Based on a series of conversations between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, this book distills the essence of the artist’s lifelong meditations on the problems and paradoxes of representing a three-dimensional world on a flat surface.How does drawing make one “see things clearer and clearer and clearer still”? What significance do differing media, from a Lascaux cave wall to an iPad, have for the images we see? What is the relationship between the images we make and the reality around us? And how can we fully enjoy the pleasures of just looking—at trees, or faces, or sunrises?These conversations are punctuated by wise and witty observations by both artist and interviewer on many other artists—Vermeer, Tiepolo, Caravaggio, Van Gogh, and Monet among them—and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of California, where Hockney spent so many years, and East Yorkshire, his birthplace, to which he has now returned.

    Tables, desks, chairs, and cabinets from this simple workshop grace the homes and mansions and executive boardrooms of people who prize such excellence. In this lavishly illustrated volume, George Nakashima allows us in intimate look at his artistry, his philosophy, his life. It is the portrait of an artisan who strives to find the ideal use for each plank in order to "create an object of utility to man and, if nature smiles, an object of lasting beauty."The author's search for the meaning of life took him as a young man to Paris, Tokyo, and Pondicherry, India. In India, he found the inner peace for which he had been searching and began to find ways to work with timber. He writes movingly about the grandeur of ancient trees and stunning figured woods and explains how he selects and prepares his materials. Above all, he impresses us with his devotion to discovering the inherent beauty of wood so that noble trees might have a second life as furniture. The Soul of a Tree looks at the world through the eyes of an artist and evokes the joy of living in harmony with nature.

    Drawing on a number of accessible examples, the author prompts us to call on our own musical experiences in order to think more critically about the roles of the performers and the listener, about music as a commodity and an experience, what it means to understand music, and the values we ascribe to it. This very short introduction, written with both humor and flair, begins with a sampling of music as human activity and then goes on to consider the slippery phenomenon of how music has become an object of thought. Covering not only Western and classical music, Cook touches on all types from rock to Indonesian music and beyond. Incorporating musical forms from every continent, Music will make enjoyable reading for beginner and expert alike. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    Written in a warm and conversational way that is, at times, deeply moving, at times, surprisingly amusing, and always practical, it covers a wide range of issues facing people in grief. Marasco and Shuff have done the footwork for readers who wish to know more about this complex subject. Using a variety of sources, including books, films, music and many hours spent talking with people in grief, the authors distill their candid insights into a series of short, single-topic-essays that can be easily digested in one sitting--a format they found grieving people preferred. This is not a book written by clinicians, so there's no cold jargon. It's not a memoir of one individual's grief, so it has something for everyone. And it's not a self-peddling inspirational book. It's a wise, plain-spoken, comforting book about an intimidating topic. As one reader recently said of About Grief: "Reading this book is like having a smart, entertaining friend around--at a time when you really need one."

    His posthumously published collection of poems under the title Sky, wind, stars, and poems is one of the all-time favorites of Korean readers. Wishing not to have so much as a speck of shame toward heaven until the day I die, I suffered, even when the wind stirred the leaves. (From Foreword) In simple diction and straightforward expressions, his poems sing of his love for his people, his compassion for the poor and destitute, and his hopes for freedom and independence. These themes still resonate deep within the hearts of the Korean people. His imprisonment and eventual death in 1945 in a Japanese prison lend great poignancy to his work.

    Many things, or rather peoplee and ideas, are dealt with here in what I hope is a humorous vein."

    

    The award-winning author of more than twenty novels, and numerous short stories and essays, Park often deals with the themes of Korean War tragedies, middle-class values, and women's issues. The novel is rich with scenes of cultural clashes, racial prejudice, and the kinds of misunderstandings that many American soldiers and Koreans experienced during the war years.

    If you find yourself struggling to live up to, or even enjoy, these non-stop social expectations, then this book is for you.Written for highly sensitive people, the book explains the characteristics of being highly sensitive and how to overcome common difficulties, such as low self-esteem and the exhausting effects of socialising. Ilse Sand also encourages you to explore and appreciate the advantages of high sensitivity, including your aptitude for depth, intensity and presence, and suggests activities to calm and inspire.

    . . Stein develops the cartographical metaphor of the title by beginning with the "surface" (ego) of the psyche and exploring successively more complex areas, including complexes, libido thoery, shadow, "anima/us," the self, individuation, and synchronicity. The map soon resembles the multidisciplinary chart of a solar system more than it does a flat map. In each subject area, Stein draws heavily on papers that Jung wrote late in his life, but he sets these in the context of Jung's earlier developing thought. This method allows the author to demonstrate the interconnectedness and coherence of Jung's mature work. -- Choice, 10/15/98Stein could just as aptly have named his introductory guide "Jung's Art of the Soul," for the course the founder of analytical psychology charted also has the intuitive sweep of an artist on an inner journey integrated within a systematic framework of techniques. Though acknowledging Jung's creative, intuitive approach to fathoming the mysteries of the individual and collective human psyche, the author presents a solid case for the basic coherency and empirical underpinnings of the great psychoanalyst's theory-counter to those who viewed him as more of a mystic or philosopher who espoused: "As within, so without." Territory consciously omitted from this psychic map concern his analytic practice and interpretation of culture, history, and religion. Organized like a graduate thesis, all the major concepts that evolved over Jung's lengthy career are lucidly summarized with some contextual details: ego-consciousness, complexes, libido theory, archetypes, persona/shadow, anima/animus, the self, individuation, and synchronicity. While this presentation is eminently more accessible than most Jungian texts-and Stein does preface it with personal remarks about his long-time attraction to Jung-those who seek a sense of Jung's own voice and personal development in his quest for answers to many of life's enigmas will have their appetites whet to explore further. -- From Independent Publisher

    Reflecting the political craft of a leading statesman and the urbane wit of a man who associated with Pope, Addison, and Swift, Lord Chesterfield's Letters reveal the author's political cynicism, his views on good breeding, and instruction to his son in etiquette and the worldly arts. The only annotated selection of this breadth available in paperback, these entertaining letters illuminate the fascinating aspects of eighteenth-century life and manners.

    The Gardener's Year is a charismatic product of Karel Capek's genius: amusing, informative, and full of a quizzical interest in people, animals and plants.In this new version, Geoffrey Newsome -the highly acclaimed translator of Capek's witty Letters from England -has captured the grace and irony of the original Czech, to produce a volume that will be treasured equally by those who love gardening as a relaxation, by those who loathe it as a chore, and by those who have no interest in it whatsoever.

    Together in one volume, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Henry David Thoreau's Walking, writing that defines our distinctly American relationship to nature.

    On the outskirts of South Korea’s glittering metropolis is a place few people know about: a vast landfill site called Flower Island. Home to those driven from the city by poverty, is it here that 13-year-old Bugeye and his mother arrive, following his father’s internment in a government ‘re-education camp’.Living in a shack and supporting himself by weeding recyclables out of the refuse, at first Bugeye’s life on Flower Island is hard. But then one night he notices mysterious lights around the landfill. And when the ancient spirits that still inhabit the island’s landscape reveal themselves to him, Bugeye's luck begins to change – but can it last?Vibrant and enchanting, Familiar Things depicts a society on the edge of dizzying economic and social change, and is a haunting reminder to us all to be careful of what we throw away.

    Now, in the “unknown, unanticipated galaxy” of very old age, he is writing searching essays that startle, move, and delight. In the transgressive and horrifyingly funny “No Smoking,” he looks back over his lifetime, and several of his ancestors’ lifetimes, of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, packs of them every day. Hall paints his past: “Decades followed each other — thirty was terrifying, forty I never noticed because I was drunk, fifty was best with a total change of life, sixty extended the bliss of fifty . . .” And, poignantly, often joyfully, he limns his present: “When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone on my chest, my beard roared like a lion and gained four inches.” Most memorably, Hall writes about his enduring love affair with his ancestral Eagle Pond Farm and with the writing life that sustains him, every day: “Yesterday my first nap was at 9:30 a.m., but when I awoke I wrote again.”