After many years of living abroad, a young writer returns to the United States to take up a position at his former college. There he encounters Philip Lentz, an outspoken neurologist intent on using computers to model the human brain.
Lentz involves the writer in an outlandish and irresistible project - to train a computing system by reading a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the machine grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own age, sex, race and reason for existing.
A beautifully illustrated guide to coping with the struggles of modern life, from the Zen Buddhist monk and internationally bestselling author
What if moments of great difficulty are, in fact, opportunities for growth and self-discovery? What if they can serve as stepping stones to greater things in life?
Modern life doesn't always go our way. Loss, rejection, uncertainty and loneliness are unavoidable parts of the human experience -- but there is solace to be found. In When Things Don't Go Your Way, Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim provides simple but powerful wisdom for navigating life's challenges. Through his trademark combination of beautiful illustrations, insightful stories, and contemplative aphorisms, Sunim helps us reframe our mindsets and develop emotional agility.
Whether you're in the midst of a crisis or simply seeking to improve your mental and emotional wellbeing, When Things Don't Go Your Way is a soothing balm that helps us all find courage and comfort when we need it most.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
‘This captivating, powerful book shows us scientifically and practically how to define, create and most importantly live the good life’ Jay Shetty
What is the key to a good life?
It is a question that preoccupies us all and one that the longest and most successful study of happiness ever conducted strives to answer. In this groundbreaking book, directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, bring together over 80 years of research to reveal the true components of a happy, fulfilled life.
The Good Life makes clear that what truly makes a rich and happy life is not synonymous with financial success and achievement, but is rather the result of our relationships. This remarkable work brings together scientific precision, traditional wisdom, incredible real-life stories and actionable insights to prove once and for all that our own wellbeing and ability to flourish is absolutely within our control.
‘In a crowded field of life advice and even life advice based on scientific research, Schulz and Waldinger stand apart’ Angela Duckworth, author of Grit
'An outstanding book. It combines the longest and richest study of human lives anywhere with two remarkable authors of extraordinary breadth' Richard Layard, author of Can We Be Happier?
Four new friends. Four dead bodies. One big problem . . .
Sally never meant to cave her husband's head in with a skillet. Or at least she didn't until suddenly, she did.
But Sally isn't the only woman in town being pushed to breaking point. When coincidence brings four strangers together, a surprising solidarity is formed.
So can they find the best way to bury their husbands - and get away with it?
Darkly funny and with a big beating heart, The Best Way to Bury Your Husband combines four very different women, one unexpected friendship and several spades in this irresistible page-turner.
Three women. One Killer.
Talking to strangers has never been more dangerous...
When forty-four-year-old Karen Simmons is found lifeless, abandoned in remote woodland, journalist Kiki Nunn is determined to beat every other reporter to the story.
And she already has a head start. Just days before Karen’s murder, Kiki interviewed her about the highs and lows of mid-life romance. Karen told her about the expensive gifts and the starlit rendezvous. About the scammers and the creeps...
While police stay focused on local suspects, Kiki starts to write the definitive piece on one woman's fatal search for love. But she will soon learn that the search for truth can be just as deadly...
Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in Edinburgh: two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. When government officials open fire on protestors in broad daylight, both friends are wounded, and their lives forever changed.
Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history. If friendship is a space to inhabit, theirs becomes small and inhospitable when a revolution in Libya forces them to choose between the lives they have created in London and the lives they left behind.
How did the world's most remarkable people get that way?
This is a book about how the highest-performing people changed their lives - and how you can change yours.
Drawing on interviews with record-setting athletes, Olympic coaches and billionaire founders, Jake Humphrey and Professor Damian Hughes introduce the five simple steps that take you from where you are to where you want to be. And they introduce the cutting-edge research that explains why these surprisingly simple tools are so effective.
It is never too late to change. This book shows you how.
Long simmering chemistry is released when a hurricane forces two exes to weather the storm in a house they used to share.
Hot shot DC lawyer Meena is about to get engaged to the perfect man. The only hitch? She is already married…
Which is why she ends up travelling home to convince her first-love-slash-husband (courtesy of one slightly too wild night in Vegas nearly a decade ago) to finally agree to get UN-hitched.
But life loves to throw curve balls, or in this case, a good old natural disaster. Meena touches down just in time to find out a hurricane hitting Houston - all flights are cancelled and the only place she can take refuge? Her soon-to-be-ex-husband's home.
Will the storm force them to face what happened all those years ago? And might this be the best worst thing that has ever happened to them
The intricacy of modern life has created a false dichotomy between things that are 'hard and important,' and those that are 'easy and trivial.' Everything has become so much harder than it ought to be. But, Greg McKeown, bestselling author of Essentialism, says, there is a third alternative.
In Effortless, he offers practical tools for making the most essential activities the easiest ones, so you can achieve the results you want, without burning out. Honed over the better part of a decade, these strategies include:
·Turning tedious tasks into enjoyable rituals
·Preventing frustration by solving problems before they arise
·Setting a sustainable pace instead of powering through
·Making one-time choices that eliminate many future decisions
·Making relationships easier to maintain and manage
·And much more
McKeown's philosophy of essentialism has helped thousands to recognise that the effortless way isn't the lazy way. It's the smart way. Not every hard thing in life can be made easy but we can make it easier to do more of what matters most. Effortless will show you how.
A twisty, pulse-pounding read that offers a modern psychological thriller update on The Shining
When Kerry arrives to start a new job as the caretaker of a remote motel in the Catskills, she’s excited for a fresh start.
But she quickly realises that something is very wrong.
Her room is full of the previous caretaker’s belongings – and it looks like she was trying to leave in a hurry.
And then, Kerry sees it – the trails of blood. The hand reaching out from the snow…
Confused and scared, in the midst of a snowstorm, Kerry goes out to seek help. When the police arrive, though, things go from bad to worse.
Because the body has disappeared. But the killer is still out there…
VOLUME 3 in the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN
‘Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels are truly foundational books; it’s hard to imagine the modern-day landscape of fantasy and science fiction without them.’ Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series
When Lessa chose a dragon over her birthright, the hold she was to have inherited passed to Lord Jaxom instead. But Jaxom then muddied generations of Pern tradition by impulsively Impressing Ruth, a small, white dragon, as a child. From that moment on, the debate has raged. Is Jaxom now a dragonrider, or a lord holder? All anyone agrees on is that he cannot be both. But perhaps it is all academic anyway, for no one expects Ruth to survive.
But Ruth not only survives, he thrives. With Jaxom on the cusp on adulthood, the thing the pair most desire is to fight Thread side-by-side with the larger dragons. Jaxom knows what his dragon is capable of, and now that he is – mostly – grown, he is determined to buck tradition. Fortunately, a teenage rebellion may be the key to both Pern’s salvation and winning the woman of his dreams.
Don’t miss the original trilogy from Anne McCaffrey’s beloved Dragonriders of Pern series:
DRAGONFLIGHT • DRAGONQUEST • THE WHITE DRAGON
This rich and enjoyable book recounts the tangled, dynamic encounters through which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries
From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the twentieth century much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic and spiritual influence was fighting back.
The Light of Asia is a wonderfully varied and entertaining history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship. From Marco Polo onwards Asia has been both a source of genuine fascination and equally genuine failures of comprehension. China, India and Japan were all acknowledged to be both great civilizations and in crude ways seen as superseded by the West. From Chicago to Calcutta, and from antiquity to the new millennium, this is a rich, involving story of misunderstandings and sincere connection, of inspiration and falsehood, of geniuses, adventurers and con-men.
Christopher Harding's captivating gallery of people and places celebrates Asia's impact on the West in all its variety.
1991
Near Checkpoint Zulu, one hundred miles from the Kuwait border, British journalist Thomas Benton meets American private Arwood Hobbes. Desert Storm is over, and peace has been declared. As the two argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border, they become embroiled in a horrific attack in which a young local girl in a green dress is killed under their protection. The two men walk away into their respective lives. But something has cracked in both of them.
2013
Twenty-two years later, in another place, in another war, they meet again and are offered an unlikely opportunity to redeem themselves when that same girl in green is found alive and in need of salvation. Will this second chance allow the two men to right the wrongs of their past?
Nabokov's early novel about a chess-playing genius, reissuing in Modern Classics as part of the Nabokov relaunch
Vladimir Nabokov's early novel is the dazzling story of the coarse, strange yet oddly endearing chess-playing genius Luzhin. Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood and rising to the rank of International Grandmaster, Luzhin develops a lyrical passion for chess that renders the real world a phantom. As he confronts the fiery, swift-swooping Italian Grandmaster Turati, he brings into play his carefully devised defence. Making masterly play of metaphor and imagery, The Defense is the book that, of his early works, Nabokov felt 'contains and diffuses the greatest warmth'.
The compelling and heartrending new novel from the award-winning author of Norwegian By Night and How To Find Your Way In The Dark
We will lie, cheat, steal, fight, sin... Whatever it takes to survive.
The bombing of Rome in 1943 leaves fourteen-year-old Massimo orphaned and with no choice but to set out on a journey to discover any remaining relatives in Naples. A chance meeting with the mysterious and charismatic Pietro Houdini will deliver both of them to the doors of the abbey of Monte Cassino, a centuries-old haven of contemplation, learning and art. But war has no time for such niceties and before long the abbey is threatened by the relentless Allied advance. In the face of the coming cataclysm, Pietro and Massimo must do what they can to save the monastery's priceless art from oblivion.
To do so, they must learn to dissemble, to disguise, to outwit, all skills that evidently Pietro has in spades, but as their cherished haven edges ever closer to war, it becomes clear that Massimo is not without a surprise or two either...
The Curse of Pietro Houdini is a sweeping tale of resilience, hope and survival which is at once an action-packed adventure heist, an imaginative chronicle of forgotten history and a philosophical coming-of-age story, perfect for fans of All the Light We Cannot See, City of Lies and A Thousand Splendid Suns.
A Harvard professor shows how we can become better talkers - and why effective conversation will help us all thrive
Conversation is at the heart of our relationships and our decision-making. From meeting a colleague to saying goodnight to our loved ones, our days are filled with verbal communication -- but the science of everyday conversation is little known. We may spend time thinking about difficult exchanges, but research shows that there’s room to improve seemingly easy interactions too.
In Talk, Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks shows how simple changes in how we communicate can enhance our relationships, our performance at work and our lives; who we talk to affects our happiness; and how to talk across differences. Her original research, based on thousands of conversations from sales calls to speed dating, provides fascinating insights - for instance, the way that certain questions affect dating success, and the role of jokes in reaching leadership positions.
Learning to converse even a little more effectively can make a big difference. Through her original TALK framework – Topics, Asking, Levity and Kindness – Wood Brooks will give you the tools that her MBA students say transforms their lives. Bringing together psychology, linguistics, sociology and neuroscience, Talk will show how we can use science to help us enrich our lives, one conversation at a time.
From acclaimed critic, novelist and academic W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, a collection of essay on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him
As a German in self-chosen exile from his country of birth, Sebald found a particular affinity with these writers from a neighbouring nation. The traumatic evolution of Austria from vast empire to diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Germany, meant that concepts such as ‘home/land’, ‘borderland’ and ‘exile’ occupy a prominent role in its literature, just as they would in Sebald’s own.
Through a series of remarkable close readings of texts by Bernhard, Stifter, Kafka, Handke, Roth and more, Sebald charts both the pathologies which so often drove their work and the seismic historical forces which shaped them. This sequence of essays will be a revelation to Sebald’s English-language readers, tracing as they do so many of the themes which animate his own literary writings, to which these essays form a kind of prelude.
The beloved Australian classic, published in a stunning Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time
Miles Franklin’s debut novel follows the vivacious and rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn – closely modelled on Franklin herself – as she fights to break free of restrictive bush life. Growing up on her parents’ outback farm, Sybylla is desperate to read, write, sing and achieve great things. Yet her aspirations for a ‘brilliant career’ are persistently thwarted, first by the arduous demands of rural family life, and later by the shackles of a proposed conventional marriage to the wealthy Harold Beecham. With only her brilliant, conflicted mind to guide her, Sybylla is forced to define a life on her own terms.
My Brilliant Career is acclaimed for capturing the spirit of Australia at the turn of the twentieth century. The struggles of its fiery, precocious protagonist shine a light on the emergent women’s rights and suffrage movement during this period, and memorably evoke the intensity of youth.
One of philosophy's finest minds looks back over a life in thought
'Who would have guessed that a philosopher's life could be so full of adventures?'
Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering consciousness. I've Been Thinking traces the development of Dennett's own intellect and instructs us how we too can become good thinkers.
Dennett's restless curiosity leads him from his childhood in Beirut to Harvard, and from Parisian jazz clubs to 'tillosophy' on his tractor in Maine. Along the way, he encounters and debates with a host of legendary thinkers, and reveals the breakthroughs and misjudgments that shaped his paradigm-shifting philosophies. Thinking, Dennett argues, is hard, and risky. In fact, all good philosophical thinking is inevitably accompanied by bafflement, frustration and self-doubt. It is only in getting it wrong that we, very occasionally, find a way to get it right.
This memoir by one of the greatest philosophers of our time will speak to anyone who seeks a life of the mind with adventure and creativity.
Unlock a better understanding of your brain, body and environment to eat well and lose weight, forever.
‘One of Britain’s top weight-loss experts’ This Morning
For years we’ve been told that successful weight loss is a simple matter of willpower and calorie control. But this argument fails to take into account how our brains and bodies respond to food – in particular, to the ultra-processed foods that seem inescapable in modern life.
Bariatric surgeon and Sunday Times bestselling author Dr Andrew Jenkinson gives us a game-changing blueprint to free us from our biological impulses. Even though our brains are hardwired to seek out quick rewards in salty and sugary foods, he demonstrates how to escape our default behaviours to create long-lasting change.
With cutting edge metabolic science, mental reprogramming strategies, easy lifestyle changes and even delicious recipes, maintaining a healthy weight never felt so good.
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