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The Magic of Metaphor presents a collection of stories designed to engage, inspire, and transform the listener and the reader. Some of the stories motivate, some are spiritual, and some provide strategies for excellence. All promote positive feelings, encouraging confi dence, direction, and vision.
Since its inception as an art form, anime has engaged with themes, symbols and narrative strategies drawn from the realm of magic. In recent years, the medium has increasingly turned to magic specifically as a metaphor for a wide range of cultural, philosophical and psychological concerns. This book first examines a range of Eastern and Western approaches to magic in anime, addressing magical thinking as an overarching concept which unites numerous titles despite their generic and tonal diversity. It then explores the collusion of anime and magic with reference to specific topics. A close study of cardinal titles is complemented by allusions to ancillary productions in order to situate the medium's fascination with magic within an appropriately broad historical context.
You might say that author Anne Miller is like a homeowner who strikes oil while digging a ditch in the backyard. In this book, she shares knowledge she refined from more than 20 years of distilling metaphors. Her book leaves little doubt that metaphors can fuel the engines of your sales success. Its pages are full of colorful, persuasive anecdotes and analogies that follow one another like racecars coming out of Turn Four at Daytona. If you doubt whether her advice will apply to the rubber-meets-the-road realities of sales, just take Miller's ideas out for a test drive. Her primary expertise is in presentations, not sales, which may explain why her roadmap (note the extended metaphor) to success is so much more creative than most sales advice. Miller's book leaves many other tomes in the dust. getAbstract.com thinks sales professionals who read this book and master the art of the metaphor should get ready to take a victory lap or two.
Bestselling author Sandor Katz—an “unlikely rock star of the American food scene” (New York Times)—delivers a mesmerizing treatise on the meaning of fermentation alongside his awe-inspiring photography of this transformative process, teaching us with words and images about ourselves, our culture, and being human. In 2012, Sandor Ellix Katz published The Art of Fermentation, which quickly became the bible for foodies around the world, a runaway bestseller, and a James Beard Book Award winner. Since then his work has gone on to inspire countless professionals and home cooks worldwide, bringing fermentation into the mainstream. In Fermentation as Metaphor, stemming from his personal obsession with all things fermented, Katz meditates on his art and work, drawing connections between microbial communities and aspects of human culture: politics, religion, social and cultural movements, art, music, sexuality, identity, and even our individual thoughts and feelings. He informs his arguments with his vast knowledge of the fermentation process, which he describes as a slow, gentle, steady, yet unstoppable force for change. Throughout this truly one-of-a-kind book, Katz showcases fifty mesmerizing, original images of otherworldly beings from an unseen universe—images of fermented foods and beverages that he has photographed using both a stereoscope and electron microscope—exalting microbial life from the level of “germs” to that of high art. When you see the raw beauty and complexity of microbial structures, Katz says, they will take you “far from absolute boundaries and rigid categories. They force us to reconceptualize. They make us ferment.” Fermentation as Metaphor broadens and redefines our relationship with food and fermentation. It’s the perfect gift for serious foodies, fans of fermentation, and non-fiction readers alike.
Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric was the definitive guide to the use of rhetorical devices in English. It became a best-seller in its field, with over 20,000 copies in print. Here now is the natural sequel, Farnsworth’s Classical English Metaphor—the most entertaining and instructive book ever written about the art of comparison. A metaphor compares two things that seem unalike. Lincoln was a master of the art (A house divided against itself cannot stand). So were Jefferson (The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants) and Shakespeare (All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players). Farnsworth’s book is the finest collection of such figurative comparisons ever assembled. It offers an original analysis of patterns in the sources and uses of metaphor. It also explains the different stylistic ways that comparisons can be written, and with what effects. The book starts by dividing the sources of metaphor into families, including nature, architecture, animals, and myth. It then shows how the best writers have put each of those traditions to distinctive use-for the sake of caricature, to make an abstract idea visible, to make a complicated idea simple. The book provides, along the way, an extraordinarily wide-ranging tour of examples from novelists, playwrights, philosophers, and orators. There is interest, instruction, and amusement to be found on every page. Ward Farnsworth-lawyer, dean, teacher, and polymath-has produced another indispensable book for the writer. Classical English Metaphor will be a constant source of learning and enjoyment for anyone who appreciates the art of observation and the pleasure of well-chosen words.
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
Myth, Magic & Metaphor takes the reader on a journey into the heart of creativity and attempts to awaken the aesthetic sense, the creative muse who lurks within us all. There are no limitations to what thoughts, ideas, observations, or research could and might be used to stimulate the creative process.
For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market. From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotle’s investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Romeo’s exclamation “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness. Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphor’s effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more.
Not since Mindfulness in Plain English has there been a more accessible and user friendly book on mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is a process of self-inquiry directed at what is happening in the moment, a focus on experience as it occurs without inner commentary or judgment. Metaphors are indispensable to mindfulness practice. They motivate us, help us bring mindfulness into daily life, and show us how to use mindfulness as a tool for self-improvement. Their imagery helps anchor understanding and provides a bridge from concept to experience. This book presents 108 metaphors for mindfulness, meditation practice, self-change, acceptance, and other related concepts. Compiled by the author over a 25-year period, they employ imagery as diverse as the inner mute button and Earl Gray tea. Many are original; others are selected from the classic literature on Buddhism and mindfulness. Each is a node in a network of interweaving concepts that enliven the experience of mindfulness while alleviating stress, anxiety, and depression.
USA Today–bestselling author Amanda Flower returns with the third cozy mystery in her more-charming-than-ever Magical Bookshop series—for fans of Sofie Kelly and Heather Blake. Niagara region booksellers Violet Waverly and Grandma Daisy get a little help from Little Women as they sleuth the slaying of a sommelier whose book signing turned into her sayonara. January means ice wine season in the Niagara Falls region, but the festivities leave Charming Books owner Violet Waverly cold, still reeling from a past heartbreak. A past heartbreak who will be present at the annual midnight grape-harvest festival, and no magic in the world or incantation powerful enough could get Violet to attend. But Grandma Daisy, an omniscient force all on her own, informs Violet that she’s already arranged for the mystical Charming Books to host celebrity sommelier Belinda Perkins’s book signing at the party. Little do either Waverly women know, the ice wine festival will turn colder still when Violet finds Belinda in the middle of the frozen vineyard—with a grape harvest knife protruding from her chest. Belinda grew up in Cascade Springs, but she left town years ago after a huge falling-out with her three sisters. One of those sisters, Violet’s high school friend Lacey Dupont, attends the book signing in the hope of making amends with her sister, but Belinda and Lacey end up disrupting the signing with a very public shouting match and Lacey quickly becomes the prime suspect in the sommelier’s murder. Violet is sure Lacey is innocent, and to keep her friend out of prison, Violet asks for guidance from her magical bookshop. The shop’s ethereal essence points her to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, but what have the four March sisters to do with the four Perkins sisters? If she can’t figure it out, Violet, herself, may turn as cold as ice. Violet, Grandma Daisy, Emerson the tuxedo cat, and resident crow Faulkner are back on the case in Murders and Metaphors, USA Today–bestselling author Amanda Flower’s enchanting third Magical Bookshop mystery.
