Book Haul – Trying to get my motivation back

Over the course of the year, I’ve found it a bit of a struggle to get into the reading mindset. Audio books have been a lifeline for me as far as books go and I can get through those at an absolutely absurd rate. I suddenly feel like I’m coming into more of a flow as far as reading goes (not that what I’m currently doing would be classed as consistently reading, but it’s an improvement).

I decided a variety was what might be needed … that being said, it seems to have just ended up with me starting numerous things and picking at them a few pages at a time like a cautious grazer at a buffet.

PS.

WordPress shows me some seriously bizarre text issues when viewing this as a preview. Despite the fact I have removed all quote blocks, it still looks like random chunks of text are going to appear in quote on the preview. If it looks dodgy below, that’s just one more instance of wordpress being a bit rubbish.

Physical/E-books

A phenomenal collection of medical patient accounts of encounters with the mysterious during severe illness and life-threatening injury from the voice of the physician who took care of them. Both touching and thought-provoking, this book invites you to reconsider what happens when we die, and in doing so, challenges you to ponder that perhaps we are much more than our earth-bound physical bodies.

Near-death experiences are often profoundly meaningful, yet when they are reported, they are frequently met with skepticism and dismissal by medical caregivers and family members. But do we have to fully understand these events to honor the transformative role they often play in the lives of those who experience them?

For nearly twenty years, Dr. Laurin Bellg has been present at the bedside of critically ill and dying patients. As she has worked to create an accepting and supportive relationship with them, her patients have shared with her the mysterious experiences they sometimes have during moments of crisis of apparently seeing beyond our physical world. In telling their engaging, powerful and sometimes humorous stories, Dr. Bellg invites the reader to consider that bearing witness to a patient’s near-death experience is a respectful and meaningful part of medical care, a way for families to support their loved ones, and an important part of the patient’s healingDo we need to prove they are something more than the result of illness, medication or a dying brain to acknowledge their power to impact lives in a positive way?

Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.

Death is the Grim Reaper of the Discworld, a black-robed skeleton with a scythe who ushers souls into the next world. He is also fond of cats and endlessly baffled by humanity. Soon Death is yearning to experience what humanity really has to offer, but to do that, he’ll need to hire some help.

It’s an offer Mort can’t refuse. As Death’s apprentice he’ll have free board, use of the company horse – and being dead isn’t compulsory. It’s a dream job – until Mort falls in love with Death’s daughter, Ysabell, and discovers that your boss can be a killer on your love life . . .

An eighth son of an eighth son is born, a wizard squared, a source of magic. A sourcerer.

Unseen University, the Discworld’s most magical establishment, has finally got its wish: the emergence of a wizard more powerful than ever before. You’d think they would have been a little more careful what they wished for . . .

As the sourcerer takes over the University and sets his sights on the rest of the world, only one wizard manages to escape his influence. Unfortunately for everyone, it’s Rincewind.

Once again the cowardly wizard must embark on a quest: to deliver a precious artefact – the very embodiment of magic itself – halfway across the Disc to safety. If he doesn’t make it, the death of all wizardry is at hand.

And the end of the world, depending on who you listen to.

Renowned academic Dr Sparling seeks help with his project on a remote Irish village. Historical researchers Ben and Chloe are thrilled to be chosen – until they arrive.

The village is isolated and forgotten. There is no record of its history, its stories. There is no friendliness from the locals, only wary looks and whispers. The villagers lock down their homes at sundown

It seems a nameless fear stalks the streets, but nobody will talk – nobody except one little girl. Her words strike dread into the hearts of the newcomers. Three times you see him. Each night he comes closer…

That night, Ben and Chloe see a sinister figure watching them. He is the Creeper. He is the nameless fear in the night. Stories keep him alive. And nothing will keep him away…

Remy is a tour guide for Carrow House, a notoriously haunted building. When she’s asked to host seven guests for a week-long stay to research Carrow’s phenomena, she hopes to finally experience some of the sightings that made the house famous.

At first, it’s everything they hoped for. Then a storm moves in, cutting off their contact with the outside world, and things quickly become twisted. Doors open on their own. Seances go disastrously wrong. Red liquid seeps from behind the wallpaper. Their spirit medium wanders through the house during the night, seemingly in a trance.

Then one of the guests dies under strange circumstances, and Remy is forced to consider the possibility that the ghost of the house’s original owner, a twisted serial killer, still walks the halls.

But by then it’s too late to escape.

Homeless, hunted, and desperate to escape a bitter storm, Keira takes refuge in an abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage. Her new home is tucked away at the edge of a cemetery, surrounded on all sides by gravestones: some recent, some hundreds of years old, all suffering from neglect.

And in the darkness, she can hear the unquiet dead whispering.

The cemetery is alive with faint, spectral shapes, led by a woman who died before her time…and Keira, the only person who can see her, has become her new target. Determined to help put the ghost to rest, Keira digs into the spirit’s past life with the help of unlikely new friends, and discovers a history of deception, ill-fated love, and murder.

But the past is not as simple as it seems, and Keira’s time is running out. Tangled in a dangerous web, she has to find a way to free the spirit…even if it means offering her own life in return.

The greatest warriors are forged in the flames

Two pagan fighters

771AD, Northern Europe. Bjarki Bloodhand and Tor Hildarsdottir are journeying south into Saxony. Their destination is the Irminsul, the One Tree that links the Nine Worlds of the Middle-Realm. In this most holy place, they hope to learn how to summon their animal spirits so they can enter the ranks of the legendary berserkir: the elite frenzied fighters of the North.

One Christian king

Karolus, newly crowned King of the Franks, has a thorn in his side: the warlike Saxon tribes on his northern borders who shun the teachings of the Church, blasphemously continuing to worship their pagan gods.

An epic battle for the soul of the North

The West’s greatest warlord vows to stamp out his neighbours’ superstitions and bring the light of the True Faith to the Northmen – at the point of a sword. It will fall to Bjarki, Tor and the men and women of Saxony to resist him in a struggle for the fate of all Europe.

Audio Books

The sea keeps its secrets. But not this time.

One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand.

It’s time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organised crime.

It’s time for James Bond to earn his licence to kill.

This is the story of the birth of a legend in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera. 

2045, the Arctic Circle. A crew of six aboard the research vessel, The Nox, embark upon a voyage through the melting ice and Arctic dark in search of the last of the polar bears. The mission represents a ray of hope in a world ravaged by climate change, but it quickly becomes clear that some on board are in search of more than bears….

Isolation and the disorientation of 24/7 darkness soon have the group losing their grip on reality – accidents, nightmares, or hauntings – no one can be sure, but the voyage seems cursed. For Professor Clara Fitzgerald, the mission quickly turns from conservation to survival as she realises that danger lurks not only out on the ice, but on The Nox itself.

Determined to give his wife and children a better life back home, Ivan Pritchard ventures to the edge of known space to join the crew of the Mad Astra as an asteroid miner. He’s prepared for hard work and loneliness—but not the unthinkable. After coming into contact with a mysterious alien substance, Pritchard finds an unwelcome entity sharing his mind, and a disturbing physical transformation taking place. With his very humanity at stake, Pritchard must save mankind from a full-scale interstellar war.

The Consultant’s Guild has served the Aurelian Empire for over 1,000 years, working in the darkness to hunt dissension and eliminate traitors.

Now, the Emperor is dead.

For Shera, an assassin in the employ of the Consultants, the Emperor’s death is the beginning of a nightmare. Powerful forces hunt the Heart of Nakothi, a cursed artifact that can raise a second Emperor…and corrupt him in the process.

But some desire power at any cost.

The Guild of Navigators, an infamous collection of swindlers and pirates, has been paid a fortune to secure the Heart. Their only lord is greed, their only loyalty to gold, and they would sell the Empire’s freedom for the promise of a quick coin.

In the shadows, a woman works to set the world free.

On the seas, a man seeks to raise a lunatic to lord over mankind.

Will you walk the shadows here with Shera? Or will you explore the seas with Calder, in the parallel novel Of Sea and Shadow?

Nowhere on our planet is devoid of life. Plants and animals thrive or survive within every extreme of climate and habitat that it offers. Single species, and often whole communities, adapt to make the most of ice cap and tundra, forest and plain, desert, ocean and volcano. These adaptations can be truly extraordinary: fish that walk or lay eggs on leaves in mid-air, snakes that fly, flightless birds that graze like deer and bears that grow hair on the soles of their feet.

In Living Planet, David Attenborough’s searching eye, unfailing curiosity and infectious enthusiasm explain and illuminate the intricate lives of the these colonies, from the lonely heights of the Himalayas to the wild creatures that have established themselves in the most recent of environments, the city. By the end of this book, it is difficult to say which is the more astonishing – the ingenuity with which individual species contrive a living, or the complexity of their interdependence on each other and on the habitations provided by our planet.

In this new edition, the author, with the help of zoologist Matthew Cobb, has added all the most up-to-date discoveries of ecology and biology. He also addresses the urgent issues facing our living planet: climate change, pollution and mass extinction of species.

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