Showing results by author "Os Swift" in All Categories

The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection by best-selling author Michael A. Singer, is a spiritual memoir that chronicles Singer’s quest to embrace whatever the universe presented to him at any given moment. Singer’s experiment with surrender began in 1970, when he was enrolled in a graduate-level economics program at the University of Florida and realized there was a voice inside his head, often critical and judgmental.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

This is a summary of How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen & How to Listen so Your Kids Will Talk (1979), which is a guide for parents who want to effectively communicate with their children. The skills contained in the book can be learned and practiced by all parents and, when incorporated consistently, help parents and children build positive relationships with each other....

Five Days at Memorial (2013) is a two-part investigation of the controversial events and decisions that took place at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Sailing Made Easy is the first step in a voyage that will last you the rest of your life. It is a gift from a group of dedicated sailing professionals who have committed their lives to sharing their art, their skill, and their passion for this wonderful activity.

Lemuel Gulliver sets out on a series of travels, but each time he finds himself shipwrecked in new and unfamiliar lands. And how unfamiliar! In Lilliput, everyone is tiny, and it takes thousands of them to capture him; in Brobdingnag, they’re huge and treat him as a sort of living toy; in Laputa, they live on a floating island inventing impossibly mad projects; and the Houyhnhnms are horses! But through all his adventures, Gulliver learns to see humans in a different way, too.

These 25 new stories mark Graham Swift's return to the short form after seven acclaimed novels and confirm him as a master storyteller. They unite into a richly peopled vision of a country that is both a crucible of history and a maze of contemporary confusions.

Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov were the most electrifying pairs skaters of all time, winning Olympic gold medals and countless major championships. Partners on and off the ice, they were inseparable until Sergei's sudden, tragic death at the age of 28. In the inspiring, heartbreaking My Sergei, Katia tells the remarkable story of their storybook romance and extraordinary career, paying loving tribute to her exceptional husband. She also speaks eloquently of her battle to overcome grief after Sergei's death, her struggle to raise their daughter Daria, and her dramatic decision to skate again...alone.

Bill Unwin, an academic of dubious status, has never recovered from the death of his famous actress wife and is now convalescing from a recent brush with his own mortality. He has two tales to tell. One, spanning postwar Paris, 1950s Soho and contemporary sexual and scholarly entanglements, surveys the muddle of his own life. The other, drawn from the notebooks of a Victorian ancestor, is the very different story of Matthew Pearce, a serious-minded man whose happiness is destroyed by his compulsive search for truth.

Peggy's family has lost its Christmas spirit and Peggy is desperate to help them get it back. The little pug wishes she could turn into a reindeer so she could work some Christmas magic on her family. She tries eating carrots, giving herself antlers and a glowing red nose, but nothing works - and the messes she makes only create more problems at home! Finally, the brave little pug decides that the only solution is to ask Santa for help. But the North Pole is far away, and Peggy gets lost in a snowstorm before she even makes it out of town.

Meet the Puppies Online! Einstein the brainy dachshund, Puzzle the snoozy sheepdog, and Bounce the speedy spaniel spend their holidays at a very special kind of kennels - a lighthouse by the sea! But there's no time for sunbathing. The woof-tastic trio meet the evil Mike Dodger, discover an ancient treasure map and find themselves caught up in a race against time. Luckily the pups are equipped with all the latest online gadgets and tech know-how. But will their super skills be enough to sniff out the treasure before Mike does?

Maggie and Ibby make up a happy - if unconventional - family. After meeting at university, they now live in the village of Applecroft in the West Country. Okay, so Ibby’s gay and prone to disastrous dates, while couples’ counsellor Maggie spends her days helping people with their relationship problems despite having no sex life of her own. Nevertheless, they’re devoted to bringing up teenage daughter Amelia – the result of a drunken one-night stand when they were students. Until a face from the past disrupts their quiet lives.

When Peggy the pug's friend Chloe is cast as Wendy in the school production of Peter Pan, Peggy feels left out. Chloe is too busy learning lines and going to rehearsals to play with her. So Peggy sets out to show Chloe that she has star quality, too. When a hilarious video of Peggy goes viral, Peggy becomes a celebrity overnight. Suddenly, she can't even go for a a walk to the park without being stopped for a selfie. Maybe fame isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Wickedly narrated by David Stifel, and written in 1729, this satiric essay on how to solve Ireland's chronic poverty is perhaps more shocking today than when it was written. In the 1960s, when Peter O'Toole did a public reading of this piece in Dublin, he very nearly started a riot. Newspapers the following day lambasted O'Toole's "shocking bad taste." Whether shocking satire, or Monty-Pythonesque surrealism, this essay has continually managed to offend people for well over 3 centuries. Enjoy! (and Thank You!)

Soon I felt something alive moving along my leg and up my body to my face, and when I looked down, I saw a very small human being, only 15 centimetres tall . . . I was so surprised that I gave a great shout. ’But that is only the first of many surprises which Gulliver has on his travels. He visits a land of giants and a flying island, meets ghosts from the past and horses which talk. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Jonathan Swift original by Clare West.

This is a summary of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert (1999), which provides married couples with a system for evaluating the health of their marriages, as well as tactics for reinvigorating those unions if they become unfulfilling.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee, is a coming-of-age novel that traces young Scout Finch’s growing awareness of racism in her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama. Watching her father, a lawyer, represent a Black man who has been falsely accused of rape, Scout comes to understand some difficult truths about her neighbors and, by extension, about the world. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy (2009) traces the lives of six North Korean defectors from Chongjin, a city in northeastern North Korea in North Hamgyong Province. The narrative examines their daily lives and occupations. Listen to this in-depth summary by Swift Reads to learn more.

"I Viaggi di Gulliver" (Gulliver's Travels) è un capolavoro della letteratura mondiale, un romanzo che coniuga fantasia e satira...

Lost Connections explores the physical, psychological, and cultural factors that lead to depression, as well as the tactics communities can employ to overcome it. British journalist Johann Hari argues that while depression can have a biological cause, it’s largely an involuntary reaction to the social ills that plague modern society. Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

In The Big Short (2010), journalist Michael Lewis traces the stories of a handful of misfit investors who predicted the 2008 financial crisis. In the parlance of Wall Street, to “short” something is to bet against an investment or company through the purchase of a complex high-finance product.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)