The author takes the reader back to a snapshot in time, when she was a young girl. She describes in great detail and a flair for the whimsical what her childhood experiences were like growing up in the 1930s and 1940s with her rowdy and adventurous siblings. It's such a unique perspective and one I believe children of most ages can appreciate. The most incredible thing about the book is that all the artwork is done by the authoress herself! It's playful and sweet, and very original. The book is based on her real life experiences and brings us all back to a time when childhood could be truly innocent and carefree.
This is the second edition, revised and over 70% bigger than the first one. Most people think that phrasal verbs, verbs with more than one word, are hard to learn. As students we are given lists and lists of them to memorise, and we usually find the whole thing boring, complicated, and really hard to remember. This book is different. There are no lists and there is nothing to memorise. Instead, there are over 600 little stories, one for each verb. The fact is that phrasal verbs are not a logical system, designed by some maniac a few centuries ago. No. There are simply something that grew up naturally. Most natives don't even know the expression phrasal verbs. We never learn them at school. We know the difference between chopping down a tree and then chopping it up. We also know that when a building burns down, it is the same as when it burns up. Neither do we ever confuse put up your cousin with put up with him. If you use this book for about ten minutes every day, I money-back guarantee that in about ten days you will know more about phrasal verbs than 99% of all non-native teachers who teach English for a living. I also promise you that you will have fun doing it. Reviews for the first edition, which was Kindle only Phrasal verbs are usually a nightmare for us. Often we try out the "uncommon common sense" just to come to the wrong meaning, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. So I am very grateful to the author as he shows a natural way to learn those damned little things. - jartiblisimo (Spain) It's a brilliantly conceived book, not only the short stories really stick in your head and help your memory in recalling all those verbs, but also enables the reader to get all the subtle shades of a verb which a non-native speaker fails to appreciate most of the times. - haunted85 (Italy)
The side-splittingly funny Newbery Honor Book about a rebellious boy who is sent to a home-schooling program run by one family—the creative, kooky, loud, and loving Applewhites! Jake Semple is notorious. Rumor has it he managed to get kicked out of every school in Rhode Island, and actually burned the last one down to the ground. Only one place will take him now, and that's a home school run by the Applewhites, a chaotic and hilarious family of artists: poet Lucille, theater director Randolph, dancer Cordelia, and dreamy Destiny. The only one who doesn't fit the Applewhite mold is E.D.—a smart, sensible girl who immediately clashes with the defiant Jake. Jake thinks surviving this new school will be a breeze . . . but is he really as tough or as bad as he seems?
Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna, is an autobiographical account of renowned ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna's childhood, his relationship with his brother, and the author's experiences with and reflections on psychedelics, philosophy, and scientific innovation. Chronicling the McKenna brothers' childhood in western Colorado during the 1950s and 1960s, Dennis writes of his adolescent adventures including his first encounters with alcohol and drugs (many of which were facilitated by Terence), and the people and ideas that shaped them both. Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss weaves personal narrative through philosophical ideas and tales of psychedelic experimentation. In this book, Dennis describes these inquiries with the wisdom of perspective. In his account of what has become known as "The Experiment at La Chorrera"-- which Terence documented in his own 1989 book, True Hallucinations -- Dennis describes how he had visions of merging mushroom and human DNA, the brothers' predictions for the future, and their evolving ideas about society and consciousness. He also offers an intellectual understanding of the hallucinogenic effects of high-dose psychedelic mushrooms and other psychedelic substances. Dennis, now world-renowned for this ethnobotanical work, describes in Brotherhood his early interests in cosmology and astrology, his sometimes rocky relationship with his older brother and how their paths diverged later in their lives. Dennis describes his academic career in between touching accounts of both his mother's and Terence's battles with cancer. In the 10th Anniversary edition of Brotherhood, Dennis reflects on scientific revelations, climate change, and the social and political crises of our time. The new edition also features both the original foreword by Luis Eduardo Luna and a new foreword by Dr. Bruce Damer. Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss is a story about brotherhood, psychedelic experimentation, and the intertwining nature of science and myth.
Hanna and Andreas will do anything to leave oppressive East Germany behind. There's one escape route open to them, but can they survive it? Hanna and Andreas have always been friends. When they're expelled from school for activism directly challenging the socialist state in East Germany, they end up doing factory work. But what kind of life do they have to look forward to without education or opportunity? Especially when they aren't allowed a voice? The choice to risk imprisonment or death by escaping to the democratic West seems like a risk worth taking. They set out to swim twenty-five hours across the choppy waters of the Baltic Sea. Linke's storytelling achieves a delicate balance between heightened moments of danger--searchlights, jellyfish, a Russian helicopter, a violent summer storm--and the monotony, ineffable fatigue, physical pain, cramping, fear, and hope that fill the rest of the journey. A memorable tale of two people risking all for a chance at freedom.
Like cities everywhere, Melbourne is two cities. There is the city of space and place, of the streets and parks and buildings where we live. Then there is the city of words, the imagined city that has inspired or directed the building of the material city, and that holds the memories of the lives its people have led. Before the invasion of the settlers, the Aborigines who lived in what would become Melbourne patterned their lives in song and dance, word and ritual, that joined them in a seamless reality of place and space: past, present and future. The settlers displaced this with the chartered streets where solid buildings aspired to the ostentatious wealth of London or Paris, and narrow lanes and alleyways crawled with the misery of poverty. As new forms of transport arrived, new suburbs spread. Successive waves of immigration brought people from around the world as the city passed through cycles of prosperity and depression and changed from British to Antipodean to cosmopolitan. Each wave brought its own dreams. Each appropriated what they liked in the new land as they tried to build their separate pasts into a common future. In this study of Melbourne as a city imagined through words, John McLaren examines the words of writers who, in memoir and autobiography, diaries and journalism, fiction and poetry, have shared their perceptions of the city, its conflicts and its celebrations. He shows how this past lives on beneath today's city, taking us back to the boats that filled its harbour, the rivers that run beneath its streets and the ghosts who dance in its market. His book offers its readers new prospects of reading, and new ways of seeing the city within the city.
Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey chronicles the uniquely wild adventure of Doug Smith, who was determined to realize his dream of playing professional hockey, despite the fact he didn't start skating until the age of 19. Armed with a burning desire and his only marketable athletic abilities - those honed as an amateur boxer - Doug defeated impossible odds to win a championship ring and play in the world's second-best hockey league. Goon gives a raw and revealing insider's look at the riotous world of minor league hockey and the most peculiar role in all of sport - the Goon, whose job is to protect teammates from opposing ruffians. Come along as Doug Smith, an outsider in the hockey world, literally fights his way to the highest level of minor league hockey. You may never view the game in the same light again.
For the MTV generation which put Beavis and Butt-head's first book on the New York Times bestseller list comes a new compilation of unique humor. Beavis and Butt-head give us their view of the world from A to Z in their own version of an encyclopedia--just in time for Christmas. Illustrated.
