Hard Like Water

Hard Like Water
Author: Yan Lianke
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473566088

'The new masterpiece by eminent Chinese writer Yan Lianke . . . two revolutionaries take matters disastrously into their own hands while conducting a crazed affair' MARGARET ATWOOD on Twitter A breakneck adventure story following the erotic love affair of party cadres Aijun and Hongmei during China's Cultural Revolution This is the story of the freewheeling love affair between married soldier Aijun and Hongmei, a beautiful young woman from his village in the Balou Mountains. Intoxicated with one another, Aijun and Hongmei hurl themselves into their town's revolutionary struggle. Spending their days and nights stamping out feudalism, writing pamphlets and organising rallies, they become inseparable: they are the engines of history. But as their political activity reaches new heights, so does the danger of getting caught... 'A blistering tour-de-force... Sensuous and riveting' MADELEINE THIEN, Booker-shortlisted author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing 'Fascinating... This tale of an illicit tryst during the Cultural Revolution is a stinging satire' The Times **A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST FICTION IN TRANSLATION BOOK 2021**

A Long Walk to Water

A Long Walk to Water
Author: Linda Sue Park
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2010
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0547251270

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, 11-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan. By a Newbery Medal-winning author.

A Hard-water World

A Hard-water World
Author: Greg Breining
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2008
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9780873516242

Striking photographs by Kennedy and engaging essays by outdoor writer and fisherman Breining capture the quirky world of ice fishing--its natural beauty and solitary subzero vigils, along with its oddball practices and practitioners.

This Is Water

This Is Water
Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2009-04-14
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0316071005

In this rare peak into the personal life of the author of numerous bestselling novels, gain an understanding of David Foster Wallace and how he became the man that he was. Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

The Sweetness of Water (Oprah's Book Club)

The Sweetness of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
Author: Nathan Harris
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2022-05-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780316461245

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, "a miraculous debut" (Washington Post)​ and "a towering achievement of imagination" (CBS This Morning)about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever--from "a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance" (Kirkus) A Best Book of the Year: Oprah Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Time, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Chicago Public Library, BookBrowse, and the Oregonian A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A July Indie Next Pick In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry--freed by the Emancipation Proclamation--seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox. With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
Author: Angie Cruz
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2022-09-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250208440

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE · A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK · REVIEWED ON THE FRONT COVER From GMA BOOK CLUB PICK and WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana, an electrifying new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story “Will have you LAUGHING line after line...Cruz AIMS FOR THE HEART, and fires.” —Los Angeles Times "An endearing portrait of a FIERCE, FUNNY woman." —The Washington Post Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight. Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz’s most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.

The Shipping News

The Shipping News
Author: Annie Proulx
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0743519809

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is a vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives. Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above seventy degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it’s easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents). As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph—in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover’s knot.

Flamer

Flamer
Author: Mike Curato
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company BYR Paperbacks
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250803942

Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in Flamer, his debut graphic novel, telling a difficult story with humor, compassion, and love. "This book will save lives." —Jarrett J. Krosoczka, author of National Book Award Finalist Hey, Kiddo I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both. I hate that word. Gay. It makes me feel . . . unsafe. It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes—but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can't stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance. Godwin Books

This Is Water

This Is Water
Author: Kenyon College
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: Conduct of life
ISBN: 9780316151467

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously' How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion' The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

The First Woman

The First Woman
Author: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 527
Release: 2020-08-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1786077892

'Jennifer Makumbi is a genius storyteller.' Reni Eddo-Lodge An intoxicating mix of Ugandan folklore and modern feminism, from a multi-award-winning author As Kirabo enters her teens, questions begin to gnaw at her – questions which the adults in her life will do anything to ignore. Where is the mother she has never known? And why would she choose to leave her daughter behind? Inquisitive, headstrong, and unwilling to take no for an answer, Kirabo sets out to find the truth for herself. Her search will take her away from the safety of her prosperous Ugandan family, plunging her into a very different world of magic, tradition, and the haunting legend of 'The First Woman'. 'In Jennifer Makumbi, we have a giant of literature living among us.' Peter Kalu, Jhalak Prize Judge A SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, BBC CULTURE & IRISH INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR