Infernal

Infernal PDF Author: Bianca Scardoni
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781999387426
Category : Amulets
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Hell is empty. The Devil is here. There is no road so long and winding as the one that leads you to the finish line. Every bend is meant to test you, every junction meant to bring you closer to that place where love and sacrifice meet. To that place in the valley where the sun doesn

Infernal

Infernal PDF Author: Bianca Scardoni
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781999387426
Category : Amulets
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Hell is empty. The Devil is here. There is no road so long and winding as the one that leads you to the finish line. Every bend is meant to test you, every junction meant to bring you closer to that place where love and sacrifice meet. To that place in the valley where the sun doesn

An Irreverent Curiosity

An Irreverent Curiosity PDF Author: David Farley
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110110497X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Read David Farley's posts on the Penguin Blog.A tour through the centuries and through a bizarre Italian town in search of an unbelievable relic: the foreskin of Jesus Christ In December 1983, a priest in the Italian hill town of Calcata shared shocking news with his congregation: the pride of their town, the foreskin of Jesus, had been stolen. Some postulated that it had been stolen by Satanists. Some said the priest himself was to blame. Some even pointed their fingers at the Vatican. In 2006, travel writer David Farley moved to Calcata, determined to find the missing foreskin, or at least find out the truth behind its disappearance. Farley recounts how the relic passed from Charlemagne to the papacy to a marauding sixteenth-century German solider before finally ending up in Calcata, where miracles occurred that made the sleepy town a major pilgrimage destination. Blending history, travel, and perhaps the oddest story in Christian lore, An Irreverent Curiosity is a weird and wonderful tale of conspiracy and misadventure.

Printer's Error

Printer's Error PDF Author: J. P. Romney
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062412337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A funny and entertaining history of printed books as told through absurd moments in the lives of authors and printers, collected by television’s favorite rare-book expert from HISTORY’s hit series Pawn Stars. Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn’t been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer’s Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing, and makes clear that we’ve succeeded despite ourselves. Rare-book expert Rebecca Romney and author J. P. Romney take us from monasteries and museums to auction houses and libraries to introduce curious episodes in the history of print that have had a profound impact on our world. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on it. Today, Johannes Gutenberg is recognized as the father of Western printing. But for the first few hundred years after the invention of the printing press, no one knew who printed the first book. This long-standing mystery took researchers down a labyrinth of ancient archives and libraries, and unearthed surprising details, such as the fact that Gutenberg’s financier sued him, repossessed his printing equipment, and started his own printing business afterward. Eventually the first printed book was tracked to the library of Cardinal Mazarin in France, and Gutenberg’s forty-two-line Bible was finally credited to him, thus ensuring Gutenberg’s name would be remembered by middle-school students worldwide. Like the works of Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, and Ken Jennings, Printer’s Error is a rollicking ride through the annals of time and the printed word.

Irreverence

Irreverence PDF Author: Gianfranco Cecchin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042991525X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Irreverence: A strategy for Therapists' Survival marks the end result of a collaboration between the creative and highly respected therapists and writers in the family therapy field. It continues the tradition of the Milan group and later systemic thinkers to examine the way a therapist's own thinking can block the process of therapy and lead to feeling stuck. The authors define and demonstrate the use of a concept in the therapeutic field: Irreverence, which allows therapists to free themselves from the limitations of their own theoretical schools of thought and the familiar hypotheses they apply to their client families. They illustrate their ideas with some very challenging family therapy cases, such as violence and incest, and include an interesting consultation with the staff caring for a hospitalized patient. The book also extends the notion of irreverence beyond therapy to the fields of training and research where its application is both fresh and profound.

Virtual Faith

Virtual Faith PDF Author: Tom Beaudoin
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9780787955274
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Reveals the deep and pervasive search for meaning that haunts Generation X. This book is must reading for anyone who would understand the spirituality of young people at the turn of a new millennium.--Robert A. Ludwig, author of Reconstructing Catholicism for a New Generation In Virtual Faith, Beaudoin explores fashion, music videos, and cyberspace concluding that his generation has fashioned a theology radically different from, but no less potent or valid than, that of their elders. Beaudoin's investigation of popular culture uncovers four themes that underpin his generation?s theology. First, all institutions are suspect -- especially organized religion. Second, personal experience is everything, and every form of intense personal experience is potentially spiritual. Third, suffering is also spiritual. Finally, this generation sees ambiguity as a central element of faith. This book opens a long overdue conversation about where and how we find meaning, and how we all can encourage each other in this central human searching. Tom Beaudoin earned his Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University School of Divinity in 1996 and is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Religion and Education at Boston College.

Florilegium of Lucian’s philosophical finesse and irreverent wit

Florilegium of Lucian’s philosophical finesse and irreverent wit PDF Author: Lucian of Samosata
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
1. A dispute between two consonants heard by a jury of seven vowels. Consonant Sigma sues consonant Tau for stealing words from him. I shall be almost dumb, lose my rank as a letter, and be degraded to a mere noise, exclaims Sigma. Vowels are the natural guardians of our laws and jurors. 2. Lucian sings the praises of the valiant gauze-winged fly. Her feathers are neither fledged, nor provided with quill-feathers like other birds, but resemble locusts, grasshoppers, and bees in being gauze-winged, much more delicate than Indian fabrics, lighter and softer than Greek. When spread out and moving in the sun they appear are peacock-hued. Homer likens her valour and spirit not to a lion’s, a panther’s, or a boar’s, but to her courage, to her unflinching and persistent assault. It is not mere audacity, but courage that he attributes to her. If a little ashes be sprinkled on a dead fly, she gets up and starts life afresh, which is proof that her soul is immortal, inasmuch as after it has departed it returns, reanimates the body, and enables her to fly again. She toils not, but lives profiting by the labours of others, finding everywhere a table spread for her. Like the Scythians, she leads a wandering life and, where night finds her, there is her hearth and chamber. Her ancient name is Myia, Selene’s rival for the love of Endymion. When the young man slept, she was for ever waking him with her gossip and tunes and merriment, till he lost patience and Selene in wrath turned Myia to what she now is. Since then, in memory of Endymion, the valiant fly grudges all sleepers their rest, and most of all the young and tender. Her bite and thirst for blood tell not of savagery, but of love and human kindness; she is but enjoying mankind as she may, while sipping beauty. 3. Lucian on Dipsas, the sneaky thirst-snake of the Libyan desert. On the borders of Southern Libya dwell the Garamantians, a lightly clad, agile tribe of tent-dwellers, subsisting mainly by the chase. Perils much worse than the heat, thirst, desolation, and the aridity of the Libyan desert are all sorts of reptiles, hideous and venomous beyond belief or cure. The direst of all, bred in the sand, is the viper-like Dipsas or thirst-snake; his bite is sharp, and the venom acts at once, inducing agonies to which there is no relief. Dipsas has an unquenchable thirst: the more he drinks, the thirstier he becomes. He conceals himself near the eggs, and when a man comes, crawls out and bites the unfortunate, sentencing him to quenchless thirst before a harrowing demise. Gentlemen! My feelings towards you are the same as those of Dipsas’ victim towards drink: the more I have of your company, the more of it I want; my thirst for it rages uncontrollably; I shall never have enough of this drink. Where else could one find such clear sparkling water to refresh the soul? 4. Lucian harangues an illiterate book-fancier in Syria. Do you think that by buying up the best books you can lay your hands on, you will pass for a man of literary tastes? not a bit of it; you are merely exposing your ignorance of literature. You may get together the works of Demosthenes, and his eight beautiful copies of Thucydides, all in the orator’s own handwriting, and all the manuscripts that Sulla sent away from Athens to Italy — and you will be no nearer to culture at the end of it, even if you sleep with them under your pillow, or paste them together and wear them as a garment; an ape is still an ape, says the proverb, though his trappings be of gold. What is your idea, now, in all this rolling and unrolling of scrolls? To what end the gluing and the trimming, the cedar oil and saffron, the leather cases and the bosses? You are as dumb as a fish but your life and your unmentionable vices, make every one hate the sight of you. If that is what books do, one cannot keep too clear of them. You are dense and helpless; you pray for the earth to open and swallow you. You stand like Bellerophon with the warrant for your own execution in your hand. Does the bald man buy a comb, the blind a mirror, the deaf a flute, the eunuch a concubine, the landsman an oar, the pilot a plough? Or are you merely seizing an opportunity of displaying your wealth? Is it just your way of showing the public that you can afford to spend money even on things that are of no use to you? Why, even a Syrian like myself knows that if you had not got your name foisted into that old man’s will, you would have been starving by this time, and all your books must have been put up to sale. After all, it was nothing for an illiterate fool like you to take such a fancy into his head, and walk about with his chin in the air, aping the gait and dress and expression of his supposed model: even the Epirote king Pyrrhus, remarkable man that he was in other respects, had the same foible, and was persuaded by his flatterers that he looked like Alexander the Great. Once Pyrrhus had got this fancy into his head, that he was the look-alike of Alexander, everyone else ran mad for company, till at last an old woman of Larissa, who did not know Pyrrhus, told him the plain truth, and cured his delusion. Come to your senses then, while there is yet time: sell your library to some scholar and, while you are about it, sell your new house too, and wipe off part of your debt to the slave-dealers. Books cannot mask the deficiencies of your education by throwing dust in our eyes. You are exactly like the quack doctors, who provide themselves with silver cupping-glasses, gold-handled lancets, and ivory cases for their instruments; they are quite incapable of using them when the time comes, and have to give place to some properly qualified surgeon, who produces a lancet with a keen edge and a rusty handle, and affords immediate relief to the sufferer. Carry on buying books then, and reap the glory that comes of possessions: only, let that be enough; presume not to touch nor read; pollute not with that tongue the poetry and eloquence of the ancients; what harm have they ever done to you? 5. Lucian puts up various philosophers for sale by auction in a slave market. Bring up the lots and put them in line, said Zeus. Give them a rub up first, though; we must have them looking their best, to attract bidders. Pythagoras was sold for 40 pounds. Diogenes was sold cheaply for just 3 pence. No bids were placed for a Cyrenaic philosopher. No bids were placed for Democritus and Heraclitus. Socrates was sold to Dion of Syracuse for 500 pounds. Epicureanism was sold for 8 pounds. Chrysippus was sold to a pool of shareholders for 50 pounds. A Peripatetic slave was sold for 80 pounds. A sceptic slave kept wrangling with his new master. 6. Lucian’s diatribe on true philosophy and her counterfeits. An autobiographic sequel to the sale of philosophers where Lucian, who has taken upon him the name of rhetorician Parrhesiades, continues satirising the philosophers of the Hellenistic period. 7. Ignorance and assumption stretching out a hand to slander. Lucian elucidates the origin, nature, and dreadful consequences of slander. Ignorance is the source of endless human woes, spreading a mist over facts, obscuring truth, and casting a dark gloom everywhere. Whatever we do, we are perpetually slipping about. Ptolemy IV Philopator, the fourth pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, was not distinguished for sagacity: he had been brought up on a royal diet of adulation. The malicious slander of Apelles so inflamed his prejudice and carried him away, that the underwhelming strength of the case never struck him. Slander is an undefended indictment, concealed from its object, and owing its success to one-sided half-informed procedure. Listen not to a tale bearer for, as he discoverers the secrets of others, so he will yours in turn, says Socrates. Of all the ills that flesh is heir to, none is more grievous or more iniquitous than that a man should be condemned unjudged and unheard. Slander would never do the harm it does, if it were not made plausible; it would never prevail against truth, that strongest of all things, if it were not dressed up into really attractive bait. The venom has entered the ear and inflamed the brain; the hearer does not wait for confirmation, but abandons his friend. The slanderer finds out where the soul is weak or corrupt or accessible, there makes his assault, there applies his engines, and enters at a point where there are no defenders to mark his approach. Once in, he soon has all in flames. We all delight in whisperings and insinuations. I know people whose ears are as agreeably titillated with slander as their skin with a feather. The slanderer’s tactics include deceit, falsehood, perjury, insinuation, presumption, and a thousand other hereditary evils and moral infirmities. But the chief of them all is flattery, sister of the calumniator and crafty machinator. Supported by all these allies, the slanderer’s attack prevails; there is no defence or resistance to the assault; the hearer surrenders without reluctance, and the slandered knows nothing of what is going on; as when a town is stormed by night, he has his throat cut in his sleep. There are those who, if they subsequently learn that they have condemned a friend in error, are too much ashamed of their error and avoid looking at him in the face again; you might suppose the discovery of his innocence was a personal injury to them. What then should we, men of sense and decency, do? We should shut our ears to those siren voices that allure and ensnare the mind, and sail past the ear-charmers. Thus shielded from calumny and prejudice, we should practise proper discrimination and judgement, and above all charity to each other’s faults.

Sister BFFs

Sister BFFs PDF Author: Philippa Rice
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 1449497527
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Sister BFFs follows a pair of sisters who are not quite adults, but trying desperately to act like them. From job searches to embarrassing encounters with former crushes, these twenty-something sisters navigate the ups, downs, and in-betweens of early adulthood – together. Loosely based on the author’s own life, Sister BFFs celebrates the complicated love-hate relationship between sisters to hilarious effect. They tease and trick each other but always stay loyal.

Chaos and All That

Chaos and All That PDF Author: Liu Sola
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816513
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
This brilliant little novel, set against the backdrop of post-Mao China, juxtaposes recollections of childhood, pet ownership, and marriage with discussions of art, sex, and murder, weaving together an absurdist tapestry that is the inner life of the novel’s felicitously named protagonist, Huang Haha. Subversive, iconoclastic, and wholly irreverent.

Van Rooten's Book of Improbable Saints

Van Rooten's Book of Improbable Saints PDF Author: Luis d'Antin Van Rooten
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780670742820
Category : Christian saints
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description


Rhymes for the Irreverent

Rhymes for the Irreverent PDF Author: Edgar Yipsel Harburg
Publisher: Freedom from Religion Foundation
ISBN: 9781877733154
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Yip Harburg, the great American lyricist who wrote "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow," "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", "It's Only a Paper Moon," "April in Paris," and Finian's Rainbow, delights us with his poetic genius in this collection of humorous, iconoclastic, and exhilaratingly human verses. Harburg wrote the lyrics and much of the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz. He was later blacklisted for his liberal views, though constantly admired for his immense talent. The 150+ poems are illustrated with whimsical cartoons by celebrated artist Seymour Chwast. Bonus material includes a biographical article on Harburg's life and a "Yip in his own words" section of comments on the art of songwriting and his life of collaboration with Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Burton Lane, Vernon Duke, and Jay Gorney.