Download or read book The Blind Storyteller written by Iris Berent and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happiness or anger? If they do, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body link are the topics of age-old scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, that newborn babies don't know the difference between right and wrong-such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite-that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied. These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself. An intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research, The Blind Storyteller grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so infatuated with our brains to what happens when we die. The end result is a startling new perspective on our humanity."--
Download or read book The Blind Storyteller written by Iris Berent and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do newborns think? Do they know that "three" is greater than "two"? Do they prefer "right" to "wrong"? What about emotions--can newborns recognize happiness or anger? If the answer to these questions is yes, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body problem have been the topics of fierce scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, that newborn babies don't know the difference between right and wrong--such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite--that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied. These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In The Blind Storyteller, the cognitive psychologist Iris Berent exposes a chasm between our intuitive understanding of human nature and the conclusions emerging from science. Her conclusions show that many of our stories are misguided. Just like Homer, we, the storyteller, are blind. How could we get it so wrong? In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: Our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself. An intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research, The Blind Storyteller grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so afraid of zombies, to whether dyslexia is "just in our heads," from what happens to us when we die, to why we are so infatuated with our brains. The end result is a startling new perspective on the age-old nature/nurture debate--and on what it means to be human.
Download or read book The Untold Story of the Talking Book written by Matthew Rubery and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-14 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of audiobooks, from entertainment & rehabilitation for blinded World War I soldiers to a twenty-first-century competitive industry. Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account are nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison’s recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877, to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans, to today’s billion-dollar audiobook industry. The Untold Story of the Talking Book focuses on the social impact of audiobooks, not just the technological history, in telling a story of surprising and impassioned conflicts: from controversies over which books the Library of Congress selected to become talking books—yes to Kipling, no to Flaubert—to debates about what defines a reader. Delving into the vexed relationship between spoken and printed texts, Rubery argues that storytelling can be just as engaging with the ears as with the eyes, and that audiobooks deserve to be taken seriously. They are not mere derivatives of printed books but their own form of entertainment. We have come a long way from the era of sound recorded on wax cylinders, when people imagined one day hearing entire novels on mini-phonographs tucked inside their hats. Rubery tells the untold story of this incredible evolution and, in doing so, breaks from convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctively modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read. Praise for The Untold Story of the Talking Book “If audiobooks are relatively new to your world, you might wonder where they came from and where they’re going. And for general fans of the intersection of culture and technology, The Untold Story of the Talking Book is a fascinating read.” —Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times “[Rubery] explores 150 years of the audio format with an imminently accessible style, touching upon a wide range of interconnected topics . . . Through careful investigation of the co-development of formats within the publishing industry, Rubery shines a light on overlooked pioneers of audio . . . Rubery’s work succeeds in providing evidence to ‘move beyond the reductive debate’ on whether audiobooks really count as reading, and establishes the format’s rightful place in the literary family.” —Mary Burkey, Booklist (starred review)
Download or read book The Last Storytellers written by Richard Hamilton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marrakech is the heart and lifeblood of Morocco's ancient storytelling tradition. For nearly a thousand years, storytellers have gathered in the Jemaa el Fna, the legendary square of the city, to recount ancient folktales and fables to rapt audiences. But this unique chain of oral tradition that has passed seamlessly from generation to generation is teetering on the brink of extinction. The competing distractions of television, movies and the internet have drawn the crowds away from the storytellers and few have the desire to learn the stories and continue their legacy. Richard Hamilton has witnessed at first hand the death throes of this rich and captivating tradition and, in the labyrinth of the Marrakech medina, has tracked down the last few remaining storytellers, recording stories that are replete with the mysteries and beauty of the Maghreb.
Download or read book The Blind Assassin written by Margaret Atwood and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” These words are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, married at eighteen to a wealthy industrialist but now poor and eighty-two. Iris recalls her far from exemplary life, and the events leading up to her sister’s death, gradually revealing the carefully guarded Chase family secrets. Among these is “The Blind Assassin,” a novel that earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, it was a pulp fantasy improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet secretly in rented rooms and seedy cafés. As this novel-within-a-novel twists and turns through love and jealousy, self-sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real narrative, as both move closer to war and catastrophe. Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning sensation combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding tale.
Download or read book The Blind Man and the Loon written by Craig Mishler and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Blind Man and the Loon is a living Native folktale about a blind man who is betrayed by his mother or wife but whose vision is magically restored by a kind loon. Variations of this tale are told by Native storytellers all across Alaska, arctic Canada, Greenland, the Northwest Coast, and even into the Great Basin and the Great Plains. As the story has traveled through cultures and ecosystems over many centuries, individual storytellers have added cultural and local ecological details to the tale, creating countless variations. In The Blind Man and the Loon: The Story of a Tale, folklorist Craig Mishler goes back to 1827, tracing the story's emergence across Greenland and North America in manuscripts, books, and in the visual arts and other media such as film, music, and dance theater. Examining and comparing the story's variants and permutations across cultures in detail, Mishler brings the individual storyteller into his analysis of how the tale changed over time, considering how storytellers and the oral tradition function within various societies. Two maps unequivocally demonstrate the routes the story has traveled. The result is a masterful compilation and analysis of Native oral traditions that sheds light on how folktales spread and are adapted by widely diverse cultures.
Download or read book The Blind written by A.F. Brady and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Taut and intelligent’ Prima ‘Utterly addictive’ Lisa Hall
Download or read book The Storytellers written by Mark Rubinstein and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever read a suspense novel so good you had to stop and think to yourself, “How did the author come up with this idea? Their characters? Is some of this story real?” For over five years, Mark Rubinstein, physician, psychiatrist, and mystery and thriller writer, had the chance to ask the most well-known authors in the field just these kinds of questions in interviews for the Huffington Post. Collected here are interviews with forty-seven accomplished authors, including Michael Connelly, Ken Follett, Meg Gardiner, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, and Don Winslow. These are their personal stories in their own words, much of the material never before published. How do these writers’ life experiences color their art? Find out their thoughts, their inspirations, their candid opinions. Learn more about your favorite authors, how they work and who they truly are.
Download or read book The Blind Woman and Other Stories written by Michael Gurian and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within this dramatic and profound collection of stories, New York Times bestselling author Michael Gurian explores the cultural and spiritual gulf between Muslims and Westerners. From Ankara to Seattle, the West Bank to Manhattan, these provocative stories continually surprise with scenes of shocking brutality and improbable enlightenment.In A Desperate Pride, a Palestinian woman falls in love with Raf Horowitz, an American Jew who arrives in Israel with reckless idealism. In The Reincarnation of Donaldo Fuertes, an elderly writer recruits a young African American Muslim to accompany him on a pilgrimage to his homeland. And in the title story, a young hospice nurse finds her life course completely changed as she fulfills her duties to a Somali woman scarred by her upbringing.With the grace and craftsmanship of a veteran storyteller, Gurian's collection is an emotional powerhouse filled with animosity and love, heartache and understanding, disillusionment and hope. Lyrical and absorbing, these stories reveal the humanity of a culture so often in conflict with our own.
Download or read book Jesus the Storyteller written by Stephen I. Wright and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While it is widely acknowledged that Jesus told stories, there has not been much focus on why he did so and how these stories contributed to his ministry. Stephen Wright approaches this topic afresh to analyze how considering the parables as "stories" can help our understanding of Jesus and his mission. Wright begins by looking for insights in scholarship from recent decades on the parables and the historical Jesus. He goes on to imagine how these stories would have resonated with hearers in each of the Synoptic Gospels and considers the dynamics between Jesus and his hearers in different locations like Galilee and Jerusalem. Finally, Wright considers the purpose of these parables as an element of Jesus' ministry and looks at Jesus himself as a storyteller. This book will provide a solid basis for understanding why Jesus spoke in parables and how this distinctive style of speech functioned in his ministry.
Download or read book The Storyteller written by Jodi Picoult and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing novel about redemption and forgiveness from the “amazingly talented writer” (HuffPost) and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult. Some stories live forever... Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t. Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future.
Download or read book The Phonological Mind written by Iris Berent and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of how humans weave the sound-patterns of language, informed by insights from linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience and genetics.
Download or read book Cassandra Speaks written by Elizabeth Lesser and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers? Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted. Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.
Download or read book The Seeing Stick written by Jane Yolen and published by Running Press Kids. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The same story that captivated readers in 1977 is back in a stunning new edition! Hwei Min, the only daughter of the emperor of China, has been blind since birth. Her father offers a reward to anyone who can find a cure for the little girl. It seems that no one from magicians to physicians can help her. Then, one day a wise old man with a mysterious seeing stick visits the princess. Will he be able to teach Hwei Min that there is more than one way to see the world?
Download or read book Storytellers written by Bjørn Larssen and published by josephtailor. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you don't write your story, they will. Iceland, 1920. Gunnar, a hermit blacksmith, dwells with his animals, darkness, and moonshine. The last thing he wants is an injured lodger, but his money may change Gunnar’s life. So might the stranger’s story – by ending it. That is, unless an unwanted marriage, God’s messengers’ sudden interest, an obnoxious elf, or his doctor’s guilt derail the narrative. Or will the demons from Gunnar’s past cut all the stories short? Side effects of too much truth include death, but one’s true story is another’s game of lies. With so many eager to write his final chapter, can Gunnar find his own happy ending? Bjørn Larssen’s award-winning, best selling novel is an otherworldly, emotive Icelandic saga – a story of love and loneliness, relief and suffering, hatred… and hope. “These strange, sad, funny, murderous people will stay with me for a long time.” – Annie Whitehead, author of The Sins of the Father Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Award – Finalist Readers' Favorite Gold Medal – Historical Fiction Discovered Diamond – Winner Note: British English conventions, spelling, and grammar were used in this book. The author is an ex-blacksmith, lover of all things Icelandic, physically located in Amsterdam, spiritually living in a log cabin near Akureyri. He has published stories and essays in Polish and American magazines, both online and in print. This is his first novel.
Download or read book BLIND PONY As True A Story As I Can Tell written by Samantha Hart and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blind Pony is a story of healing and hope, a coming of age narrative intersecting themes of recovery, redemption, forgiveness, and the struggle it takes to define life on your terms.
Download or read book The Storyteller written by Evan Turk and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time of drought in the Kingdom of Morocco, a storyteller and a boy weave a tale to thwart a Djinn and his sandstorm from destroying their city.
