Oliver burkeman. Broadcast date: Monday 2 June 2014 Oliver Burkeman is based in New York, and writes for The Guardian and Psychologies magazine about social psychology, self-help culture and the science of happiness.
Oliver says happiness means ditching positive thinking and choosing the negative path: embrace failure, embarrassment and above all accept insecurity. His non self-help self-help book is called The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking is published by Text. Interview first broadcast March 2013. Neil Gaiman wins Book of the Year. 27 December 2013Last updated at 07:08 ET Gaiman is arguably best known for his series of comic books The Sandman Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been voted 2013's Book of the Year, winning the public vote "by a considerable margin".
Gaiman's fantasy novel beat fellow National Book Award winners including Kate Atkinson and David Walliams. The tale about a man returning to his childhood home for a funeral won the public vote from a shortlist of this year's 10 National Book Award winners. The graphic novelist said he was "amazed and thrilled". "I've never written a book before that was so close to my own heart - a story about memory and magic and the fear and danger of being a child," said Gaiman. Life-Changing Books: Your Picks. We asked our readers what books made the biggest difference in their lives, and here’s what they had to say.
The list below tells you what books shaped their lives and why. 1984 – George Orwell 1984 “was the first book I actually enjoyed reading. It completely blew my mind at the time (I was 16) and it opened my eyes to the power of ideas and to the joy of reading a good book.” — Tim A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson “Wow this book is incredible. Alice Munro — the author as friend. They talk about Alice like she grew up down the street.
“When you heard the news, didn’t you start to smile?” Asks Betty Scott, 78, of Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize in Literature. “Isn’t this strange? "Mark Twain" was a brand. IN THE 150 YEARS Samuel Clemens has been better known as Mark Twain, journalists, scholars, and even bartenders have offered competing theories as to where America’s first signature wit acquired his nom de plume. According to Twain, his pen name once belonged to a Mississippi riverboat captain, and he merely “laid violent hands upon it.”
Newspapers at the time however claimed he earned his alias drinking at a one-bit saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Both stories fit the author’s roguish persona. Both recall his bio. But neither has stood up to scholarly investigation, and the truth has been elusive until perhaps now. Cannibal horror of the sailors shipwrecked by the real Moby Dick: Two new films reveal the TRUE story - and how the victims drew lots to decide who to eat first. By Annabel Venning Published: 21:23 GMT, 21 October 2013 | Updated: 13:58 GMT, 22 October 2013.
The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013. The thing about reading is this: it takes a long time.
There are innumerable books in the world, and many more good ones than can be read by any mortal in a lifetime. 25 Banned Books That You Should Read Today. Almost since the dawn of publishing, books have been banned for one reason or another.
Many notable banned books are also compelling reads from classic or contemporary literature. This list summarizes 25 of the most controversial banned books from throughout history. #1 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Harper Lee's only novel is considered by many to be among the greatest works of fiction in American literature. 5 Hardest Books To Read (That Are Totally Worth It) 100 Notable Books of 2013. Favorite Books of 2013 From Bazelon, Plotz, Stevens, and the Rest of Slate. Books of the Year 2013. Each year we ask regular contributors to the Critics pages of the New Statesman, together with other friends of the magazine, to write about their favourite books of year.
There are no constraints on what kinds of books they are able to choose, so the results are often intriguing. John Gray ❦ Ali Smith ❦ Ed BallsStephen King ❦ Rachel Reeves ❦ Sarah SandsWilliam Boyd ❦ Alan Rusbridger ❦ Lucy Hughes-HallettSimon Heffer ❦ Andrew Adonis ❦ Craig RaineFelix Martin ❦ Frances Wilson ❦ John BurnsideJesse Norman ❦ Alexander McCall Smith ❦ Richard OveryJason Cowley ❦ Mark Damazer ❦ Lionel ShriverJemima Khan ❦ Geoff Dyer ❦ Laurie PennyVince Cable ❦ Alan Johnson ❦ Leo RobsonJane Shilling ❦ John Bew ❦ Ed Smith ❦ Richard J EvansDavid Baddiel ❦ Michael Rosen ❦ John BanvilleDavid Shrigley ❦ Chris Hadfield ❦ Tim FarronToby Litt ❦ David Marquand ❦ Robert HarrisMichael Prodger ❦ Michael Symmons Roberts ❦ Sarah Churchwell John Gray Ali Smith Ed Balls.
53 Books Every College Student Should Read. 22 Science Books That Are So Exciting They Read Like Genre Fiction. 10 Amazing Science Books That Reveal The Wonders Of The Universe. This Woman Read One Book From Every Country in the World: Here Are Her Favorites. » 50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library. Post written by Leo Babauta.
I recently ran into a couple of reading lists (I’ll share them at the end) and realized that I LOVE reading book recommendations. I can’t get enough of them. So I decided to compile my own (somewhat eclectic) list of novels I think are amazing and essential to every library. I hope you enjoy it. I should make some notes before diving in. Another note: there are actually many more books listed here than 50 — a number of those listed are actually series of books, in a couple cases series that include 20 or more books. There are classics here, but there are cheap thrillers and popular fiction and even a few “kids” books. If you could fill your library with only 50 books, you could do much worse than choose these 50. The 10 Greatest Apocalyptic Novels Of All Time. After scouring book reviews and Wikipedia, a list of the Top Ten Best Apocalyptic Novels was born. The books on this list take you down the darkest paths in uncivilized worlds, from cannibalistic gangs to vampire infected corpses.
If this list doesn't get you thinking on the quickest way stock your basement full of water, canned goods and rifles, I don't know what will! Enjoy! Exclusive interview with Wendy Jones on The World is a Wedding. By Lucy Walton | The World is a Wedding is about Wilfred Price, the undertaker in The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals.
He's married, he's and undertaker, he's going to become a father. And everything in the garden looks rosy. Although Wilfred is beginning to wonder if the past has too powerful a hold on him. Grace is in London, a chambermaid in the Ritz. ‘The Dinosaur Feather,' by S.J. Gazan, is a weird and ingenious new mystery. “The Dinosaur Feather” takes readers deep into the insular world of scientists, centered at the University of Copenhagen, who are investigating dinosaur evolution, particularly the question of how birds descended from dinosaurs. (Although a few renegade scientists insist otherwise, recent fossil discoveries in China have pretty much settled the theory that Big Bird and Barney do, in fact, share the same gory family tree.)
An exhausted single mother and graduate student named Anna Bella Nor is hard at work in the university’s creepy Institute of Biology when she hears screams coming from the office of her faculty supervisor. 6 Books Everyone (Including Your English Teacher) Got Wrong. With most every classic novel comes some outlandish interpretations. Some people have wild fringe theories about Harry Potter as an allegory for young gay love and Lord of the Rings being about WWII and the atom bomb.
What we should take from the second volume of Mark Twain's cantankerous autobiography. Though renowned for his aphoristic wit, Mark Twain could be mightily long-winded. At over 700 pages, the second volume of his Autobiography (University of California Press, £29.95) shows him at his most discursive. Newspaper clippings, passing remarks, casual stimulus from letters or visitors – anything could get him going.
Is Full List one of the All-TIME 100 Best Novels? TIME thinks so. Check it out. Birdbooker Report 278. For A Girl And Her Horses, A Bumpy Ride To Adulthood. Anton DiSclafani's debut novel, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, is a painstakingly constructed ode to a young girl's sexual awakening — just ladylike enough to be more bodice unbuttoner than bodice ripper. A Book of Voyages. Reviewed by Michael O'Donnell for Barnes & Noble Review.
10 Sci Fi and Fantasy Works Every Conservative Should Read. The left-wing science fiction writer China Miéville has compiled a list of “50 Sci Fi and Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read.” 20 Essential Works of Latin-American Literature. From The Fatherland, With Love by Ryu Murakami. The world has turned its back on Japan: it has been economically devastated, thrown into political turmoil – and then attacked. A small team of highly trained, ruthless North Korean special forces troops invade the city of Fukuoka, holding the residents hostage. The Interview: Claire Messud. Stephen Woodfin's The Alzheimer's Conspiracy, is only a novel. It's just a story. What if it's true?
Top Ten Best Novels You've Never Heard Of. Or perhaps you have. The Top 10 Banned books of all time - ShortLists. 5 Grimm Fairy Tales You Should Only Read to Kids You Hate. Many of Grimm's fairy tales have been lightened up for modern children. However, some of them are beyond any hope, and should only be read to children you hate. On Translating Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' James Salter Is as Good as Roth, Updike, or Ford. So Why Isn't He Popular? Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue novelist, dies aged 85.