Download or read book The Poisonwood Bible written by Barbara Kingsolver and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

Download or read book A Supposedly Fun Thing I ll Never Do Again written by David Foster Wallace and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These widely acclaimed essays from the author of Infinite Jest -- on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more -- established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book -- a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner -- David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.

Download or read book PERSUASION written by Jane Austen and published by Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-08 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Persuasion is a novel written by a famous British writer Jane Austen. It is a story about the life of Anne Elliot, a middle daughter of baronet Sir Walter, a spender and bluffer. Due to these features of his character, he found himself in a difficult financial position. He has to rent a family estate Kellynch Hall in order to pay his debts. Meanwhile, his most smart and considerate daughter Anne goes to Uppercross to look after a sick sister. In the days of her youth she was mutually in love with Frederick Wentworth, but because of a fear of a poor marriage, “reasons of conscience” and on the insistence of a “family friend” Lady Russel Anne stopped her relationship with him. But now after eight years, some incredible coincidence happens. The family that rents Kellynch Hall is related to Frederick Wentworth. Is the old-time love still alive in the hearts of Anne and Frederick?

Download or read book New Moon written by Stephenie Meyer and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2007-08-08 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From evil vampires to a mysterious pack of wolves, new threats of danger and vengeance test Bella and Edward's romance in the second book of the irresistible Twilight saga. For Bella Swan, there is one thing more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning. Bella and Edward face a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy's reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi. Passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality. It's here! #1 bestselling author Stephenie Meyer makes a triumphant return to the world of Twilight with the highly anticipated companion, Midnight Sun: the iconic love story of Bella and Edward told from the vampire's point of view. "People do not want to just read Meyer's books; they want to climb inside them and live there." -- Time "A literary phenomenon." -- The New York Times

Download or read book Salvage the Bones written by Jesmyn Ward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. He's a hard drinker, largely absent, and it isn't often he worries about the family. Esch and her three brothers are stocking up on food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; at fifteen, she has just realized that she's pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pit bull's new litter, dying one by one. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting. As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to a dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family - motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce - pulls itself up to face another day.

Download or read book The Wealth of Networks written by Yochai Benkler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing. The author shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront.

Download or read book Suicide Club written by Rachel Heng and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A provocative new author. A fascinating debut novel. Read it!” —Jeff VanderMeer In Rachel Heng's debut set in near future New York City—where lives last three hundred years and the pursuit of immortality is all-consuming—Lea must choose between her estranged father and her chance to live forever. Lea Kirino is a “Lifer,” which means that a roll of the genetic dice has given her the potential to live forever—if she does everything right. And Lea is an overachiever. She’s a successful trader on the New York exchange—where instead of stocks, human organs are now bought and sold—she has a beautiful apartment, and a fiancé who rivals her in genetic perfection. And with the right balance of HealthTechTM, rigorous juicing, and low-impact exercise, she might never die. But Lea’s perfect life is turned upside down when she spots her estranged father on a crowded sidewalk. His return marks the beginning of her downfall as she is drawn into his mysterious world of the Suicide Club, a network of powerful individuals and rebels who reject society’s pursuit of immortality, and instead choose to live—and die—on their own terms. In this future world, death is not only taboo; it’s also highly illegal. Soon Lea is forced to choose between a sanitized immortal existence and a short, bittersweet time with a man she has never really known, but who is the only family she has left in the world.

Download or read book Predictably Irrational written by Dan Ariely and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-02 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent, lively, humorous, and thoroughly engaging, "The Predictably Irrational" explains why people often make bad decisions and what can be done about it.

Download or read book Dead Inside written by Chandler Morrison and published by Death's Head Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young hospital security guard with a disturbingly unique taste in women. A maternity doctor with a horrifically unusual appetite. When the two of them meet, they embark on a journey of self-discovery while shattering societal norms and engaging in destructively aberrant behavior. As they unwittingly help each other understand a world in which neither seems to belong, they begin to realize what it truly means to be alive...And that it might not always a good thing.

Download or read book The Routledge History of Literature in English written by Ronald Carter and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.

Download or read book Mancunia written by Michael Symmons Roberts and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize Longlisted for the 2019 Portico Prize PBS Autumn Recommendation Mancunia is both a real and an unreal city. In part, it is rooted in Manchester, but it is an imagined city too, a fallen utopia viewed from formal tracks, as from the train in the background of De Chirico’s paintings. In these poems we encounter a Victorian diorama, a bar where a merchant mariner has a story he must tell, a chimeric creature – Miss Molasses – emerging from the old docks. There are poems in honour of Mancunia’s bureaucrats: the Master of the Lighting of Small Objects, the Superintendent of Public Spectacles, the Co-ordinator of Misreadings. Metaphysical and lyrical, the poems in Michael Symmons Roberts’ seventh collection are concerned with why and how we ascribe value, where it resides and how it survives. Mancunia is – like More’s Utopia – both a no-place and an attempt at the good-place. It is occupied, liberated, abandoned and rebuilt. Capacious, disturbing and shape-shifting, these are poems for our changing times.

Download or read book Gre Vocab Capacity written by Vince Kotchian and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2015 version published on 12/29/14. Need a good way to remember that the word "prodigal" means "wasteful"? Just think ofprada gal - a girl who spends all of her money on designer clothes. Brian McElroy (Harvard, '02) and Vince Kotchian (Boston College, '97), two of San Diego's most sought after test-prep tutors, provide a series of clever, unconventional, and funny memory devices aimed toward helping you to improve your vocabulary and remember words long-term so that you don't ever forget their meanings. Brian and Vince, combined, have been tutoring the test for over 20 years. They have analyzed all available official GRE tests to select the words that appear in this book. The vocabulary words in this book are best suited for students at a 9th-grade level or above. The words in this edition are specifically targeted toward the GRE exam, but they are also helpful for students who are preparing for other standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, ISEE, SSAT, GMAT, LSAT or MCAT, or anyone at any age who simply wants to improve his/her knowledge of English vocabulary. Disclaimer: a few of our mnemonics might not be appropriate for kids – some contain adult language or situations. Over 950 of the words in this book appear in our other mnemonics book,SAT Vocab Capacity. So if you're easily offended, the SAT version might be a better choice. Why This Book Is Different If you're studying for the GRE, SAT, or for any other standardized test that measures your vocabulary, you may be feeling a little bit anxious – especially if you've taken a practice test and encountered words you didn't know (or maybe never even saw before)! Whether you have seven days or seven months to prepare for the test, you're going to want to boost your vocabulary. But it's not that simple – you've got to remember the words you learn. And on many GRE text completion and sentence equivalence questions, getting the right answer comes down to knowing the precise definition of the words. You could make vocabulary flashcards. You could look up words you don't know. You could read a book with lots of big words. But unless you give your brain a way to hold on to the words you learn, it will probably have a harder time remembering them when they appear on the test. That's the problem with most vocabulary books: the definitions and sentences in the books aren't especially memorable. That's where this book is different. We've not only clearly defined the words but we've also created sentences designed to help you remember the words through a variety of associations - using mnemonics. Mnemonic Examples A mnemonic is just a memory device. It works by creating a link in your brain to something else, so that recall of one thing helps recall of the other. This can be done in many ways – but the strongest links are through senses, emotions, rhymes, and patterns. Consider this example: Quash (verb): to completely stop from happening. Think: squash. The best way to quash an invasion of ants in your kitchen is simple: squash them. Now your brain has a link from the word quash (which it may not have known) to the word squash (which it probably knows). Both words sound and look the same, so it's easy to create a visual and aural link. If you picture someone squashing ants (and maybe get grossed out), you also have another visual link and an emotional link. Here's another example: Eschew (verb): to avoid. Think: ah-choo! Eschew people who say "ah-choo!" unless you want to catch their colds. The word eschew sounds similar to a sneeze (ah-choo!), so your brain will now link the two sounds. If you picture yourself avoiding someone who is about to sneeze in your face, even better! Again, the more connections you make in your brain to the new word, th

Download or read book dith Piaf written by David Looseley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world-famous French singer Édith Piaf (1915-63) was never just a singer. This book suggests new ways of understanding her, her myth and her meanings over time at home and abroad, by proposing the notion of an 'imagined Piaf.

Download or read book The Open Work written by Umberto Eco and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is significant for its concept of "openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its anticipation of two themes of literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interaction between reader and text.

Download or read book Music Ho A Study of Music in Decline written by Constant Lambert and published by Rare Treasure Editions. This book was released on 2021-11-05T11:09:00Z with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant analysis of the music of the twenties and thirties, also discusses the music of composers like Stravinsky, Satie, Gershwin, and considers the contributions of jazz and other pop music of the time with classical music.

Download or read book Against Love written by Laura Kipnis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A polemic against love that is “engagingly acerbic ... extremely funny.... A deft indictment of the marital ideal, as well as a celebration of the dissent that constitutes adultery, delivered in pointed daggers of prose” (The New Yorker). Who would dream of being against love? No one. Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions. But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love. Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won’t injure you (well not severely); it’s just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.

Download or read book Staring at the Sun written by Irvin D. Yalom and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2008-03-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in Irvin Yalom’s inimitable story-telling style, Staring at the Sun is a profoundly encouraging approach to the universal issue of mortality. In this magisterial opus, capping a lifetime of work and personal experience, Dr Yalom helps us recognise that the fear of death is at the heart of much of our day-to-day anxiety. This reality is often brought to the surface by an 'awakening experience' — a dream, a loss (such as the death of a loved one, a divorce, or the loss of a job or home), illness, trauma, or ageing. Once we confront our own mortality, Dr Yalom writes, we are inspired to rearrange our priorities, communicate more deeply with those we love, appreciate more keenly the beauty of life, and increase our willingness to take the risks necessary for personal fulfillment. This is a book with tremendous utility, including the provision of techniques for dealing with the most prevalent kinds of fears of death — especially by living in the here and now, and by embracing what Dr Yalom calls ‘rippling’, the influence and impact we all have that has a life beyond our own.