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What The Heck Do I Do With My Life?
‘As the world grows in complexity, Ravi’s guidance to be curious and adaptable has never been more relevant.’ —Bill Gates Our world will change more in this century than in all of human history, driven by many factors including technology, climate change, demographics and inequality. Such extreme change is throwing up unprecedented opportunities and creating an ‘adaptive challenge’ for individuals, organizations and societies. Those who can adapt to a fast-flowing, complex, volatile and uncertain world will flourish. Those who cannot will suffer greatly. There are clear signs everywhere that we need new ways to think about the world and our place in it. Our old ideas about education, lifestyle, success and happiness no longer work. How is work changing? How can you know what skills will be useful when jobs of the future are still being invented? Will ‘jobs’ even exist or are we moving to a world of projects and gig work? How do you make sense of all this and more? In What the Heck Do I Do With My Life? Ravi Venkatesan makes the case that successful adaptation in the new century requires a ‘paradigm shift’, a different mindset, new skills and new strategies. Ravi also reflects on how we will need to live life more intentionally, making deliberate choices about who we are, what we do and how we live rather than simply being carried along like a piece of driftwood.
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The Festival of Insignificance
The new novel from Milan Kundera 'Enchanting ... it explores all aspects of a declining civilisation without taking any of them too seriously ... In this novel of Flaubertian seduction, free of blame and guilt, insignificance is the very essence of life.' La Repubblica Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism - that's The Festival of Insignificance. Readers who know Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the "unserious" in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In Immortality, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together talking and laughing. And in Slowness, Vera, the author's wife, says to her husband: "you've often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it... I warn you: watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait." Now, far from watching out, Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work. A strange sort of summation. Strange sort of epilogue. Strange sort of laughter, inspired by our time, which is comical because it has lost all sense of humor. What more can we say? Nothing. Just read.
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Healing Our Autistic Children
Every 20 minutes a child is diagnosed with a disease on the autism spectrum--including ADD, learning disabilities, Asperger's, Autism, and PDD--making it today's most common childhood disability. While the medical establishment treats autism as a psychiatric condition and prescribes behaviorally based therapies, Dr. Julie A. Buckley argues that it is a physiological disease that must be medically treated. Part personal story of her battle to heal her autistic daughter, part guide for parents, Healing Our Autistic Children explains simply and accessibly the new treatments and diets that have already proven effective for many families. Told through the case studies of her patients, the book is divided into four typical visits to Dr. Buckley's pediatric practice so that parents can see the progression of initial treatment. Written in a warmly engaging voice, parents new to the diagnosis will: - learn about clinical treatments that work - understand how different foods affect the body and how to begin implementing diets - learn to navigate the medical system and advocate for their child - bridge the communication gap with their pediatrician - discover that recovery is possible
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Cobalt Blue
A paying guest seems like a win-win proposition to the Joshi family. He's ready with the rent, he's willing to lend a hand when he can and he's happy to listen to Mrs Joshi on the imminent collapse of our culture. But he's also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history and no plans for the future. The siblings Tanay and Anuja are smitten by him. He overturns their lives and when he vanishes, he breaks their hearts. Elegantly wrought and exquisitely spare, Cobalt Blue is a tale of rapturous love and fierce heartbreak told with tenderness and unsparing clarity.
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The Thief
A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable. The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections.... But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.
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Breakfast with the Borgias
'Hell is other people.' A chilling, page-turning Hammer novella by the Booker-Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little. The setting: a faded, lonely guesthouse on the Essex coast. Outside, it's dark, and very foggy. Inside there's no phone or internet reception, no connection with the outside world. Enter Ariel Panek, a promising young academic en route from the USA to an important convention in Amsterdam. With his plane grounded by fog at Stanstead, he has been booked in for the night at the guesthouse. Discombobulated and jetlagged, he falls in with a family who appear to be commemorating an event. But this is no ordinary celebration. And this is no ordinary family. As evening becomes night, Panek realises that he has become caught in an insidious web of other people's secrets and lies, a Sartrian hell from which for him there may be no escape.
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Feludas Last Case
COLLECTS SEVEN CASES WHICH SPAN THE CAREER OF PRADOSH MITTER.
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Bhutan for the Indian Traveller
Bhutan, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, is no ordinary place. It is a traveller’s ultimate dream; a Himalayan kingdom replete with myths and legends, where the best of traditional culture thrives and the latest global developments are enthusiastically embraced. Discover Bhutan with a guide that understands the Indian traveller. Experience the pulsating markets, stately museums, sublime monasteries, formidable dzongs, picturesque mountain vistas, all laid out for you in convenient day-by-day itineraries and easy-to-follow listings. Our expert authors will guide you to the most authentic Indian restaurants, give you loads of reliable practical information and help you get the best possible value for money. Go armed with all the information you need without being bogged down by unnecessary details.
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The Passion of Artemisia
From extraordinary highs - patronage by the Medicis, friendship with Galileo and, most importantly of all, beautiful and outstandingly original paintings - to rape by her father's colleague, torture by the Inquisition, life-long struggles for acceptance by the artistic Establishment, and betrayal by the men she loved, Artemisia was a bold and brilliant woman who lived as she wanted, and paid a high price. Now Susan Vreeland, author of the acclaimed GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE, brings her story to passionate and vivid life.
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The Tattooed Fakir
A young woman - Roshanara - is kidnapped by the village zamindar. The British sahib, owner of the Indigo plantation, intervenes, but then takes her as his own mistress. She is not, however, any local woman – she is a fakir’s daughter. It is the end of the eighteenth century in northern Bengal. Roshanara’s father, Cherag Ali and her husband, Asif go to Majnu Shah’s band of fakirs to plead for help in getting her back. The fakirs are known for their heroic battles with the British, for their arms and horses. Asif feels nothing is left for him in the village and joins the fakirs, training in the use of weapons and ammunition, skirmishing with them up and down the country, but pining, always, for his Roshanara. Years later, in an oddly fated rescue mission he ends up, not with her, but with her son – Roshan – who evolves into a ferocious fakir soldier, tattooed and insecure about his identity. A spare, elegant rendition of political clashes driven by personal agendas of rage and revenge, The Tattooed Fakir underlines a lesser known section of history with deep emotions.
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Anon
Welcome to Calcutta of the sixties and the seventies. Meet Debottam, the genius vagabond son of a wealthy zamindar. Meet Urbish, the ambitious dreamer whose father is a fisherman. Walk with them through the red earth of Shantiniketan. Visit the jazz clubs of Park Street. Experience friendship redefined by two people who have only one thing in common writing. But one is willing to kill to write and the other is willing to die. Anon. Short for Anonymous. After all what’s in a name?
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The Promise
The Promise charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for - not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land... yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled. The narrator's eye shifts and blinks: moving fluidly between characters, flying into their dreams; deliciously lethal in its observation. And as the country moves from old deep divisions to its new so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel's title. In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home. Confident, deft and quietly powerful, The Promise is literary fiction at its finest.