According to literacy statistics 21% of Adults are illiterate, meaning that those adults cannot read at all or read a very low academic level. There are 54% of adults that have a literacy below the 6th grade reading level. The levels of children's literacy are also staggering. A child who cannot read, or reads at a lower academic level, and without proper education, will grow up to be an adult with the same level of literacy. What can you do? Read to your children or grandchildren. If you know an adult who has trouble reading, first let them know it's nothing to be ashamed of, and then help them, if they are willing, to learn to read. There are resources for illiterate adults who need help.
EVERY WOMEN WANTED TO BE WITH HIM. EVERY MEN WANTED TO BE HIM!
"‘Travels With Maurice’ is a gem of a book that just sneaks up on you with its greatness... The lifelong friendship, the lessons learned, and the change of attitude towards Gary’s life itself make this book an incredible read. While Maurice, as the son of a rich man, could have easily skated through Europe and his life on his family’s money, he was incredibly aware of the people around him, their hopes, their dreams and tried to make their interaction with him, however brief, meaningful and memorable... The richness of this personal story will find you savoring every page, from the toast that opens it to the story of these two men’s lives long after their time together in Europe..." - Michael Berman
An unbelievable story, yet it's true because nobody could make this story up- NOBODY.
The 19,985 miles, 12 country adventure in 1968, Gary and Maurice, formed a formidable friendship, while perusing the London music scene, which included The Who, Elton John, The Rolling Stones and even the Beatles. Maurice, son of the richest Iranian man, shares his life and culture with Gary, as they dined with Kings and Queens, gambled with Shah of Iran and his wife-Her Royal Highness Empress Farah, while also learning the ins and outs of The Iranian government, its corruption, and the reasons the Shah was doomed to fail.
See them come of age while rubbing elbows with other famous persons, asked to dance by Brigitte Bardot, was even rescued out of handcuffs by Shirley Temple Black during the Russian Invasion of Czechoslovakia during the summer of 1968.
A simple "thank you" led to the trip of a lifetime!
Harold Kushner and his roommate of thirty years, Murray Schwartz, are average senior citizens facing down their mortality in a trailer park in Land O' Lakes, Florida. Two self-professed “best Jewish bowlers ever” wind up contestants in the first-ever Great Mongolian Bowling League Tournament in the U.S.A. The rivalry becomes a high-stakes roll-off as Harold approaches “perfection” (defined in the bowling world as three 300-score games in a row) despite a fix set by the alley's mobster-owners. As the reporters and camera crews swarm to cover his amazing feat, Harold finds himself in a life review spanning back to his Bar Mitzvah and a past incarnation as a Mongolian warrior in the era of Genghis Khan, as he ponders profound questions we all ask as we near the end of our lives: Did my life have meaning? Did I fulfill my potential? Was I a good person?
Can Harold roll perfection to help his new Mongolian friends and live to tell the tale? The uncanny action unfolds in this beautiful comedy illuminating that although we come from worlds far apart, we share a common humanity. The outcome will impact millions... and strike you right in the heart.
Want to go for a ride in a classic car? Park by the ocean? Sounds nice huh?
Mona found the man and his car, a beautiful, old Ferrari, very attractive. Sure, she'd go for a ride with him to look at the ocean, the party was boring anyway. Maybe by the time they got back things would liven up a bit...
She felt the bag tighten around her neck, cutting off her air supply. This cannot be happening. She gasped and struggled, but it was no use. He was as strong as he was classically handsome, a real Hollywood leading man type. Everything went dark as she lost consciousness, her last thought was about the mistake she'd made threatening to tell Danny's wife...
Susan felt that someone was stalking her. She'd gotten several strange calls attempting to make appointments for private exercise and aerobics lessons. Dicky and the cops had wrecked her apartment and she needed to work to get a new place but she was afraid to take on an unknown client. What should she do?
"Get in the car or your pregnant friend is dead!" he said hoarsely. Susan must save Anne, but how?
What would you do if God fell into your lap?
Jessy Ascher and her friends set up camp near Moonlight Rocks in the California desert to watch the Leonid meteor shower. After darkness falls, a stunningly bright meteor suddenly flashes across the sky blinding the friends to the approaching danger.
The meteorite blasts into their camp site knocking everyone unconscious but Jessy quickly regains her senses. Her friends however, cannot be roused. Instinctively she grabs the still smoking meteorite and stumbles downhill toward the jeep she arrived in, desperate to get help for her friends...
But, Jessy isn't alone in that rough, cactus-filled landscape... two dark figures who also saw the meteor flashing down to Earth are frantically searching the same area and they are ready to do anything... even murder to get their hands on a meteorite they could sell to the highest bidder.
And what about the meteorite? Others have been waiting for its arrival. Cultists, fanatical members of nearby religious or supernatural factions - some good, some evil - believe that the meteor heralds the birth of a new Messiah and they, too, are ready to do anything to gain control of the blessed rock.
Jessy wants help for her friends, others want the meteorite for their own end, but the Meteorite, it wants something too... Is this the dawn of a new spiritual age, or just a bunch of psychos raging in the desert?
In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax.
The Call of the Wild is a novel by Jack London published in 1903. The story is set in the Yukon during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush—a period in which strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's central character is a dog named Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California as the story opens. Stolen from his home and sold into service as sled dog in Alaska, he reverts to a wild state. Buck is forced to fight in order to dominate other dogs in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of civilization, relying on primordial instincts and learned experience to emerge as a leader in the wild. London lived for most of a year in the Yukon collecting material for the book. The story was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903; a month later it was released in book form. The novel’s great popularity and success made a reputation for London. Much of its appeal derives from the simplicity of this tale of survival. As early as 1908 the story was adapted to film and it has since seen several more cinematic adaptations.
Vincent Pollack is a serial killer, whose evil roots were planted during a traumatic childhood, with an agenda to rob and kill women for financial gain. It is down to Mavis Bone, a forty-year-old Australian, lesbian Private investigator, and her German lesbian secretary, Gertrude Stick, to try and foil his murderous plans. Together they make up the Mavis Bone Detective Agency based in Wimbledon Broadway, London SW19.
It is a hands-on job to chase down this ingenious killer, and Mavis is not afraid to get them dirty. Dirty with the blood of her prostitute philandering husband, and the blood of a problem client that could send her secretary to prison for a war crime. Both detective’s and killer’s paths, have already crossed during their troubled youths, but as the murders pile up, they move towards a final conflict.
Mavis’s hard Australian outback childhood, led to her sexual and gender choices, as well as some questionable racist opinions. Not to mention the drug habit she picked up as a student, while backpacking in South America. This, making her, not your average South London Private Eye.
When Covid first showed up in 2020, it presented us with a choice: to respond with fear, or to respond with love. This book is an appeal to love, seeing in the 'virus' an agent of social reform, setting us free from the structures of exploitation and enslavement that have assailed mankind for millennia.
And there is no better author to deliver this message than Abdiel LeRoy, a Bible scholar and former journalist, a storyteller and poet, who has discerned and set out for us Covid's prophetic mission, likening it to the role of plague when wielded by Moses to abolish slavery in ancient Egypt.
Weaving between entertaining stories, prophetic analysis, and searing poetry, LeRoy hails the transformational power of this virus while denouncing the mindless response of world leaders who have no better answer than to enrich pharmaceutical companies. You will find here no flag-waving for party or candidate but recognition that the political system, with its imperial structures, is starting to break apart, that it must break apart for the good of planet, peoples, and species.
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband.
In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning twenty years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson’s wife, Sophia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all.
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.
In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic.
When Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems--but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition.
This beautifully-designed volume presents the original edition Leaves of Grass in its entirety, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.
The story of a transgender child based on the real-life experience of Jazz Jennings, who has become a spokesperson for transkids everywhere
From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl's brain in a boy's body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn't feel like herself in boys' clothing. This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who said that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way. Jazz's story is based on her real-life experience and she tells it in a simple, clear way that will be appreciated by picture book readers, their parents, and teachers.
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.
Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale.
January 24th
After you’ve had it, there isn't even life without drugs…
It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life.
Read her diary.
Enter her world.
You will never forget her.
