Tag Archives: adult non-fiction

Top Ten Borrowed Lists for 2023

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Cover-image-for-Emily-Henry's-novel-People-We-Meet-on-Vacation

It’s that time of year again. The time when algorithms — and the multinational corporations who employ them — encourage us to look back. At the pictures we’ve taken, the music we’ve listened to, and the digital lives we’ve led over the past year. We inevitably start to draw conclusions. What kind of year has it been? ‘Have I listened to a lot of emotional music this year?’ Or, ‘Should I start taking more pictures of my friends?’ It feels as if we’re being prepped to make our new year’s resolutions starting from the end of November, and resolutions have never been my friends. I don’t find it helpful to try to start new habits at the beginning of the calendar year, when we’re all getting over the indulgences and excesses of the winter holiday season. If there’s a habit I want to start, I try to start it when the motivation and momentum are there. I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t have much motivation or momentum at the beginning of January. Nevertheless, it is the end of the year, so here at VPL we’re looking back at the most popular books and films borrowed by our customers in 2023. Here are my recommendations from the top ten lists this year. I share them in the hopes that they may bring a little joy to the last part of your 2023. Don’t worry about your new year’s resolutions yet. To paraphrase Ina Garten:

Don’t worry about the future. If you’re in a stream, and you find yourself knocking against the riverbanks, you’re in the wrong stream. Find a stream that carries you along. 1

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Inside the Mind of Miyazaki

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the-boy-and-the-heron

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, and manga artist, and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, which produces some of the most beautifully animated films of our time. Miyazaki himself is considered one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation.

Ahead of the December 8th release of the latest Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron, I thought a little dive into Miyazaki and Ghibli would be apt.

My first Miyazaki-Ghibli film (to distinguish from Ghibli films by other directors and/or screenwriters) was Spirited Away. My uncle brought it for me on DVD when I was somewhere between 10 and 13 years old, and said it was his favourite and that he thought I might like it. I remember being a little scared by all the monsters, horrified by Chihiro’s parents turning into pigs, and ultimately entranced by everything else. I was already hugely into fantasy, and there was nothing more designed to hook me at that age than a dragon-boy, a grumpy girl, and their relationship with each other.

Since then, I’ve been an avid Ghibli fan, though there are a few I haven’t watched, and one I refuse to watch simply because it’s too sad and will make me cry inconsolably.

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Meet Award Winning Author Connie Zweig as She Talks about A Life Review: The Inner Work of Age

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Author-Connie-Zweig

Connie Zweig, Ph.D is the author of the award-winning book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, co-author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, and the novel A Moth to the Flame: The Life of Sufi Poet Rumi. Her new book is Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening. Connie is also a retired psychotherapist, former executive editor at Jeremy P. Tarcher Publishing, former columnist for Esquire magazine, and contributor to the LA Times. Connie has been doing contemplative practices for more than 50 years.

On November 15th at 7 pm she joins us to present A Life Review. The traditional life review is a well-known tool for those in midlife and beyond who wish to recall memories, release conflicts, and find forgiveness. Connie describes this as the ego’s life review, the story we consciously lived out. But we know from psychology that the personal unconscious, or Shadow, carries its own stories. She will add the dimension of Shadow to bring a deeper perspective to your life story. Demonstrating with an animated Power Point, we will explore how to connect what was expressed in your conscious life with what was repressed and unlived in your shadow. In this way, your unlived life moves into conscious awareness, and you can reclaim some of what was sacrificed—lost dreams, talents, and opportunities for self-expression, reconciliation, and healing. This session is hosted live on Zoom. Please register for this fascinating talk on Eventbrite.

Book cover of The Inner Work of Age by Connie Zweig

Connie’s book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul won the 2022 Gold COVR Award, the 2022 Gold Nautilus Award, the 2021 American Book Fest Award, and the 2021 Best Indie Book Award for best inspirational non-fiction.

Here is an excerpt from Connie’s book:

“Most of us live our lives in reaction to changing circumstances, in the details of the moment that require our energy and attention to meet our survival needs, our emotional needs, and the needs of those we love. We are lost in those moments as if they are disconnected from what came before or what comes after.

As the great existential philosopher Kierkegaard said, “We live life forward but understand it backward.”

I believe that the effort to understand it, repair it, and find meaning in it is a natural developmental task of late life. As we suffer disorientation with the loss of the ego’s agenda, a life review can help us reorient to the soul’s mission, a deeper purpose for late life.

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