Staying true to the time-honored adage "fake it till you make it," Minare continues her journey as a fledgling radio DJ, bullshitting her way to the top one show at a time. Meanwhile, veteran scriptwriter Kureko announces he’s making a career shift and begins planning a trip to gather material for a new book, to which his secret admirer, Mizuho, volunteers to join him on as his assistant. As luck would have it, Minare ends up tagging along with them to Wassamu, where they have a run-in with some less-than-savory religious fanatics who plan to make their stay...longer than expected.
As Minare Koda continues to grow as a radio host week by week, one day, she's assigned to accompany Mizhuho and Kureko to Wassamu for some on-site research. But soon after arriving, they're abducted by a shady religious group and coerced into producing a radio show for the church. Then, after accidentally uncovering the cult's sinister plot involving sonic weaponry, Minare and co. have their stay extended indefinitely. Sensing foul play afoot, Nakahara and his band of would-be white knights rush from Sapporo to Wassamu to save the damsels in distress...plus Kureko!
From the legendary creator of Blade of the Immortal comes something completely different: the wild ride of one disgruntled young woman down the rapids of talk radio! LIKE WATER AND OIL As Minare struggles to establish an identity for her radio show and for herself as a radio personality, she enters the recording booth devoid of good ideas. A clever script from veteran writer Kureko helps save the episode, but when it's revealed that his days at the station may be numbered, Minare agonizes over the impact this will have on her assistant director Mizuho, who's idolized him since her school days...
A moving and heartwarming verse novel from CBCA shortlisted author Pip Harry about friendship, new experiences and staying true to yourself. When a Manly school sets out to bring a country class to the city for a beach visit, three very different kids find each other and themselves.Noah is fearless in the surf. So where does his courage go when his best mate pushes him around?Lottie loves collecting facts about bugs, but she doesn't know what to do about her dad filling their lonely house with junk.Jack wants to be a cricket star, but first he has to improve at school. Especially if he wants to see the ocean for the first time.
A mysterious murder takes place in a shopping arcade in China, while in Japan a yakuza gang discovers a large amount of money is missing. These volatile ingredients will combine to set off an explosion of violence on a remote island, that will eventually grow to consume more and more lives across the world!
A brave, intimate, beautifully crafted memoir by a survivor of the tsunami that struck the Sri Lankan coast in 2004 and took her entire family. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation at the seaside resort of Yala on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. Sonali Deraniyagala has written an extraordinarily honest, utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.
Discover how the freedom of sucking at something can help you build resilience, embrace imperfection, and find joy in the pursuit rather than the goal. What if the secret to resilience and joy is the one thing we’ve been taught to avoid? When was the last time you tried something new? Something that won’t make you more productive, make you more money, or check anything off your to-do list? Something you’re really, really bad at, but that brought you joy? Odds are, not recently. As a sh*tty surfer and all-around-imperfect human Karen Rinaldi explains in this eye-opening book, we live in a time of aspirational psychoses. We humblebrag about how hard we work and we prioritize productivity over play. Even kids don’t play for the sake of playing anymore: they’re building blocks to build the ideal college application. But we’re all being had. We’re told to be the best or nothing at all. We’re trapped in an epic and farcical quest for perfection. We judge others on stuff we can’t even begin to master, and it’s all making us more anxious and depressed than ever. Worse, we’re not improving on what really matters. This book provides the antidote. (It’s Great to) Suck at Something reveals that the key to a richer, more fulfilling life is finding something to suck at. Drawing on her personal experience sucking at surfing (a sport she’s dedicated nearly two decades of her life to doing without ever coming close to getting good at it) along with philosophy, literature, and the latest science, Rinaldi explores sucking as a lost art we must reclaim for our health and our sanity and helps us find the way to our own riotous suck-ability. She draws from sources as diverse as Anthony Bourdain and surfing luminary Jaimal Yogis, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among many others, and explains the marvelous things that happen to our mammalian brains when we try something new, all to discover what she’s learned firsthand: it is great to suck at something. Sucking at something rewires our brain in positive ways, helps us cultivate grit, and inspires us to find joy in the process, without obsessing about the destination. Ultimately, it gives you freedom: the freedom to suck without caring is revelatory. Coupling honest, hilarious storytelling with unexpected insights, (It’s Great to) Suck at Something is an invitation to embrace our shortcomings as the very best of who we are and to open ourselves up to adventure, where we may not find what we thought we were looking for, but something way more important.
Winner of the 2011 Booker Prize and #1 international bestseller, The Sense of an Ending is a masterpiece. The story of a man coming to terms with the mutable past, Julian Barnes's award-winning novel is laced with his trademark precision, dexterity and insight. It is the work of one of the world's most distinguished writers. Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigated the girl drought of gawky adolescence together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they swore to stay friends forever. Until Adrian's life took a turn into tragedy, and all of them, especially Tony, moved on and did their best to forget. Now Tony is in middle age. He's had a career and a marriage, a calm divorce. He gets along nicely, he thinks, with his one child, a daughter, and even with his ex-wife. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove. The unexpected bequest conveyed by that letter leads Tony on a dogged search through a past suddenly turned murky. And how do you carry on, contentedly, when events conspire to upset all your vaunted truths?
Mizuho's concerted efforts to help advance Minare's career lead her straight into a trap laid by a dark shadow in her recent past. Stranded in a hut in the middle of a blizzard, the assistant director must keep her wits about her if she is to brave the wilderness to return home. Minare and Madoka are already en route as would-be rescuers, but who is the “Mizuho” that keeps messaging them…?
