Other books that might interest you

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  Did I Ever Tell You This?

  Sam Neill

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  In this unexpected memoir, written in a creative burst of just a few months in 2022, Sam Neill tells the story of how he became one of the world’s most celebrated actors, who has worked with everyone from Meryl Streep to Isabel Adjani, from Jeff Goldblum to Sean Connery, from Steven Spielberg to Jane Campion. 
  By his own account, his career has been a series of unpredictable turns of fortune. Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, he emigrated to New Zealand at the age of seven. His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island, but young Sam was sent away to boarding school in Christchurch, where he was hopeless at sports and discovered he enjoyed acting. 
  But how did you become an actor in New Zealand in the 1960 and 1970s where there was no film industry? After university he made documentary films while also appearing in occasional amateur productions of Shakespeare. In 1977 he took the lead in Sleeping Dogs, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade, a project that led to a major role in Gillian Armstrong’s celebrated My Brilliant Career. 
   
  And after that Sam Neill found his way, sometimes by accident, into his own brilliant career. He has worked around the world, an actor who has moved effortlessly from blockbuster to art house to TV, from Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park movies to The Piano and Peaky Blinders. 
   
  Did I Ever Tell You This? is a joy to read, a marvellous and often very funny book, the work of a natural storyteller who is a superb observer of other people, and who writes with love and warmth about his family. It is also his account of his life outside film, especially in Central Otago where he established Two Paddocks, his vineyard famous for its pinot noir. 
   
  ‘Sam Neill is one of my favourite people in the world, and a great entertainer. Did I Ever Tell You This? is full of warm, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking stories. It will make you feel like you have just sat down under a tree to chat with a dear friend.’ JIMMY BARNES 
   
  ‘Just wonderful, so funny and charming and sharp. Sam Neill’s lively, lovely book made me laugh out loud.’ MERYL STREEP 
    
  ‘A fabulously entertaining, insanely readable memoir.’ STEPHEN FRY 
    
  'DID I EVER TELL YOU THIS? is tender, funny and emotional, modest and generous, both unbearably sad and deliciously companionable.’ JANE CAMPION

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  The Stillwater Tragedy

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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  "The Stillwater Tragedy" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich is a fictional novel likely written in the late 19th century. The story delves into the dark and mysterious atmosphere surrounding a murder in the seemingly idyllic village of Stillwater. As the narrative unfolds, it reveals the tumultuous and often harsh lives of the townsfolk, with a particular focus on several key characters, including the recently deceased wealthy man, Mr. Lemuel Shackford, and his estranged cousin, Richard Shackford. 
  The story opens with a chilling tone just before daybreak in Stillwater, where the body of Mr. Shackford lies dead, the victim of a violent crime. As the sun rises, the village awakens to its daily rhythm while grappling with the shock of the murder. Young Mary Hennessey, whose delayed milk delivery leads her to discover the crime scene, unwittingly becomes the center of attention as gossip spreads throughout the town. 
  Shortly after the discovery, the townspeople gather in anxiety and suspicion, prompting an investigation led by local authorities. Through vivid descriptions and evocative character portrayals, the beginning of the novel establishes an unsettling mood as it explores themes of violence, greed, and the fragile nature of community bonds in the face of tragedy.

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  We All Have a Story to Tell - An...

  Bisila Bokoko

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  If a single word could summarize everything Bisila Bokoko conveys it would be "inspiration". Her personal story, is one of a racialized woman who has learned how to grow in the face of adversity, and her business, her wisdom, her love of books, and her philanthropic spirit will act as a guide and a path for those who dive into the pages of We All Have a Story to Tell.
  
  Discover how to make our dreams come true, how to learn from failure, how to be happy despite the hurdles, what reading can do for us —as the pages of her parent's library did for her, with which she uncovered Africa for the first time— and how to handle our fears. These are the lessons to be learned from the story Bokoko narrates so we can know how to do the same with our own. 
  The United Nations award winning author, founder of the Bisila Bokoko African Literacy Project and owner of a life full of anecdotes and valuable lessons, reveals a vital trajectory that will help us take that step we all need to go further into the story of our lives.

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  Killer Stories - Conversations...

  Brin Hodgskiss, Nicole Engelbrecht

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  'If you made me angry, to me, for that anger to go away, I have to get hold of you ... I have to do something to you.' 
  'I didn't feel myself. I felt numb, like a zombie, like a switch had been flicked and a light had gone off.' 
  These are the words of some of South Africa's most terrifying serial killers, who spoke to psychologist Brin Hodgskiss in the bowels of the country's most secure prisons. 
  Hodgskiss interviewed several of the most notorious serial killers and his recordings sat gathering dust until recently, when top true-crime podcaster Nicole Engelbrecht found his research online. The two connected and now they bring their love of storytelling to this highly readable book. 
  In Killer Stories, Hodgskiss combines his interviews with the tenets of narrative psychology to take the reader into the minds of the killers and shares with us the ways in which his own journey as a psychologist and human being contributed to his deeper understanding of them. The book intertwines the killers' versions of the truth and the true-crime stories behind them, re-telling their killing sprees in gripping detail. 
  Journey with the authors as they lay out how the stories these men told themselves about their lives contributed to where they ended up – and how those stories aren't that different from those we all tell ourselves.

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  Heavy Is the Head

  Sumaya Enyegue

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  "Where does all the grief go when it's not tugging at your wrist?" Enyegue's debut collection is an ode to girlhood, to Blackness, to generational trauma, sexual assault, and mental health. 
   
  This collection does not aim to heal anyone who reads it, but instead help them confront their own healing. Rather than sugar-coated bullets that enter you lightly, these poems are designed to hurt.  
   
  They are for the girls with difficult names, the boys with softness at their core, and the people with neither. They are meant for the people who are Black, and the people who are not—because we are all tethered together by the heaviness of the human experience.

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  Leonardo DaVinci

  Sigmund Freud

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  "Leonardo da Vinci" by Sigmund Freud is a seminal work exploring the life, art, and psyche of the renowned Italian Renaissance polymath, Leonardo da Vinci. In this book, Freud delves into da Vinci's personality, creativity, and inner conflicts, drawing on his psychoanalytic framework to analyze the complexities of the artist's mind. Freud examines da Vinci's relationships, his artistic endeavors, and his intellectual pursuits through the lens of psychoanalysis, offering insights into the motivations behind his work and the intricacies of his character.

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