Emma Restall Orr

Advantages: Interesting & inspiring read
Disadvantages: ...

...As the title suggests this is a book about Druidry. By merely reading this author's work the reader is taken on a journey back through a powerful and ancient spiritual discipline that provide inspiration and encouragement to create a deeper relationship with the natural world and all its inhabitants - plants, animals and human, both incarnate and disincarnate. There is something in Emma Restall's Orr's Living Druidry that appeals strongly to me as a Zen practitioner. Firstly it is the graphic dream-like descriptions of her trance-like experiences she has in her communion with nature. And then there's her commitment to share "to give to others what we have been given". A vow not dissimilar to that which is uttered by a Zen practitioner before his/her zazen (Zen meditation, whose ultimate goal is enlightenment). The opening chapter... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: well thought through book characters are well explained
Disadvantages: very similar to her others

...I have read many of Jane Austens books and i found that 'Emma' is a well written book. Like Emma, Jane tells all the detail we need to know i feel that i could fall in love with the character and the surroundings. Quick-witted, beautiful, headstrong and rich, Emma Woodhouse is inordinately fond of match-making select inhabitants of the village of Highbury, yet aloof and oblivious as to the question of whom she herself might marry. This paradox multiplies the intrigues and sparkling ironies of Jane Austen's masterpiece, her comedy of a sentimental education through which Emma discovers a capacity for love and marriage. I like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of return; it would do her good," Jane Austen has developed Emma's character well. When i read this book it makes me feel that i know Emma quite well. If you have read... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Amazing story
Disadvantages: plot is hard to follow at times, disturbing images occasionally

...Iain Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife, in Scotland in 1954 and was educated at Stirling University where he read English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988. The Bridge was written in 1986 after the success of the Wasp Factory. Orr, the otherwise unnamed main character of the novel, is a successful Scottish engineer who's fed up with his life. His work doesn't really interest him anymore; years of alcohol abuse and smoking marijuana has dulled his life; his girlfriend has other lovers (he also has lover, but he would rather his lover remained dedicated to him). Then one evening he crashes his classic Jaguar into a parked MG. The aftermath is coma and months of amnesiac trance. The Bridge is what the reader comes to know as reality. However it is what Orr has created... Read review

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