Bøker av Norman Weeks

Walden Contemporaneous: 5-stars review rating from Readers' Favorite!Our United States. Living in the country with the best and the most, why aren't we satisfied and happy? The problem is one of values.A diagnosis of our ills and a prescription for happiness and fulfillment are at hand, in our own American heritage. A book out of the 1840s and 1850s, Henry David Thoreau's Walden may have more to offer to the America of today than it did to its own time.In Walden Contemporaneous, Norman Weeks applies the values expressed in Walden to our current society and presents some experiential verification of Thoreau's prescriptions for successful living.Psychology, sociology, culture, economics, politics, religion: -All are subjected to comprehensive evaluation based upon Thoreau's principles and values.More good sense came out of one man in that little cabin on Walden Pond than we have received from our glib editorialists and multi-staffed think tanks.Walden is relevant. Walden is contemporaneous.

In the National Roman Museum, there is a naked idol, the Sleeping Hermaphrodite, an incarnation in marble of the total biological beauty and complete gender identity of the two sexes fused into one form. Hermaphrodite presents us with a mystery, namely, the sex instinct. Instinct is the dynamic of Life Itself.Things are not well with our instinct. Even so, there is a natural tendency toward health. That is eros. Ministering to our need and longing, eros draws us on, to the touch, to intimacy, to human fulfillment.(Instinct is volume two of ROMAN RUMINATIONS, "the Psychology of the Human as Enculturated Animal".)

4-stars review from Readers' Favorite!One of the most fabulous travel destinations on earth has always been Egypt. In former centuries, a trip to Egypt was adventure travel, but in our time it has become group tourism.What would a group tour of Egypt be like? Two Weeks in Eternal Egypt is the narrative of a modern Grand Tour of the country: Setting off from Cairo, proceeding to the Pyramids and Sphinx, Aswan and Abu Simbel, a cruise of the Nile down to Thebes and Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, and on to the Red Sea and up to Alexandria on the Mediterranean. The almost-all of Egypt, presented with enough historical background and cultural context to make sense of the sights.The tour also features extensive social interactions, both with members of the group and with the locals.A travel guide, geography, history, and sociology, Two Weeks in Eternal Egypt is presented in the form of light literary entertainment.This is the experience of Egypt, fabulous still.

Autobioscenes & Necrographies: 5-stars review rating from readersfavorite.com!"An illuminating autobiographical account...as thought-provoking as it is wistfully philosophical-Kirkus ReviewsAutobioscenes: A word coined by the author to describe episodes from his life. And so, not a full straight-through autobiography, but a series of scenes.Then, necrographies. Biographies are life stories. Necrographies, another word coinage of the author, are death stories of people with whom the author had some acquaintance.Put together, they are Autobioscenes & Necrographies, "Some Personal Experiences of Life and Death", reported in 65 short narratives arranged in rough chronological sequence."Norman has had an interesting life," an acquaintance remarks. A life deeply experienced, assimilated and valuated, and presented here.

5-stars review rating from readersfavorite.com!Here are twenty literary melodies in a Symphony of Stories. The word-music of the stories is arranged in the form and framework of a classical symphony. There are four symphonic movements: First comes the Andante, a going-along in a sequence of events, a narrative, a story. Next is an Adagio, the slowing down on the path of sorrow; these stories are tragic. A contrast is provided by the Scherzo, jokes, tales with tongue-in-cheek. The grand finale of the Allegro is the happy ending.The themes of the stories are some of the most basic: Longing for love, finding love, suffering disappointment in love, and losing love. Sex as farce. Ambition and the frustration of ambition. Music, art, literature, and our electronic technoculture. The individual in society. Moral and immoral. Sane, insane, and doubts about which is which.Symphony of Stories. Oh, the wondrous complexities of the human!

TROPICAL ECSTASY: 5-stars review from readersfavorite.com!A vagabond always wants to go elsewhere. Why not, now and then, go back? A solo nostalgia trip, back to Brazil after a quarter-century absence.Tropical Ecstasy is the narrative of a month-long adventure of discovery and rediscovery: A cruise of the Amazon, hikes into the jungle, and Manaus, the metropolis amidst raw Nature. Then to the Northeast of Brazil, to Olinda, an old colonial capital, and to the modern state capitals on the Atlantic. The ultimate destination is the town of Penedo, where Norman Weeks had lived.As an ex-Peace Corps Volunteer, the author knows the territory, the language, the culture, and the people. Tropical Ecstasy records fresh daily impressions against a backdrop of deep previous knowledge and experience. The author treats the locals not as caricatures, but with human sympathy. After all, he was, once, one of them.

AWARDS FINALIST! Two categories: Best Nature book and Best Regional Non-Fiction: Midwest. (National Indie Excellence Awards.) AWARDS FINALIST! Best Nature/Travel Book, Book of the Year Awards. (Independent Author Netwwork.) 5-stars review rating from Readers' Favorite! The land of wolves, moose, bears and 10,000 lakes. NATURE NORM'S NORTH WOODS is an anecdotal natural history of northeastern Minnesota, based upon the author's forty years' experience there. Nature Norm first describes the woods-and-waters setting from the vantage point of his cabin on Pelican Lake. He then surveys the wildlife in the area and relates various animal encounters. Next, he conducts hiking and canoeing excursions. He concludes with a consideration of the human impact upon the northwoods environment. A naturalist, outdoor program director, former camp director, and Boundary Waters guide, Nature Norm promotes appreciation of, and attunement to, our natural environment.

5-stars review rating from Readers' Favorite!If you want to find out what loneliness is, go off by yourself; not to pout in that nearby corner, but into a transoceanic expatriation. To Rome, then!Once there, you immerse yourself in culture and the past, you savor loneliness at leisure.Settling in, getting a job, you pursue vocation. That vocation is writing. As for loneliness, it has nothing to do with writing. Literary solitude is a work discipline, not an affliction of the self.Inspired by an ideal, the writer masters technique, burns with ambition.Meanwhile, life in Rome is tedium and boredom, so loneliness intensifies.As the solution we look to others, only to suffer indifference, rejection, and estrangement. Where can one find happiness and fulfillment?There is always suicide to consider and insomnia to suffer.But the morning of a new day arrives. Our rescue and redemption from loneliness can be found in attunement to Nature, the experience of love, and the transcendent joy of music.Loneliness is Volume One of ROMAN RUMINATIONS, "The Psychology of the Human as Enculturated Animal".

An Autobiographical Letter: 5-stars review rating from Readers' Favorite!How do life experiences feed into the books that an author writes?In An Autobiographical Letter, Norman Weeks recounts the experiential origins of his writings.Looking back over his first fifty years, he presents a comprehensive treatment of his life, especially those aspects that proved source material for what he would eventually write: His upbringing, education, maturation, personal interactions with friends and lovers, adventures and misadventures, travels and travails. A rich life, a rich lode for literary mining.The principal theme of An Autobiographical Letter, a literary biography, is the pursuit of personal vocation.We follow the thought processes of an author-at-work, as he reports on his various literary projects, -their roots, the subjects and their treatment, the difficulties of composition, the relation of form to content, revisions and new versions in the pursuit of perfection.In all, a self-revelation and an exegesis of the author's works.

Love: 5-stars review rating from Readers' Favorite!The culture of the Mediterranean is an erotic one. Rome is the supreme shrine of the Christian love-cult.Whatever our pretensions to culture, we are, deep down, just naked animals, and naked in our needs, one of which is love. Needy, we drift into fantasies and illusions in our desperate search for love. Haunted by our failures, we may end up with broken hearts.And yet, love certainly has its lighter side. We eavesdrop on the conversations of men's and women's misunderstandings of each other, we consider some odd matches, and argue which sex is superior. The author relates his own Roman romances, interjects some aphorisms, and then gets straightened out by a sybil.Still naked in our needs, we want, not the examined life, but the shared life. Eros, our Mediterranean angel, guides us past sex to love and marriage, with home and family. Our needs are met, we find fulfillment.(Love is volume three of ROMAN RUMINATIONS, "the Psychology of the Human as Enculturated Animal".)