Book picks similar to
A Recipe For Dreaming by Bryce Courtenay


non-fiction
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poetry

The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective


Andy Andrews - 2009
    Consider even the simplest action you take, for your lives matter beyond measure…and they matter forever.”Jones speaks to that part in everyone that is yearning to understand why things happen and what we can do about it.Like The Traveler’s Gift, The Noticer is a unique narrative is a blend of fiction, allegory, and inspiration.  Gifted storyteller Andy Andrews helps us see how becoming a “noticer” just might change a person’s life forever.

The Law and Other Essays on Manifestation


Neville Goddard - 2011
    Not one thing has ever appeared in man's world but what man decreed that it should. This you may deny, but try as you will you cannot disprove it, for this decreeing is based upon a changeless principle. You do not command things to appear by your words or loud affirmations. Such vain repetition is more often than not confirmation of the opposite. Decreeing is ever done in consciousness. That is? every man is conscious of being that which he has decreed himself to be. Collected her are six essays on the Law of Attraction: The Law, Be What You Wish; Be What You Believe, By Imagination We Become, The Law of Assumption, Truth, and At Your Command.

Boy Swallows Universe


Trent Dalton - 2018
    It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.But if Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.

Thoughts From the Seat of the Soul: Meditations for Souls in Process


Gary Zukav - 2002
    Slip this lovely little book into your purse or bag and take it with you wherever you go. Turn the pages as you are drawn -- you can be inspired every day or once an hour, or you can meditate on your favorite thought all month. Use it as an oracle, or to stimulate deeper insight, joy, and appreciation of your life and the lives of others. This powerful volume is for those who are growing in consciousness and for those who want to. It is the perfect gift for someone you love or for yourself.

Child of the Dawn: A Magical Journey of Awakening


Gautama Chopra - 1996
    This enchanting tale of an orphaned boy seeking happiness takes readers on a journey through the spiritual landscape of their own hearts.

True History of the Kelly Gang


Peter Carey - 2000
    of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.”In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved


Kate Bowler - 2018
    She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.

There Was Still Love


Favel Parrett - 2019
    A tender and masterfully told story of memory, family and love.Prague, 1938: Eva flies down the street from her sister. Suddenly a man steps out, a man wearing a hat. Eva runs into him, hits the pavement hard. His hat is in the gutter. His anger slaps Eva, but his hate will change everything, as war forces so many lives into small, brown suitcases.Prague, 1980: No one sees Ludek. A young boy can slip right under the heavy blanket that covers this city - the fear cannot touch him. Ludek is free. And he sees everything. The world can do what it likes. The world can go to hell for all he cares because Babi is waiting for him in the warm flat. His whole world.Melbourne, 1980: Mala Li ka's grandma holds her hand as they climb the stairs to their third floor flat. Inside, the smell of warm pipe tobacco and homemade cakes. Here, Mana and Bill have made a life for themselves and their granddaughter. A life imbued with the spirit of Prague and the loved ones left behind.Favel Parrett's deep emotional insight and stellar literary talent shine through in this love letter to the strong women who bind families together, despite dislocation and distance. It is a tender and beautifully told story of memory, family and love. Because there is still love. No matter what.

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings


John O'Donohue - 2008
    John O'Donohue, Irish teacher and poet, looks at life's thresholds--getting married, having children, starting a new job--and offers invaluable guidelines for making the transition from a known, familiar world into a new, unmapped territory.Most profoundly, however, O'Donohue explains "blessings" as a way of life, a lens through which the whole world is transformed. He awakens readers to timeless truths and shows the power they have to answer contemporary dilemmas and ease us through periods of change.

Iron John: A Book About Men


Robert Bly - 1984
    He addresses the devastating effects of remote fathers and mourns the disappearance of male initiation rites in our culture. Finding rich meaning in ancient stories and legends, Bly uses the Grimm fairy tale "Iron John," in which the narrator, or "Wild Man," guides a young man through eight stages of male growth, to remind us of archetypes long forgotten-images of vigorous masculinity, both protective and emotionally centered.Simultaneously poetic and down-to-earth, combining the grandeur of myth with the practical and often painful lessons of our own histories, Iron John is a rare work that will continue to guide and inspire men-and women-for years to come.

The Coconut Children


Vivian Pham - 2017
    It took two years of juvie, a crazy mother and a porn stash for them to meet again.Sonny is a sixteen-year-old girl who watches the world from her bedroom window and has a habit of falling hopelessly in love with just about anyone. Vince is a sixteen-year-old boy who became a legend after he was taken away two years ago. Now, Vince is back. In the vertigo of 1990's Cabramatta, in households which harbour histories and parents who are difficult to love, they stumble upon each other once more.

Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe


Laura Lynne Jackson - 2019
    She possesses an incredible gift: the ability to communicate with loved ones who have passed, convey messages of love and healing, and impart a greater understanding of our interconnectedness. Though her abilities are exceptional, they are not unique, and that is the message at the core of this book. Understanding "the secret language of the universe" is a gift available to all. As we learn to ask for and recognize signs from the other side, we will start to find meaning where before there was only confusion, and see light in the darkness. We may decide to change paths, push toward love, pursue joy, and engage with life in a whole new way.In Signs, Jackson is able to bring the mystical into the everyday. She relates stories of people who have experienced uncanny revelations and instances of unexplained synchronicity, as well as others drawn from her own experience. There's the lost child who appears to his mother as a deer that approaches her unhesitatingly at a highway rest stop; the name written on a dollar bill that lets a terrified wife know that her husband will be okay; the Elvis Presley song that arrives at the exact moment of Jackson's own father's passing; and many others. This is a book that is inspiring and practical, deeply comforting and wonderfully motivational, in asking us to see beyond ourselves to a more magnificent universal design.

In Moonland


Miles Allinson - 2021
    It goes down into the guts of the world. But a child’s love for a parent is different. It goes up. It’s more ethereal. It’s not quite present on the earth.’In present-day Melbourne, a man attempts to piece together the mystery of his father’s apparent suicide, as his young family slowly implodes. At the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in 1976, a man searching for salvation must confront his capacity for violence and darkness. And in a not-too-distant future, a woman with a life-altering decision to make travels through a climate-ravaged landscape to visit her estranged father.In Moonland is a portrait of three generations, each grappling with their own mortality. Spanning the wild idealism of the 70s through to the fragile hope of the future, it is a novel about the struggle for transcendence and the reverberating effects of family bonds. This long-awaited second outing from Miles Allinson, the multi-award-winning author of Fever of Animals, will affirm his reputation as one of Australia’s most interesting contemporary fiction writers, and urge us to see our own political and environmental reality in a new light.

Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness


Jon Kabat-Zinn - 2004
    . ." --Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the Introduction Jon Kabat-Zinn changed the way we thought about awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. Now, with Coming to Our Senses, he provides the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness and our physical and spiritual wellbeing. With scientific rigor, poetic deftness, and compelling personal stories, Jon Kabat-Zinn examines the mysteries and marvels of our minds and bodies, describing simple, intuitive ways in which we can come to a deeper understanding, through our senses, of our beauty, our genius, and our life path in a complicated, fear-driven, and rapidly changing world. In each of the book's eight parts, Jon Kabat-Zinn explores another facet of the great adventure of healing ourselves -- and our world -- through mindful awareness, with a focus on the "sensescapes" of our lives and how a more intentional awareness of the senses, including the human mind itself, allows us to live more fully and more authentically. By "coming to our senses" -- both literally and metaphorically by opening to our innate connectedness with the world around us and within us -- we can become more compassionate, more embodied, more aware human beings, and in the process, contribute to the healing of the body politic as well as our own lives in ways both little and big.

Stories: The Collected Short Fiction


Helen Garner - 2017
    Each one a perfect piece, together they showcase Garner’s mastery of the form.