Books with title Walking Backwards

Skye wants what all teenagers want--to survive high school. She lives in Southern California, though, which is making that difficult. Her mother has fallen victim to the pseudo-New Age culture and insists on dragging her to consciousness-raising workshops and hypnotists. As if this weren't difficult enough, Skye falls in love with Jessica, a troubled gothic punk girl who cuts herself regularly with sharp objects. When she finds her boyfriend having sex with Jessica in a bathroom stall at a rave, her romantic illusions collapse and she has to face the fact that she's been running away from her mother's insanity. Right when things look their worst though, Skye is helped by Mol, a pagan who becomes her true friend, and Lorri, a graceful volelyball player with whom she finds real love. From them she learns how to feel authentic emotions in a culture of poseurs and New Age charlatans. In this anti-coming-of-age novel, where growing up is irrelevant, this is the best gift of all.

This beautiful literary memoir framed in six days walking on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in 2015 is a love letter to Spain and to women’s lives. It weaves together rich seams of hard reality with profound lyricism, the political with the personal, suffering and fear with love and joy. It moves from the silver of Scotland’s North Sea coast to the terracotta and gold of Iberia, the sterile white of hospital wards to the bountiful blues of the deep Atlantic. It is a story of banker knights, dangling caterpillars, handsome lovers, aching pilgrims and policemen’s bottoms, and it is all true. Alison Chandler is a one-time student of Hispanic Studies now a newly exhibited Scottish artist in her sixties. The thousand-year-old pilgrimage way winds through her experiences of 1970s Catalunya and Galicia, 1980s Notting Hill and her survival of cancer and return to Camino in 2018. As she makes her way, we catch glimpses of Europe’s great crossroads, its myths and our mortality as their impressions on all our lives flicker through the wet green woodlands of north-west Spain. A colourful and original mix of profundity and humour, it is redemptive and full of surreal adventures and new beginnings.

The best way to visit any country is with someone who knows and loves it intimately. In Walking Backward, Diana Anhalt welcomes us graciously into the very heart of her family and her Mexico. With deep empathy and quiet courage, and always with a saving grace of humor, she shows us how to deal with love and loss, both on a personal and an artistic level.—Dan Veach, founding editor of Atlanta Review, author of Elephant Water and LunchboxesThese poems walk gracefully together, backward and forward—through the rooms of childhood, motherhood, and widowhood—from a shtetl in Russia and a 1912 steerage class crossing, to homes in the U.S. and Mexico. A master of specificity and musical language, Anhalt enables us to see and hear places, events, and family members’ idiosyncrasies (such as her mother’s infamous Venus flytrap memory). The collection bursts with humor, history, and heartbreak. Perhaps my favorite is “Homesick,” where the poet recalls the first home in Mexico that she shared with her late husband—scorpions / rallied in the bathtub and the bamboo/thrust through parquet floors—and now misses the words stripped from her tongue: the tu and the yo, the you and the me. —Karen Paul Holmes, author of Untying the Knot and No Such Thing as DistanceDiana Anhalt’s poems are dedicated to the love and loss of people and place. She transforms this love and loss to find her home in poetry. Anhalt lyrically leads her reader on a path toward this home where so many restless feet have walked. She shows us that when wandering to that place called home, the “Feet are the last to follow.” We feel the chill of walking barefoot and blind down corridors she has left behind. We feel the weight and expanse of walking in the shoes, the footsteps, of family long gone. Anhalt has pared down language to describe the moment of arriving in a new country with one pair of shoes, and she shows us how our feet, like many of her lines, must dance and celebrate. Anhalt’s words beautifully describe just how “our feet scrawl messages in the dust of our pasts, of lives left behind.” —Jane Simpson 2018 Blessings of the Beasts, Georgia Author of the Year for On the Porch, Under the Eaves

This beautiful literary memoir framed in six days walking on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in 2015 is a love letter to Spain and to women’s lives. It weaves together rich seams of hard reality with profound lyricism, the political with the personal, suffering and fear with love and joy. It moves from the silver of Scotland’s North Sea coast to the terracotta and gold of Iberia, the sterile white of hospital wards to the bountiful blues of the deep Atlantic. It is a story of banker knights, dangling caterpillars, handsome lovers, aching pilgrims and policemen’s bottoms, and it is all true. Alison Chandler is a one-time student of Hispanic Studies now a newly exhibited Scottish artist in her sixties. The thousand-year-old pilgrimage way winds through her experiences of 1970s Catalunya and Galicia, 1980s Notting Hill and her survival of cancer and return to Camino in 2018. As she makes her way, we catch glimpses of Europe’s great crossroads, its myths and our mortality as their impressions on all our lives flicker through the wet green woodlands of north-west Spain. A colourful and original mix of profundity and humour, it is redemptive and full of surreal adventures and new beginnings.

When Josh's mother dies in a phobia-induced car crash, she leaves two questions for her grieving family: how did a snake get into her car and how do you mourn with no faith to guide you? Twelve-year-old Josh is left alone to find the answers. His father is building a time machine. His four-year-old brother's closest friend is a plastic Power Ranger. His psychiatrist offers nothing more than a blank journal and platitudes. Isolated by grief in a home where every day is pajama day, Josh makes death his research project. He tests the mourning practices of religions he doesn't believe in. He tries to mend his little brother's shattered heart. He observes, records and waits―for his life to feel normal, for his mother's death to make sense, for his father to come out of the basement. His observations, recorded in a series of journal entries, are funny, smart, insightful―and heartbreaking. His conclusions about the nature of love, loss, grief and the space-time continuum are nothing less than life-changing.

When Josh's mother dies in a phobia-induced car crash, she leaves two questions for her grieving family: how did a snake get into her car and how do you mourn with no faith to guide you? Twelve-year-old Josh is left alone to find the answers. His father is building a time machine. His four-year-old brother's closest friend is a plastic Power Ranger. His psychiatrist offers nothing more than a blank journal and platitudes. Isolated by grief in a home where every day is pajama day, Josh makes death his research project. He tests the mourning practices of religions he doesn't believe in. He tries to mend his little brother's shattered heart. He observes, records and waits - for his life to feel normal, for his mother's death to make sense, for his father to come out of the basement. His observations, recorded in a series of journal entries, are funny, smart, insightful - and heartbreaking. His conclusions about the nature of love, loss, grief and the space-time continuum are nothing less than life-changing

It was Saturday, November 15, but I didn’t know that. I wouldn't understand the strange countdown of days that formed my existence until later. All I knew then was that I was alive, alone, and trapped in the body of a dead person. At the moment Dan's life ends, the Rider's life begins. Unwillingly tied to Dan, the Rider finds himself moving backwards in time, each day revealing more of the series of events that led to Dan's suicide. As the Rider struggles to figure out what he's meant to do, he revels in the life Dan ignores: his little sister, always disappointed by her big brother's rejection; his overwhelmed mom, who can never rely on Dan for help; and Cat, with her purple hair, artistic talent, and misfit beauty. But Cat doesn't want anything to do with Dan. What did he do? As the days move in reverse, it's up to the Rider to find out why Cat is so angry and what he must do to make things right. In his second novel for teens, Todd Mitchell turns time around as the Rider attempts to fix the future by changing the past and experiences the joys and heartbreak of living backwards.

In Girl Walking Backwards, Skye wants what all teenagers want--to survive high school. She lives in Southern California, though, which is making that difficult. Her mother has fallen victim to the pseudo-New Age culture and insists on dragging her to consciousness-raising workshops and hypnotists. As if this weren't difficult enough, Skye falls in love with Jessica, a troubled gothic punk girl who cuts herself regularly with sharp objects. When she finds her boyfriend having sex with Jessica in a bathroom stall at a rave, her romantic illusions collapse and she has to face the fact that she's been running away from her mother's insanity. Right when things look their worst though, Skye is helped by Mol, a pagan who becomes her true friend, and Lorri, a graceful volleyball player with whom she finds real love. From them she learns how to feel authentic emotions in a culture of poseurs and New Age charlatans. In this anti-coming-of-age novel by Bett Williams, where growing up is irrelevant, this is the best gift of all.

Though the Christmas story is well known, most of us have learnt it from school nativity plays and carols. On the whole, this familiar version is more concerned with light than darkness. The backwards approach taken here allows the movement to be in the opposite direction, enabling us to get under the skin of a complex narrative. We begin by seeing through the eyes of Anna, the prophetess; followed by Rachel, who weeps for her children; King Herod; Casper, a wise men; David, a shepherd; Martha, the (so-named) innkeeper's wife; Joseph; Elizabeth; Mary; Isaiah and, finally, Moses. Each imaginative reflection is prefaced by a Bible reading and followed by a prayer.

Congregations are often confused or uninspired by the emphasis on Old Testament themes during Advent and too "over" Christmas by December 26 to pay much attention to the gospel stories that follow Jesus' birth. Walking Backwards to Christmas starts at the end of the story, with Jesus' presentation to Anna and Simeon at the temple, and moves backwards through Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the wise men's visit, Jesus' birth in a stable, Mary's pregnancy, and finally to the much-earlier hopes and dreams of Isaiah and Moses. Telling the Christmas story through the eyes of both famous figures like King Herod and imagined characters like the innkeeper's wife, Stephen Cottrell invites readers to experience Jesus' birth anew, with greater appreciation of the dark themes and ancient figures relevant to the Advent story.

Using the brilliant, deceptively simple device of telling the Christmas story backwards, Stephen Cottrell helps us encounter it as if for the first time. Narrating the story from the perspective of key characters gives us insights into its many horrors and uncertainties as well as its joys. The book may be used as a fresh and unique Advent study course or even as an adult Nativity play. Though the Christmas story is well known, most of us have learnt it from school nativity plays and carols. On the whole, this familiar version is more concerned with light than darkness. The backwards approach taken here allows the movement to be in the opposite direction, enabling us to get under the skin of a complex narrative. We begin by seeing through the eyes of Anna, the prophetess; followed by Rachel, who weeps for her children; King Herod; Casper, a wise men; David, a shepherd; Martha, the so-named innkeeper's wife; Joseph; Elizabeth; Mary; Isaiah and, finally, Moses. Each imaginative reflection is prefaced by a Bible reading and followed by a prayer.

Backwards is an exciting first novel, by ten year old author, Chelsea Burgess. This novel is written for readers between 8-12 years of age, but its gripping tale of the quest to find family will appeal to readers of all ages. Six nine year old siblings are living alone. They are about to embark on the adventure of their lives! What will become of them in their search to find their parents?