Download or read book The Wordhord written by Hana Videen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and illuminating collection of weird, wonderful, and downright baffling words from the origins of English—and what they reveal about the lives of the earliest English speakers Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer’s Middle English, Old English—the language of Beowulf—defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it is rich with words that haven’t changed (like word), others that are unrecognizable (such as neorxnawang, or paradise), and some that are mystifying even in translation (gafol-fisc, or tax-fish). In this delightful book, Hana Videen gathers a glorious trove of these gems and uses them to illuminate the lives of the earliest English speakers. We discover a world where choking on a bit of bread might prove your guilt, where fiend-ship was as likely as friendship, and where you might grow up to be a laughter-smith. The Wordhord takes readers on a journey through Old English words and customs related to practical daily activities (eating, drinking, learning, working); relationships and entertainment; health and the body, mind, and soul; the natural world (animals, plants, and weather); locations and travel (the source of some of the most evocative words in Old English); mortality, religion, and fate; and the imagination and storytelling. Each chapter ends with its own “wordhord”—a list of its Old English terms, with definitions and pronunciations. Entertaining and enlightening, The Wordhord reveals the magical roots of the language you’re reading right now: you’ll never look at—or speak—English in the same way again.

Download or read book Born a Crime written by Trevor Noah and published by One World. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.

Download or read book The Power of Fun written by Catherine Price and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you’re not having fun, you’re not fully living. The author of How to Break Up with Your Phone makes the case that, far from being frivolous, fun is actually critical to our well-being—and shows us how to have more of it. “This delightful book might just be what we need to start flourishing.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Adam Grant Journalist and screen/life balance expert Catherine Price argues persuasively that our always-on, tech-addicted lifestyles have led us to obsess over intangible concepts such as happiness while obscuring the fact that real happiness lies in the everyday experience of fun. We often think of fun as indulgent, even immature and selfish. We claim to not have time for it, even as we find hours a day for what Price calls Fake Fun—bingeing on television, doomscrolling the news, or posting photos to social media, all in hopes of filling some of the emptiness we feel inside. In this follow-up to her hit book, How to Break Up with Your Phone, Price makes the case that True Fun—which she defines as the magical confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow—will give us the fulfillment we so desperately seek. If you use True Fun as your compass, you will be happier and healthier. You will be more productive, less resentful, and less stressed. You will have more energy. You will find community and a sense of purpose. You will stop languishing and start flourishing. And best of all? You’ll enjoy the process. Weaving together scientific research with personal experience, Price reveals the surprising mental, physical, and cognitive benefits of fun, and offers a practical, personalized plan for how we can achieve better screen/life balance and attract more True Fun into our daily lives—without feeling overwhelmed. Groundbreaking, eye-opening, and packed with useful advice, The Power of Fun won’t just change the way you think about fun. It will bring you back to life.

Download or read book Breath written by James Nestor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

Download or read book Modern Gods written by Nick Laird and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended, from an award-winning author with “a wonderfully original and limber voice” (The New York Times) “[Nick Laird’s] kinetic prose, full of insight about politics, history and religion, dazzles eye and ear." –The New York Times Book Review “Nick Laird takes two experiences poles apart and unites them in gorgeous language…[with] fierce tenderness. ” –Dave Eggers, author of Heroes of the Frontier Alison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born, working for her father’s real estate agency, she hopes a second marriage will help her get her life back together. Her sister Liz, a fiercely independent professor who lives in New York City, is about to return to Ulster for Alison’s wedding, before heading to an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea to make a TV show about the world’s newest religion. Both sisters hope to write their own futures, but the past has other ideas. Alison wakes up the day after her wedding to find that her new husband has a past neither of them can escape. While Liz, in a rainforest on the other side of the planet, finds herself increasingly entangled in the eerie, charged world of Belef, the charismatic middle-aged woman she has come to film, the leader of a cargo cult. As Modern Gods ingeniously interweaves the stories of Liz and Alison, it becomes clear that both sisters must learn how to negotiate with the past, with the sins of fanaticism, and decide exactly what the living owe to the dead. Laird’s brave, innovative novel charts the intimacies and disappointments of a family trying to hold itself together, and the repercussions of history and belief.

Download or read book STOP READING THE NEWS written by ROLF. DOBELLI and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Another Day in the Death of America written by Gary Younge and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2017 J. Anthony Lukas PrizeShortlisted for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Foundation AwardFinalist for the 2017 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismLonglisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction On an average day in America, seven children and teens will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during one such day. It could have been any day, but he chose November 23, 2013. Black, white, and Latino, aged nine to nineteen, they fell at sleepovers, on street corners, in stairwells, and on their own doorsteps. From the rural Midwest to the barrios of Texas, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of twenty-four hours to reveal the full human stories behind the gun-violence statistics and the brief mentions in local papers of lives lost. This powerful and moving work puts a human face-a child's face-on the "collateral damage" of gun deaths across the country. This is not a book about gun control, but about what happens in a country where it does not exist. What emerges in these pages is a searing and urgent portrait of youth, family, and firearms in America today.

Download or read book Mail Men written by Adrian Addison and published by Atlantic Books (UK). This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its founding by the Harmsworth brothers in 1896, to turning 'compact' in 1971 and becoming the world's biggest newspaper website in 2011, Mail Men explores the rise and rise of the Daily Mail, Britain's most profitable newspaper. Charting the controversy that has always dogged the publication - from its flirtation with fascism in the 1930s to its fractious relationship with celebrities today, Addison explains how the divisive paper has shaped British journalism and, indeed, Britain itself. With colourful portraits of rambunctious life behind the masthead (discover why one corridor is dubbed 'scary' by staffers), Mail Men includes fascinating biographical details of key figures in the history of the paper - including idiosyncratic boss Paul Dacre, unrivalled moral arbiter for Middle England and the highest paid newspaper editor in the UK. Drawing on interviews with a vast array of the paper's journalists, past and present -- as well as fans, victims, and critics - this is the uncut story of the Mail Men who created and ran the paper, and the underlings who were expected to give their lives to this peculiarly British institution--

Download or read book The Outrun A Memoir written by Amy Liptrot and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “It’s wild writing: sexy, unguarded, raw, and ardent … highly recommended.”—The Millions After a decade of heavy partying and hard drinking in London, Amy Liptrot returns home to Orkney, a remote island off the north of Scotland. The Outrun maps Amy’s inspiring recovery as she walks along windy coasts, swims in icy Atlantic waters, tracks Orkney’s wildlife, and reconnects with her parents, revisiting and rediscovering the place that shaped her. A Guardian Best Nonfiction Book of 2016 Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller New Statesman Book of the Year

Download or read book Better to Live written by Alastair Campbell and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Last Christmas I almost killed myself. Almost. I've had a lot of almosts. Never gone from almost to deed. Don't think I ever will. But it was a bad almost. Bad. BETTER TO LIVE is Alastair Campbell's autobiographical, psychological and psychiatric study of his lifelong struggle with depression. He explores the childhood events and family relationships that have gone on to echo through his political career and private life. Every bit as direct and driven, clever and candid as he is, his quest to get to the bottom of his depression and its treatment animates an inspiring and uplifting book that really could save lives. We all know someone with depression. There is barely a family untouched by it. We may be talking about it more than we did, back in the era of 'boys don't cry' - they did you know - and when a brave face or a stiff upper lip or a best foot forward was seen as the only way to go. But we still don't talk about it enough. There is still stigma, and shame, and taboo. There is still the feeling that admitting to being sad or anxious makes us weak. It took me years, decades even to get to this point, but I passionately believe that the reverse is true and that speaking honestly about our feelings and experiences (whether as a depressive or as the friend or relative of a depressive) is the first and best step on the road to recovery. So that is what I have tried to do here.

Download or read book The Ungrateful Refugee written by Dina Nayeri and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction "Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times Book Review "Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” —Star–Tribune (Minneapolis) Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials. Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis. “A writer who confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

Download or read book HELP written by Oliver Burkeman and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2011-01-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you solve the problem of human happiness? It’s a subject that has occupied some of the greatest philosophers of all time, from Aristotle to Paul McKenna – but how do we sort the good ideas from the terrible ones? Over the past few years, Oliver Burkeman has travelled to some of the strangest outposts of the ‘happiness industry’ in an attempt to find out. In Help!, the first collection of his popular Guardian columns, Burkeman presents his findings. It’s a witty and thought-provoking exploration that punctures many of self-help’s most common myths, while also offering clear-headed, practical and of ten counter-intuitive advice on a range of topics from stress, procrastination and insomnia to wealth, laughter, time management and creativity. It doesn’t claim to have solved the problem of human happiness. But it might just bring us one step closer.

Download or read book The Keepers written by Al Campbell and published by Univ. of Queensland Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This daring and dazzling debut shines a light on the unsung heroes of our communities: the carers. Jay is devoted to the care of her teenage twins who view the world as differently as it views them. Frank is sweet, sensitive and bullied, while whip-smart Teddy needs an iPad to speak. With an absent husband and battling a nightmare bureaucracy, Jay leans heavily on Keep, her lifelong half-real friend. But in the corner of her eye lurks her mother, and a childhood Jay knows she can't ever outrun. Jay believes she is managing quite well, with a half-grip on this half-life of hers. That is, until Teddy starts to get sick, refusing to eat, while doctors refuse to listen, confounding everything Jay thought she knew about what lies ahead. The Keepers is an incredible and fiercely honest novel about the damage done by parents who can't love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold.

Download or read book Brittle with Relics written by Richard King and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brittle with Relics is a landmark history of the people of Wales during a period of great national change.'Richly humane, viscerally political, generously multi-voiced, Brittle with Relics is oral history at its revelatory best.'DAVID KYNASTON'Fascinating.' OBSERVER'Powerful.' LITERARY REVIEW'Inspired.' GUARDIANBrittle with Relics is a vital history of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution.Drawing upon the voices of its inhabitants - includin Neil Kinnock, Rowan Williams, Leanne Wood, Gruff Rhys, Michael Sheen, Nicky Wire, Sian James, language activists, members of former mining communities and many more - this is a vivid portrait of a nation determined to survive, while maintaining the hope that Wales will one day thrive on its own terms.'Passionate.' HISTORY TODAY'Compels attention.' IRISH TIMES'Superb.' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A testament to the brutal circumstances that bonded the communities of Wales into a new polity for the 21st century.'GRUFF RHYS'This book is a guide to remembering who we can be when we work together.'GWENNO SAUNDERS'An essential telling of Welshness that contains a powerful reflection of Englishness, too.'EMMA WARREN

Download or read book Modern Nature written by Derek Jarman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1994.

Download or read book When I Sing Mountains Dance written by Irene Solà and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war. But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain - human, animal and other - come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape. This remarkable English-language debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative.

Download or read book What We Really Do All Day written by Jonathan Gershuny and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has the way we spend our time changed over the last fifty years? Are we really working more, sleeping less and addicted to our phones? What does this mean for our health, wealth and happiness? Everything we do happens in time and it feels like our lives are busier than ever before. Yet a detailed look at our daily activities reveals some surprising truths about the social and economic structure of the world we live in. This book delves into the unrivalled data collection and expertise of the Centre for Time Use Research to explore fifty-five years of change and what it means for us today.