Care of the Souls by Thomas Moore -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is “loss of soul.”

— Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore.

I first read Care of the Soul back in the ‘90s, shortly after it was published and shortly after I had gone through a divorce. It had a great impact on me then. I am curious to see how it will strike me when I reread it now, much older and well into a very happy second marriage. I suspect it still has a lot to offer, even if what I take from it this time is different.

Have you read this one or any of Moore's books? If you aren't familiar with his books, Care of the Soul is not about your Christian soul, or soul in a religious sense. He is talking about "soul" in terms of Jungian or post-Jungian archetypal psychology. He draws on the wisdom of world religions, but writes in terms of "spirituality," not about religion per se. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Care of the Soul:

Jung explains that when we meet something of the shadow in another, we often feel repulsed, but that is because we are confronting something in ourselves that we find objectionable, something with which we ourselves struggle, and something that contains qualities valuable to the soul. The negative image we have of narcissism may indicate that self-preoccupation contains something we need so badly that it is surrounded with negative connotations.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

[Care of the Soul] provides a path-breaking lifestyle handbook that shows how to add spirituality, depth, and meaning to modern-day life by nurturing the soul. Readers are presented with a revolutionary approach to thinking about daily life—everyday activities, events, problems and creative opportunities—and a therapeutic lifestyle is proposed that focuses on looking more deeply into emotional problems and learning how to sense sacredness in even ordinary things. 

Basing his writing on the ancient model of "care of the soul"—which provided a religious context for viewing the everyday events of life—Moore brings "care of the soul" into the 21st century. Promising to deepen and broaden the reader's perspective on his or her own life experiences, Moore draws on his own life as a therapist practicing "care of the soul," as well as his studies of the world's religions and his work in music and art, to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society.

Lessons by Ian McEwan -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Lessons by Ian McEwan

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

This was insomniac memory, not a dream. It was the piano lesson again – an orange-tiled floor, one high window, a new upright in a bare room close to the sickbay.

-- from Lessons by Ian McEwan. McEwan is a must-read author for me but I've fallen behind with his more recent books. Lessons came out in 2022 and I am just now reading it. I love it and now wish I had made an effort to read it earlier. It's both the story of one man and how a confusing sexual experience changed the trajectory of his life, and a capsulized history, through his eyes, of England from WWII to the present. "Boomer Bio," yes. Sprawling, yes. But also intimate and engaging. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Lessons:

Two days later Roland and his parents took the train from Liverpool Street to Ipswich. Outside the comatose Victorian station they waited for a number 202 bus, as instructed in a letter from the headmaster’s secretary.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy sense of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot anecdote to winter.

-- from Chocolat by Joanne Harris.

I saw the movie adaptation of Chocolat with Juliette Binoche Johnny Depp back when it came out in 2000. But the book has sat unread on my shelf for years. I have this weird hang up about watching an adaptation and reading a book (or vice versa) back to back. I think it stems from my deep love of plot that makes me wait until the plot has faded in my mind before consuming the story in the other format. The problem is, I often forget to read the book (or watch the movie). That's what happened with Chocolat. I put it on my TBR 26 in '26 list to push myself to read it. 

Now that I am almost finished with the book, I regret having it take up shelf space for so long. It's a fun romp of a story, but Harris paints it with such a broad brush it's cartoonish. The sexy cholate-making stranger blows into the village and squares off with the mean priest. She's good. He's bad. Get it? It might be the rare exception to the rule and the movie is better than the book. At least the movie condenses the simplistic story into two hours. 

Have you read Chocolat or watched the movie? What did you think?

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Chocolat:

I remember now; the boy supporting his mother's arm as they passed on their way to church. Alone of all Lansquenet's children, he has never bought chocolates from La Praline, though I think I may have seen him looking in at the window once or twice.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival.

 

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

I just came back through the wardrobe from revisiting Narnia. I’m rereading C. S. Lewis’s classic Chronicles of Narnia series to figure out which of my grandkids are the right age to discover them for the first time. The youngest is four, which is definitely too soon, at least for him to read them himself. But the oldest is 11, which might be too late. I want them to be brave enough to go into battle, but still believe in talking lions. 

One turns eight in a few months and I think he might be at just the right stage. He also loves to read, especially adventure stories. He's the one I have in mind when I reread all seven books. I've been hanging on to this boxed set until he was ready. So far, I've gotten through the first two and know he would love them. 

These are not the actual books I had as a child, because those have disappeared in the Narnian mists. But this boxed set is the same edition I had and loved as a young reader in the 1970s. 

I am rereading them in publication order, which is how I read them as a child. In between, there was a trend of reading them in narrative order, but I've never been a fan of that sort of tinkering. I like to read a series in the order the author wrote it. 

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

• Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951)

• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

• The Silver Chair (1953)

• The Horse and His Boy (1954)

• The Magician’s Nephew (1955)

• The Last Battle (1956)

The alternate, chronological order is:

• The Magician’s Nephew 

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 

• The Horse and His Boy 

• Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia

• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 

• The Silver Chair 

• The Last Battle 

My problem with this version is that The Magician's Nephew is a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It goes back and describes the beginning of Narnia. While being chronologically "correct," it robs the reader of that initial sense of amazement in discovering Narnia on the other side of the magic wardrobe. 

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.

-- from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.

That is one of the most famous opening lines and immediately transports me to Narnia. I'm rereading the seven books because I want to give the set to one of my grandkids on his next birthday. I think he will love them, but want to have them fresh in my mind before I give them to him. 

This is SUPER petty. But my adult punctuation-nerd brain is irked by the lack of an Oxford comma in both the title and the first sentence. I'll get over it.   

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

"I don't want to go a step further and I wish we'd never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name is---I mean the faun."

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Four siblings step through a mysterious wardrobe and into the magical Narnia, a once-peaceful land now frozen in snow and stone by the cruelty of the evil White Witch. Only the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, can put an end to the White Witch’s tyranny and restore peace. But for winter to meet its death and spring to come again, a great sacrifice must be made. . . .