D'autres livres qui pourraient vous intéresser

• 

  The Ugly Duckling

  Hans Christian Andersen

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  "The Ugly Duckling"  is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen lavished great care on this story, spending a year perfecting it. It was first published in 1844. 
  A mother duck hatches six pretty little ducklings. A seventh bird is hatched. He is homely. The other ducks abuse him. He runs away. He is given a home by an old woman. Her cat and hen do not like him. He runs away again. Winter comes and a kind farmer gives him a home. The little bird almost dies. Spring comes. The "ugly duckling" has grown into a beautiful swan. The other swans welcome him as their own. They bow to him. He is happy for the first time in his life.
  The moral of the tale: "it does not matter if you were born in a duck yard if you have lain in a swan's egg." 
  Andersen considered the story "a reflection of my own life."

  Voir livre

• 

  A BIKE AT LARGE - Ordeals on Wheels

  Jo May

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A Bike at Large is the fourth book in Jo’s ‘At Large’ series. 
  When he was overtaken by a jogger on a borrowed mountain bike, Jo knew it was time for drastic action. Welcome to the world of a man in his 60s and his new e-bike. 
  His first injury occurred within one foot! Setting off for his first practice ride round a car park, he misjudged the width of the handlebars and scraped his hand on the cycle shop’s stone wall. 
  ‘You’ll go places you’ll never have dreamed of,’ said the shop owner. Prophetic words indeed. Eighteen hours later Jo was embedded in his neighbours hedge due to a clothing malfunction. Fortunately, before setting out he’d put his ego and self-esteem in the top drawer in the kitchen. 
  With the emergency ambulance on speed-dial, Jo climbs a steep learning curve on a series of mini adventures throughout the north of England, mercifully with a diminishing distance to injury ratio. 
  By calling his e-bike a ‘Lifestyle Investment’, it took his wife’s mind off the cost. At the time she needed some new slippers, so it was a sensitive issue. Asked whether he was searching for eternal youth? ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘more trying to keep out of my eternal hole in the ground.’ 
  Fuelled by red wine and optimism, off he goes………

  Voir livre

• 

  The Last Landlady - An English...

  Laura Thompson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Laura Thompson's grandmother Violet was one of the great landladies. Born in a London pub, she became the first woman to be given a publican's licence in her own name. Just as pubs defined her life, she seemed in many ways to embody their essence.
  
  
  Laura spent part of her childhood in Violet's Home Counties establishment, mesmerised by her gift for cultivating the mix of cosiness and glamour that defined the pub's atmosphere, making it a unique reflection of the national character. Her memories of this time are just as intoxicating: beer and ash on the carpets in the morning, the deepening rhythms of mirth at night, the magical brightness of glass behind the bar…
  
  
  Through them Laura traces the story of the English pub, asking why it has occupied such a treasured position in our culture. But even Violet, as she grew older, recognised that places like hers were a dying breed, and Laura also considers the precarious future they face. 
  Part memoir, part social history, part elegy,  The Last Landlady  pays tribute to an extraordinary woman and the world she epitomised. It was selected as a Spectator book of the year in 2018.

  Voir livre

• 

  Brightness Falls - From their...

  Mary Butts

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Mary Frances Butts was born on 13th December 1890 in Poole, Dorset. 
  Her early years were spent at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour.  Sadly in 1905 her father died, and she was sent for boarding at St Leonard's school for girls in St Andrews. 
  Her mother remarried and, from 1909, Mary studied at Westfield College in London, and here, first became aware of her bisexual feelings.  She was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races and only completed her degree in 1914 when she graduated from the London School of Economics.  By then Mary had become an admirer of the occultist Aleister Crowley and she was given a co-authorship credit on his ‘Magick (Book 4)’. 
  In 1916, she began the diary which would now detail her future life and be a constant reference point for her observations and her absorbing experiences. 
  During World War I, she was doing social work for the London County Council in Hackney Wick, and involved in a lesbian relationship.  Life changed after meeting the modernist poet, John Rodker and they married in 1918. 
  In 1921 she spent 3 months at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices dreadful and also acquired a drug habit.  Mary now spent time writing in Dorset, including her celebrated book of short stories ‘Speed the Plough’ which saw fully develop her unique Modernist prose style. 
  Europe now beckoned and several years were spent in Paris befriending many artists and writing further extraordinary stories.   
  She was continually sought after by literary magazines and also published several short story collections as books. Although a Modernist writer she worked in other genres but is essentially only known for her short stories.  Mary was deeply committed to nature conservation and wrote several pamphlets attacking the growing pollution of the countryside. 
  In 1927, she divorced and the following year her novel ‘Armed with Madness’ was published.  A further marriage followed in 1930 and time was spent attempting to settle in London and Newcastle before setting up home on the western tip of Cornwall.  By 1934 the marriage had failed. 
  Mary Butts died on 5th March 1937, at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. She was 46.

  Voir livre

• 

  Heart of a Lioness - The True...

  Irene Gleeson, Nicole Partridge

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Building an oasis of hope in a desert of despair 
  AT 37, Irene Gleeson was a broken woman. Her marriage had crumbled, her children were out of control, and she had spiralled into a deep depression.Her life changed when she walked into a small beachside church and encountered God.Ten years later, she was on a plane bound for northern Uganda to rescue war-affected children.Armed with nothing but faith, courage and dogged determination, Irene sold her beach home, said goodbye to family, and hauled her tiny caravan 13,000 kilometres to Kitgum, an isolated community besieged by Joseph Kony and his brutal rebel group, the LRA.Under the shade of a mango tree,"Mama Irene" gathered the children of war and taught them to sing, and read and write by scratching letters in the dust. And then, for the next twenty two years together with the locals, forged a ministry that would transform the lives of thousands of former child soldiers, a work now applauded by the rest of the world. Heart of a Lioness bursts with drama and glows with miracles, a tale that brings Africa's culture and characters to life, capturing the horrors of war, the heartache of poverty, and the healing power of God's love through one woman. This story will captivate your imagination, challenge your beliefs and demonstrate that, regardless of who you are, or where you've come from, with God, anything is possible.

  Voir livre

• 

  Body Horror - Capitalism Fear...

  Anne Elizabeth Moore

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Whether for entertainment, under the guise of medicine, or to propel consumerism, heinous acts are perpetrated daily on women’s bodies. In Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes, award-winning journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore catalogs the global toll of capitalism on our physical autonomy. Weaving together unflinching research and surprising humor, these essays range from investigative—probing the Cambodian garment industry, the history of menstrual products, or the gender biases of patent law—to uncomfortably intimate. Informed by her own navigation of several autoimmune diagnoses, Moore examines what it takes to seek care and community in the increasingly complicated, problematic, and disinterested US healthcare system. 
   
  A Lambda Literary Award finalist and a Chicago Review of Books Nonfiction Award shortlist title, Body Horror is “sharp, shocking, and darkly funny. . . . Brainy and historically informed, this collection is less a rallying cry or a bitter diatribe than a series of irreverent and ruthlessly accurate jabs at a culture that is slowly devouring us” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Featuring an updated introduction and new essays, as well as illustrations by Xander Marro, this new edition of Body Horror is a fascinating, insightful portrait of the gore that encapsulates contemporary American politics.

  Voir livre