Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

The Wisdom of Pooh.Is there such thing as a Western Taoist? Benjamin Hoff says there is, and this Taoist's favorite food is honey. Through brilliant and witty dialogue with the beloved Pooh-bear and his companions, the author of this smash bestseller explains with ease and aplomb that rather than being a distant and mysterious concept, Taoism is as near and practical to us as our morning breakfast bowl. Romp through the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh while soaking up invaluable lessons on simplicity and natural living.

A lucid translation of the well-known Taoist classic by a leading scholar-now in a Shambhala Pocket Library edition. Written more than two thousand years ago, the Tao Teh Ching, or -The Classic of the Way and Its Virtue, - is one of the true classics of the world of spiritual literature. Traditionally attributed to the legendary -Old Master, - Lao Tzu, the Tao Teh Ching teaches that the qualities of the enlightened sage or ideal ruler are identical with those of the perfected individual. Today, Lao Tzu's words are as useful in mastering the arts of leadership in business and politics as they are in developing a sense of balance and harmony in everyday life. To follow the Tao or Way of all things and realize their true nature is to embody humility, spontaneity, and generosity. John C. H. Wu has done a remarkable job of rendering this subtle text into English while retaining the freshness and depth of the original. A jurist and scholar, Dr. Wu was a recognized authority on Taoism and the translator of several Taoist and Zen texts and of Chinese poetry.This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

I had removed this review, which violates Article 2 of the Terms of Use:You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal.Looking at the comment thread, it is abundantly clear that the review not only may, but indeed has caused emotional distress to several Potter fans. I would like to offer my apologies to these unfortunate people, who had every right to expect better service from Goodreads. But, despite the above, I have decided on mature consideration that I will attempt an experiment: I am reinstating the original review, hiding the dangerous and inflammatory content inside a spoiler tag. If you are a person easily offended by negative comments about Harry Potter and still decide to click it, then you have only yourself to blame. You have been warned.(view spoiler)[I got into an argument the other day with an articulate 17 year old Harry Potter fan - let's call him D - who wanted to know why I was being so nasty in my review of Deathly Hallows. What was wrong with it? I offered various structural criticisms: the ending is abrupt and unconvincing, the subplot with the Horcruxes has not been adequately foreshadowed in the earlier volumes, and the book as a whole is overlong and boring. D expressed surprise that I could call Deathly Hallows boring, when I'd given five stars to Madame Bovary and Animal Farm, both of which he considered far duller. The discussion continued for some time. In the end, I said I would write a review summarising my objections to the series as a whole. Here it is.As I said to D, it's not the books or the author. The early Potter books are cute and entertaining, and J.K. Rowling seems like a nice person - if someone's going to scoop the literary Powerball jackpot, why not her? What I very strongly object to is the way the books have been marketed. About 10 years ago, it seems to me, some clever people figured out a new marketing strategy, which they first applied to Potter; when that came to an end, the same methods were used for Twilight. Both series have enjoyed a level of success which is utterly disproportionate to their quality, and which is also unprecedented in literary history. Twilight clearly follows Potter; I've had several discussions about what preceded Potter, and the answer, everyone seems to agree, is that there was no earlier success story of this kind. Before Potter, there was no YA series of dubious merit that absolutely everyone read. I think it's uncontroversial that Potter, in terms of literary quality, is better than Twilight, but Twilight has been even more successful. At one point, the four volumes occupied the top four spots in the New York Times bestseller list. On Goodreads, nearly half of the top 50 reviews are of Twilight books. This is an absurd and unnatural state of affairs. Even though Twilight may not be quite as bad as is sometimes made out - I'm one of many people who have tried to defend it - there's no way it deserves this level of attention.So why is everyone reading it, and why, before that, was everyone reading Potter? As I said, I think it's primarily about the marketing, though I wish I was more sure about the details. Here, at any rate, are some thoughts. First, the publishers are aggressively using economies of scale and deals with third parties. They print very large numbers of copies, and they work together with movie studios, game companies and merchandisers to cross-promote them. I think it's particularly important that a large proportion of the books are sold, not at bookstores, but at normal supermarkets. It's well known that the cover price is usually marked down to the point where the supermarket is not in fact making any profit; they have discovered that they can successfully treat it as a loss leader. This is causing great pain to independent bookstores. Some of them, I have read, have adopted the desperate expedient of buying copies at supermarkets and then reselling them. Second, let's look at the content and style. Even though Potter and Twilight are fairly different in some ways, they also have many strong similarities. Above all, they are extremely easy to read, at every level. The vocabulary is unchallenging; the sentences are short and simple; most characters are one-dimensional stereotypes; the story is uncomplicatedly plot-driven; there are few references to other works of literature. You can read these books if you're tired, if you're sleepy, if you have poor reading skills, if you've never read anything else. They consequently have a very large potential audience.Third, they describe a comforting, emasculated world in which most of the things that make our own world so difficult and unpleasant have been removed. Most strikingly, there is no sex; in Harry Potter, which is supposed to be about fairly normal teens, no one masturbates, no girls get pregnant, none of them are labelled sluts because they've had sex with more than one boy (sometimes one is enough, for that matter), no one gets their heart broken and drops out of school or starts taking drugs as a result, no one is stuck in a dead-end relationship that they wish they could escape from, but can't. The worst thing that happens in either series is the sequence in New Moon where Edward temporarily leaves Bella. Meyer notoriously doesn't describe Bella's feelings at all, but just leaves several pages blank. Once, in fact not so long ago, most adults would have been embarrassed to be seen reading YA literature of this kind; to start with, the comforting word "YA" hadn't been invented yet, and they would have been reading children's books. Somehow, there's been a shift in standards. You look around you on a bus to see what people are reading, and you can be pretty sure you'll see at least a couple of people over 20 engrossed in Potter or Twilight. It's odd that this has happened, and I wish I understood why.In conclusion, I couldn't help being struck by the two books D chose to contrast against Potter. D, Madame Bovary is going to outlast both of these authors because Emma is a real person who experiences the crazy and contradictory emotions that real people experience when they are very unhappy, and as a result she behaves in a crazy and contradictory way; also, Flaubert, unlike Rowling and Meyer, took a great deal of trouble over his prose, and created some of the most beautiful and ironic passages in world literature. There aren't many books I'd call masterpieces, but this is one of them. And finally, Animal Farm is indeed an allegory of the Russian Revolution. More importantly, though, it's about how smart, unscrupulous people manipulate trusting, weak people. Tens of millions of people are reading Potter and Twilight, not because the books are well-written or interesting, but because the readers have been manipulated into buying them by the Napoleons and Squealers of this world. That's what I'm objecting to. Think about it for a moment. (hide spoiler)]

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen.

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"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the first wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, she for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between their teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what has been accomplished by the movement in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.So what do women want? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will "light the torch of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished."

Follow the lives of Viago (Taika Waititi), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), and Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) - three flatmates who are just trying to get by and overcome life's obstacles-like being immortal vampires who must feast on human blood. Hundreds of years old, the vampires are finding that beyond sunlight catastrophes, hitting the main artery, and not being able to get a sense of their wardrobe without a reflection-modern society has them struggling with the mundane like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs, and overcoming flatmate conflicts.

2014 film by Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement

English musician and singer for Radiohead

British comedian Richard Ayoade and a celebrity guest, usually from the comedy world, spend 48 hours in a popular city to discover the must see tourist attractions.

The question of sexual consent in contemporary life and how, in the new landscape of dating and relationships, we make the distinction between liberation and exploitation.

British comedy-drama-mystery television series

Set in 1950s Manhattan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a 60-minute dramedy that centers on Miriam "Midge" Maisel, a sunny, energetic, sharp Jewish woman who had her life mapped out: go to college, find a husband, have kids, and throw the best Yom Kippur breakfasts in town. Soon enough, she finds herself exactly where she had hoped to be, living happily with her husband and two children on the Upper West Side. A woman of her time, Midge is a cheerleader wife of a man who dreams of a stand-up comedy career, but her perfect life is upended when her husband suddenly leaves her for another woman. Utterly unprepared, Midge is left with no choice but to reevaluate her life. When she accidentally stumbles onto the stage at a nightclub, she discovers her own comedic skills and decides to use this newfound talent to help her reinvent her life. The series follows the trajectory of Midge's journey as she pursues a career in the male-dominated stand-up comedy profession, and it transforms from uptown society matron to East Village club performer.

He's got it all: a loving wife, good friends, a successful career, a great home...what could possibly go wrong for Larry David? Seinfeld co-creator Larry David stars as himself in this hilarious, off-kilter comedy series that presents an unflinching, self-deprecating depiction of his life.

A dry-witted woman, known only as Fleabag, has no filter as she navigates life and love in London while trying to cope with tragedy. The angry, grief-riddled woman tries to heal while rejecting anyone who tries to help her, but Fleabag continues to keep up her bravado through it all. Comic actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge stars as the titular character on the series, which is based on Waller-Bridge's 2013 one-woman show of the same name.

Two FBI agents, fighting the departmental stigma of backroom boys - those who try to complicate the status quo of simple Means, Motive, Opportunity (MMO) of crime-solving with academics - work to develop an innovative investigative field incorporating psychology, anthropology and sociology as a method to reveal the motive. They acknowledge classic crime-solving - MMO - as no longer sufficient because criminality is becoming more complicated as Motive graduates from need and greed to inexplicable and irrational reasons. They theorize applying deeper psychological evaluation will posit new questions. Simply, asking Why will lead to the Who. This series focuses on the development by two men, two agents, of a new criminal field and does so through story lines of visiting the sociopathic mind.

When Madeline and Celeste take new-in-town single mom Jane under their wing, none of them realize how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

In a small town where everyone knows everyone, a peculiar incident starts a chain of events that leads to the disappearance of a child, which begins to tear at the fabric of an otherwise peaceful community. Dark government agencies and seemingly malevolent supernatural forces converge on the town, while a few of the locals begin to understand that there's more going on than meets the eye.

American science fiction horror Netflix series

Jerry Seinfeld stars in this television comedy series as himself, a comedian. The premise of this sitcom is Jerry and his friends going through everyday life, discussing various quirky situations, to which we can all relate (especially if we live in New York City). The eccentric personalities of the offbeat characters who make up Jerry's social circle contribute to the fun.

Disillusioned at the thought of taking down another "mark," depressed, low-level hit man Barry Berkman seeks a way out. When the Midwesterner reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an actor who is bedding a mobster's wife, little does Barry know that the City of Angels may be his sanctuary. He follows his target into acting class and ends up instantly drawn to the community of eager hopefuls, especially dedicated student Sally, who becomes the object of his affection. While Barry wants to start a new life as an actor, his handler, Fuches, has other ideas, and the hit man's criminal past won't let him walk away so easily.

This science-fiction Western series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy was inspired by Michael Crichton's Westworld (1973) and is set at a Wild West theme park created by Dr. Robert Ford (Sir Anthony Hopkins) with human-like androids, where guests are encouraged to indulge their fantasies and desires.

US science fiction thriller television series from 2016

When chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given only two years to live, he decides he has nothing to lose. He lives with his teenage son, who has cerebral palsy, and his wife, in New Mexico. Determined to ensure that his family will have a secure future, Walt embarks on a career of drugs and crime. He proves to be remarkably proficient in this new world as he begins manufacturing and selling methamphetamine with one of his former students. The series tracks the impacts of a fatal diagnosis on a regular, hard working man, and explores how a fatal diagnosis affects his morality and transforms him into a major player of the drug trade.

In April 1986, a huge explosion erupted at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in northern Ukraine. This series follows the stories of the men and women, who tried to contain the disaster, as well as those who gave their lives preventing a subsequent and worse one.

2019 miniseries about the Chernobyl disaster

A group of British home bakers are convened for a baking competition. There is a theme to each week's competition, generally in the vein of the type of goods the competitors are to bake (i.e. cakes, cookies, pastry, etc.). Each week, they are given a set amount of time to complete each of three challenges, their finished products which are evaluated by expert judges. The first weekly challenge is the signature bake, the competitors to bake something from their home recipes which are to signify who they are as bakers within the category. The second weekly challenge is the technical challenge, where each of the competitors are provided the same recipe, in large part of something they may have never heard of let alone baked before in their lives. This challenge is to see how knowledgeable the competitors are about general baking concepts. Their finished products are evaluated blind in that the judges have no idea who baked what. The third weekly challenge is the showstopper challenge, in which the competitors are to pull out all the stops to produce a baked good which overall grand appearance is as important as taste. At the end of the week based solely on the three challenges, the judges will name the best competitor star baker, and will send one competitor home, that person whose competition has come to an end. The final three competitors enter into the finale, the winner of that week who will be crowned the overall competition winner.

Eve is a bored, whip-smart security services operative whose desk-bound job doesn't fulfill her fantasies of being a spy. Villanelle is a talented killer, who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her. These two fierce women, equally obsessed with each other, will go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse, toppling the typical spy-action thriller.

'STATH LETS FLATS' is a brand new 6x30min sitcom for E4, written by and starring one of the UK's leading young character comedians, JAMIE DEMETRIOU (Fleabag, Paddington) - described by the Independent as 'a Steve Coogan in the making.' Main character Stath is a chaotic but well-meaning lettings agent, working for his Greek-Cypriot father in North London. Across the series, Stath tries to prove himself a worthy heir to the family business, 'Michael and Eagle', despite his epic incompetence and divisive personality. Against the backdrop of London's crazy property market, STATH is a highly original workplace comedy with family at its heart, which offers a unique glimpse of Greek-Cypriot life in the city. The series is co-written by Robert Popper (Peep Show, Friday Night Dinner) and directed by Tom Kingsley, director Pls Like (BBC3) and BAFTA-nominated feature Black Pond.

Dethklok is the biggest, baddest, and most famous heavy metal band in the world. The quintet, consisting of Americans Nathan Explosion (vocals), William Murderface (bass), and Pickles the Drummer, along with Scandinavian guitarists Toki Wartooth and Skwisgaar Skwigelf, have to deal with their fame and other situations in their lives, all the while being monitored by a government organization out to destroy them.

Two hangmen (Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher) compete for women, money and happiness, venturing deeper in the ocean of depravity than any friends should in a whisky-fuelled, cross-cultural friendship.

Steven Toast, an eccentric middle-aged actor with a chequered past, spends more time dealing with his problems off stage than performing on stage.

Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds is a former galactic war veteran who is the captain of the transport ship "Serenity". Mal and his crew, ensign Zoe Alleyne Washburne; Zoe's husband, pilot Hoban 'Wash' Washburne; muscular mercenary Jayne Cobb; young mechanic Kaylee Frye; former Alliance medical officer Simon Tam; his disturbed teenage sister River (both on the run from the interplanetary government "The Alliance"); the beautiful courtesan Inara Serra; and preacher Shepherd Book do any jobs, legal or illegal, they can find as the Serenity crew travels across the outskirts of outer space.

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