‘Everyone dies, but no one is dead, ‘ goes the Tibetan saying. It is with these words that Advice on Dying takes flight. Using a seventeenth-century poem written by a prominent scholar-practitioner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama draws from a wide range of traditions and beliefs to explore the stages we all go through when we die, which are the very same stages we experience in life when we go to sleep, faint, or reach orgasm (Shakespeare’s ‘little death’).

The stages are described so vividly that we can imagine the process of traveling deeper into the mind, on the ultimate journey of transformation. In this way, His Holiness shows us how to prepare for that time and, in doing so, how to enrich our time on earth, die without fear or upset, and influence the stage between this life and the next so that we may gain the best possible incarnation. As always, the ultimate goal is to advance along the path to enlightenment. Advice on Dying is an essential tool for attaining that eternal bliss.

Other great blogs discussing Dalai Lama..

The Dalai Lama speaks at the Sheldonian - On the final leg of his official UK schedule, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has come to Oxford for a couple of days. Wherever there are Tibetan connections, the Office of Tibet will seek to guide His Holiness there - whether Tibetan :

Apologies ForthcomingTriggers Discussion - The conversation that followed ranged from questions like what the Dalai Lama would think of the book to whether Chinese or Americans are more judgmental and one-sided. An important theme that emerged was the value of fiction in keeping :

Emotional Inteliigence and Life purpose - One has to face a reality that a lot of work is repetitive and either one tries to do them with full attention or makes games out of them as some management books suggest. The Dalai Lama also suggests that if one thinks one’s work is :

http://media.libsyn.com/media/blogrelations/Zoo_Bit_Back.mp3

Theo, the star of our popular story The Monkey Who Loved Chocolate, returns for a new escapade in which the animals at the zoo face a major threat to the comfy lifestyle in the form of Mr. Shingles, the new chief zoo keeper.

Mr. Shingles does not believe in modern zoology. He thinks that pampering to animals every wish just encourages them to lounge and loaf around. His new regime is far from the animals liking. The animals want to ‘bite back’ - but only Theo is ingenious enough to find a way.

Read by Natasha. Duration 16 min.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked for your help in finding me an artist to bring my vision of Denton and Monty out of the black and white pages of the novels into a 2D world of graphics and art.
And boy did you come through in a big way!

My good friend, fellow novelist Christopher Gronlund referred me to the person I think is going to do an amazing job. The perfect artist for my vision, and I’m eager to start working with him to create some marketing materials that will take the sales and recognition of the series to the next level.

Folks, I’d like you to meet Daniel Fu.

I know that as you look through his portfolio above, and more relevantly, his work on his web comic, The Retriever, that you’ll come to the same conclusion that I did.

This guy is very talented, and he’s going to knock it out of the park.

The contract is all but signed, sealed and delivered, and as soon as some money has changed hands, Daniel and I will start working on bringing Denton and Monty to life.
I urge you to stop by his websites, drop him a line, congratulate him, tell him what a great guy I am, what a great series he’s getting ready to get involved with, etc.

You know, the usual

http://www.williammize.com/audio/angel/chapter_4.mp3

http://www.williammize.com/audio/angel/chapter_5.mp3

http://www.williammize.com/audio/angel/chapter_6.mp3

The book: Jane Eyre can be divided into five parts, neatly defined by Jane’s five main places of residence. The first two sections, when she is with her Aunt Reed and at Lowood school made me think I would not enjoy the novel very much. Like Charles Dickens, Brontë spends a large portion of these early chapters beating the reader into sympathy through the injustice and hardships of an innocent orphan. Yet, I got the sense that Jane is not the Shirley Temple character she makes herself out to be in her first-person narrative. This tension of an unreliable narrator kept me interested in the book through the first two acts.

The real heart of Jane Eyre is the third section, when she becomes a governess at Thornfield. These chapters are a marvelous body of writing, encompassing romance, comedy of manners, mystery, and gothic horror. The momentum of the plot built up in this third part is so great that it carries the story through the fourth section, which starts out strong, but devolves into a “yes you will / no I won’t” battle of wills. The fifth section brings the novel to a satisfying conclusion.

If you are reading this review, and are already a Jane Eyre fan, I would like to suggest, dear reader, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. This novel has a great story with a number of parallels to Jane Eyre. I was able to pick the unabridged CDs for around $3 from the sale table at a Borders Bookstore, then after I listened to it, sell it to a used bookstore for $10. I can’t recommend it as a “Free Listen”, but for me, that was better than free.

Rating: 8/10

The reader: Amanda Eland has a pleasant girlish voice that suits the calm character of Jane quite well. The repartee between Jane and Mr. Rochester does not come across as engaging as perhaps it should be, but otherwise her characters are well established. Although I’m no foreign language expert, Ms. Eland seemed to have trouble pronouncing the French and German phrases in the book. Overall this was a good reading in a high-quality recording. The main fault I had was not with the recording itself, but how it is presented. To download each chapter, you have to follow a link from the table of contents to that chapter’s page, then download the file for that chapter separately. The files are quite large in size, with some chapters weighing in over 90 MB. However, this large size translates into good audio quality, so if you have a fast connection and plenty of memory, this book is certainly worthy of a download.

Ähnlich Jules Verne in seinem Roman ‘Reise zum Mittelpunkt der Erde’, so führt uns auch Ernst Constantin (richtiger Name: Ernst Constantin Schumann) in die Urtümliche Welt der Dinosaurier zurück. Als Handlungsort hat Ernst Constantin die damals noch unerforschte Polarregion gewählt. Sicherlich mit ein Grund, warum der Roman heute in Vergessenheit geraten ist. (Summary by Wassermann)

• Gutenberg.de e-text
• LibriVox’s Das Warme Polarland Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book (139.8MB)