The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire | 
 enlarge | Author: Noelle Oxenhandler
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $14.17
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 8287
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8
ISBN: 1400064856
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.603
EAN: 9781400064854
ASIN: 1400064856
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080906212818T
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Product Description
One New Year’s Day, Noelle Oxenhandler took stock of her life and found that she was alone after a long marriage, seemingly doomed to perpetual house rental and separated from the spiritual community that once had sustained her. With little left to lose, she launched a year’s experiment in desire, forcing herself to take the plunge and try the path of Putting It Out There. It wasn’t easy. A skeptic at heart, and a practicing Buddhist as well, Oxenhandler had grown up with a strong aversion to mixing spiritual and earthly matters. Still, she suspended her doubts and went for it all: a new love, a healed soul, and the 2RBD/1.5 BA of her dreams. Thus began her initiation into the art of wishing brazenly.
In this charming, compelling, and ultimately joyful book, Oxenhandler records a journey that is at once comic and poignant, light and dark, earthy and spiritual. Along the way she wonders: Does wishing have power? Is there danger in wishing? Are some wishes more worthy than others? And what about the ancient link between suffering and desire? To answer her questions, she delves into the history of wishing, from the rain dance and deer song of primeval magic to modern beliefs about mind over matter, prosperity consciousness, and the law of attraction.
As the months go by, Oxenhandler is humbled to discover the courage it takes to make a wish and thus open oneself to the unknown. She is surprised when her experiment expands to include other people and other places in ways she never imagined. But most of all, she is amazed to find that there is, indeed, both power and danger in the act of wishing. For soon her wishes begin to come true–in ways that meet, subvert, and overflow her expectations. And what started as a year’s dare turns into a way of life.
A delightfully candid memoir, unfettered, poetic, and ripe with discovery, Oxenhandler’s journey into the art and soul of wishing will inspire even the most skeptical reader to search the skies for the next shooting star.
Praise for THE WISHING YEAR
"This is a wonderful book, full of wisdom gleaned from a year of Noelle Oxenhandler's daring to embrace what she had previously denied herself--her own personal wishes. I highly recommend The Wishing Year for anyone wanting to learn more about what life has to offer when we pay attention to our heart's desires."
–Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big Life
"Do you want to know how wishes come true? Then read The Wishing Year. It's a book that beautifully illuminates the art and mystery of wishing--and it does so in a way that is inspiring, funny, serious, honest, heartfelt, and irresistibly readable."
–Jack Kornfield, author of After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
"The Wishing Year is an elegant exploration of the way thought shapes reality. Writing with great personal honesty and candor, Noelle Oxenhandler's exhilarating prose takes us deep into the pain and glory of being human."
–Mark Epstein, M.D., author of Open to Desire
“Oxenhandler's new book makes it okay to be a smart, sophisticated grow-up who also believes in magic. She dives beneath the new age veneer and deconstructs how wishes really come true.” –Susan Piver, author of How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 I wished this book would never end September 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I just finished the Wishing Year and my profoundest wish when I got to the end was that it wouldn't be over so soon. I wanted it to go on and on. Spending time with this author is like spending an evening with one of those mesmerizing friends who leans towards you over the table at your favorite bistro and says, "You won't believe what happened to me?" and then launches into a tale of meeting someone fascinating who transformed her life, or unexpectedly being offered a trip to an exotic place that she'd always wanted to visit, or another wondrous occurrence. You're left thinking, "why don't these things happen to me? Reading the Wishing Year is wish fulfillment in itself. You get to live Noelle's life for that year and it was a hell of a lot more fun than my life that year for sure.
The best thing about her approach to wishing was that it made sense of New Agey gobbledygook like the "Secret." I, like her, am an intellectual, skeptical sort who secretly visits psychics and semi-believes in some of this woo-woo stuff but feels guilty about it. Oxenhandler removes the guilt by explaining the ancient roots of wishing and other attempts at magical intervention, and comes up with some scientific theories about why it might work. Hey, even Plato believed it. (sort of).
I'm coming up with my wish list as we speak and will report back whether any of them came true.
SIMPLY INCREDIBLE, BEAUTIFUL PROSE September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the most beautifully written and thought provoking books I've read in a long time. I am a voracious reader, devouring books at a clip of 3 or 4 a week, both fiction and non-fiction. This book had a lot of meaning for me, a newbie to the law of attraction and a devotee of all things positive and spiritual. Noelle's journey is profound and so beautifully written that it made me smile, dream and travel with her and her friends through their physical, emotional and dreamed journeys, always seeking balance. I will not only read this several more times, but intend to buy this book for about 15 dear friends with whom I want to share Noelle's journey. I've also already made a lengthy list of books she quotes from that I also wish to purchase, though Raquelle's might have to wait for the next tax return check! I wish (left hand over heart, right hand over left) that Noelle would continue this journey, taking us with her once again as her life continues to unfold, her man becomes more cleaved to her, her new home transforms (those old vinyl floors have to go) and her spiritual journey is given more insight. I want more and I've said that about only three other authors in my lifetime. I didn't want her year or my reading of it, to end. Buy this book for yourself and for everyone you care about, now - today. Few books you will ever read will leave you feeling more fulfilled, satisfied and optomistic! It will also expand your understanding of how life really can work, will provide a brief study of authors from before Christ to the spring of '06 and will solidly plant a burning 'I must know more' lust in your heart - yearning for Bromeliads and tide pools, hot tubs and burritoes. When Budda said (even though it is aberrated) 'What we think - we are' is the most fundamenal of truths for all of us, for all time. Thank you Noelle Oxenhandler, a thousand Thank You's!!!
Courageous and illuminating August 26, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Noelle Oxenhandler's work -- in the New Yorker or Tricycle or book form -- always knocks me out. Her writing is sometimes referred to as memoir, but I think she's a philosopher who uses elements of her own life, along with her research, to explore the textures and workings of the world. Her books have such a remarkable combination of pleasures: gorgeous, lucid, vivid prose; wonderful descriptions of people and places; philosophical inquiry; a rich, interdisciplinary investigation of her topics; brave but elegant personal revelation; and a feeling for the rich textures and absurdities of life. I loved The Eros of Parenthood (The Eros Of Parenthood: Explorations In Light And Dark), in which she goes into territory that most writers would be afraid to touch and handles it with such grace that she conceals the difficulty of her accomplishments as a writer and a reader.
The Wishing Year is another example of her generosity and originality. The book is funny in a subtle and complicated way, and at the same time, moving. She doesn't shy away from either library or field research (I'm including swimming with the dolphins in Hawaii, or following unlikely wishing practices, as well as delving into history, mythology, philosophy, and even self-help books).
The Wishing Year invites us to examine our own depth-monsters -- anyone who reads it is likely to have to own up to their own desires and their own choices. It's a delicious book to read but not always a comfortable one. Her writing is so beautiful that I think some people may be surprised by how challenging it is. I think it's a book one is likely to love when coming to it with an open sense of inquiry, and maybe it's a book that would enrage those readers who would rather not look into their own areas of darkness and desire.
The book is gripping -- it reads like a novel -- it's more about stirring up the questions for readers than trying to answer them in ways that would invariably be false or reductive. What are the lines between sacred and profane? Where do traditional magic and modern science intersect? What do we allow ourselves to wish for, and how, and why? Are there wishes we should not have? How do we work with the images and desires presented to us by our unconscious minds, even those we find somehow embarrassing or scary? How do we come to terms with our lives, past and present?
A Memoir To Learn From August 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
We live vicariously through reading all kinds of books, but memoir truly gives readers the sense that they understand the writer's inner experience of life. Every once in a while a memoir appears that makes you fall in love with the author's mind. That's how I feel about Noelle Oxenhandler's The Wishing Year. At so many points in the book I found myself appreciating not just her humor and her intelligence but her entire way of being in the world. For example, when I read the account of how the author sat with her dying friend, I felt I was witnessing something essential about simply being with a dying person, about meeting those who are dying on their own terms and not ours. The other people in the memoir are presented with complexity, not as a cast of flat characters. The Wishing Year is a memoir that, among other things, shows us a person who knows how to live life with compassion, openness and grace. It's good to soak up the details of such a life.
Touching, Fascinating, & Insightful August 25, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Having tried to read Eat, Pray, Love and found it so sadly lightweight, I couldn't finish, I was hesitant about picking up The Wishing Year. But, Oxenhandler's book surpassed all expectations. Readable, intelligent, thought provoking, authentic, without going into useless or irrelevant details. It's a wonderful book for starting a conversation about self-limiting beliefs, core religious values (no matter what your religion is), and coming back after a huge disaster -- that you yourself caused and feel the devastating weight of still. This is the book you want to give ALL your book-loving friends this holiday season.
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