Other books that might interest you

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  Scribbling the Cat - Travels...

  Alexandra Fuller

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  When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians-and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way-by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere.

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  Charlie Watts Rhythm King -...

  Geoffrey Giuliano

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  Charlie Watts June 2, 1941- August 24, 2021 
  LIFE ON THE BACKBEAT 
   
  A TRIBUTE FROM THE AUTHOR OF 'PAINT IT BLACK THE MURDER OF BRIAN JONES' 
  AND 'THE ROLLING STONES ALBUM', SQUID GAME STAR & PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD WINNER GEOFFREY GIULIANO 
   
  "I wanted to play drums because I fell in love with the glitter and the lights, but it wasn't about adulation. It was being up there playing." 
   
  "I hate leaving home. I love what I do, but I'd love to go home every night." 
   
  "It's been years and years and years I've been playing the drums, and they're still a challenge." 
   
  "I never had lessons. Used to try to play to records, which I hated doing. Still can't play to them." 
  Charlie Watts 
   
  Charlie Watts provided the foundation that underpinned the music of the Rolling Stones. The band became a by-word for rock 'n' roll excess but for Watts, playing with the Stones did not become the ego trip that drove Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. A jazz aficionado, Watts vied with Bill Wyman for the title of least charismatic member of the band; he eschewed the limelight and rarely gave interviews. And he famously described life with the Stones as five years of playing, 20 years of hanging around. 
   
  Charles Robert Watts was born on 2 June 1941 at the University College Hospital in London and was raised in Kingsbury, now part of the London Borough of Brent. His father was a lorry driver and Watts was brought up in a prefabricated house to which the family had moved after German bombs destroyed hundreds of houses in the area. A childhood friend once described how Watts had an early interest in jazz and recalled listening to 78s in Charlie's bedroom by artists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Charlie Parker.

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  It Goes So Fast - The Year of No...

  Mary Louise Kelly

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  Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Narration by the Author!This program is read by the author.Operating Instructions meets Glennon Doyle in this new book by famed NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly that is destined to become a classic—about the year before her son goes to college—and the joys, losses and surprises that happen along the way.The time for do-overs is over.Ever since she became a parent, Mary Louise Kelly has said “next year.” Next year will be the year she makes it to her son James’s soccer games (which are on weekdays at 4 p.m., right when she is on the air on NPR’s All Things Considered, talking to millions of listeners). Drive carpool for her son Alexander? Not if she wants to do that story about Ukraine and interview the secretary of state. Like millions of parents who wrestle with raising children while pursuing a career, she has never been cavalier about these decisions. The bargain she has always made with herself is this: this time I’ll get on the plane, and next year I’ll find a way to be there for the mom stuff.Well, James and Alexander are now seventeen and fifteen, and a realization has overtaken Mary Louise: her older son will be leaving soon for college. There used to be years to make good on her promises; now, there are months, weeks, minutes. And with the devastating death of her beloved father, Mary Louise is facing act three of her life head-on. Mary Louise is coming to grips with the reality every parent faces. Childhood has a definite expiration date. You have only so many years with your kids before they leave your house to build their own lives. It’s what every parent is supposed to want, what they raise their children to do. But it is bittersweet. Mary Louise is also dealing with the realities of having aging parents. This pivotal time brings with it the enormous questions of what you did right and what you did wrong. This chronicle of her eldest child’s final year at home, of losing her father, as well as other curve balls thrown at her, is not a definitive answer―not for herself and certainly not for any other parent. But her questions, her issues, will resonate with every parent. And, yes, especially with mothers, who are judged more harshly by society and, more important, judge themselves more harshly. What would she do if she had to decide all over again? Mary Louise’s thoughts as she faces the coming year will speak to anyone who has ever cared about a child or a parent. It. Goes. So. Fast. is honest, funny, poignant, revelatory, and immensely relatable.A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

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  The Amish Sweet Shop

  Emma Miller, Laura Bradford,...

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  The Sweetest Courtship by Emma Miller At age thirty-six, Jacob Beechy is a rarity—a master candy maker and a bachelor. His mother, however, still hopes for grandchildren. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, she convinces him that he’ll need extra help and interviews a string of applicants…for the position of his future wife… The Sweetest Truth by Laura Bradford Sadie Fischer has accepted that she’ll never marry. Her scars from a barn fire are a daily reminder of why. So when she receives mysterious gifts leading up to Valentine’s Day, she’s bewildered, yet curious. Somewhere there’s a young man who sees only sweetness when he looks at her… Nothing Tastes So Sweet by Mary Ellis Pregnant and suddenly widowed, Hannah must give up the dreams she once had. But when she learns that her longtime employer plans to sell his hardware store, she’s determined to buy it. What she doesn’t realize is that it’ll mean following a clue from Beechy’s to clear a man’s name—and finding a partnership in work, faith, and love…

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  Opening Men's Eyes - Peter Brown...

  Michael Card

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  Peter Brown, leader of South Africa's Liberal Party until its demise in 1968, is one of the unsung heroes of South Africa's struggle against apartheid in pursuit of non-racial democracy. In Opening Men's Eyes, author Michael Cardo tells the story of how a privileged youngster growing up in the all-white world of racially conservative Natal settler society had the scales of racial prejudice removed from his eyes and how he set about opening the eyes of his compatriots. Cardo brings to life Brown's friendships across the colour bar with the likes of Archie Gumede, later one of the founders of the United Democratic Front, and his close relationship with the celebrated novelist Alan Paton, author of Cry, The Beloved Country. The book provides the first documented history of the Liberal Party, and shows how it was radicalised under Brown's leadership. Opening Men's Eyes offers a fascinating sidelight on South Africa's political and intellectual history.

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  Al Bernstein - 30 Years 30...

  Al Bernstein

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  The legendary cable television sports broadcaster takes a humorous look back on the fight game—as seen from a ringside seat.   For more than thirty years, Al Bernstein has been one of the most recognizable and respected sportscasters in America. In those three decades, the “voice of boxing” reported the funny, poignant, and bizarre events that helped shape sports television, ESPN, boxing, Las Vegas, and SHOWTIME. With an eclectic cast of characters that includes every big name in boxing, including Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, as well as such names in the entertainment world as Rodney Dangerfield, Sylvester Stallone, Russell Crowe, and Jerry Lewis, Bernstein’s memoir will have you in stitches.

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