Download or read book The Learning Curves of Vanessa Partridge written by Clare Strahan and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vanessa Partridge, cello-playing good girl, spends every summer holiday at Shearwater. This year, her brother is bringing his best mate, Darith - the object of many, many fantasies Van will never say aloud. Or will she? This summer feels different...and so does Van. But her first taste of independence comes with a bitter tang of regret, and when her sense of self is shattered, Van wrestles with ideas of consent and desire, and what it means to want and be wanted. Can someone with sensible plaits and a soft spot for Plato also have secret, lustful fantasies? And if she does, is there anything wrong with that? The Learning Curves of Vanessa Partridge is a heartbreaking and joyful coming-of-age novel about sex, love, family and finding your voice. 'A wonderfully original voice and an irresistible protagonist who captures the complex, hilarious and messy inner life of girls. Witty, funny and heartbreaking - I wished I could lean into the pages and give Vanessa a hug.' - Melissa Keil

Download or read book Never Look Desperate written by Rachel Matthews and published by Transit Lounge . This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never Look Desperate is Sedaris meets Fleabag, a tragi-comedy romance set in Melbourne 2023. It features cremation bling, pineapple underwear, grief and vaccinated cruise ships. The central characters Bernard, Goldie and Minh are everything TED Talks tell you not to be. The story tackles the absurdity of despair in a recovering world, the liberation from isolation and the wild frontier of middle-aged Tinder. 'Matthews’s voice is funny and wry and heartbreakingly honest. She has empathy for everyone — even those of us who, like Bernard, are a little bit hopeless but not entirely without hope...' — Toni Jordan, author of Addition, Nine Days, Fall Girl ‘Rachel Matthews understands the pleasures of tragi-comedy and knows exactly how to deliver them — the giggle that turns into a sob, the delight that morphs into insight, the black humour that assuages grief. The vulnerabilities of her characters make you want to scold them, scoop them up and tell them you love them.’ — Sian Prior, author of Shy: A memoir and Childless: A story of freedom and longing 'Matthews writes with unflinching honesty tempered by humour and a wise compassion. Touching, funny and sexy, Never Look Desperate is transgressive but hugely readable…' — Clare Strahan, Cracked and The Learning Curves of Vanessa Partridge ‘Never Look Desperate shines light on generational trauma and the effects it carries through our bloodlines in the most elegant and sophisticated ways. Without being afraid to touch on controversial topics, Rachel Matthews reveals the struggle of each character and their subsequent triumphs, entwining their stories to deliver a masterpiece on fear, resilience and, finally, love.’ — Shayling Ngo, journalist, Seven West Media, Perth 'Dense, wry, glorious and tragic…figures who lodge deep in the heart…the unravelling and humiliation of being human…with humour, complexity and wit. There are precarious moments evoked in the wider cultural backdrop to this story—the post-viral anxiety runs like a vein beneath the characters’ every thought. This work feels timely and tender.' — Ilka Tampke, author of Skin and Songwoman 'I was hooked. Rachel’s characters are always exquisitely crafted, yet utterly real.' — Di Websdale-Morrisey, On A Wing and a Prayer

Download or read book Unmasked written by Turia Pitt and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether via the numerous media reports, 60 Minutesspecials, Women's Weeklycover stories or her first book, Everything To Live For,we know about the why, how and what of that fateful day in September 2011. We know how she died four times on the operating table and her tortuous road to recovery. We've had a glimpse of the love of her fiance, Michael, that sustained her, and seen hints of the inner-strength that has made her one of the most admired women in the country. But until now, the true essence of this most remarkable Australian, plus the toll her accident has all taken on her and those around her, have remained a mystery. How and why does she push herself to ever greater physical and mental limits? What does she see when she looks in the mirror? How does her sudden celebrity (for the most unorthodox of reasons) sit with her? What lessons has she learned in the past five years? And how can each and every one of us take those lessons and apply them to our own lives? Since the first edition of Unmasked, in which Turia describes a never-ending series of impressive physical feats, including climbing the Great Wall of China, walking the Kokoda Track and competing in not one but two Ironman competitions, she and Michael have had a little boy, Hakavai. In this second edition, in three new chapters Turia also narrates her pregnancy and the joy of having a child. Unmaskedreveals the woman behind the headlines, and in so doing, uncover the grace, humour and inner-steel that gets Turia Pitt through every day - and which leaves the rest of us watching on in amazement.

Download or read book Stone Girl written by Eleni Hale and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unspeakable event changes everything for Sophie. No more Mum, school or bed of her own. She’s made a ward of the state and grows up in a volatile world where kids make their own rules, adults don’t count and the only constant is change. Until one day she meets Gwen, Matty and Spiral. Spiral is the most furious, beautiful boy Sophie has ever known. And as their bond tightens she finally begins to confront what happened in her past. I’m at the police station. There’s blood splattered across my face and clothes. In this tiny room with walls the colour of winter sky I hug a black backpack full of treasures. Only one thing is certain . . . no one can ever forgive me for what I’ve done. Winner of the Readings YA Book Prize, 2019 Voted the Best Young Adult Book of the year by Readings customers Voted Favourite YA Read of the year by Kids’ Book Review Voted in the top 100 great reads by Australian women Shortlisted for New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature, 2019 Contains mature content. Suitable for older readers.

Download or read book The Dark Tide written by Alicia Jasinska and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping, dark enemies to lovers LGBTQ+ YA fantasy about two girls who must choose between saving themselves, each other, or their sinking island home. Every year on St. Walpurga's Eve, Caldella's Witch Queen lures a boy back to her palace. An innocent life to be sacrificed on the full moon to keep the island city from sinking. Lina Kirk is convinced her brother is going to be taken this year. To save him, she enlists the help of Thomas Lin, the boy she secretly loves, and the only person to ever escape from the palace. But they draw the queen's attention, and Thomas is chosen as the sacrifice. Queen Eva watched her sister die to save the boy she loved. Now as queen, she won't make the same mistake. She's willing to sacrifice anyone if it means saving herself and her city. When Lina offers herself to the queen in exchange for Thomas's freedom, the two girls await the full moon together. But Lina is not at all what Eva expected, and the queen is nothing like Lina envisioned. Against their will, they find themselves falling for each other as water floods Caldella's streets and the dark tide demands its sacrifice. Perfect for fans of: The Wicked Deep and A Curse So Dark and Lonely Witchy tales Dark fantasy fiction LGBTQ books Enemies to lovers romance Praise for The Dark Tide: "Striking the perfect balance, The Dark Tide demands to be read in one held breath as its tide bears down on all."—Foreword, Starred Review "A dark scenic adventure, sensitively written for romantics, Jasinska's debut novel is a fantasy of promises, betrayal, unrequited love, and black magic."—School Library Journal, Starred Review "The Dark Tide is the dark, queer fantasy of your dreams that's part beauty and the beast, part something entirely new and original... a lush world that begs to be lived in... It's beautiful, and fast paced, and everything I ever want from a fairy tale."—Cat VanOrder, Bookmarks (Winston-Salem, NC) "Fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope will be ecstatic with this book...The Dark Tide offers an exciting and immersive story with a strong feminist slant that subverts common YA tropes and forges its own original path."—The Nerd Daily

Download or read book The Constitution of Algorithms written by Florian Jaton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A laboratory study that investigates how algorithms come into existence. Algorithms--often associated with the terms big data, machine learning, or artificial intelligence--underlie the technologies we use every day, and disputes over the consequences, actual or potential, of new algorithms arise regularly. In this book, Florian Jaton offers a new way to study computerized methods, providing an account of where algorithms come from and how they are constituted, investigating the practical activities by which algorithms are progressively assembled rather than what they may suggest or require once they are assembled.

Download or read book The Optical Unconscious written by Rosalind E. Krauss and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1994-07-25 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Optical Unconscious is a pointed protest against the official story of modernism and against the critical tradition that attempted to define modern art according to certain sacred commandments and self-fulfilling truths. The account of modernism presented here challenges the vaunted principle of "vision itself." And it is a very different story than we have ever read, not only because its insurgent plot and characters rise from below the calm surface of the known and law-like field of modernist painting, but because the voice is unlike anything we have heard before. Just as the artists of the optical unconscious assaulted the idea of autonomy and visual mastery, Rosalind Krauss abandons the historian's voice of objective detachment and forges a new style of writing in this book: art history that insinuates diary and art theory, and that has the gait and tone of fiction. The Optical Unconscious will be deeply vexing to modernism's standard-bearers, and to readers who have accepted the foundational principles on which their aesthetic is based. Krauss also gives us the story that Alfred Barr, Meyer Shapiro, and Clement Greenberg repressed, the story of a small, disparate group of artists who defied modernism's most cherished self-descriptions, giving rise to an unruly, disruptive force that persistently haunted the field of modernism from the 1920s to the 1950s and continues to disrupt it today. In order to understand why modernism had to repress the optical unconscious, Krauss eavesdrops on Roger Fry in the salons of Bloomsbury, and spies on the toddler John Ruskin as he amuses himself with the patterns of a rug; we find her in the living room of Clement Greenberg as he complains about "smart Jewish girls with their typewriters" in the 1960s, and in colloquy with Michael Fried about Frank Stella's love of baseball. Along the way, there are also narrative encounters with Freud, Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard. To embody this optical unconscious, Krauss turns to the pages of Max Ernst's collage novels, to Marcel Duchamp's hypnotic Rotoreliefs, to Eva Hesse's luminous sculptures, and to Cy Twombly's, Andy Warhol's, and Robert Morris's scandalous decoding of Jackson Pollock's drip pictures as "Anti-Form." These artists introduced a new set of values into the field of twentieth-century art, offering ready-made images of obsessional fantasy in place of modernism's intentionality and unexamined compulsions.

Download or read book Euphoria Kids written by Alison Evans and published by Echo. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the witch cursed Babs, she turns invisible sometimes. She has her mum and her dog, but teachers and classmates barely notice her. Then, one day, Iris can see her. And Iris likes what they see. Babs is made of fire. Iris grew from a seed in the ground. They have friends, but not human ones. Not until they meet Babs. The two of them have a lot in common: they speak to dryads and faeries, and they're connected to the magic that's all around them. There's a new boy at school, a boy who's like them and who hasn't yet found his real name. Soon the three of them are hanging out and trying spellwork together. Magic can be dangerous, though. Witches and fae can be cruel. Something is happening in the other realm, and despite being warned to stay away, the three friends have to figure out how to deal with it on their own terms. Anyone who loves the work of Francesca Lia Block and delights in Studio Ghibli films will be entranced by this gorgeous and gentle young adult novel about three queer friends who come into their power.

Download or read book Animal Eyes written by Michael F. Land and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers the way that all known types of eyes work, from their optics to the behaviour they guide. The ways that eyes sample the world in space and time are considered, and the evolutionary origins of eyes are discussed. This new edition incorporates discoveries made since the first edition published in 2001.

Download or read book Ecology written by Michael Begon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive guide to the depth and breadth of the ecological sciences, revised and updated The revised and updated fifth edition of Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems – now in full colour – offers students and practitioners a review of the ecological sciences. The previous editions of this book earned the authors the prestigious ‘Exceptional Life-time Achievement Award’ of the British Ecological Society – the aim for the fifth edition is not only to maintain standards but indeed to enhance its coverage of Ecology. In the first edition, 34 years ago, it seemed acceptable for ecologists to hold a comfortable, objective, not to say aloof position, from which the ecological communities around us were simply material for which we sought a scientific understanding. Now, we must accept the immediacy of the many environmental problems that threaten us and the responsibility of ecologists to play their full part in addressing these problems. This fifth edition addresses this challenge, with several chapters devoted entirely to applied topics, and examples of how ecological principles have been applied to problems facing us highlighted throughout the remaining nineteen chapters. Nonetheless, the authors remain wedded to the belief that environmental action can only ever be as sound as the ecological principles on which it is based. Hence, while trying harder than ever to help improve preparedness for addressing the environmental problems of the years ahead, the book remains, in its essence, an exposition of the science of ecology. This new edition incorporates the results from more than a thousand recent studies into a fully up-to-date text. Written for students of ecology, researchers and practitioners, the fifth edition of Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems is anessential reference to all aspects of ecology and addresses environmental problems of the future.

Download or read book Shades of Scarlet written by Anne Fine and published by David Fickling Books. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Mum gives her the notebook, Scarlet should be happy. It's beautiful, with its shiny scarlet cover and its blank pages full of promise. But Scarlet is absolutely NOT in the mood for a peace offering.Does Mum really think she can tear their family apart and expect Scarlet to be happy about it?Scarlet decides there's only one thing she can write in the notebook. The truth, about everything . . .

Download or read book Becoming Dangerous written by Katie West and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Edgy and often deeply personal, the twenty-one essays collected here come from a wide variety of writers. Some identify as witches, others identify as writers, musicians, game developers, or artists. What they have in common is that they've created personal rituals to summon their own power in a world that would prefer them powerless. Here, they share the rituals they use to resist self-doubt, grief, and depression in the face of sexism, slut shaming, racism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression"--

Download or read book Camp written by L. C. Rosen and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in a summer camp, this sweet and sharp screwball comedy set in a summer camp for queer teens examines the nature of toxic masculinity and self-acceptance. Sixteen-year-old Randy Kapplehoff loves spending the summer at Camp Outland, a camp for queer teens. It's where he met his best friends. It's where he takes to the stage in the big musical. And it's where he fell for Hudson Aaronson-Lim—who's only into straight-acting guys and barely knows not-at-all-straight-acting Randy even exists. This year, however, it's going to be different. Randy has reinvented himself as 'Del'—buff, masculine, and on the market. Even if it means giving up show tunes, nail polish, and his unicorn bedsheets, he's determined to get Hudson to fall for him. But as he and Hudson grow closer, Randy has to ask himself: How much is he willing to change for love? And is it really love anyway, if Hudson doesn't know who he truly is?

Download or read book The Sky is Mine written by Amy Beashel and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Bristol Teen Book Award 2020 Longlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2021 Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2021 ‘Izzy is my hero, and her voice deserves to be heard around the world. Stunning.’ Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places ‘Amy Beashel holds nothing back when confronting rape culture and toxicity; this beautiful book will floor you and deserves to be on every shelf, everywhere.’ Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces Izzy feels invisible. Trapped under the weight of expectation and censored by shame. Her mum Steph and best friend Grace have always been there to save her. But with one under the control of her stepfather and the other caught in the throes of new love, Izzy is falling between the cracks. As threats to her safety grow, Izzy wants to scream. But first she must find her voice. And if the sky is the limit, then the sky is hers. [This book contains material which some readers may find distressing, including discussions of rape, coercive behaviour, domestic violence and abuse.]

Download or read book The Vertigo Years written by Philipp Blom and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how changes from the Industrial Revolution prior to World War I brought about radical transformation in society, changes in education, and massive migration in population that led to one of the bloodiest events in history.

Download or read book Cognitive Enhancement written by Shira Knafo and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2014-12-20 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive Enhancement: Pharmacologic, Environmental and Genetic Factors addresses the gap that exists in research on the topic, gathering multidisciplinary knowledge and tools that help the reader understand the basics of cognitive enhancement. It also provides assistance in designing procedures and pharmacological approaches to further the use of novel cognitive enhancers, a field that offers potential benefit to a variety of populations, including those with neurologic and psychiatric disorders, mild aging-related cognitive impairment, and those who want to improve intellectual performance. The text builds on our knowledge of the molecular/cellular basis of cognitive function, offering the technological developments that may soon enhance cognition. Separate sections cover enhancement drugs, environmental conditions, and genetic factors in terms of both human and animal studies, including both healthy/young and aging/diseased individuals. - Provides a multidisciplinary knowledge, enabling a further understanding of cognitive enhancement - Offers coverage of the pharmacologic, environmental, and genetic factors relevant to the topic - Discusses cognitive enhancement from the perspective of both healthy and diseased or aging populations - Topics are discussed in terms of both human and animal studies

Download or read book Highway Bodies written by Alison Evans and published by Bonnier Zaffre Ltd.. This book was released on 2019-02-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bodies on the TV, explosions, barriers, and people fleeing. No access to social media. And a dad who'll suddenly bite your head off - literally. These teens have to learn a new resilience... Members of a band wield weapons instead of instruments. A pair of siblings find there's only so much you can joke about, when the menace is this strong. And a couple find depth among the chaos. Highway Bodies is a unique zombie apocalypse story featuring a range of queer and gender non-conforming teens who have lost their families and friends and can only rely upon each other.