Sacred Texts of the World (The Great Courses #6160) by Professor Grant Hardy

With few exceptions, the world's religions are anchored in their sacred texts-core writings that express the ideals and vision of the faiths, forming a basis for belief and action. Humanity's library of sacred writings is a huge canon that includes many of the most influential books ever written. In addition to the Hebrew and Christian bibles and the Quran of Islam, major sacred writings include the Hindu Vedas, the Buddhist Sutras, Daoism's Daodejing, and the Analects of Confucius, as well as the beloved texts of religions such as Zoroastrianism and Jainism, and modern faiths such as Baha'i.

These are texts that people live by and, at times, are willing to die for.

In these 36 lectures, Professor Hardy takes you deeply into the body of sacred writings that have played a fundamental role in human culture and history. Discussing a broad range of texts, the course examines the scriptures of seven major religions, as well as nine lesser known or smaller faiths, including texts from the ancient Egyptian and Mayan societies. In addition to studying the scriptures of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic worlds, you'll discover religious texts from vastly differing cultures around the world.

These richly insightful lectures highlight a global legacy of faith, thought, and spirituality.

I am impressed - soooo impressed - with Professor Grant Hardy's lectures on Sacred Texts of the World. It's one of Audible's The Great Courses and it is fascinating! It covers ancient texts as well as modern, and everything in between.

Why am I so impressed? Because he gives us 36 faith specific chapters worth of lectures (each about 30 minutes long) and even though he can't possibly have lived each of these religions, he shares informed, impartial, compassionate insights. He talks about the text's level of importance to each faith, and not once did he mock, make light, snicker, or disrespect those that he might disagree with. Nor could I even tell if he disagreed with any of them!

Sacred Texts of the World has easily become one of my favorite of The Great Courses.

A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie by Dean Koontz, Narrated by Christopher Lane

Blurb…

In a profound, funny, and beautifully rendered portrait of a beloved companion, bestselling novelist Dean Koontz remembers the golden retriever who changed his life. A retired service dog, Trixie was three when Dean and his wife, Gerda, welcomed her into their home. She was superbly trained, but her greatest gifts couldn’t be taught: her keen intelligence, her innate joy, and an uncanny knack for living in the moment. Whether chasing a tennis ball or protecting those she loved, Trixie gave all she had to everything she did, inspiring Dean and Gerda to trust their instincts and recapture a sense of wonder that will remain with them always. Trixie lived fewer than twelve years; in this wide world, she was a little thing. But in every way that mattered, she lived a big life.

I literally just finished listening to Christopher Lane’s brilliant performance of Dean Koontz’s poignant A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie, stopping only long enough to blow my nose and wipe the tears from my eyes before writing this review.

I can’t find the words to use to tell you how amazing this memoir is. It’s not just a story about a man and a woman and their dog, it’s what I can say is one of the most life enriching stories I’ve had the pleasure of reading or listening to. I was so impressed and moved by Mr. Koontz's openly candid thoughts and recollections of how Trixie changed his life, and in my opinion, in many ways, saved it. There are so many quotes I wanted to share, but being on audio and being a complete blubbering ninny while listening to the most profound of the quotes I wasn’t able to catch them.

Make no mistake, this isn’t a depressing story. Sure, there were moments I sobbed so deeply I was sure I'd never recover, but in fact it’s one of the most uplifting, hopeful, insightful books I can remember experiencing, and I will listen to it again and again.

Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques Audible's Great Courses) by Professor James Hynes

Blurb...Whether you're huddled around the campfire, composing an email to a friend, or sitting down to write a novel, storytelling is fundamental to human nature. But as any writer can tell you, the blank page can be daunting. It's tough to know where to get started, what details to include in each scene, and how to move from the kernel of an idea to a completed manuscript.

Writing great fiction isn't a gift reserved for the talented few. There is a craft to storytelling that can be learned, and studying writing techniques can be incredibly rewarding - both personally and professionally. Even if you don’t have ambitions of penning the next Moby-Dick, you'll find value in exploring all the elements of fiction.

From evoking a scene to charting a plot to revising your drafts, Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques offers a master class in storytelling. Taught by award-winning novelist James Hynes, a former visiting professor at the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop, these 24 insightful lectures show you the ins and outs of the fiction writer's craft. Get tips for developing believable and memorable characters, explore how to craft plausible dialogue that serves the purposes of your narrative, compare the advantages of different points of view, and more. A wealth of exercises will inspire you to practice the many techniques you learn. Professor Hynes is an able guide, showing you what has worked for him and other novelists, and pointing out pitfalls to avoid. Writing Great Fiction is truly an exceptional course for anyone interested in storytelling.

This audio lecture was more than I had expected it to be, but not what I needed it to be. There's a lot of great detail given to writing techniques such as point of view, plotting, capturing your readers's attention and things like that, but I was looking for something more basic. Something less geared toward the mechanics of writing, and more focused on theories and ideas such as finding your muse, using your own experiences to flesh out a story...simple examples that would have hopefully had me me saying "Aha! Great idea! I can do that!" but there was nothing like that. James Hynes, the author/lecturer, used examples from what he called "great classics", citing authors I had never heard of before which added to my lack of interest in much of what he was trying to tell us.

Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques

Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity by Marc Zender

At just over 5,000 years old, writing is actually a relatively recent invention. It has become so central to the way we communicate and live, however, that it often seems as if writing has always existed.

But the question remains: Who invented writing, and why?

In these 24 fascinating lectures, you'll trace the remarkable saga of the invention and evolution of "visible speech," from its earliest origins to its future in the digital age. Your guide is an accomplished professor and epigrapher who whisks you around the globe to explore how an array of sophisticated writing systems developed, then were adopted and adapted by surrounding cultures.

Along the way, you'll visit the great early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, and the Americas, and you'll see how deciphering ancient scripts is a little like cracking secret codes - only far more difficult.

You'll be spellbound as you hear accounts of the breathtaking moments when the decipherment of ancient scripts broke centuries of silence. And you'll marvel at fascinating objects once shrouded in mystery, including the iconic Rosetta stone.

Writing and Civilization offers the chance to not only discover the history of ancient writing systems, but also the rare opportunity to actually hear those scripts read aloud and to learn the meaning of their messages hidden in plain sight.

I enjoy listening to Audible's The Great Courses series of books. This one started out slow... lot's of background information... but the narrator is excellent and at the 30% mark, I was hooked!

There are so many interesting facts and so much information about how languages and writing styles came and went, and I would have enjoyed this much more if there had been lecture handouts with graphs and images, but still all in all a great course/lecture.

The one thing that shocked me was learning that The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy proposed in 2009, and now adopted by 45 of the United States, does not mandate cursive instruction. Only keyboarding is required.

So, what happens when/if there's a time, generations from now, when something happens - like a solar flare - that shuts down electrical grids and there are no keyboards to type on? How will people communicate? Also, think about what that means. Cursive is a dying art form, and someday your grand-kids will be asking you to show them what writing looks like.

Purchase Writing and Civilization at Amazon

Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas Narrated by David Brakke

I’m always intrigued by the origins of things; language, cultures, traditions... which is why I love listening to The Great Courses’ historical (especially ancient histories) lectures. Though I struggled through the first 20% or so of this lecture because it wasn’t at all what I expected, it was still fascinating and eye-opening, to say the least.

Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas is ‘narrated by Professor David Brakke who did a fabulous job explaining the differences and divisions, no matter how intricate, between the many early ‘religions’ and how they related to, or differed from, Christianity.

From the website:

This course takes on these provocative questions and more, in a narrative that unfolds as an enthralling religious detective story—penetrating the mysteries of a stigmatized yet profoundly important legacy of religious thought. Among many intriguing features of the story, you’ll learn that:

• What we call “Gnosticism” comprises a number of related religious ideologies and movements, all of which sought “gnosis,” or immediate, direct, and intimate knowledge of God;

• Gnostic groups reinterpreted and often rewrote Jewish and Christian scriptures, creating religious mythologies that struck deep chords in contemporary seekers;

• Gnostic thought and practice reveal to us the precursors of the mystical tradition within Christianity.

Many of the teachings of the early churches read like Greek or Roman mythology, which was, as I said, not at all what I had expected. Once I wrapped my head around what I was listening to, I simply couldn’t turn it off.

I highly recommend this 12ish hour lecture to anyone interested, as I am, in the ancient origins of theologies.

For more information check out The Great Courses: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas

The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries by Neil deGrasse Tyson (Narrator)

Neil deGrasse Tyson is absolutely brilliant narrating this set of lectures in Audible's The Great Courses series. His excitement for these unsolved mysteries is apparent and that made me even more fascinated by what I was learning. It was nice to be able listen to a single lecture, then not have to recap when I started listening again because these lectures are topic-unrelated to each other.

Overall, my favorite part of The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries, is getting the behind the scenes scoop on how some of our greatest discoveries were made, and why some of our most thought provoking questions remain unanswered.

This is a must listen for anyone who finds themselves looking at the world around them and wondering...

Blurb...

Everything we now know about the universe - from the behavior of quarks to the birth of galaxies - has come from people who've been willing to ponder the unanswerable. And with the advent of modern science, great minds have turned to testing and experimentation rather than mere thought as a way of grappling with some of the universe's most vexing dilemmas.

So what is our latest picture of some of the most inexplicable features of the universe? What still remains to be uncovered and explored by today's scientists?

"We know a lot about the universe. But there's even more that we don't know," says astrophysicist and professor Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, an award-winning lecturer, and one of the world's foremost experts on the secrets of the universe. This course, which has been honored with a 2013 Telly Award for Outstanding Educational Program, features six self-contained lectures that transport you on a marvelous journey to the frontiers of the known (and unknown) universe and introduce you to tantalizing questions being addressed by the world's top scientists. Engaging and fascinating, this lecture series is a wonderful entrée to scientific pursuits that lie at the very heart of the history and nature of our universe.

Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.

On Death and Dying by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

One of the most important psychological studies of the late twentieth century, On Death and Dying grew out of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famous interdisciplinary seminar on death, life, and transition. In this remarkable book, Dr. Kübler-Ross first explored the now-famous five stages of death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Through sample interviews and conversations, she gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve that patient, and the patient's family, bringing hope to all who are involved.

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On Death and Dying isn't the kind of book I normally read, much less review, but it's such an important, powerful work that I feel it needs to be shared in hopes that others will benefit from the insights and wisdom found within.

I re-read this book from time to time simply because it helps me put 'the circle of life' into perspective, and having recently had to put Honey, our 11.5 year old dog to sleep, I pulled this out again and read the parts that deal with the process and necessity and importance of allowing ourselves to grieve.

This is a well written, compassionate but honest collection of interviews with dying patients and their families, the purpose of this study/book being to help both deal with the emotions and the many phases of death they will face. Denial. Anger. Depression.... It was a difficult read sometimes because I couldn't help but become attached to the patients and ache for what they were going through.

And as hard as it might be to believe, this book is also an excellent help when going through a relationship breakup, whether by choice or not. As my dear friend, Beverly, always told me, "You have to go through it to get through it. I miss you, Brat!

I highly recommend this book to anyone with elderly or ailing friends or family members, or to anyone who works in healthcare. It's written with respect and integrity, giving hope to the living and honoring the dying by helping assure them of a peaceful, dignified passing.

         

Growing Up Humming by Mike Spinak

 

Fans of David Attenborough will enjoy experiencing the wonders of nature through Mike Spinak's pictures and words.

Imagine witnessing hummingbird chicks being raised on the nest from front row seats, with every step shown as it unfolds, accompanied by fundamental explanations of the "whys" behind what you're seeing. In Mike Spinak's "Growing Up Humming", you'll see hummingbirds as you've never seen them before.

The elder chick has flown from the nest, and now follows her mother while learning how to live like an adult. The younger chick hasn't yet fledged, and life will be easier for her mother when both are flying. What happens when a mother hummingbird wants her chick to leave the nest, but the chick isn't ready? This fact-filled, true story, photo book shows the answers in a heartwarming tale the entire family can enjoy.

*****

 
Growing Up Humming is an absolutely lovely book, chronicling life inside an Anna's Hummingbird nest. Each gorgeous photo is captioned with interesting information, written so anyone, young and old alike, can enjoy this little family's journey from chicks to adults.

 

It's hard to imagine possible, but a hummingbird egg is about the size of a pea, and the nest built by this Mother sits atop a seed pod!

As you can see from the photos above and below, it doesn't take long for a nest to become cramped quarters.

 

This charming book is informative and beautiful, and took no time at all to read. Through pictures and journaling the growth of these chicks, Mr. Spinak makes Growing Up Humming a fun learning experience!

And on a side note, when Mr. Spinak contacted me about reviewing this book, he noted that it "It does not have a romantic element, in line with your general interests." Well, while this isn't technically a romance, it spoke to my excitement and adoration for hummingbirds, so in the end, it really is all about love.

All photos used with author/photographer permission

My thanks to Mike Spinak for providing me with a copy of this wonderful book in exchange for an honest review.