Not really – I began Taiji not having seen it, only knowing it was one of the internal Chinese Martial Arts which were based on Daoist principles and that their purpose was internal development. After meeting one of Master Huang's instructors who clearly demonstrated knowledge and ability beyond anything seen in my previous 10 years of research, and then meeting Master Huang himself, I knew I had found what I was looking for.
The aim is to unite the levels, not to work exclusively on any one of them. People should first learn how to move smoothly in their body, then how to release and align, then to find the forces in the body – combining all these with the mind. All this is for the mind-body co-ordination. Just body training barely has any place in Taiji. Then there is training for mind-energy co-ordination and later for the deepest part of the mind. Simultaneously the Deep Mind connection with the Spirit can be allowed to grow.
P.K.: It is possible to say something but real understanding comes from training. There is awareness and intention on many levels from superficial to very deep. Awareness and intention combine and interact to produce response. Commonly people train some sort of awareness in Taiji but they seldom train the intention. Action with awareness implies body active, mind passive, while action with intention implies mind active, body passive. The special training of the mind intention (Yi) was quite deliberately kept secret by the old masters. Master Huang and Master Ma, for example, kept it just for their inner school pupils, only passing it on to a few of their thousands of students. Because of this the method of developing intention is not usually found in the training either in China or the West, yet strangely, in the Classics it is stated as the most important thing. Even when it is taught, students must practise for a long time before they begin to find it for themselves and take it deeper.
The horizontal circle contains the external movements of the body which involve repositioning the centre. In the vertical circle the internal changes take place within the mind and within the body, producing subtle changes in the height and vertical forces of the body, while the body makes its external movements. The internal changes in their simplest form are contraction which produces movement followed by release which allows the body to 'swing' or move on under the influence of momentum and gravity. Because the body works against the ground to move, contraction produces both a horizontal force and a vertical one. Faster movements require a greater horizontal force, which necessitates a stronger vertical force, which will produce a slight lifting in the body. While moving slowly in the Taiji Form gravity overcomes this lifting so people may not become sensitive to it. When people need to move quickly the vertical force overcomes gravity and will lift the body slightly, followed by a settling down of the body once the wave of contraction passes. Many people find this for themselves and Zheng Manqing mentioned it in one of this books, but this second phase of releasing or swing has 3 hidden phases that people seldom understand.
Please explain the different states of the muscles and how they affect the forces in the body.
The muscles cycle through contract, release, stretch and un-stretch, while the mind has its corresponding cycle of concentrate, relax, sink and empty, plus a neutral state for both giving 5 phases. Practical understanding of this only comes from long study. This cycle of mind and body is the basis of all Master Huang taught me in my 20 years learning under his direction. If you don't understand the five states then it's difficult to find the relaxed elastic force of Taiji. It's commonly taught that there are just the two muscle states of contraction and relax. If you only know these two you will be stuck on the pairs of opposites, the Yin and the Yang. If you only consider, or attempt to combine these two as in first contract and then relax, or partly relaxed, partly contracted, then the search for the relaxed elastic force of Taiji is doomed to failure. Stretching and un-stretching are seldom talked about or understood. The corresponding changes in the state of the mind are even more obscure.
No, I can't really explain that. They need to be trained with a person who understands them. I can say, people first have to listen very closely to their body. Its not the normal listening which is from the superficial mind. Look for genuine body sensations such as warmth, pressure and non-visual body positioning.. This is the first step and it is considerably different from the feeling type of awareness that the average Taiji person trains. Merely increasing concentration on the level of normal daily awareness is a false method which just makes it more difficult to go deeper later on. Unfortunately, many modern systems of meditation teach people to value and strengthen just this superficial awareness. The ego observes the superficial perceptions, vision, hearing etc. and feels it sees reality 'just as it is'. It is not a true path. Each of my teachers spoke of this error, and my experience confirms what they said.
On every level of Taiji there is the paradox of letting go and keeping control. What are your thoughts about this and what ways of working with this do you recommend?
Central to Taiji is the paradox of how to combine the yin and the yang, e.g. Contract/release or control/naturalness. What we are looking for is not more yin or yang, or a mixture, but something new. You could call it yin-yang, as one thing. It seems like a mixture of the two, but it is something different, a third thing that is produced. Its never a matter of one is right and the other is wrong, but the simultaneous combination of the two produces something more subtle. When producing Taiji force (jin) there is drawing in and sending out at the same time. The state of stretching is actually a new state that's produced within the muscle. The stretching allows the yielding and at the same time produces a force, it's not a simple combination of contracting and relaxing either in time or space. The same with letting go and keeping control. The letting go that interferes with keeping control, is not the letting go that you need. The keeping control that interferes with letting go is not the control that you need. You must find that which simultaneously allows an increasing control and an increasing letting go.
It's important to align, at the time of forces passing through the body. It's not necessary to align when you are just relaxing. Aligning creates a line of connection from the ground to the point of application which allows the forces to pass through the body without producing contraction, resistance or pain. A straight and vertical spine for example, allows the strongest vertical forces to rise from the ground. Usually as people get older their spine becomes less flexible and the curves increase causing problems with the disks. Releasing and aligning within the Form and auxiliary exercises can reverse this process.
Internal forces of Taiji work up and down from the ground. Without a good base people can't find these forces and will never escape using upper-body strength and weight, signalled by leaning and excessive movement when issuing force. Only when the body is stable can you really loosen the upper-body and find the vertical circle. Only when the body is extremely stable can you concentrate the mind deeply while in the midst of action.
When babies are born they are already loose, but they don't know how to move. The first thing they learn in order to survive, is a reasonable ability to move the body, which involves contraction. Everybody learns that but they may never learn how to release. Consequently, residual contraction remains and accumulates in the body so that when they become older their whole body becomes tight and locked. As an antidote, people first need to learn how to release these residual, habitual contractions. Then, once they make a contraction, how to release it fully, immediately afterwards. Residual contractions block the blood flow and energy flow, as well as interfering with subsequent movements. Certainly when the forces flow from the ground through the body, it is necessary to be able to release previous contractions completely to allow the semi-automatic stretching and un-stretching to take place.
When beginning on the path, it became obvious that I needed to find a teacher who really knew what they were about in a spiritual sense. I began Master Huang's Taiji and shortly after began training with a Sufi teacher. He was a sheikh in the Nasqabandi tradition from Afghanistan, drawing also partly on the Gurdjieff tradition. I continued to train with these two people until their deaths (Master Huang in 1992; the Sufi in 1987). Other teachers who have had some influence are an old yogi who lives in the desert in India, whom I visit from time to time, and an old Daoist sage who is hidden in China and unknown in the West. Master Ma Yueliang, who stayed in NZ for 6 months and whom I later visited in China, helped me also and I have kept close contact for the past 15 years with Master Ni Hua Ching who knew Yang Shou Hou and Yang Cheng Fu and was a good friend of Zheng Manqing. These teachers all pushed me to teach. Without their mandate I wouldn't be so bold as to direct other people in their lives.
To come back to the Taiji practise – what is the purpose of pushing hands?
Pushing hands is for sensitivity, the Form is to train internal strength. This is their original purpose but poorly trained students reverse this, training the Form lightly with awareness but no intention looking for sensitivity, then using strength combined with elementary mechanics in the pushing hands in an attempt to find internal strength. Pushing hands teaches you to expand and extend your awareness to include others. It allows you to practise awareness of, and a correct response to the partners intention whereas in the Form it is your intention that produces the movement in response to the stored body memory of the sequence. Over time and with the correct method you become sensitive to the intention to move in the partner's body, energy field and mind. Pushing hands is also a teaching method where the students can interact with the teacher and learn from that contact.
Have you competed in a push hands contest? How do you feel about competitions?
I have never competed in a pushing hands contest, but in the Chinese world when you push hands it tends to be very competitive, remembering that most students and teachers in Asia have, at best, learnt in the 'outer schools' of the good masters. In Asia we would often go to the parks on the weekend where there would be Taiji people from many different schools meeting. Though our intention was to learn, this situation was extremely competitive. In China when I visited various teachers, it was often taken mistakenly as a challenge, and serious pushing hands would be difficult to escape. I have watched competitions and they appear to produce and stimulate the worst aspects of Taiji. What people are doing, the competitiveness and desperate trying to win, is against the basic principles. I don't believe people learn much of worth from it. Some people feel they learn to handle an aggressive energy or an aggressive situation but I observe people just become more competitive themselves. The aggressive situation stimulates aggressiveness so it achieves the exact opposite of what people imagine. Pushy people feel justified in their behaviour and rise through the ranks of the organisations that convene the contests, perpetuating these patterns of behaviour.
The superficial mind, or normal daily awareness is basically brain consciousness. The real mind, in all its parts, exists in the energy field, not in the brain. When you die the superficial mind is gone with the brain, but the deeper aspects of the mind still exist and operate on three different levels. There is the mind connected with the body, the mind connected with the energy field and then there is the intelligence of the mind. The Deep Mind Intelligence functions through these three aspects. It connects into the brain and body through these 3 aspects, but is quite different from the brain. The Deep Mind, which includes the deeper parts of the energy field, is your real individual self. It's born in a body to develop its energy field and its associated intelligence's. That is the purpose of life. Not remembering this, you waste your lifetime.
So you would say it's the main purpose in training Taiji?
The classics say the main purpose in training Taiji is to achieve longevity, which in the Daoist teaching means immortality or the ability to survive after death in your diamond body. The Buddhists talk of enlightenment which means to create a body of light for the same purpose. After death you live on in your energy body one way or another. If your energy body is strengthened and refined through correct effort during your lifetime then the deeper aspects of yourself become independent from the body, immune from death in your crystallised energy body. If you haven't achieved that, then you either gradually fade from all individual existence or return in a body to try again to escape the rounds of lives and deaths. This is the truth of life. It is well understood by all real teachers. Other purposes for Taiji are minor ones, created by people in normal life, usually to nurse the body and make it more comfortable, or to attain fighting power and the dubious respect that confers. Unfortunately concentrating on health or self-defence may just make the mind more attached to the body, strengthen the ego and block internal development.
This interview was conducted by Jean Haines (GB), Michael Plötz (DE) und Michael Jagdt (DE).
Then there are the written historical records and these are incomplete really, because especially in older times the teacher never gave out the information – this was a type of secret information that was passed on from teacher to pupil. It's only in more modern times that the history has been written down and correlated between the different accounts. If you look at the historical records a few generations back there is a break, before which not much is known. The information that has passed down from teacher to student was more continuous and goes back to who is considered the (perhaps) mythical founder, Chang San Feng, who is said to have lived about 750 years ago. So that information was passed on. My teacher received it from his teacher and so on, back as far as we know. I think this is more trustworthy information.
Yes. Chen style Tai Chi is much closer to Shaolin than Tai Chi in fact. What happened, partly, was at the time of the communists taking over in China, they suppressed Tai Chi. Many of the best practitioners escaped to Hong Kong, Taiwan, America and Great Britain. The ones that remained in China were heavily repressed – prevented from practising or teaching, often imprisoned and sometimes killed. After a time the communists realised they'd made a mistake and they began to attempt to resurrect Tai Chi but because Yang and Wu styles had mostly escaped to the west they attempted to resurrect the Chen style – so that became the government sponsored art, the one that wasn't taught widely in the West. That's why the Chen style became popular. I knew Yang and Wu style people who switched to Chen simply because that was the only one they were allowed to practise.
They have played an inevitable part – they play a part in the whole of Chinese society. The Chinese mostly integrate those three quite smoothly in their life without feeling they are separate things. Typically they use the Confucianism for their external way of life, how they relate to their parents, their family, to society. The Buddhism has more of a religious nature, the Taoism has more of a philosophical nature and so they use the philosophy of Taoism, the religion of Buddhism and the social interaction coming from Confucianism. That philosophical pragmatism naturally infiltrated the Tai Chi teaching as well. Master Huang and Master Ma, for example, were members of an esoteric society that deliberately integrated the Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist principles. They merged them without the feeling that people might get in the west that these are three separate things that should be kept separate.
Well yes I'd say that's true, Tai Chi is considered more of a Taoist art, while the Shaolin arts were practised in the Buddhist monasteries. Tai Chi, Hsing I, Ba Gua and a few other lesser known arts arose more amongst the Taoist teachers. Master Huang's teacher was known as a Taoist wandering monk. Buddhism has a later influence in China than Taoism. Taoism can be traced back to two and half thousand years ago, via Lao Tzu, so that is the original influence I suppose. It was when those two, Taoism and Buddhism, met, that Chan Buddhism appeared. Chan Buddhism later spread from China to Japan giving rise to Zen Buddhism.
Tai Chi as a philosophical concept existed long before Tai Chi as a practice. Only in the last one or two hundred years was the name Tai Chi given to this system of practice. The general meaning of the Yin Yang symbol, put simply, is the intelligent interaction of opposing forces, rather than the unintelligent meeting and conflict between opposing forces. Speaking more specifically, it can apply to two people – the intelligent interaction between the two people. It can apply more generally in society to the large social pressure of groups or even cosmologically to the interaction of universes. It can also apply more particularly inside yourself, to two types of otherwise conflicting forces. For example, the emotions and the intellect or the body's urges and the mind's wishes. It might also apply to the struggle between external forces that drive a person connected to their outer life and the internal ones connected with inner evolution, enlightenment or immortality.
It is necessary in the early stages to learn to quieten the mind, calm the emotions and relax the body. This is external training, you move the body, smoothly, calmly, breathing gently and as a result, through listening to that smooth calm movement, the mind becomes quiet the emotions calm down, the body itself becomes relaxed. So this early training typically takes a few years – that brings about the base condition in which people can begin the internal training.
There are two aspects to the effortlessness. The external aspect is by removing the excess thoughts, the excess emotional activity and the excess bodily activity then the resulting gentle movements have a feeling of effortlessness about them – but this is only the external sense of effortlessness.
There is another meaning to it completely – that is, that if you go through the intensive training then after some decades perhaps you arrive at a state where, because of the very deep part of you becoming active, then you become able to deal with difficult external circumstances in a very effortless manner.
That is really the sign of a person's training having gone deep – that when they meet difficult external circumstances, physical pressure, emotional pressure, mental pressure they are able to deal with it in a highly intelligent, smooth and gentle manner.
He placed a great emphasis on the philosophical principles, in terms of those three philosophies that we mentioned earlier – Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. He didn't differentiate between any of them, considering them all relevant teachings to Tai Chi.
As mentioned earlier he was a member of an esoteric society (as was Cheng Man Ching and Yang Cheng Fu) where they integrated the outer social practices of Confucianism, the slightly religious practices of Buddhism, (chanting and reading of sutras etc) and the internal energy circulation and transformation that is taught in Daoist meditation. He was initially taught Tai Chi in the Daoist tradition by his teacher who was a Daoist monk. That teacher taught him Chinese medicine, the Daoist fighting arts, the Daoist philosophy and taught him how to read the classics and old Daoist writings and so on – so that was an integral part of his learning and he attempted to pass that on to us.
The Tai Chi classics are a set of writings, I can't give the exact dates – I can't even give the exact manuscripts because different teachings take a slightly different set of writings as the classics. But there is a core group of classics of perhaps five writings. These are writings from competent Tai Chi teachers over the last one or two hundred years that contain the basic principles of Tai Chi and people normally refer to anything that complies with (or fits in with) these particular writings as Tai Chi, and if it doesn't you can't really call it Tai Chi.
Not really, I didn't look at what was personally relevant – rather I tried to see what was the true essence of the teaching. For each of those teachers I learnt from, deep inside themselves there was no difference at all. They understood exactly the same thing. Each of them by the time of their deaths had very little of the cultural aspect left in their teaching. Earlier on however, their teaching was much more related to their culture. For example Master Huang when I first knew him was much more influenced by the Chinese culture – 20 years later his teaching had lost a lot of the Chinese culture. It was the same with the other teachers. Apart from that transformation, deeply inside themselves their teaching was the same.
In Buddhism they talk of enlightenment, in Daoism they talk of immortality, in Sufism they talk of annihilation. In Hindu related yoga traditions they talk of realisation. So to realise the self, to destroy the non-real self of the Sufism, to become immortal in the Daoist tradition, to become enlightened in the Buddhist tradition – all these are just ways of looking from the outside at the same thing that can take place within as a result of true training.
The saying is in Tai Chi the weak can overcome the strong, the slow can overcome the fast. The way that you can use Tai Chi to overcome the fast and the strong is by not opposing the fast and the strong. You mustn't oppose the strength but merge with the person's strength and be part of it. You have to move with it and then you can have an influence over it – the moment you attempt to block it or force it another direction then you meet the strength.
Specifically when a force comes you must move in the same direction as the force, then you can gently have an influence over it – in the same way as pulling on a string in a bull's nose rather than meeting the strength of the bull or forcing it to the side. Untrained people typically meet forces head on while people trained in the harder martial arts train to parry the force at 90 degrees, but they both still rely on the defenders strength. However even the smallest person can begin to lead the bull by its nose once the bull begins to advance. That's a saying in Tai Chi, "to lead the bull by its nose", and it's the key to dealing with the opponent's strength as having merged with the person's movement, you can then begin to have an intelligent influence over their force.
With the process of learning you have to start from the outside and work slowly inwards. You need to begin with exactly what you have. You have the your body movements, your thoughts and your feelings – you have to begin with a process of refinement of all three of those. Typically you'd begin by removing the tensions of the body, that's to say relaxing, so to relax the body is generally considered the first stage of beginning to learn Tai Chi. This may take one, two or three years if you practice sufficiently to remove the excess outer tension from the body. In the process of doing this the associated emotional tension and over-activity of the brain will also be affected, will be reduced. So that is what people should look for initially.
Q. I was wondering if you could answer some more questions on the history of Tai Chi? It seems the more I look into this the less can be said for certain prior to the mid 19th century. According to the oral transmission of Tai Chi's history that you received was it true that Cheng Man Ching received teachings from Yang Cheng Fu or did he learn from one of Yang's students?
Cheng Man Ching learnt directly from Yang Cheng Fu – but of course he also learnt from the senior students. That's the way all schools work. He especially learnt the meditation from Zhang Qinlin, one of the most senior students of Yang Cheng Fu (really a student of his father Yang Chien-hou).
Most old teachers say the modern Chen style is mostly Chen village Shaolin – barely connected to the Tai Chi of Chen village in the past.
Master Huang's White Crane teacher was a Taoist monk, yes. He taught him White Crane, Chinese Medicine and Meditation.
Cheng Man Ching was in a Taoist 'sacred society' as was Yang Cheng Fu we believe. Master Huang was also a member. Master Ma Yue Liang was in that same one I believe (he talked to me about it). It still exists in Taiwan and Singapore. They teach the internal energy practices of Taoism, the mental attitudes of Buddhism and the social rules of Confucianism. I visited the organisation in Singapore a year or 2 ago. They have 3 temples – one dedicated to Taoism, one to Buddhism, one to Confucianism. Usually this information was kept fairly secret. Most students (of Yang, Cheng, Ma or Huang) are not told about it. It is information only for the 'inside the door students'.
Well, it is something that has never been published before – a secret lineage chart with Master Huang's inner students on the bottom line. The next line up shows all Cheng Man Ching's inner students. Next up is Yang Cheng Fu's etc. The lineage chart reveals the exact chain back about 6 or 7 generations. I was the only one allowed to hold a photograph of it and the original disappeared when Master Huang died. Unfortunately the resolution not good enough to read, although it is perhaps enough just to know that such things exist. I have kept it private till now.
They are probably scored out due to death. I am not sure if a person can be expelled. Master Huang commented on this once saying although people couldn't be expelled in his own mind some of those people were no longer in his inner school.
Sincere thanks to Patrick Kelly for his time and help with this interview – both during his visit to Devon in June 2011, in subsequent emails and with the editing process.


My research principally focuses on the ecology and evolution of host-pathogen relationships. Primarily using insects as a model system, I am interested in the diverse selection pressures that act on and between closely associated organisms, particularly the interplay between hosts and pathogens in complex insect societies.
Enquiries concerning potential PhD and postdoctoral positions are welcome.


If we are honest with ourselves, salad isn't a word that conjures excitement, largely thanks to the boring repertoire of rabbit food that's usually associated with being on a diet.
Done well, however, it's just like any other well thought out dish, full of flavour and something you genuinely look forward to eating.
This black rice salad is one such treasure, with different flavour combinations and textures making it an all around solid recipe.
Having had the pleasure of demonstrating this dish at the Tatton Park Christmas Foodies Festival, I can also confirm it's a total crowd pleaser.
Put the cashews in a small bowl and cover them with cold water. Set aside.
Peel the butternut squash, cut in half, scrape out the seeds and chop up the flesh into rough squares. Transfer to a roasting tray, drizzle with rapeseed oil, season with sea salt and black pepper and roast for approximately 40 minutes until soft.
Cook the rice according to packet instructions, approximately 25 minutes. Be careful not to overcook it, the dish works better if the rice retains some bite.
Put the flat cap mushrooms on a small roasting tray, season, drizzle with rapeseed oil, crush a clove of garlic over each mushroom and sprinkle over the leaves from the 4 sprigs of thyme.
Roast in the oven for 15 minutes then slice when cool enough to handle.
Put the torn kale in bowl, squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, season with sea salt and black pepper and "massage" to break down the kale slightly.
Transfer the cooked rice, sliced roasted mushrooms, roasted butternut squash and massaged kale into a big bowl and stir.
To make the turmeric dressing, drain the cashews and put them in a blender or smoothie maker. Add enough water to cover them 3/4 of the way up, squeeze in the juice from the other half of the lemon, add the turmeric root or powder, a pinch of sea salt and some freshly ground black pepper and blend until completely smooth. You may need to add a touch more water if you prefer a runnier dressing.
Divide the salad between two plates and drizzle over the dressing to serve.


text:
Rivne International Film Festival
moc.liamg@tsefonikenvir
Jury and team
Online Festival of the European Films: what films will the viewers show?
European Film Festival starts online on April 21 and ends on April 27. This news were reported by Ukrinform with a link to Facebook of the company Arthouse Traffic.
The program included eight hits with video comments by Ukrainian critics Oleksandr Gusev and Anna Datsyuk. Viewers will be able to watch movies for free.
Movies that viewers will see:
Campeones (Spain), comedy, directed by Javier Fesser;
Frantz (Germany, France), melodrama, directed by Francois Ozon;
La Grande Bellezza (Italy, France), tragicomedy, directed by Paolo Sorrentino;
In my room (Germany), drama-dystopia, directed by Ulrich Kohler;
Little Joe (Austria, United Kingdom), thriller, directed by Jessica Gausner;
Angelo (Austria), historical drama, directed by Marcus Schleinzer;
Zimna wojna (Poland, France), melodrama, directed by Pavel Pavlikowski;
King of the Belgians (Belgium), tragicomic road movie, directed by Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth.
Movies will be shown with Ukrainian voice or subtitles — optional.
The online film festival was organized with the support of the Delegation of the European Union in cooperation with European cultural institutions.
Copyright © 2020 Rivne International Film Festival Dream City. All rights reserved.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
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1) Around the world in eighty days
STEAM tales volume 2
Extraordinary Voyages
Puffin Classics
Voyages Extraordinaires
Book, eAudiobook, eBook, eComic, Playaway
2016. Puffin Books
v, 292 pages ; 18 cm.
eComic
[2007] InAudio/Sound Room Pub
1 sound media player (6 hr.) : digital ; 9 x 6 cm
Shocking his stodgy colleagues at the exclusive Reform Club, enigmatic Englishman Phileas Fogg wagers his fortune, undertaking an extraordinary and daring enterprise: to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. With his French valet Passepartout in tow, Verne's hero traverses the far reaches of the earth, all the while tracked by the intrepid Detective Fix, a bounty hunter certain he is on the trail of a notorious bank robber.
2) A journey to the center of the earth
Graphic Horror
Classic Starts
Book, eAudiobook, eBook, eComic, Kindle, Playaway
1999. Hallmark Entertainment Books
vi, 265 pages, 8 pages plates ; 22 cm
2012. Signet Classics
2014 Open Road Media
Playaways - Junior (1st floor Audio/Video)
SMP-J VER
[2012?] Playaway
[Unabridged].
1 digital media player (10 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
A dirty slip of parchment falls from the pages of an ancient manuscript. Deciphered by the indefatigable Otto Liedenbrock, professor of geology, and his reluctant nephew, Axel, the parchment's coded message is a wild assertion made by a medieval alchemist: Inside a volcano in Iceland is a passageway to the center of the earth. Impossible, says Axelthe temperature of the earth's core is far too high for any human being to go near it. That is one theory,...
3) The mysterious island
Captain Nemo
Mysterious Island
Junior - Fiction (2nd floor Children's Area)
J VER
xxx, 629 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm
[1988] Atheneum
viii, 493 pages, 14 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
In this spirited novel by master storyteller Jules Verne, five Civil War prisoners escape their Confederate jail by hijacking a hot-air balloon. Blown halfway across the world and stranded on a remote island, the fugitives' survival depends upon their ability to build a sustainable environment while withstanding pirate attacks, volcanic eruptions, and other challenges. Engineer Cyrus Harding takes charge of the crew, consisting of his servant, Neb;...
4) 20,000 leagues under the sea
Capitaine Nemo
2006. Sterling
vii, 325 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
1 sound media player (14 hr., 30 min.) : digital, HD audio ; 3 3/8 x 2 1/8 in.
"Professor Aronnax and two companions set out to investigate a monstrous sea creature, but what they discover is even more extraordinary: the mysterious Captain Nemo and his futuristic submarine, the Nautilus.--P. [4] of cover.
5) From the Earth to the Moon
Baltimore Gun Club
eAudiobook, eBook
First published in 1865, "From the Earth to the Moon" is Jules Verne's fantastical tale of an ambitious plan to fly to the moon. Set at the end of the American Civil War, Verne's novel is a forward-looking and modern tale of space adventure. With the war over and no other pressing tasks to occupy them, the members of the Baltimore Gun Club, at the urging of their President, Impey Barbicane, decide to build a gun large enough to propel a projectile...
6) The Survivors of the Chancellor
Extroardinary Voyages
This novel from the author of Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth captures the terror and tragedy of a shipwreck. This 1875 novel portrays in devastating detail the final voyage of a British sailing ship, the Chancellor, in the form of a diary written by one of its passengers, J. R. Kazallon. Carrying eight travelers and twenty crew members, the Chancellor sets sail from Charleston, South Carolina. Nearly a month...
7) Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
Giant Raft
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon is a unique addition to Jules Verne's beloved adventure series, Voyages Extraordinaire, as it is among the few Verne novels that does not include elements of science fiction. Instead, Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon combines the adventure genre with a murder mystery. After being falsely accused of a crime, Joam Garral was forced to flee Brazil. Now, many years later, he is living on a thriving Peruvian plantation...
8) Extraordinary Voyages
In the nineteenth century, French author Jules Verne awed readers with astounding adventures that transported them to the ends of the Earth, plunged them into the ocean's depths, and dropped them into mysterious subterranean realms. Dubbed Voyages Extraordinaries, these unique blends of action, adventure, and science fiction offered prescient glimpses into the future and a level of scientific speculation unprecedented in imaginative fiction. The three...
9) Five Weeks in a Balloon
Five Weeks in a Balloon is not only the first installment in Jules Verne's celebrated Voyages Extraordinaires series, but also the first of Verne's works to earn him widespread popularity as a writer of science fiction and adventure novels. Following his invention of an ingenious new air balloon capable of long-distance flight, Dr. Samuel Fergusson embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with his trusted servant, Joe, and loyal friend, Dick Kennedy....
10) A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. 'From that hour we had no further occasion for the exercise of reason, or judgment, or skill, or contrivance. We were henceforth to be hurled along, the playthings of the fierce elements of the deep.' In Verne's science-fiction classic, Professor Lidenbrock chances upon an ancient manuscript and pledges to solve the mysterious coded message that lies within it. Eventually...
11) An Antarctic Mystery
Antarctic Mystery
But strange as the journey may be, it's nowhere near as strange as what they will find waiting at its end. One of the lesser known novels by Jules Verne, but certainly a novel that is worth reading, An Antarctic Mystery or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields is a fictional travelogue that describes the narrator's adventures as he travels from Kerguelen Islands, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, towards the South Pole. The novel is the account of the...
12) Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours
Une édition de référence du Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours de Jules Verne, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « — Un bon Anglais ne plaisante jamais, quand il s'agit d'une chose aussi sérieuse qu'un pari, répondit Phileas Fogg. Je parie vingt mille livres contre qui voudra que je ferai le tour de la Terre en quatre-vingts jours ou moins, soit dix-neuf cent vingt heures ou cent quinze mille deux cents...
13) The Adventures of a Special Correspondent
A fantastic classic adventure novel by the master of the genre Jules Verne. The reporter Claudius Bombarnac is sent to Asia by the journal "The Twentieth Century" to report on the new Grand Transasiatic Railway.
14) The Adventures of Captain Hatteras
An explorer obsessed with reaching the North Pole undertakes a harrowing expedition in this classic novel of adventure and survival in the Arctic. Capt. John Hatteras will stop at nothing to reach the North Pole. After having a steamship built for the purpose, he embarks for terra incognita. But when he encounters a frozen sea, mutiny and shipwreck leave Hatteras and his remaining crew stranded on an island in the harsh Arctic winter. Even in the...
15) The Sphinx of the Ice Realm: The First Complete English Translation, with the Full Text of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by
The first complete English translation of Jules Verne's epic fantasy novel. Decades after Edgar Allan Poe's longest and weirdest tale, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, was published-the protagonist disappearing into the misty, mystifying Antarctic seas; his fate unknown-Jules Verne took up the challenge to answer what had happened to him. In The Sphinx of the Ice Realm, he penned the most amazing journey of his fabled career: a voyage across...
16) Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
Une édition de référence de Vingt mille lieues sous les mers de Jules Verne, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « L'année 1866 fut marquée par un événement bizarre, un phénomène inexpliqué et inexplicable que personne n'a sans doute oublié. Sans parler des rumeurs qui agitaient les populations des ports et surexcitaient l'esprit public à l'intérieur des continents, les gens de mer furent particulièrement...
17) Voyage au centre de la terre
Une édition de référence du Voyage au centre de la terre de Jules Verne, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. «Alors une invincible épouvante s'empara de mon cerveau et ne le quitta plus. J'avais le sentiment d'une catastrophe prochaine, et telle que la plus audacieuse imagination n'aurait pu la concevoir. Une idée, d'abord vague, incertaine, se changeait en certitude dans mon esprit. Je la repoussai, mais elle...
18) Journey To The Center Of The Earth (New Translation) (53 Illustr
When an eccentric professor acquires an ancient book, a riddle on a spare piece of parchment tucked neatly within its pages leads him and his nephew on an unparalleled adventure. The unlocked riddle brings them to a remote mountain on Iceland, where they enter an extinct volcano on a daring quest to reach the center of the earth. They soon find themselves at a giant underground ocean where the laws of science are constantly redefined and prehistoric...
19) The Blockade Runners
The American Civil War plot centers on the exploits of James Playfair who must break the Union blockade of the harbour of Charleston in South Carolina to trade supplies for cotton and, later in the book, to rescue the father of a young girl held prisoner by the Confederates. Verne's tale was inspired by reality as many ships were actually lost while acting as blockade runners in and around Charleston in the early eighteen sixties.
20) Cinq semaines en ballon
Extrait: "Il y avait une grande affluence d'auditeurs, le 14 janvier 1862, à la séance de la Société royale géographique de Londres, Waterloo place, 3. Le président, Sir Francis M..., faisait à ses honorables collègues une importante communication dans un discours fréquemment interrompu par les applaudissements."