Megazines And Book Education

Kat is a 16 year old in a post apocalyptic North America, she has a younger sister named Primrose and they do their best to survive each day with their mother. Her father died in a tragic mining accident, and she had to step into the role of provider at an early age. Using the hunting skills he taught her, she spends most of her days hunting illegally in the woods for meat and other forms of sustenance. Not so bad right?

Wrong. The real tragedy is the regime that they live under, a terrifying monolithic monarchy known as The Capitol. The Capitol is in the center of 13 different districts (12 of them inhabited) that are ruled under the iron hand dictatorship. The districts are doled out food and supplies as the Capitol sees fit, and they are kept in near destitute conditions to ensure that they remain culled and controllable. The most atrocious actions of the Capitol take place once per year, when they host “The Hunger Games”.

A competition that forces each district to submit a boy and a girl between the age of 12-18 to a barbaric contest. They are taken to an arena of gargantuan proportions, and there they are pitted against each other in a battle of mortal combat, survival, and keen intellect. The boy or girl who out survives the others garners favor for his or her district. The Capitol allocates special food stuffs and supplies for that next year to all the peoples of the victor’s homeland.

Suzanne Collins’ writing is simple yet powerfully thought provoking. There are only a handful of books that I have ever read that made me as nervous as Hunger Games did. Katniss is submitted to the games, and she must kill and outsmart her peers from the other districts in order to survive. THIS BOOK IS THE FEMALE EQUIVALENT TO ENDER’S GAME. Some of you may understand my feelings towards Orson Scott Card’s masterpiece, and if you do, you know what an immense compliment I just bestowed on Suzanne Collins. This is a must read scenario people. Go get a copy, or I will loan you mine. (I promise that if my children want to escape my wrath, they will read Ender’s Game and NOW Hunger Games)

Chad de Lisle is a newly married college student in Utah. He spends much of his day with his wife Hilary and their dog Bobby Dylan. He spends his weekends as a Dungeon Master for his friend’s Dungeon’s and Dragon’s games.
His website: http://www.resmirch.com

A very unusual story! The story begins with this seventeen year old girl (named Leela) who loses her father in riots and whose mother abandons her when they shift from Nairobi to Europe. Mother sends her to a childless uncle and aunt in France and takes the twin younger boys with her to stay with her brother in England. Leela is trying to adjust in an alien world, hoping that her mom will soon call her to join her in England, but instead mom soon re-marries and abandons her forever. She learns to cook from her aunt and soon realizes she has a very distinctive power of smell. She can smell the spices and figure out the details about the taste of the dish being cooked.

The story continues as she is thrown out of her aunt’s house and finds herself on streets one late night, why? Coz she dared to tell aunty the truth about her uncle. Then she moves from one job to another in search of a shelter and people who may care for her. In this journey, she meets a famous model, a musician, a business man and many others. She becomes nanny for two little girls, a mistress of a very rich & successful businessman only to leave it all behind her and go to a lonely beach to maybe try and kill herself, where she meets a man who loves dogs and doesn’t have his legs, but is content with his life. She realizes on meeting him that she cannot run forever and she must get back to life.

She returns back to an old friend only to realize that the guy had been madly in love with her all these years. She is happy and content now but that’s not the end of the story yet, she develops a strong sense of a pungent smell coming out from her body. She feels that she stinks and gets into panic attacks and repulses everyone around her. Does she actually stink? Or it’s just her feeling? Is she suffering from a disease? Well, that’s for you to find out in the book…

A beautiful narration where the reader finds it very difficult to put down the book. Very simply written story from yet another amazing Indian author who is not very well-known. Hats-off for such a wonderful work! If you are a reader who needs some freshness and different style of narration, try this book.

Ok, a couple of disclaimers right up front: 1) SuperFreakonomics is a follow-up book to the authors’ first book – Freakonomics. I didn’t read Freakonomics, and as it turns out, you don’t have to read the first one to get the second one – these aren’t vampire novels; 2) More than likely, I would not have read Super Freakonomics if I hadn’t been sent a copy to review. Why? The word “freakonomics” is way to close to the word “economics” which, for a creative person like me, is a topic much like a bottle of wine – puts me right out. But I will tell you this – freakonomics is MUCH more interesting than plain, old economics. Here’s why:

In spite of the overly witty full title – Super Freakonomics Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance – the book is actually a fascinating tale of how economics plays into even the most bizarre areas of modern life. I guess that is what authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner wanted to convey with that extravagant title – they should have just let the content speak for itself, but I know, its all about getting people to OPEN the book, I get it, really.

So anyway, back to Super Freakonomics. I really enjoyed this book! I did snooze a bit through Chapter 3, but for the most part, here are two guys with nothing to gain except royalties. They don’t seem to have an overt political bend. They don’t seem to want to convince me that there is only one right way to do things. They’re not selling me anything I don’t already own. But what they are doing is taking incongruent subjects, like Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo (ok, not TOTALLY incongruent), prostitutes and Santa Claus, real estate agents and pimps, and telling me that they do actually have something in common and here’s how it effects my life.

You see, we tend not to draw the comparisons Steven and Stephen have drawn in Super Freakonomics. Most of us don’t want to see these connections or can’t because we only really look at the surface of things. The Steves have penetrated that surface and dove down deep. They’ve brought to light some things that make you go, “hmm.” Such as the hand-washing rate of doctors – YES YOU HEARD ME. You’ll have to read that chapter for yourself as its quite disturbing.

All in all, its a thought-provoking book that I highly recommend you read. If for nothing else than to give you a little perspective on the world around you, how we got here and where we can hope the future brings us. There’s a lot of what I believe is truth, in this book. The chapter on Global Warming is really a good one. But so is the Monkey chapter.

Levitt and Dubner have clearly done a ton of research and another ton of analysis. Typical economists… But untypically, they’ve written this book in such a way to make it all relevant to what’s happening in our world today. Thumbs up.

P.S.: I may just read Freakonomics now…

Joyce Dierschke is a professional writer living in Nashville, TN. She writes on a variety of subjects including spirituality, religion, wellness, pets and more. If you’re looking for high-quality, custom content suitable for websites, magazine, e-zines, newspapers, newsletters or blogs, please contact Joyce. For more information or to contact Joyce, visit: http://www.JoyceDierschkeCopywriting.com