Books by Will Buckingham
I am the author of thirteen books, and contributor to many more.
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Hello, Stranger: Stories of Connection in a Divided World
A Radio4 Book of the Week!
When Will Buckingham's partner died, the shock of his grief told him to withdraw. Instead, he sought solace in throwing open the door to new people; travelling the world - from Birmingham to Myanmar - seeking out stories of loneliness, exile and friendship, from classical times to the modern day.
Drawing from his travels, as well as insights from philosophy, anthropology, history and literature, Hello, Stranger is a powerful antidote to loneliness and xenophobia, and a heart-warming story of the power of kindness and compassion.
1465458557
The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas, Simply Explained
The multi-million global bestseller! The Philosophy Book introduces you to ancient philosophers like Plato and Confucius. But it doesn't stop there -- read about our modern thinkers such as Chomsky and Derrida, too. This book has short and sweet biographies of over a hundred philosophers and their profound questions.
Work your way through the different branches of philosophy like metaphysics and ethics. Understand how philosophical questions have led to breakthroughs in math and science. Figure out how the history of philosophy informs our modern lives, exploring topics like how science can predict the future and how language shapes our thoughts and decisions.
I wrote all the chapters on modern and contemporary philosophy for this big, beautiful volume: everyone from Nietzsche to Žižek.
0702318450
The Snorgh and the Sailor
“Outstanding—adventurous and quirky” — Julia Donaldson
A poignant and witty story about an unlikely friendship; a surprising journey—and the discovery that we can all do the most amazing things, if we only dare to.
Snorghs don't have visitors. Snorghs don't share soup. And Snorghs most definitely DO NOT like adventures. But then a bedraggled sailor arrives telling exciting stories of exotic lands—and the Snorgh finds himself going on an adventure after all.
A beautiful new cover edition of The Snorgh and the Sailor for new fans and old fans alike. Rich, captivating storytelling full of unexpected adventure.
A reassuring book about welcoming new experiences
Stunning, atmospheric artwork by Thomas Docherty, illustrator of The Snatchabook, The Screen Thief and Abracazebra
0399554327
Lucy and the Rocket Dog
Lucy loves space. She loves to gaze up at the stars and bask in space's bigness and its here, there, and everywhereness. She loves it so much that she built a rocket ship in her backyard, hoping that one day she can use it to explore space herself. The ship is just Prototype I, though, so it's not ready to carry anyone into orbit yet. Or so she thinks.
Laika doesn't give much thought to space--she is a dog, after all. The thing that Laika loves the most is Lucy. She loves Lucy so much that, one evening, she wanders into Prototype I looking for her--and is promptly launched into space.
While Laika takes off on an intergalactic adventure, Lucy begins a lifelong scientific quest to bring her dog home. Told from the two friends' alternating perspectives and, in turns, heartbreaking and hilarious, this tale will win over anyone who has ever loved a pet, or who has looked at the stars and wondered just what might be going on in the here, there, and everywhereness.
9781909961425
Stealing with the Eyes: Imaginings and Incantations in Indonesia
Will Buckingham travelled to Tanimbar Islands (Indonesia) as a trainee anthropologist to meet three remarkable sculptors: the crippled Matias Fatruan, the buffalo hunter Abraham Amelwatin, and Damianus Masele, who was skilled in black magic, but who abstained out of Christian principle. Part memoir, part travel-writing, Stealing with the Eyes is the story of these men, and also of how stumbling into a world of witchcraft, sickness and fever lead him to question the validity of his anthropological studies, and eventually to abandon them for good. Through his encounters with these remarkable craftsmen and weaving together Tanimbarese history, myth and philosophy of this part of the world from ancient times we are shown the forces at play in all of our lives: the struggle between the powerful and the powerless, the tension between the past and the future, and how to make sense of a world that is in constant flux.
1473600480
Complete Write a Novel Course: Your complete guide to mastering the art of novel writing
Designed to take you from the moment you first put pen to paper right through to the process of contacting publishers (or uploading an ebook file) and promoting your book, this is the most important book on writing that you'll ever read. It introduces you to the craft of fiction writing, the art of words and the way in which to use them. It gives you inspiration, ideas and practical advice.
It gives you the background and the skills you'll need to succeed.
Unlike other books on the market, however, it also helps you begin to critique your own work, meaning that at every step of the writing process you'll be producing the best art you can. There are plenty of other essential writing tools in this book, as well, including techniques for overcoming writer's block; with nearly a quarter of the book focussing on how to get published, how to publish yourself, which courses you do - and don't - need, the nuts and bolts of competitions and festivals and the importance of social media, this really is the most comprehensive companion to the subject available.
9380905076
The Descent of the Lyre
It is the early nineteenth century, and the Bulgarian village of Gela, the legendary home of Orpheus, is suffering under the heavy taxation and arbitrary justice of Ottoman rule. When his bride-to-be is abducted the night before his wedding, Ivan Gelski takes to the hills and turns to banditry to seek revenge. But a chance encounter with a travelling guitarist, and the bloodshed that follows, set him on a musical journey through fame, martyrdom and legend. In this remarkable reinvention of the tale of Orpheus, Will Buckingham plunges us into the music and folklore of Bulgaria, in a parable about storytelling, sainthood and myth-making.
1785783246
A Practical Guide to Happiness: Think Deeply and Flourish
What is happiness? What makes you happy?Is there more to life than happiness?
Learn to cultivate your taste for pleasure, free yourself from the various disturbances of life, and overcome irrational expectations that cause distress. Go with the flow and rediscover the joy of existence.
Filled with exercises, tips and case studies, this Practical Guide will enable you to see happiness in a new light, with the help of the world's greatest minds
0367521229
Snapshots of Museum Experience: Understanding Child Visitors Through Photography
n Snapshots of Museum Experience, Will Buckingham draws upon Elee Kirk’s research amongst child visitors to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, to take a different approach. Using a method of photo-elicitation with four-and five-year-old child visitors to the museum, the book investigates children’s experience of the museum, and in the process undermines many of our assumptions about the interests, needs and demands of child museum visitors.
Drawing together the fields of museum studies and childhood studies, the book considers children as active creators of the museum visit. It investigates the way that children navigate and take control of the physical and social spaces of the museum, finding their own idiosyncratic pathways through these spaces. It also explores how elements of the museum ‘light up’, becoming salient to the child visitor. Finally, it investigates how children make sense through intellectually and imaginatively engaging with these elements of the museum visit.
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Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes
The Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, is one of the oldest and strangest of all books, a masterpiece of world literature, a divination manual and a magnet for the deranged and the obsessive. In Sixty-Four Chance Pieces, novelist and philosopher Will Buckingham puts the I Ching to work, using it to weave together sixty-four stories of chance and change, each flowing from one of the I Ching's 64 hexagrams. Moving between myth, fable and travel-writing, Sixty-Four Chance Pieces offers an attempt to make sense of the maddening, changeable book that is the I Ching with tales of inventors and fox-spirits, ancient poets and non-existent rulers, kleptomaniac pensioners and infernal bureaucrats. Like the I Ching itself, this new Book of Changes is a puzzle, a conundrum and a journey of many transformations, where nothing is quite what it seems.
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Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling (Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy)
The telling of tales is always a troubling business, and the way in which we tell stories about ourselves and about others always involves a degree of ethical risk. Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling explores the troubling nature of storytelling through a reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas.
Levinas is a thinker who has a complex relationship with literature and with storytelling. At times, Levinas is a teller of powerful tales about ethics; at other times, on ethical grounds, he disavows storytelling altogether. Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling explores the tensions between philosophy and storytelling that run throughout Levinas's work. By asking about how Levinas tells and untells his stories, and by risking the telling of tales that Levinas himself does not dare to tell, this book opens up new ways of thinking about Levinas's ethics of responsibility.