finally, as I said to a friend, Latitudes of Longing is almost like Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things had a book baby with Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, whose not-so-distant relative is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude.

It’s not too often that I say a book changed my perspective — this one did. Easily one of my “Top 5” in the past year. Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and unabashedly feminist. Read it! All of us are burdened by the twin destinies of saying goodbye to our loved ones and departing from our loved ones ourselves. Let this not obliterate the greater destiny we all share - the fleeting moments we have together." I enjoyed this novel immensely, but found myself irritated by what I felt was a bit of "bait-and-switch" based on its published description. It's billed as centering around the protagonist's partnership with Jesus, but in actuality the two are separated for most of the book and their lives seldom intersect. There's nothing particularly challenging about the themes contained in The Book of Longings, but it's nonetheless superb historical fiction and a great tale of female empowerment, especially for those interested in learning more about the time period and readers who enjoy a feminist take on history... continued it's a little bit from all of those columns; his generosity and humility and classiness, but it’s also his humor. he opens a poem called The Death of Zen with a description of cunnilingus, and this poem most certainly speaks to the difficulty of pursuing a spiritual journey when the physical urges won’t go gently:

Book of Longing - Penguin Books UK

For all my critiques, I'd recommend this simply because it feels like the first book of an author who will go on to greater things: this may be uneven but at its best, it's glorious. It’s difficult to describe what Latitudes of Longing is or what it did to me, as it doesn’t quite compare to many other books I’ve read and loved, but stands truly on its own. It’s the type of book that feels like a journey: an exploration of different continents where you can feel, smell and taste the world around you through Swarub’s words. Along the way you meet characters that feel real enough to be actual encounters along your travels, where you get a glimpse of their personal lives as you pass through. I especially loved meeting Girija Prasad and Chanda Devi, and actually started missing them throughout the rest of the book, as their part ended. The period details are fascinating, but the dialogue can feel over-starched...Also, Ana’s feminist consciousness seems immaculately conceived, wholly uncontaminated by the trappings of her culture...Confined in Ana’s earnest narration, the story provides no critical distance, no irony, no real thematic ambiguity...The best historical fiction disorients us by demonstrating the uncanny nature of the past — a world like and not like ours, woven through with strands of ancient DNA. Unfortunately, The Book of Longings rarely confronts us with anything that might challenge our contemporary liberalism. Book of Longing is Leonard Cohen's astonishing new collection of poems, the first since Book of Mercy was published nearly three decades ago.Whenever the sky quaked, women uttered a blessing: Lord preserve me from the wrath of Lilith. But I could never bring myself to say it. I would whisper instead, Lord, bless the roaring” For a day spent on the choppy waters can easily turn into a lifetime traversing the faultline. No one, not even the cyclonic clouds and deep-sea currents, can escape its elemental pull. There is a danger of slipping into the earth's cleft... Truly the author is a gifted writer, her imagination carry us to the world we have never been and without it we go nowhere, I wouldn’t have experience colonial ghost if it was not Lord Goodenough, I wouldn’t have known how it feels to talk to ghosts and return to the place we love, in afterlife otherwise. I was less aware of how there can be so many people with different ideas of longing in different latitude yet they share the same magnitude of ardor, this is the power of this richly imaginative in its storytelling debut work of Shubhangi Swarup. I am in awe of her.

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd - BookBrowse Reviews of The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd - BookBrowse

Snow Desert, is set in the Karakoram Mountains, in a remote village, and follows the story of Apo, the ’Grandfather of the entire village, a man who ’feels that…the past is real and the present is a half-baked memory Sometimes, the past is an incomprehensible beast and the future its unrealized shadow. He spends his time trying to preserve, share the myths, legends. But yes, I can feel the pain, the grief, the longing and the loneliness of the characters in such an environment as portrayed. Because life changes. And we grow old and things do not remain the same.Leonard Cohen’s ‘Book of Longing.’ Written by the famous folk singer and poet, is a unique and artful collection of work. I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth. I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder. He said he heard rumblings inside me while I slept, a sound like thunder from far over the Nahal Zippori valley or even farther beyond the Jordan. I don't doubt he heard something. All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night. That my husband bent his heart to mine on our thin straw mat and listened was the kindness I most loved in him. What he heard was my life begging to be born. Valley follows Thapa, a friend of Mary’s son, who is from Nepal, and who meets a very young dancer at a bar in Kathmandu. He is closer to sixty, and she is ’…young enough to be his granddaughter.’ Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history.