Designed as a tool for those who are just learning about the labyrinth or those who use it frequently, "Pondering the Labyrinth" provides hundreds of questions to help individuals embrace their spiritual journey. Beginning with answers to frequently asked questions about labyrinths and ending with questions to ponder for special reasons including constructing a labyrinth, the author provides thoughtful, transforming questions such as: where are my longings leading? what is dying in me? where am I most at home? and what am I circling and what is encircling me? Each question opens fresh space and inspires not only answers, but one's own questions. Each chapter includes a reflection page with space to write your own questions. The book also contains black and white line drawings of fifteen labyrinths from around the world.

Notable International Crime Novel of the Year – Crime Reads / Lit Hub From a prize-winning Turkish novelist, a heady, political tale of one man’s search for identity and meaning in Istanbul after the loss of his memory. A blues singer, Boratin, attempts suicide by jumping off the Bosphorus Bridge, but opens his eyes in the hospital. He has lost his memory, and can't recall why he wished to end his life. He remembers only things that are unrelated to himself, but confuses their timing. He knows that the Ottoman Empire fell, and that the last sultan died, but has no idea when. His mind falters when remembering civilizations, while life, like a labyrinth, leads him down different paths. From the confusion of his social and individual memory, he is faced with two questions. Does physical recognition provide a sense of identity? Which is more liberating for a man, or a society: knowing the past, or forgetting it? Embroidered with Borgesian micro-stories, Labyrinth flows smoothly on the surface while traversing sharp bends beneath the current.

Geoffrion has created a unique spiritual experience cleverly intertwining traditional labyrinthine concepts and the entire Hebrew Scriptures love poem "Song of Songs."

Providing a historical and modern context for the unique spiritual discipline of walking a labyrinth, Travis Scholl weaves his own journey with a prayerful study of the Gospel of Mark, guiding readers to powerful encounters with God, even in the midst of quiet solitude, repetition and stillness. These 40 reflections are ideal for daily reading—during Lent or any time of the year.

In this whimsical fantasy adventure, a novelist’s search for an author takes him to a magical city, a villainous literary scholar, and perilous catacombs. Optimus Yarnspinner’s search for an author’s identity takes him to Bookholm―the so-called City of Dreaming Books. On entering its streets, our hero feels as if he has opened the door of a gigantic second-hand bookshop. His nostrils are assailed by clouds of book dust, the stimulating scent of ancient leather, and the tang of printer’s ink. Soon, though, Yarnspinner falls into the clutches of the city’s evil genius, Pfistomel Smyke, who treacherously maroons him in the labyrinthine catacombs underneath the city, where reading books can be genuinely dangerous . . . In The City of Dreaming Books, Walter Moers transports us to a magical world where reading is a remarkable adventure. Only those intrepid souls who are prepared to join Yarnspinner on his perilous journey should read this book. We wish the rest of you a long, safe, unutterably dull, and boring life! Praise for The City of Dreaming Books “German author and cartoonist Moers returns to the mythical lost continent of Zamonia in his uproarious third fantasy adventure to be translated into English, a delightfully imaginative mélange of Shel Silverstein zaniness and oddball anthropomorphism à la Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. . . . A wonderfully whimsical story that will appeal to readers of all ages.” —Publishers Weekly “A salmagundi of whimsy, imagination and book lore—remarkable fun.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer “Moers puts Tolkien through some sort of Willy Wonka sweetening process and comes up with characters such as Optimus Yarnspinner, who, names being fate and all, just has to be a storyteller.” —Kirkus Reviews

National Outdoor Book Awards Winner Winner of the BANFF Adventure Travel Award “A thrilling and harrowing story. If it’s a cliche to say I couldn’t put this book down, well, too bad: I couldn’t put this book down.” —Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins “Polar exploration is utter madness. It is the insistence of life where life shouldn’t exist. And so, Labyrinth of Ice shows you exactly what happens when the unstoppable meets the unmovable. Buddy Levy outdoes himself here. The details and story are magnificent.” —Brad Meltzer, bestselling author of The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington Based on the author's exhaustive research, the incredible true story of the Greely Expedition, one of the most harrowing adventures in the annals of polar exploration. In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible challenge—vicious wolves, sub-zero temperatures, and months of total darkness—as they set about exploring one of the most remote, unrelenting environments on the planet. In May 1882, they broke the 300-year-old record, and returned to camp to eagerly await the resupply ship scheduled to return at the end of the year. Only nothing came. 250 miles south, a wall of ice prevented any rescue from reaching them. Provisions thinned and a second winter descended. Back home, Greely’s wife worked tirelessly against government resistance to rally a rescue mission. Months passed, and Greely made a drastic choice: he and his men loaded the remaining provisions and tools onto their five small boats, and pushed off into the treacherous waters. After just two weeks, dangerous floes surrounded them. Now new dangers awaited: insanity, threats of mutiny, and cannibalism. As food dwindled and the men weakened, Greely's expedition clung desperately to life. Labyrinth of Ice tells the true story of the heroic lives and deaths of these voyagers hell-bent on fame and fortune—at any cost—and how their journey changed the world.

Philip Appleman sagely and eloquently addresses such questions as where we came from, whether there is a God, and if there is, why there is so much evil and turmoil in the world. Putting this in the illuminating context of our evolutionary development and cultural history, he also ponders the notion of an afterlife and what role it has in determining our behaviour while we are alive. Twenty-first-century thinkers, reflecting on the long and horrendous history of religious wars and atrocities, are no longer willing to pay the traditional deference to religious authority, preferring instead to seek inside their own lives, thoughts and actions for the answers to life's greatest questions. Appleman concludes that a life well lived, short as it is in the eons of our planet's existence, is its own reward.

In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece’s Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe’s earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery. Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean—the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen—to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the deipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.

Spiritual practices for beginners and practitioners all in one volume. Just Begin is an indispensable reference tool for the interested spiritual practitioner who wants to add new methods and exercises to their mystical “toolbox.” In simple terms, basic steps, and encouraging language, Dr. Wigner introduces readers to more than 40 different practices from Eastern and Western traditions, encompassing everything from mindfulness to music, yoga to the Lord’s Prayer. In each short description, the focus is to “just begin” to practice and experiment, grow, and develop spiritually on the way. No one can take a journey without taking the first step, and Dr. Wigner provides the first steps for multiple practices in various religious traditions. These spiritual exercises will help spur people of faith to deeper self-awareness, holistic living, and prayer. The book’s sections are organized around types of practices: Meditating, Listening, Being, Sensing, and Embodying, with a final section: Doing. Each chapter forms a short three to five page introduction to a mystical practice, consisting of segments on definition, background, how to practice, resources for further study, journal prompts and discussion questions, and common problems that sometimes “get in the way” of one’s practice.

Throughout this book, we discuss some open problems in various branches of science, including mathematics, theoretical physics, astrophysics, geophysics etc. It is of our hope that some of the problems discussed in this book will find their place either in theoretical exploration or further experiments, while some parts of these problems may be found useful for scholarly stimulation.The present book is also intended for young physics and mathematics fellows who will perhaps find the unsolved problems described here are at least worth pondering. If this book provides only a few highlights of plausible solutions, it is merely to keep the fun of readers in discovering the answers by themselves. Bon voyage!