I’m
cheating here. I actually started with The Colour of Magic and kept reading all
41 Discworld books. While The Colour of Magic is brilliant alone, it’s even
better as the launching point for the most fantastic, absurd, ridiculous adventures, served with a side of insightful social commentary. If there had been another hundred books, I
would have just kept reading.
In
this first book, we meet Rincewind, who
is fleeing practically everything, followed by a walking wooden box known as
Luggage. Rincewind is an utter failure as a wizard, and his only talent is
running away. He survives, hilariously, on luck alone.
I
lost a lot of sleep while reading this and the subsequent books because I kept
forgetting that I had to stop reading and go to sleep.
On a world supported on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown), a gleeful, explosive, wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There's an avaricious buy inept wizard, a naive tourist whose luggage moves on hundreds of dear little legs, dragons who only exist if you believe in them, and of course The Edge of the planet...
Eleven years ago, Australia’s then Prime Minister
Julia Gillard verbally tore apart the misogyny of opposition leader Tony
Abbott and the entire political system. She gave an eloquent, passionate
speech that resonated with women all around the world.
This book was published on the tenth anniversary of
the misogyny speech. It looks back to that day and that speech and at the
decade that followed. It includes the
full speech and the little note Ms. Gillard used for her prompts.
Women who are leaders in their fields give their
stories of the impact the speech had. They assess progress since then in a variety of areas of society. I had mixed emotions reading this. There’s a lot to
inspire hope, but we still have very far to go.
Ten years on from the speech that stopped us all in our tracks – Julia Gillard’ s misogyny speech. Where were you then? And where are we now? This is a barnburning piece of Australian feminist history in the making. MATILDA, BETTER READ THAN DEAD Then it was done. After staying silent, I’ d had my say. At no time did I feel worked up or hotly angry. I felt strong, measured, controlled. Yet emotion did play its role in the energy of the speech. The frustration that sexism and misogyny could still be so bad in the twenty-first century.…
Stephen
King is a master storyteller. I’ve always loved his work, and this was no
exception. It was another of those books that kept me reading a long past bedtime.
It’s a simple story: a teenage boy helps a grumpy old man out and
is rewarded with lots more work and an epic adventure to save a dog. I must
stress that the dog is a very good girl. The old man and the teen both have
varying levels of goodness, depending on circumstance.
I don’t want to give too
much away, but I love the world-building in this story and the amazing people
the boy encounters on his journey.
A #1 New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice!
Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for that world or ours.
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad…
Emily Clark has most of the elements of a good life. She has a loving
family, a large house, and lots of money. She also struggles with living with her own chronic illness and her
mother’s dementia.
Another negative is that her
annoying ex-husband constantly calls her, asking for money. For the most part, things are good, and life follows a predictable,
comfortable pattern.
Then she receives a note that says: “Give me my money
bitch or else.”Her comfortable, happy life starts to unravel as threats from an
unknown source escalate, putting everyone she loves in danger. In addition to the novella Family Lies, this book contains ten short
stories, loosely (very loosely) based around the theme of “family.”
