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Available at Barnes and Noble
This is a great book.
If you are looking for an uplifting book that incorporates many principles of success and chasing your dreams, then this is the right book.
I have been reading books like The Jackrabbit Factor, Hidden Treasures, Killing Sacred Cows, and other similar book about goal achievement and financial freedom. This book pretty much speaks many of the same truths and principles about chasing your dreams in a fictional tale.
The story is about a young man who wanted to travel so he became a sheperd. It is set in older times in the old world, maybe a couple hundred years ago. The time period is not essential to the story, but adds a level of interesting side stories to the main one if you pay attention to that sort of thing.
This young man has a recurring dream that he needs to travel to the great pyramids where he will find a great treasure.
The story follows his choices and decisions about how to pursue his goal and achieve his dreams.
This book is worth reading and owning. I borrowed it from the library, but will be buying it before long.
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This happens from time to time. When you have the media following you around with cameras and pictures are being taken, it is bound to happen.
I won’t post it here, but here is a link.
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I have heard of this book numerous times and finally sat down to read it.
It is supposed to be an epic work deconstructing the connection between legends and mythology from around the world, [then] modern psychoanalysis, and making sense of it all.
Part of the problem is that Mr. Campbell lumps religion in with all of these myths and legends. If you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Shinto, or a Buddist, you may take offense or otherwise choose to ignore Mr. Campbell’s writings because he paints all religions with the same “myth” brush.
This book would be a good intellectual foundation to challenge someone’s faith in their religion.
The book draws heavily on Freudian analysis of dreams and mythological tales which means that pretty much everything symbolizes sex, or a sexual relationship, or intercourse, or gender, or both genders, or phallic symbols, or wanting to marry your mom and kill your dad, or birth, or some kind of variation on this theme. He even relates a practice where some of the honored men of a tribe would first be circumcised, and then a few years later would then ritually mutilate their male member to become symbolically both a man and a woman, the singular source of life and very revered in their community.
I personally have a hard time seing sex as the motif explaining everything. Campbell relies on this type of explanation a lot. Many modern psychologists have discredited Freud and moved on in explaining things without focusing on childhood trauma or other sexual issues. For a couple examples: 1- Burying Freud, and 2- Why Freud was Wrong. For your enlightenment/amusement here is a page that takes on all of psychology for not recognizing the concept of sin.
I didn’t knuckle down and read the whole thing. After about the first third, I began skimming most of the rest of the book. Maybe I am just not at the point in my life that is ripe for reading it, I don’t know.
I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone under about 24 or so. It could be a powerful tool for undermining someone’s faith.
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So, I wrote about the news hubub last week about whether Ann Coulter really was banned from NBC for life.
In some of the comments to that post, it was mentioned that Matt Drudge first reported an outright ban and later in the day Drudge changed his reporting to reflect the differing opinions from NBC executives. I linked to a cached image of the page and I have no idea whether it was that way or not. It is entirely possible that it was originally reported as a ban without differing opinions from the execs at NBC and later changed which would then create some room for people reporting an outright ban.
So I read the book this last week. Reading Ann Coulter’s book was an interesting experience. Her writing is so full of measured venom and outrage that the book is almost pulsating with it.
I understand the outrage myself. Ann sees the media as being so friendly and collegial with the left that truths are covered up, lies are pronounced, and any other convenient change of opinion that is timely for pressing the agenda of the left. The agenda of the left is pro-abortion, pro-affirmative action, pro-gays in the military, pro-gay marriage, pro-welfare programs, pro-government, pro-state run schools, pro-relative morality, and pretty much anything that undermines the traditional values of the country. They are also anti-republican party, anti-conservative, anti-christian, and anti the traditional values of the country.
Ann Coulter uses her books to push back as hard as she can against the sea of left-inspired propaganda we are awash with every day in the print, broadcast, and cable media these days. She uses some crude language, definitely inflammatory language, and tries to bring a measure of balance to the discussion. The problem is that in the market of ideas, the scale is tilted way over on the left side and her only recourse to try and balance things out is to use even heavier and strong language because her comparative voice is so small.
The book further illustrates the massive bias the media has toward people on the left and people on the right who then turn on the right and criticize it. This is more or less a futher chronicling of the bias of the left. It is an important book if you want a different perspective on the media scene, but it uses some very strong language to get her point across.
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The Blight Way. I’ve always been a fan of Pat McManus’ writing. He has been writing for many years for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream and his articles have always been humorous.
He has written some biographical books about how he came to be a humor writer and almost just stumbled on his career as a humor writer.
Mr. McManus started out writing serious articles about serious subjects related to land management and conservation issues. [If my memory serves me correctly.] He was working at a small college teaching writing and he was doing his own serious writing for a few hours each day trying to sell his articles to major publications.
One summer, the funding for his class was cut and he was out of a job for the summer. So with fear and trembling he set out with his typewriter to make a living for his family for the summer. He worked for several hours on some serious writing, and then to blow off some steam he wrote a humor piece in about an hour. He then sent both articles out for sale. After all of his serious writing and not being able to sell his serious articles, he sent out a one-hour effort humor piece and it sold for more than he would have made for the whole summer teaching at the college.
He found his career doing something that took significantly less effort than his serious writing and it paid a whole lot more too. I am very glad for the guy.
If you haven’t read any of his stuff, I’d recommend starting with some of his collections of short stories so that you can get the feel for his humor style. It is often subtle and can take a little thinking to get it.
The Blight Way is a novel and a mystery. It is well written, but is not as funny as his short stories. It is still a well devolped story with several important characters, twists and turns. It deals with a multiple murder in small town Idaho. I like it.
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The Cause of Liberty 