Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
What Gives Us Our Names - cover

What Gives Us Our Names

Alvin Pang

Publisher: Ethos Books

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

He’d gotten the idea from a book, not unlike the one you last read and loved, whose lurid covers you have already forgotten. For a canvas, he used not his own skin but his very life, spending his days as if he were made up of the most telling bits of other people. To do this, he learned to watch quietly and look deeply, past the busy surfaces until he could discern the colours beneath, the ones that did not change. One by one he would name them as he wove them into his heart in the deep of night. He touched you once, borrowing pieces of your story in passing. They are here still, in case you wish to look.
Available since: 05/12/2025.
Print length: 56 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Robots - H G Wells - Henry Kuttner - Jack Williamson - cover

    Robots - H G Wells - Henry...

    H. G. Wells, Jack Williamson,...

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Robots - Short Stories 
     
     
    Track List 
     
    The-Ego-Machine-by-Henry-Kuttner Part 1 
     
    The-Ego-Machine-by-Henry-Kuttner Part 2 
     
    Salvage in Space - Jack Williamson          
     
    The Land Ironclads - H. G. Wells   
    Show book
  • Lady Susan - cover

    Lady Susan

    Jane Austen

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Beautiful, unflinching, and recently widowed, Lady Susan Vernon seeks an advantageous second marriage for herself, while attempting to engineer her daughter into a ill-advised match.
    
    A perfectly crafted piece of Austen's ouvere, Lady Susan is a satire of Regency manners that will delight Austen fans and those new to her work.
    Show book
  • The Odyssey - cover

    The Odyssey

    Homer Homer

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmate were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, and the stories themselves formed as part of a long oral tradition.  Scholars still reflect on the narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when considered beside the Iliad, which centers the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works of the Western canon. The first English translation of the Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of mediums. In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list. Here is the great tale as an exciting extended Icon Audiobook!
    Show book
  • A Warning to the Curious - From their pens to your ears genius in every story - cover

    A Warning to the Curious - From...

    M R James

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. 
    James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.  
    From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist.  
    Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. 
    A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword.  
    Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting.  Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. 
    Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. 
    James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. 
    M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire.  He was 73.
    Show book
  • By Grace of Julius Caesar - cover

    By Grace of Julius Caesar

    Lucy Maud Montgomery

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.
    By Grace of Julius Caesar: Melissa sent word on Monday evening that she thought we had better go round with the subscription list for cushioning the church pews on Tuesday. I sent back word that I thought we had better go on Thursday.
    Show book
  • Debby's Debut - cover

    Debby's Debut

    Louisa May Alcott

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Debby's Debut, written in 1863, is a delightful story that smells of the sea and summer, of joy and youthful innocence, of love, tenacity and courage to claim one's ideas, in which the typical themes of Alcott's production--the construction of female identity, the dignity of work, the importance of honesty and always remaining faithful to themselves, the safeguarding of the good values that modern society risks forgetting--find a lively, ironic and absolutely convincing expression. An unmissable gem for Alcott lovers. 
     
    Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novels Little Women, published in 1868, and Little Men. Due to the family's poverty, she began work at an early age as an occasional teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer - her first book was Flower Fables (1854). As she grew older, she developed as both an abolitionist and a feminist. A lesserknown part of her work are the passionate, fiery novels and stories she wrote, usually under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard, such as A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866). Alcott also produced moralistic and wholesome stories for children, and a semi-autobiographical tale Work (1873). In her later life, Alcott became an advocate of women's suffrage and was part of a group of female authors during the Gilded Age to address women's issues in a modern and candid manner. Despite worsening health, Alcott wrote through the rest of her life. 
     
    Lyssa Browne makes her home in Seattle where she works as a voice actor, performs in regional theatre companies, as well as acts for TV and film. Her voice can be heard as many different characters in a variety of video games and audiobooks, and as the narrator of documentaries for the Discovery Channel and others.
    Show book