Download or read book God s Bits of Wood written by Sembène Ousmane and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1947 and the workers on the Dakar-Niger Railway have come out on strike. Sembène Ousmane, in this vivid and moving novel, evokes all of the colour, passion and tragedy of those decisive years in history. 'Ever since they left Thiès, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending.' God's Bits of Wood is Sembène Ousmane's internationally renowned novel, based on his own experiences of the landmark 1947 railroad strike that spread across French West Africa. 'A classic.' Guardian 'Ousmane Sembène [was] a crucial figure in Africa's postcolonial cultural awakening.' New York Times 'A powerful story.' Kirkus Translated from the French by Francis Price.

Download or read book Gods of Jade and Shadow written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mayan god of death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this dark, one-of-a-kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore. “A spellbinding fairy tale rooted in Mexican mythology . . . Gods of Jade and Shadow is a magical fairy tale about identity, freedom, and love, and it's like nothing you've read before.”—Bustle NEBULA AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Tordotcom • The New York Public Library • BookRiot The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true. In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld. Praise for Gods of Jade and Shadow “A dark, dazzling fairy tale . . . a whirlwind tour of a 1920s Mexico vivid with jazz, the memories of revolution, and gods, demons, and magic.”—NPR “Snappy dialog, stellar worldbuilding, lyrical prose, and a slow-burn romance make this a standout. . . . Purchase where Naomi Novik, Nnedi Okorafor, and N. K. Jemisin are popular.”—Library Journal (starred review) “A magical novel of duality, tradition, and change . . . Moreno-Garcia’s seamless blend of mythology and history provides a ripe setting for Casiopea’s stellar journey of self-discovery, which culminates in a dramatic denouement. Readers will gladly immerse themselves in Moreno-Garcia’s rich and complex tale of desperate hopes and complicated relationships.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Download or read book Mr and Mrs God in the Creation Kitchen written by Nancy C. Wood and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2006-03-14 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a very special kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. God cook up the planet Earth and some creatures to live there.

Download or read book The Book Against God written by James Wood and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Passionate, Profoundly Funny First Novel from "the Best Literary Critic of His Generation" (Adam Begley, Financial Times) Thomas Bunting, the charming, chaotic, and deeply untruthful narrator of James Wood's wonderful first novel, is in despair. His marriage is disintegrating and his academic career is in ruins: instead of completing his philosophy Ph.D. (still unfinished after seven years), he is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork, a vast atheistic project he has privately entitled "The Book Against God." But when his father suddenly falls ill, Thomas returns to the tiny village in the north of England where he grew up and where his father still works as a parish priest. There, Thomas hopes, he may finally be able to communicate honestly with his father, a brilliant and formidable Christian example, and sort out his own wayward life. But Thomas is a chronic liar as well as an atheist, and he finds, instead, that once at home he soon reverts to the evasive patterns of his childhood years—with disastrous results. The story of a husband and wife, a father and son, faith and disbelief, and a hero who couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it, The Book Against God is at once hilarious and poignant; it introduces an original comic voice—edgy, elegiac, lyrical, and indignant—and, in the irrepressible Thomas Bunting, one of the strangest philosophers in contemporary fiction.

Download or read book American Gods written by Neil Gaiman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...

Download or read book The God Cookie written by Geoffrey Wood and published by Waterbrook Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Would you know if he did, if God really spoke to you– would it be booming from the heavens or just in your head? If it was in your head, how would you know if it was God or wasn’t? Is God speaking right now but we’re just not listening? And if God does tell you something…what would you do about it? Meet Parrish. He’s a regular guy, owns a coffee shop. He happens to be shooting the breeze with his buddies at the neighborhood Chinese buffet, talking about the dents in golf balls and such, when the discussion develops into a debate on whether or not God still speaks to people. When his friends skip out and he is left alone, Parrish tells God he's “all in.” Ready to listen, do what he’s told, and see what happens. Only moments later, back at his table, he opens his fortune cookie to find a surprise -- instead of a proverbial statement, he reads a directive from God. “Take the corner.” God, via cookie, sends him on this first step of a seemingly absurd adventure. His quest sends him to the corner bus stop, where he finds a dropped and forgotten letter, written in a desperate tone, to help those God brings across his path. There, Parrish befriends Audra, a nursing student who rides the bus home. And together they begin to follow the god cookie message, pursuing the random threads of the experiment, tying them together and discovering more about themselves than either ever imagined possible.

Download or read book God Behaving Badly written by David T. Lamb and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God has a bad reputation. Many think of God as wrathful and angry, smiting people for no apparent reason. But the story is more complicated than that. Without minimizing the sometimes harsh realities of the biblical record, David Lamb unpacks the complexity of the Old Testament and assembles an overall picture that gives coherence to our understanding of God in both Old and New Testaments.

Download or read book God s Bits of Wood written by Ousmane Sembène and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1995 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "God's Bits of Wood is a fictionalized account of the Dakar-Niger train strikes which took in the 1940s. The novel looks at both the political and personal sacrifices the strikers and their families made. The political power is portrayed here as the strikers try to win back pensions, annual paid vacations, and family allowances from the Europeans. The novel can be seen as a shift of power between the African strikers and their European bosses. The Europeans have the political process and violence as a leverage of power, which they use both insistently and mindlessly. One of the European delegates for the railway company accidentally shoots young boys who are playing along the tracks. The delegate isn't charged with their murders. The Europeans also prevent the strikers and their families from having access to water. Yet the strikers also have the masses as their power. The strikers gain powerful allies in their own women. In the beginning of the novel, the women are not told the details of the strike, though they are asked to support their men. Only the small child, Ad'jibid'ji, shows any interest and insists that her grandfather take her to a meeting of the strikers. Yet as the novel continues, the women become more and more involved in the strike. This is because the strike has hit home to them in a literal way. There is no water nor food to eat. The women and children begin to starve. The women suffer in silence until they begin to fight back. Two of the more striking sequences in the novel are the siege between the women of N'Diayene and the policemen who have come to arrest Ramatoulaye, and leads to the burning down of the village, and the march the women go on to Dakar to protest their treatment and to support the strikers. The strike breaks down the barriers which cause inequality between men and women, black and white." -- from www.associatedcontent.com (Oct. 22, 2010).

Download or read book Gods of Wood and Stone written by Mark Di Ionno and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two men from disparate worlds search for what constitutes a meaningful life in a searing portrait of honor and masculinity, sport and celebrity, marriage and parenthood in this “rough, tough, and thoughtful” (Phil Mushnick, New York Post) debut from Pulitzer Prize finalist and front-page columnist Mark Di Ionno. Joe Grudeck is a living legend—a first-ballot Hall of Famer beloved by Boston Red Sox fans who once played for millions under the bright Fenway lights. Now, he finds himself haunted by his own history, searching for connection in a world that’s alienated his true self beneath his celebrity persona. Soon, he’ll step back into the spotlight once more with a very risky Cooperstown acceptance speech that has the power to change everything—except the darkness in his past. Horace Mueller is a different type altogether—working in darkness at a museum blacksmith shop and living in a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of Cooperstown, New York. He clings to an antiquated lifestyle, fueled by nostalgia for simpler times and a rebellion against the sport-celebrity lifestyle of Cooperstown. His baseball prodigy son, however, veers towards everything Horace has spent his life railing against. Gods of Wood and Stone is the story of these two men—a timeless, but strikingly singular tale of the responsibilities of manhood and the pitfalls of glory in a painful and exhilarating novel that’s distinctly American. “Delivered with a fan’s passion, a journalist’s eye for detail, and the unblinking courage of a storyteller, Mark Di Ionno knocks it out of the park with this piercing literary thriller” (Bryan Gruley, award-winning author of the Starvation Lake trilogy).

Download or read book Summer for the Gods written by Edward J Larson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes Trial and the battle over evolution and creation in America's schools In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes, represented by Clarence Darrow and the ACLU, in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day-in cities and states throughout the country. Edward Larson's classic Summer for the Gods -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History -- is the single most authoritative account of this pivotal event. An afterword assesses the state of the battle between creationism and evolution, and points the way to how it might potentially be resolved.

Download or read book Habits of the Household written by Justin Whitmel Earley and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover simple habits and easy-to-implement daily rhythms that will help you find meaning beyond the chaos of family life as you create a home where kids and parents alike practice how to love God and each other. You long for tender moments with your children--but do you ever find yourself too busy to stop, make eye contact, and say something you really mean? Daily habits are powerful ways to shape the heart--but do you find yourself giving in to screen time just to get through the day? You want to parent with purpose--but do you know how to start? Award-winning author and father of four Justin Whitmel Earley understands the tension between how you long to parent and what your daily life actually looks like. In Habits of the Household, Earley gives you the tools you need to create structure--from mealtimes to bedtimes--that free you to parent toddlers, kids, and teens with purpose. Learn how to: Develop a bedtime liturgy to settle your little ones and ground them in God's love Discover a new framework for discipline as discipleship Acquire simple practices for more regular and meaningful family mealtimes Open your eyes to the spirituality of parenting, seeing small moments as big opportunities for spiritual formation Develop a custom age chart for your family to more intentionally plan your shared years under the same roof Each chapter in Habits of the Household ends with practical patterns, prayers, or liturgies that your family can put into practice right away. As you create liberating rhythms around your everyday routines, you will find your family has a greater sense of peace and purpose as your home becomes a place where, above all, you learn how to love.

Download or read book Is God a Moral Monster written by Paul Copan and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A recent string of popular-level books written by the New Atheists have leveled the accusation that the God of the Old Testament is nothing but a bully, a murderer, and a cosmic child abuser. This viewpoint is even making inroads into the church. How are Christians to respond to such accusations? And how are we to reconcile the seemingly disconnected natures of God portrayed in the two testaments? In this timely and readable book, apologist Paul Copan takes on some of the most vexing accusations of our time, including: God is arrogant and jealous God punishes people too harshly God is guilty of ethnic cleansing God oppresses women God endorses slavery Christianity causes violence and more Copan not only answers God's critics, he also shows how to read both the Old and New Testaments faithfully, seeing an unchanging, righteous, and loving God in both.

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Download or read book River God written by Wilbur Smith and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tanus is the fair-haired young lion of a warrior whom the gods have decreed will lead Egypt's army in a bold attempt to reunite the Kingdom's shattered halves. But Tanus will have to defy the same gods to attain the reward they have forbidden him, an object more prized than battle's glory: possession of the Lady Lostris, a rare beauty with skin the color of oiled cedar--destined for the adoration of a nation, and the love of one extraordinary man. International bestselling author Wilbur Smith, creator of over two dozen highly acclaimed novels, draws readers into a magnificent, richly imagined Egyptian saga. Exploding with all the drama, mystery, and rage of ancient Egypt, River God is a masterpiece from a storyteller at the height of his powers.

Download or read book God Is Great God Is Good written by William Lane Craig and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magisterial collection, the contemporary complaints against belief in God are addressed with intellectual passion and rigor by some of the most astute theological and philosophical minds of the day. Including an interview by Gary Habermas with noted convert to theism Antony Flew, and a direct critical response to Richard Dawkins's God Delusion by Alvin Plantinga, God Is Great, God Is Good offers convincing and compelling reassurance that though the world has changed, God has not.

Download or read book The Whole Mystery of Christ written by Jordan Daniel Wood and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2022-10-15 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thoroughgoing examination of Maximus Confessor’s singular theological vision through the prism of Christ’s cosmic and historical Incarnation. Jordan Daniel Wood changes the trajectory of patristic scholarship with this comprehensive historical and systematic study of one of the most creative and profound thinkers of the patristic era: Maximus Confessor (560–662 CE). Wood's panoramic vantage on Maximus’s thought emulates the theological depth of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy while also serving as a corrective to that classic text. Maximus's theological vision may be summed up in his enigmatic assertion that “the Word of God, very God, wills always and in all things to actualize the mystery of his Incarnation.” The Whole Mystery of Christ sets out to explicate this claim. Attentive to the various contexts in which Maximus thought and wrote—including the wisdom of earlier church fathers, conciliar developments in Christological and Trinitarian doctrine, monastic and ascetic ways of life, and prominent contemporary philosophical traditions—the book explores the relations between God’s act of creation and the Word’s historical Incarnation, between the analogy of being and Christology, and between history and the Fall, in addition to treating such topics as grace, deification, theological predication, and the ontology of nature versus personhood. Perhaps uniquely among Christian thinkers, Wood argues, Maximus envisions creatio ex nihilo as creatio ex Deo in the event of the Word’s kenosis: the mystery of Christ is the revealed identity of the Word’s historical and cosmic Incarnation. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of patristics, historical theology, systematic theology, and Byzantine studies.

Download or read book God s Trees written by Julian Evans and published by Dayone C/O Grace Books. This book was released on 2013-11-30 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: