Download or read book The Uncommon Reader written by Alan Bennett and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-09-18 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of England's most celebrated writers, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author Alan Bennett revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.

Download or read book This Is It written by Alan Watts and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-09-28 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six revolutionary essays from "the perfect guide for a course correction in life, away from materialism and its empty promise" (Deepak Chopra), exploring the relationship between spiritual experience and ordinary life—and the need for them to coexist within each of us. With essays on “cosmic consciousness” (including Alan Watts’ account of his own ventures into this inward realm); the paradoxes of self-consciousness; LSD and consciousness; and the false opposition of spirit and matter, This Is It and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience is a truly mind-opening collection.

Download or read book Two Decades of the ALAN Review written by Patricia P. Kelly and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noting that "The ALAN Review" has published probing articles by and about leading authors of young adult (YA) literature and about the themes, topics, and issues at stake in YA literature, this book presents some of the best and most provocative of the essays published in "The ALAN Review" since its founding in 1974. It offers 41 essays: 25 essays feature interviews with and explorations of 8 of the finest YA authors; 16 essays look at the body of YA literature from diverse perspectives (including social and personal problems of young readers; regional literature; gender and ethnicity; and the inclusion of YA works in the English language arts curriculum); and 5 essays (not previously published) by past editors and the first and only executive secretary of ALAN, Ted Hipple. The book illuminates how "The ALAN Review" and YA literature itself have developed and come of age over the course of two decades. (RS)

Download or read book Treacle Walker written by Alan Garner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize An extraordinary, “playful, moving, and wholly remarkable” (The Guardian) coming-of-age novel filled with myth and magic from one of England's greatest living writers. An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock is trying to make sense of the world. Living alone in an old house, he spends his time reading comic books, collecting birds’ eggs, and playing with marbles. When one day a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears on a horse and cart, offering a cure-all medicine, a mysterious friendship develops and the young boy is introduced to a world beyond his wildest imagination. Luminous, evocative, and sparely told, Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth, folklore, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Download or read book How to Think written by Alan Jacobs and published by Currency. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Absolutely splendid . . . essential for understanding why there is so much bad thinking in political life right now." —David Brooks, New York Times How to Think is a contrarian treatise on why we’re not as good at thinking as we assume—but how recovering this lost art can rescue our inner lives from the chaos of modern life. As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper’s, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America’s culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us—political, social, religious—Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we’re doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren’t thinking. Most of us don’t want to think. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that’s a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias. In this smart, endlessly entertaining book, Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking—forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, “alternative facts,” and information overload—and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. (For example: It’s impossible to “think for yourself.”) Drawing on sources as far-flung as novelist Marilynne Robinson, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, and Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all. Because if we can learn to think together, maybe we can learn to live together, too.

Download or read book Refugee written by Alan Gratz and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel from Alan Gratz tells the timely--and timeless--story of three different kids seeking refuge. A New York Times bestseller! JOSEF is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world... ISABEL is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America... MAHMOUD is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe... All three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers -- from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But there is always the hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, shocking connections will tie their stories together in the end. As powerful and poignant as it is action-packed and page-turning, this highly acclaimed novel has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years and continues to change readers' lives with its meaningful takes on survival, courage, and the quest for home.

Download or read book A Million Bucks by 30 written by Alan Corey and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2007-12-26 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At twenty-two, Alan Corey left his mom’s basement in Atlanta and moved to New York City with one goal in mind: to become a millionaire by the time he was thirty. His parents and friends laughed, but six years later they were all celebrating his prosperous accomplishment–at a bar Corey owned in one of Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhoods. No, Corey didn’t climb the corporate ladder to build his fortune. In fact, he worked the same entry-level 9-to-5 job for six years straight. But by pinching his pennies and making sound investments, he watched a pittance blossom into a seven-digit bank account. In A Million Bucks by 30, Corey recounts his rags-to-riches journey and shares his secrets to success. WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO BECOME FILTHY RICH. “What a steal . . . For any entrepreneur the advice in these pages is worth more than a million bucks.” –Barbara Corcoran, founder, The Corcoran Group “This is the best personal finance book I’ve ever read. Part self-help, part brass-tacks money guide; Corey’s confessional tales of making it to the million dollar mark are as hilarious as they are helpful.” –John Reynolds, writer, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

Download or read book The Gulp written by Alan Baxter and published by Alan Baxter. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gulp (Tales From The Gulp #1) Strange things happen in The Gulp. The residents have grown used to it. The isolated Australian harbour town of Gulpepper is not like other places. Some maps don’t even show it. And only outsiders use the full name. Everyone who lives there calls it The Gulp. The place has a habit of swallowing people. A truck driver thinks the stories about The Gulp are made up to scare him. Until he gets there. Teenage siblings try to cover up the death of their mother, but their plans go drastically awry. A rock band invite four backpackers to a party at their house, where things get dangerously out of hand. A young man loses a drug shipment and his boss gives him 48 hours to make good on his mistake. Under the blinking eye of the old lighthouse, a rock fisher makes the strangest catch of his life. Five novellas. Five descents into darkness. Welcome to The Gulp, where nothing is as it seems.

Download or read book If I Understood You Would I Have this Look on My Face written by Alan Alda and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The actor and founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science traces his personal quest to understand how to relate and communicate better, from practicing empathy and using improv games to storytelling and developing better intuitive skills.

Download or read book The World Without Us written by Alan Weisman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence

Download or read book Midworld written by Alan Dean Foster and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A jungle planet must defend against exploitative aliens in this novel by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. From the rich imagination of science fiction great Alan Dean Foster comes the story of Midworld, a Humanx Commonwealth planet that’s equally fragile and hostile. Covered by a lush rainforest, Midworld is home to a primitive society that lives in harmony with the natural world. But the arrival of an exploitative human company, whose workers know nothing of Midworld’s delicate ecosystem, sparks a conflict. Should Midworld’s villagers aid the humans or stand against them? The hero of Foster’s addictive page-turner, Born, decides to lead two humans across the perilous jungle. His choice propels Midworld toward annihilation—and leads him headlong into a battle for survival.

Download or read book Make the Leap written by Bryan Green and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-27 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key to unlocking your potential isn't in training harder or doing more sophisticated workouts. It's in thinking better about your training. Think better, train better.Make the Leap provides athletes and coaches a step-by-step guide to thinking more effectively about all aspects of training. It begins with an explanation of what "leaps" are, why they happen, and the "Build, Leap, Sustain" Leap Cycle all athletes go through.It then breaks down, via 11 Optimal Training Principles, 4 mental model spotlights and numerous stories, visuals, and tactical suggestions, exactly how to think better about your training. Some of these topics include:- the importance of attitude and mindset- the Hidden Training Program and how to reveal it- systems vs purposeful practice and when to implement them- North Star goals vs Next Step goals, and how to set each effectively- the four types of mistakes and how to make them better- and many other topics, including the author's powerful Momentum ModelTwo-time National Coach of the Year Ken Reeves said of the book: "A mental running clinic in book form, Make the Leap allows an individualized approach for each person that reads the book. Put it next to your bed stand for that 15 minutes of reading every night. It has the potential to inspire and educate you each and every reading."Olympians, hall of fame coaches, and competitive runners all agree: this book will help you and your athletes think better, train better, and make the leap.

Download or read book The Amazing Mind of Alice Makin written by Alan Shea and published by Scholastic Australia. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice is growing up in a grey world of old bombsites in post-war London. It’s a tough life made harder by her difficult step-dad, though her imagination has always offered escape. When Alice meets Reggie it seems that together, they can do extraordinary things. But what is their story, and how will it end?

Download or read book Moloka i written by Alan Brennert and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in idyllic Honolulu in the 1890s, is part of a big, loving Hawaiian family, and dreams of seeing the far-off lands that her father, a merchant seaman, often visits. But at the age of seven, Rachel and her dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. Forcibly removed from her family, she is sent to Kalaupapa, the isolated leper colony on the island of Moloka'i. In her exile she finds a family of friends to replace the family she's lost: a native healer, Haleola, who becomes her adopted "auntie" and makes Rachel aware of the rich culture and mythology of her people; Sister Mary Catherine Voorhies, one of the Franciscan sisters who care for young girls at Kalaupapa; and the beautiful, worldly Leilani, who harbors a surprising secret. At Kalaupapa she also meets the man she will one day marry. True to historical accounts, Moloka'i is the story of an extraordinary human drama, the full scope and pathos of which has never been told before in fiction. But Rachel's life, though shadowed by disease, isolation, and tragedy, is also one of joy, courage, and dignity. This is a story about life, not death; hope, not despair. It is not about the failings of flesh, but the strength of the human spirit.

Download or read book Alan Turing The Enigma written by Andrew Hodges and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades—all before his suicide at age forty-one. This New York Times bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing’s royal pardon in 2013, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. Capturing both the inner and outer drama of Turing’s life, Andrew Hodges tells how Turing’s revolutionary idea of 1936—the concept of a universal machine—laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. The book also tells how this work was directly related to Turing’s leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during World War II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory in the Atlantic. At the same time, this is the tragic account of a man who, despite his wartime service, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program—all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime. The inspiration for a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, Alan Turing: The Enigma is a gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution.

Download or read book Muscle written by Alan Trotter and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONGLISTED FOR THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FIRST BOOK AWARDIn a hard-boiled city of crooks, grifts and rackets lurk a pair of toughs: Box and _____. They're the kind of men capable of extracting apologies and reparations, of teaching you a chilling lesson. They seldom think twice, and ask very few questions.Until one night over the poker table, they encounter a pulp writer with wild ideas and an unscrupulous private detective, leading them into what is either a classic mystery, a senseless maze of corpses, or an inextricable fever dream . . .Drunk on cinematic and literary influence, Muscle is a slice of noir fiction in collapse, a ceaselessly imaginative story of violence, boredom and madness.

Download or read book In Praise of Wasting Time written by Alan Lightman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely and essential book that offers a fresh take on the qualms of modern day life, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks. We are all worried about wasting time. Especially in the West, we have created a frenzied lifestyle in which the twenty-­four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to ten minute units of efficiency. We take our iPhones and laptops with us on vacation. We check email at restaurants or our brokerage accounts while walking in the park. When the school day ends, our children are overloaded with “extras.” Our university curricula are so crammed our young people don’t have time to reflect on the material they are supposed to be learning. Yet in the face of our time-driven existence, a great deal of evidence suggests there is great value in “wasting time,” of letting the mind lie fallow for some periods, of letting minutes and even hours go by without scheduled activities or intended tasks. Gustav Mahler routinely took three or four-­hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he visited his country house. In his 1949 autobiography, Albert Einstein described how his thinking involved letting his mind roam over many possibilities and making connections between concepts that were previously unconnected. With In Praise of Wasting Time, Professor Alan Lightman documents the rush and heave of the modern world, suggests the technological and cultural origins of our time-­driven lives, and examines the many values of “wasting time”—for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, and for finding and solidifying the inner self. Break free from the idea that we must not waste a single second, and discover how sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.