false 332710 0 0 6124856 0061353353 9780061353352 21 <![CDATA[Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255965209m/6124856.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255965209s/6124856.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6124856.Listening_Below_the_Noise_A_Meditation_on_the_Practice_of_Silence 3.78 37 When Anne D. LeClaire decided to turn an ordinary Monday into a day of silence, she viewed her experiment as a one-time occurrence. Little did she realize she had begun an inner voyage that would transform her life.

In the seventeen years since, LeClaire has practiced total silence on the first and third Monday of each month. By detaching herself from the bustle of her hectic lifestyle and learning to listen to her deepest self, she has found a center from which to live—one that tests, strengthens, and heals her. In practicing silence, she has discovered her own secret garden—a cloistered, sacred, private place where true personal growth is possible.

In this eloquent book—part memoir, part philosophical inquiry—LeClaire reflects on how silence can help us attend to the world around us, expand our awareness, and achieve inner peace. Silence, LeClaire contends, reminds us to pay attention to the ordinary moments of our existence. In silence we can learn how to listen, become more compassionate, ignite and nurture creativity, uncover our inner yearnings, and ultimately find peace and improve our well-being. By confronting ourselves and learning from the anxiety that arises when we are freed from distraction, we can become whole. With clarity and humor, LeClaire reveals how silence has brought joy to her life and helped her foster new connections with nature, with others, and with herself.

]]> 332710 3.70 64 27 2009 3492480 0786235675 9780786235674 3 <![CDATA[Entering Normal]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3492480.Entering_Normal 3.78 9 Entering Normal, two women are bound by the shared trials of motherhood: birth, hope, separation, and grief. Though Rose Nelson is an older woman still mourning her son, who died five years ago, and Opal Gates is a young single mother scrabbling to raise her 5-year-old son, the two women begin to cleave together.

Both move through their worlds in a dreamlike trance, only surfacing above their own self-absorption when confronted by the violence of life: infidelity, passion, jealousy, and death. Though emotionally clueless men bumble around Rose and Opal, they are never able to pierce through these women's barriers. Rose and Opal are too convinced of their own needs--Opal believes she needs no one, while Rose focuses only on her dead son. As the two begin to find each other, the reader awaits the moments of growth that allow them to see beyond themselves. As Rose entertains hope, so does the reader, "In the morning light, for one brief moment, she ... can almost believe that she has already experienced her lifetime's allotment of pain and grief." LeClaire's skill for describing human action succeeds here as well, as her characters fail and triumph with realistic probability. Alternately melodious and emotionally torturous, Almost Normal is a moving debut. --Nancy R.E. O'Brien

]]> 332710 3.70 64 27 2001 707559 0451403959 9780451403957 2 <![CDATA[Grace Point]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/707559.Grace_Point 3.67 6 AB. LJ. K. ]]> 332710 3.70 64 27 1992 1348103 0754018954 9780754018957 0 <![CDATA[Leaving Eden]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1348103.Leaving_Eden 4.00 5 “The promise of beauty—the kind of real, personal beauty that can transform a person’s life—arrived in Eden, Virginia, on the fourth Thursday in June.” That’s the day Tallie Brock sees the sign at the Klip-N-Kurl, the beauty parlor where she works part-time, sweeping the floor and refilling shampoo bottles, among other chores. (What she really enjoys is listening to the women chat, gossip, and buzz like a beehive.) The sign in the front window announces GLAMOUR DAY. For twenty dollars, a woman can receive a complete professional makeover—and a glossy nine-by-twelve-inch picture of the result.

For Tallie, the glam shot just may be her ticket out of Lovettsville. She dreams of someday going to Hollywood and becoming a Star. Her mother, who was the spitting image of Natalie Wood, used to say “the sky’s the limit.” In fact, her mother once left home to make a movie in Los Angeles. But she returned six months later without whispering a word about it—and tried to pick up her life right where she left off. Tallie noticed something different, though. And her mother’s best friend, Martha Lee, the plainest woman within miles, knew the secret that soon the whole town would discover. At the time, Tallie was just afraid her mother would get antsy and disappear again. She was only half right.

But that was four years ago, and now Glamour Day is fast approaching. While jotting down observations in her Rulebook for Living (such as “Women with fat faces shouldn’t wear bangs” and “Beetles signify change”), Tallie finds herself changing in unexpected ways—as she tests the limits of trust, explores her growing attraction to a boy from a family as rich as her imagination, and reaches for the sky like she has never done before.

By turns funny and tender, joyous and poignant, bestselling author Anne LeClaire has written a winning, stylish novel of small-town Southern life— and what it means to be a mother, daughter, best friend, wife, and lover.]]> 332710 3.70 64 27 2002 614668 0451406109 9780451406101 0 <![CDATA[Sideshow]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176339068m/614668.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176339068s/614668.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/614668.Sideshow 3.00 4 LJ. K. AB. ]]> 332710 3.70 64 27 1994