Books

Books

Back when Ian Falconer's Olivia was published in 2000, it was evident that the headstrong, creative piglet at its center was based on a real little girl. In interviews, Falconer-a set designer and illustrator for the New Yorker-referred to his niece, also named Olivia, as the inspiration for his character, who went on to appear in almost a dozen books and a hit TV series. Twenty-five years later, I found the real Olivia, Olivia Falconer Crane, no longer a precocious little girl but a grown-up natural resource technician.

The Faloduns at the centre of Cursed Daughters share tales of heartbroken women across the generations who just can't seem to hold on to a man. There's Fikayo, whose husband left after he tired of tending to her chronic illness; Afoke, who seduced her younger sister's boyfriend; Feranmi, the matriarch of the family, who got pregnant by a married man and received the curse from the man's first wife.

In this month's ImagineFX we are focusing on the human form and how best to draw it. We have 20 pro techniques for this tricky to master aspect of art. Read on below to see all the major articles waiting for you this month. Get yours now! To bag your copy head over to Magazines Direct, where you can pick up a single issue, save some money on a subscription, and fill in the blanks in your collection with the latest back issues.

Black walnuts hitting a barn roofFairly rapped the morning.          Massachusetts,Autumn. Orioles and pumpkins.And the crack of those round shellsLike a hardwood mallet hammering a wedgeInto the moment, splitting it ever open Up ahead, letting it travel with us,Us into it, articulatedOngoing: whatever was to happen nextAnticipated as half-consciouslyAs the smack of the next mailed walnutOn the roof, but at exactly what Interval none of us could tell.

Five years ago, the Oscar-winning actor wrote a memoir called Greenlights. It wasn't a conventional memoir, more a collection of life lessons, bullet-point anecdotes and gnomic philosophies. Now he has written a book of poetry called Poems & Prayers. For McConaughey, the two are interchangeable. It's another memoir of sorts this time, a portrait of his faith and its impact on his everyday life.

To celebrate the bookstore's birthday, the shop is hosting a block party 2-5 p.m. Sept. 20. Expect family-friendly activities, including a retro photo booth, local food vendors, a giant birthday cake, kids activities and live music from Peninsula rock band Effie Zilch. RSVPs are encouraged. Kepler's has been the Peninsula's living room for curious minds for 70 years a place where ideas spark, stories connect us, and community comes alive.

Fortunately we are entering into a fall, a season that is all about maximizing coziness and grounding ourselves in the moment - enjoying a crisp breeze, admiring the leaves changing, all that good stuff. And as a bonus, we get all kinds of new cozy fall books being released, so there's plenty of analog content to go around that is comforting, gentle, and lighthearted.

A second adventure for amateur spy Gabriel Dax, first seen in Boyd's 2024 novel Gabriel's Moon. It's early 1963, and Dax, a travel writer, is in his Sussex cottage working on his latest book, struggling with emotional baggage and yearning for his MI6 handler and sometime girlfriend, Faith Green. She persuades him to go to Guatemala to check out the popular leftwing leader who is threatening to topple the country's CIA-backed government, but Dax is forced to flee when things go seriously awry.

People want to understand how and why women experience violence at the hands of people who claim to love them, and they want to know what women can do when they've experienced these atrocities. They want a window into making sense of an experience, either because it's so seemingly foreign or so altogether disturbingly familiar as to resemble their own. This is why we often crave insight into others' perceptions of their own lives as well as their perceptions of others' reactions.

The medieval steppe was a world of horsemen, warriors, and poets, where the values of loyalty, courage, and hospitality defined life. Among the Oghuz Turks - nomadic peoples who roamed Central Asia - these ideals were preserved in the Book of Dede Korkut, a collection of epic tales passed down through generations. Attributed to the bard and elder Dede Korkut himself, these sayings offer a glimpse into the mindset of medieval nomadic warriors and the lessons they believed worth remembering.

James Constantinou, owner of Prestige Pawnbrokers and star of Channel 4's Posh Pawn, told Business Matters his chain has seen a 300 per cent increase in book submissions this year. "Books are now being treated like art, jewellery or watches - rare cultural items that hold and grow in value," he said. "People are starting to realise just how much hidden wealth they have at home."

Powell's City of Books is not just an independent bookstore in Portland. It is arguably the largest independent bookstore in the world and proof that Portland is one of the literary centers of the nation. The headquarters building takes up a full block on the busiest street in the heart of the city, a destination for book-loving residents and visitors alike.

One day more than 50 years ago, Carolivia Herron was stepping onto the curb at Piney Branch Road and Underwood Street, Northwest, when she was struck by a vision: a striking woman on the sidewalk, silhouetted by the sky, her hand raised in a gesture of repudiation. "It was like, 'Oh, wow, who is she? I've got to know her story,' " Herron says. The woman was imaginary, but powerful enough to start Herron's wheels spinning. When she got home, she began to write.

This column has previously cited or recommended books on security, risk and leadership. Having just submitted a book manuscript to a publisher that explores the confluence of those three topics, I discovered that I drew most inspiration for my approach and analysis from works that don't directly relate to any of these subjects. (I should note that I tapped this column for content that I updated or more fully developed in the book).

Reading a different language helps you expand your vocabulary and nail down nuances like sentence structure, and for visual learners like myself it can be the ideal way to start really learning information. Lucky for all of us e-reader lovers, Kindle's ebook store has books in all kinds of languages that you can purchase or download through Kindle's subscription services like Kindle Unlimited and Kids+. You can always send an ebook from your library that's in your learning language of choice to your e-reader, too.

Ursula K Le Guin had her Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction; I have my comfy cardigan theory. What Le Guin proposed is that human culture, novels included, didn't begin with technologies of harm, such as flints and spears, but with items of collection and care, such as the wicker basket or, nowadays, the carrier bag. And so, if we make them that way, novels can be gatherings rather than battles.

Signs she's avoiding or preparing to avoid me - I open the door off my dining room, call down, Mom, and she doesn't answer, even though I heard her moving around moments ago. She texts two-letter replies, such as OK and no. She locks the door off the dining room. She takes out her trash before sunrise. She stops feeding the squirrels and birds. She keeps her lights off. She keeps her phone off. She stacks cardboard boxes in the laundry room or garage or on the deck.

Behind every fiat money used in exchange lies a unit of account defined by a monetary standard [which is] underwritten by credible claims to future surpluses monetized by the government and/or the commercial banking system. [...] Claims of a 'Bitcoin standard' or anything like it are completely indefensible" (p. 28).

Dune fans can get a terrific deal on the beautiful hardcover box set collecting the first three novels in Frank Herbert's legendary sci-fi series. The Dune Saga 3-Book Deluxe Hardcover Box Set is on sale for only $65.59 at Amazon, which is well over 50% off its original $150 list price. You're essentially paying $22 for each book, which is one of the best deals we've seen for this set since its release in 2023. Check out Dune's Deluxe Editions below.

"filled with intimate evenings of storytelling, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and the music that shaped his life,"

Now, that's not to say that books are only good for a hit of escapism though to be clear, they can be terrific at that, as well. This week sees the release of several works of fiction that challenge or outright shrug off the hard rigors of the day-to-day, in pursuit of something far more out there: proof, at least in concept, that other worlds are possible.

It isn't just McEwan's elegiac, indeed patriotic, attentiveness to English landscapes to the wildflowers and hedgerows and crags, to the infinite shingle of Chesil Beach, to the Chilterns turkey oak in the first paragraph of Enduring Love. Nor is it merely the ferocious home counties middle-classness of his later novels, in which every significant character is at the very least a neurosurgeon or a high court judge, everyone is conversant with Proust, Bach and Wordsworth,

Set 12 years after disbanding The Baby-Sitters Club, the musical introduces us to 25-year-old Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey as they return to Stoneybrook, Connecticut, honoring a pact they made when they were 13 to reunite, reported . Of course, you do a lot of growing up in 12 years, and the girls now face revisiting their past and handling things popping up in their present-day life, from relationships and omg-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life questions to who-the-hell-am-I-now worries.

"I wrote what I thought was five chapters," says actor Jay Ellis, star of Insecure and Running Point, on the tentative first draft of his memoir, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?: Adventures in Boyhood, firstpublished in July 2024 and now available in paperback. "Now, after writing a book, I know it was at best half a chapter," he adds, laughing.

Freya, the novel's protagonist, has never swum in the ocean, and over the course of the morning she learns how. She discovers that she can dive under a swell, "feel the tug of the wave's underturn," and shoot up when it has passed; that she can swim fast up waves that are about to break, then "crash through their crests and fall down their backsides";

As I circled the statue, the skies opened. I stayed put, moved by the creature's lonesome, grief-stricken gaze. I ran my hand along his scars and thought of my own, rough and raised beneath my rain jacket. It was impossible not to see myself in this monster. After all, he was why I was there.

At the window he put his nose against the glass, which was beautifully cold, then drew away and saw the new consistency of the air: quick and blurred and sputtering white. The changed air was leaving itself on the tree branches. The care in those words, the sensitivity! Snow-dreaded, beloved; oppressive, angelic; shoveled, ogled-with the agency to leave itself so wonderfully on the branches! For no fault of his own, James is often in need of salvation. Like snow, he is the most beautiful problem.

Wild Swans, first published in 1991 and written by Jung Chang with the help of her husband, Irish-born historian and writer Jon Halliday, had a global impact few authors dare to dream of. It told the story of three generations of women in 20th-century China Chang's grandmother, her mother and herself and became one of the most popular nonfiction books in history, selling more than 13m copies in 37 languages and collecting a fistful of awards and commendations.

bell hooks's teachings provided me with a new lens through which to view my role as a father, encouraging me to redefine what love and responsibility truly mean.

The Second Wednesday of every Month, The Setup presents"A Funny Thing Happened", a night of world class storytelling. You'll be joining bestselling authors, Emmy-Award winning writers, TED speakers, stars of The Moth Radio hour, Snap Judgment and accomplished comedic voices in an intimate setting right in the heart of San Francisco. "A Funny Thing Happened" Storytelling Night Every Second Wednesday | 8 pm The Beer Basement, 222 Hyde St,

Just over two years ago, I interviewed Katriona O'Sullivan - then a senior lecturer, but now a professor in Maynooth University's department of psychology - in her sparse on-campus office. We talked, and cried a little, as she detailed the story that would become her memoir, Poor. A remarkable and powerful account of poverty, addiction, neglect, homelessness and trauma, O'Sullivan recalled how she was born in Coventry to parents battling addiction.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nonfiction books sometimes get a reputation for being hard to slog through. But the qualities that make good novels so enjoyable-the well-paced plot, the engaging characters-can also be found in many of their fact-based counterparts. The Atlantic 's writers and editors answer the question: What is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction?

Every answer is a famous person whose first or last name is geographical -- city, state, country, or otherwise. Ex. Novelist Jack --> Jack LONDON ("The Call of the Wild") 1. Actor River 2. Actor Gooding Jr. 3. Artist O'Keeffe 4. Media personality Hilton 5. Composer Irving 6. Actress Fanning 7. Actress Ferrera 8. Adventurer in film Jones 9. Spy in film Powers 10. Video game traveler Carmen 11. Artist Pollock 12. [Phonetic:] Jazz pianist Chick