Book of Longing

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We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.” I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.” When I was finally able to read the Scriptures for myself, I discovered (behold!) there were women.” I like a story well told in beautiful lyrical language. What I don't like is trying to involve as many issues of importance and deviate as much from the original thread so as to create an ameobic tale which puts forth its pseudopods in varying confusing directions.

Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen | Waterstones

I surprised myself by re-reading the book. I had not intended to. I was only going to search for some information but soon found myself gladly reading the entirety of the book and just marveling at the author's craft. I got to re-experience the ride and also discover details I'd glossed over initially. And just as often, I saw how various pieces fit together or prepared the ground for the reading journey. I sigh with this feeling, a sense that I could just as easily read it a third time now as I recount my first two times. And now is the time for my favorite, though there were a lot I liked, this one became my best THERE FOR YOU, I wanted to post a few lines of it but couldn't choose, so... The woman speaks so softly, a breeze could fly off with her words, scattering them among the snow peaks of the Hindu Kush.... For all my critiques, I'd recommend this simply because it feels like the first book of an author who will go on to greater things: this may be uneven but at its best, it's glorious. To be ignored, to be forgotten, this was the worst sadness of all,” Ana says. “I swore an oath to set down their accomplishments and praise their flourishings, no matter how small. I would be a chronicler of lost stories.”Girija Prasad, a "diligent documenter of the plant kingdom", is invested in researching the ancestor of all continents: Pangaea. He is adamant on drawing his own map of the Andaman Islands, where he lives with his clairvoyant wife, Chanda Devi. Girija's search is an originary one, an attempt to know how it all came to be. Swarup writes,

THE BOOK OF LONGINGS | Kirkus Reviews THE BOOK OF LONGINGS | Kirkus Reviews

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.” Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. You are right, Sahara. There are no mists, or veils, or distances. But the mist is surrounded by a mist; and the veil is hidden behind a veil; and the distance continually draws away from the distance. That is why there are no mists, or veils, or distances. That is why it is called The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. It is here that The Traveler becomes The Wanderer, and The Wanderer becomes The One Who Is Lost, and The One Who Is Lost becomes The Seeker, and The Seeker becomes The Passionate Lover, and The Passionate Lover becomes The Beggar, and The Beggar becomes The Wretch, and The Wretch becomes The One Who Must Be Sacrificed, and The One Who Must Be Sacrificed becomes The Resurrected One and The Resurrected One becomes The One Who has Transcended The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Then for a thousand years, or the rest of the afternoon, such a One spins in the Blazing Fire of Changes, embodying all the transformations, one after the other, and then beginning again, and then ending again, 86,000 times a second. Then such a one, if he is a man, is ready to love the woman Sahara; and such a one, if she is a woman, is ready to love the man who can put into song The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Is it you who are waiting, Sahara, or is it I?”Charles Bukowski talks with Leonard Cohen about his book of poetry, Book of Longing. Both wrote a lot of books of poetry and fiction. Nothing much caught my interest or held my attention after 40 percent of the book even though things keep happening alongwith the introduction of new characters and events related to them. I also loved the little doodles and self-portraits scribbled in between poems, throughout the book. They're fragile and beautiful, sometimes a bit sarcastic too, and most of the time playful. I also like how the collection also includes a little introduction he wrote for Chinese readers for one of his previous books, Beautiful Losers. That intro is so beautiful that it definitely deserved to be counted as a poem in itself, so including it makes total sense. Swarup debuts withan inventive novel in stories that features a multigenerational cast in search of love and worldly purpose. . . . By integrating magical elements—talking glaciers and yetis appear—Swarup eschews conventional love stories to focus instead on many forms of desire, while zigzagging across time and place. This offersbeautiful depictions of humanity through a successfully experimental form.” — Publishers Weekly as a collection, the poems aren’t his best; a little indulgent, a little scattered, a little forced, like someone poeticizing their diary, and some of it is straight-up bragging

Book of Longing - Penguin Books UK

The writing is beautiful and if you can suspend your belief... just like with Harry Potter ... you’ll find this story to be just as engaging. A nice “what- if” to one of the world’s best known stories Apo and Ghazala live on no man's land, an imaginative intersection somewhere between India, Pakistan, and China. This land is claimed by each of those countries at different points in history. What follows this claiming is, of course, naming and renaming. If you reflect upon it, you will see connections and relationships illuminating the most disconnected things. Gravity defines time, space, and mortality. How can it not influence our inner state?" It’s difficult to describe what Latitudes of Longing is or what it did to me, as it doesn’t quite compare to many other books I’ve read and loved, but stands truly on its own. It’s the type of book that feels like a journey: an exploration of different continents where you can feel, smell and taste the world around you through Swarub’s words. Along the way you meet characters that feel real enough to be actual encounters along your travels, where you get a glimpse of their personal lives as you pass through. I especially loved meeting Girija Prasad and Chanda Devi, and actually started missing them throughout the rest of the book, as their part ended.A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert, to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents. Binding them all together is a vision of life as vast as the universe itself. I’ve been a fan of Leonard Cohen for a very long time so it was no surprise that the Book of Longing, containing poetry, lyrics, and illustrations ruminating on love, sex, aging, spirituality and more that all display his customary wryness, really floated my boat. I’m not normally a particular fan of poetry – I’d much rather listen to a song – but the fact that it was Leonard’s words I was reading helped me to give it more of a chance, while the fact that each piece lasted no longer than my shattered attention span could manage certainly helped to make my lunch breaks much, much better. A captivating novel about two sisters fighting for survival in Dark Ages Britain that casts a thrilling spell of magic and myth. It's a shame because Swarup can write beautifully: there are influences of Rushdie and Arundhati Roy in her use of figurative language, and the way she creates a vision that melds the individual with political, cultural and ecological forces. Overall, she seems to be heading towards some kind of vision of unity - sadly, the fractured stories after the first one work against, rather than towards, her goal. The world under water is an undocumented map of the world over water," he often tells her. "To solely inhabit the land limits our understanding. All terrains and forms of life, all the cycles of nature and emotions found on land, increase manifold in water."