Download or read book Never As Good As the First Time written by Mari Walker and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years Samai Collins has been a faithful Christian, devoted wife and loving mother. But suddenly she finds herself in the middle of a nasty divorce from her minister husband and struggling to find a job, with almost no work skills, in order to support her three children. As Samai tries to get back on her feet, loneliness and the deep longing for a man's touch cause her to stumble in her spiritual beliefs. Then an old high school crush reappears and Samai's life takes a wild new turn. She is seduced completely by Zane Blackmon's passion and zest for life and soon finds herself being led down a dark path that she never knew existed. An underworld of drugs threatens her life and the lives of her three children. But is love...and just a little bit of faith enough to save them all?
Download or read book Never As Good As the First Time written by Mari Walker and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this intense, gripping debut novel, a young mother of three struggles through a divorce and an unforgettable battle with addiction that threatens to destroy her life and her family.
Download or read book The First 20 Hours written by Josh Kaufman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of practicing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By completing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the methods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard keyboard, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the simple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Figure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcomponents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accurate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chainsaws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.
Download or read book The Great Mental Models Volume 1 written by Shane Parrish and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.
Download or read book The Partly Cloudy Patriot written by Sarah Vowell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-10 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author shares her perspective on such topics as the 2000 election, present-day civil rights activists, and the relationship between the United States and Canada.
Download or read book You Never Forget Your First written by Brian Grall and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Premeditated or heat-of-the-moment, accidental or under orders, a matter of pure survival, or pure evil... Your first kill changes you, defines you. Your reaction reveals who you are, and sets the path for who you become. Casanova is a rising star in his shady Organization, ""Matt"" is fighting to keep his sanity... will both become the monsters others believe them to be? In wars of the future and past, will Urzzt and Junior, two reluctant soldiers, go against their natures in the heat of battle? Can Swan, trained to just observe, take action to turn the tables on her hunter? Can training prepare Ship's Officer Danny Garrett for the trauma of his first kill, and allow him to continue on when lives are at stake? What will become of Whisper and Daniel after the ""accidental"" deaths of those they love most? What happens to Dave and his killer now? Join Authors Rising as we share in nine very different characters' stories, and explore how they and their lives are affected by their FIRST KILLS.
Download or read book I ll Never Forget My First Car written by Bill Sherk and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious story collection that describes the trials and tribulations that often follow the decision to purchase a car for the first time.
Download or read book Never Sell Your First Home written by Brendan C. Donelson and published by NSYFH Books. This book was released on 2022-05-01 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Soon as You Buy Your First Home, a Major Investment Win Can Be Yours-But Most People Miss It Too many homeowners lose a once-in-a-lifetime wealth-building opportunity. Brendan Donelson did. After moving into his second house, he recognized that selling his first home was a half-million-dollar mistake. The pain from it motivated him to do everything possible to help others avoid the same pitfall. Now, after more than two decades of showing his mortgage clients the remarkable wealth-building opportunity in keeping the first-and every other-home they own, Brendan has captured his insights and financing know-how in this practical, fun-to-read book. Never Sell Your First Home details why keeping your residence as an investment property is one of your best possible net worth strategies. Brendan shows how to finance a second home even without money from selling the first house. It's one of many keys he offers about how to make this investment work for you. And if you have sold your first home? No need to let that slow you down. This book makes clear the benefits of keeping whatever potential investment property you're living in right now. Brendan takes you step-by-step through a simple, secure way to explode your net worth and supplements his explanations with case studies of actual results. Is Your Investment Portfolio Ready to Take Off Like "Hailey's Comet"? Hailey's is just one of the wealth-building success stories you'll meet in Never Sell Your First Home. Before Hailey could make the mistake of selling her first home, Brendan showed this on-her-way-to-living-well schoolteacher from Colorado the huge financial win in owning rental property. From a Colorado school teacher to a Tennessee Fortune 500 CEO, you'll see six different stories of how homes at any level of value can be leveraged to create astounding wealth. Through this book, Brendan equips you to do what they did: Multiply your net worth far beyond the norm and create cash flow in the process. The especially good news is that everything Brendan teaches applies even if you did sell your first home. Start doing things the NSYFH way now, and you'll be better off for the rest of your life. "Brendan's approach is spot on. If mostAmericans could figure out a way to keep more real estate, they'd be wealthier.This book is a great read from an authorwho knows what he's writing about " -ArtLaffer, Economist, Author, and Economic Policy Advisor to President Reagan
Download or read book Permission to Screw Up written by Kristen Hadeed and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead–and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them. This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they’re mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. It’s the story of how she went from being an almost comically inept leader to a sought-after CEO who teaches others how to lead. Hadeed unintentionally launched Student Maid while attending college ten years ago. Since then, Student Maid has employed hundreds of students and is widely recognized for its industry-leading retention rate and its culture of trust and accountability. But Kristen and her company were no overnight sensation. In fact, they were almost nothing at all. Along the way, Kristen got it wrong almost as often as she got it right. Giving out hugs instead of feedback, fixing errors instead of enforcing accountability, and hosting parties instead of cultivating meaningful relationships were just a few of her many mistakes. But Kristen’s willingness to admit and learn from those mistakes helped her give her people the chance to learn from their own screwups too. Permission to Screw Up dismisses the idea that leaders and organizations should try to be perfect. It encourages people of all ages to go for it and learn to lead by acting, rather than waiting or thinking. Through a brutally honest and often hilarious account of her own struggles, Kristen encourages us to embrace our failures and proves that we’ll be better leaders when we do.
Download or read book South Texas Never Raided written by Jings Chen and published by Partridge Publishing Singapore. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bob Jackson, a young New York newsman, went to California with purpose to investigate a retired hit mans life story that led him an idea to go to El Paso ,Texas, for details of the hiding border truth; his fate put him into the net connecting drug cartels and law enforcement forces on the both sides of the United States and Mexican border down to Rosario, Argentina, where Sinoloa cartel from Mexico began to establish its new drug paradise with support of new raised local cartel Los Monos; a story tells you how an innocent newsman turned to be a DEA agent but when man makes plan, God used to make steps. This is an imaginary tale that reflects the similar situation had affected the whole American earth for many decades and that just likes an invisible killer hiding inside the whole Pan American soil.... People lost their own liberty while money talks.
Download or read book Maid written by Stephanie Land and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide (Barack Obama)," this New York Times bestselling memoir is the inspiration for the Netflix limited series, hailed by Rolling Stone as "a great one." At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie's years spent in service to upper middle class America as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren't being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit. "A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama's Summer Reading List
Download or read book Never Broken written by Jewel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Jewel is a truth-teller…this is a book that lingers in your heart.” – Brené Brown *The New York Times bestseller* New York Times bestselling poet and multi-platinum singer-songwriter Jewel explores her unconventional upbringing and extraordinary life in an inspirational memoir that covers her childhood to fame, marriage, and motherhood. When Jewel’s first album, Pieces of You, topped the charts in 1995, her emotional voice and vulnerable performance were groundbreaking. Drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with more than thirty million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life, and the lessons learned from her experience and her music. Living on a homestead in Alaska, Jewel learned to yodel at age five, and joined her parents’ entertainment act, working in hotels, honky-tonks, and biker bars. Behind a strong-willed family life with an emphasis on music and artistic talent, however, there was also instability, abuse, and trauma. At age fifteen, she moved out and tasked herself with a mission: to see if she could avoid being the kind of statistic that her past indicated for her future. Soon after, she was accepted to the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, and there she began writing her own songs as a means of expressing herself and documenting her journey to find happiness. Jewel was eighteen and homeless in San Diego when a radio DJ aired a bootleg version of one of her songs and it was requested into the top-ten countdown, something unheard-of for an unsigned artist. By the time she was twenty-one, her debut had gone multiplatinum. There is much more to Jewel’s story, though, one complicated by family legacies, by crippling fear and insecurity, and by the extraordinary circumstances in which she managed to flourish and find happiness despite these obstacles. Along her road of self-discovery, learning to redirect her fate, Jewel has become an iconic singer and songwriter. In Never Broken she reflects on how she survived, and how writing songs, poetry, and prose has saved her life many times over. She writes lyrically about the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and loss, about the healing power of motherhood, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.
Download or read book Mrs Dalloway written by Virginia Woolf and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-16 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.
Download or read book You Never Forget Your First written by Josh Lewin and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having already penned Getting in the Game, his inside scoop on the mayhem within baseball's winter meetings, Josh Lewin once again gives baseball fans a window into the big leagues. By interviewing big league ballplayers about their first day in the majors, Lewin creates fascinating mini-biographies of the players, highlighting the personalities hidden behind the on-field accomplishments. He lets the players recount their own memories of how they made it to the big leagues. In You Never Forget Your First, Lewin shares the stories of players great and less so. Tony Gwynn recalls singling in his first at bat and finding Pete Rose waiting for him at first base with a wink and a warning: "Don't break my record all at once, kid." Bob Brenly heard of his call-up on the car radio while on a family trip to the Grand Canyon. He then stood helplessly in the middle of the Arizona desert after his transmission gave out, trying to convince passersby he was a ballplayer heading to the big leagues and needed a lift to the airport. Duane Kuiper witnessed a fight both on the field and in his own clubhouse his first day in Cleveland. Greg Maddux recalls being stuck at the Chicago River drawbridge, convinced he'd never make it to Wrigley Field in time for his debut. Lewin interviews modern star players such as A-Rod, Barry Bonds, and Manny Ramirez, as well as Hall of Famers such as Jim Palmer, Don Sutton, and George Brett. More than 100 popular baseball players are profiled, complete with the box scores of their big league debuts.
Download or read book Art Fear written by David Bayles and published by Souvenir Press. This book was released on 2023-02-09 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I always keep a copy of Art & Fear on my bookshelf' JAMES CLEAR, author of the #1 best-seller Atomic Habits 'A book for anyone and everyone who wants to face their fears and get to work' DEBBIE MILLMAN, author and host of the podcast Design Matters 'A timeless cult classic ... I've stolen tons of inspiration from this book over the years and so will you' AUSTIN KLEON, NYTimes bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist 'The ultimate pep talk for artists. ... An invaluable guide for living a creative, collaborative life.' WENDY MACNAUGHTON, illustrator Art & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors' own experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making art in the real world, and shows how they can be overcome every day. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity. Written by artists for artists, it offers generous and wise insight into what it feels like to sit down at your easel or keyboard, in your studio or performance space, trying to do the work you need to do. Every artist, whether a beginner or a prizewinner, a student or a teacher, faces the same fears - and this book illuminates the way through them.
Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Download or read book A Snowflake Never Falls in the Wrong Place written by Richard Zakka and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2016-07-30 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Zakkas story began in Aden, a British colony, during the 1950s. At an early age, it occurred to him how every detail in life is so perfect. No accidents, even in what appeared to be an accident. As each snowflake is original in character and majestic in beauty, tiny in size, it will always fall in its perfect place on earth according to Gods perfect plan, a perfect 13. He realized that all of lifes events are but steps to condition his evolution to perfecting his relationship with his Maker. When he was thirteen, his family moved to the US and began a new chapter. After studying civil engineering in Texas, Richard decided to move to New York and enroll at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and became an actor. After graduation, he was fortunate to land several roles in films and commercials. At the same time, to fulfill a promise to his father who was skeptical about an acting career, he started several businesses in the Big City. A whirlwind of marriage, family, filmmaking, and successful businesses were like snowflakes landing one after another, guiding his life path. Richard weaves a fascinating story that traces the arc of a creative entrepreneurs career from one exciting endeavor to the next.
