Comecei a ler este livro no dia 17/02/2012 e acabei no dia 18/02/2012.
Prestes a completar cinquenta anos, Augusta "Gus" Simpson, a popular apresentadora de Cozinhar com Gusto!, dá consigo a planear um aniversário que preferiria ignorar - o seu. Está a ficar cansada de ser a anfitriã perfeita, a mãe-galinha, a mulher que é sempre o porto de abrigo para todos os que a rodeiam. Para piorar as coisas, a sua carreira corre perigo - o canal de televisão quer aumentar as audiências do programa e para isso vai buscar a bela e ambiciosa Carmen Vega, ex-Miss Espanha, que depressa se transformará na nova menina bonita da culinária. Mas Gus não vai desistir sem dar luta - e a temperatura vai subir, no estúdio e fora dele. Porque ela percebe que poderá não só rejuvenescer a sua carreira como melhorar a sua vida familiar - e talvez mesmo a sua vida amorosa.
Um romance (doce como uma guloseima) em que se misturam os sabores da infância com os desafios de começar de novo aos cinquenta.
Kate Jacobs cresceu perto de Vancouver, na Columbia Britânica, Canadá, mais tarde mudou-se para Nova Iorque onde desenvolveu a sua atividade profissional como editora da Working Woman, da Family Life e do site da Lifetime Television. Atualmente, vive no Sul da Califórnia. Já publicado em Portugal, O Clube de Tricô de Sexta à Noite, o seu primeiro romance, foi adaptado ao cinema e vendeu mais de um milhão de exemplares.
quinta-feira, fevereiro 16, 2012
Comecei a ler este livro no dia 14/02/2012 e acabei de ler no dia 16/02/2012.
IMPACTO ZERO é um testemunho fascinante de Colin Beavan, um homem que decidiu viver durante um ano, em plena cidade de Nova Iorque, sem causar impacto no ambiente. Por outras palavras, Colin tentou viver sem produzir lixo, sem poluir a água com toxinas, e sem usar coisas como elevadores, metro, ar condicionado, televisão, produtos embalados, detergentes e papel higiénico.
Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year.
It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage.
No problem – at least for Colin – but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.
Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein's film provides an intriguing inside look into the experiment that became a national fascination and media sensation, while examining the familial strains and strengthened bonds that result from Colin and Michelle’s struggle with their radical lifestyle change.
Colin Beavan, PhD AKA No Impact Man Author, writer, blogger, consultant, engaged citizen
As the news stories go: “Colin Beavan is a liberal schlub who got tired of listening to himself complain about the world without ever actually doing anything about it…” Thus, in November, 2006, Beavan launched a year-long project in which he, his wife, his two-year-old daughter and his four-year-old dog went off the grid and attempted to live in the middle of New York City with as little environmental impact as possible.
The point of the project was to experiment with ways of living that might both improve quality of life and be less harmful to the planet. It also provided a narrative vehicle by which to attract broad public attention to the range of pressing environmental crises including: food system sustainability, climate change, water scarcity, and materials and energy resource depletion.
Beavan’s experiment in lifestyle redesign is the subject of his book (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and a Sundance-selected documentary by independent film producers Laura Gabbert (Sunset Story, Getting to Know You) and Eden Wurmfeld (The Hammer, Puccini for Beginners, Kissing Jessica Stein). Both the book and the documentary will be released in September, 2009. Columbia Pictures also plans to make a feature film (produced by Todd Black) based on the book.
Beavan writes and administers the provocative environmental blog NoImpactMan.Com, which has become a meeting point for discussion of environmental issues from a “deep green” perspective. In addition to some 2,500 daily visitors and 4,000 daily page views, the site has 10,000 email and “newsreader” subscribers. About 1.8 million people have visited the blog since he established it a year and a half ago.
Beavan was named one of MSN’s Ten Most Influential Men of 2007 and was named an Eco-Illuminator in Elle Magazine’s 2008 Green Awards. His blog NoImpactMan.com was named one of the world’s top 15 environmental websites by Time Magazine. He was named a 2008 Eco-Star by New York City’s Lower East Side Ecology Center.
The No Impact project has been the subject of stories in the New York Time, the Christian Science Monitor, and many other national and international news outlets. Beavan has appeared on The Colbert Report, Good Morning America, Nightline, The Montel Show, and all the major NPR shows. He speaks regularly to a wide variety of audiences, is frequently quoted in the press and consults to business on the intersection of sustainability and human quality of life.
Beavan is a PhD electronic engineer (University of Liverpool). He spent the late 80s and early 90s as a consultant to philanthropic organizations such as social housing providers, drug treatment agencies and hospitals, helping them to promote themselves in order to secure increasingly scarce, Thatcher-era funding.
In 1992 Beavan returned to the United States and wrote for magazines until Hyperion published his first book Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science (a popular history of criminology) in 2001. In 2006, Viking published his second book, Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America’s First Shadow (about the operation that formed the precedent for U.S. anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan).
He is director of the No Impact Project, a visiting scholar at NYU, an advisor to the University’s Sustainability Task Force, and sits on the board of directors of New York City’s Transportation Alternatives and on the advisory council of Just Food.
Comecei a ler este livro no dia 09/02/2012 e acabei no dia 13/02/2012.
Este novo e aclamado romance de Nicholas Sparks conta a história emocionante de Amanda e Dawson, dois adolescentes envolvidos na mágica experiência do primeiro amor. Contudo, sob a pressão familiar e social, são obrigados a seguir vidas distintas. Somente vinte e cinco anos mais tarde voltam a encontrar-se, por altura da morte do único homem que tinha protegido o jovem casal apaixonado. E se para ambos o amor de outrora se revela intacto, confrontam-se inevitavelmente com as escolhas feitas e os compromissos assumidos. Qual então o sentido daquele encontro, se nada podia mudar o passado?
Nicholas Sparks nasceu em 1965 em Omaha, Nebraska. Cresceu em Fair Oaks na Califórnia e vive actualmente na Carolina do Norte com a família. Foi durante algum tempo delegado de informação médica até que Theresa Park, agente literária, decidiu começar a representá-lo, vendendo os direitos do seu primeiro romance O Diário da Nossa Paixão (The Notebook) à Warner Books. O sucesso foi imediato e a obra permaneceu durante 56 semanas consecutivas nos tops americanos. Seguiram-se livros como As Palavras que Nunca te Direi (Message in a Bottle) e Um Momento Inesquecível (A Walk to Remember), Corações em Silêncio (The Rescue) também eles sucessos editoriais de grandes proporções, tendo o primeiro sido adaptado para versão cinematográfica pelo próprio autor. Considerado o golden boy da ficção comercial americana é um autor consagrado internacionalmente pelo público.
Comecei a ler este livro no dia 03/02/2012 e acabei no dia 08/02/2012.
Oskar Schell tem nove anos e é inventor, francófilo, tocador de tamborim, actor shakesperiano, joalheiro, pacifista. Além disso, está a empreender uma busca urgente e secreta através das cinco zonas de Nova Iorque a fim de encontrar a fechadura onde entra uma chave misteriosa que pertencera ao pai, morto no atentado contra o World Trade Center. Oskar, uma inspirada criação do autor, é encantador, exasperante e inesquecível.
Jonathan Safran Foer é o autor de Está Tudo Iluminado e Extremamente Alto e Incrivelmente Perto. Os seus livros foram traduzidos para trinta e seis línguas. Está Tudo Iluminado recebeu o National Jewish Book Award e o Guardian First Book Award, e foi adaptado ao cinema por Liev Schreiber. Foer vive em Brooklyn.
Comecei a ler este livro no dia 31/01/2012 e acabei no dia 02/02/2012.
O mal pode espalhar-se como uma doença? A prática Jane Rizzoli, detective na Brigada de Homicídios de Bóston, não acredita, nem por um minuto, em forças sobrenaturais. Quando analisa o local do crime busca a mente do criminoso, vasculha entre vestígios para encontrar provas, para chegar ao assassino. Para este caso talvez tenha contudo de por alguns dos seus preconceitos de lado... Com a valiosa ajuda de média legista, Maura Isles, investiga a sucessão de crimes em que as vítimas são desmembradas e em que uma apocalíptica mensagem é inscrita nos corpos. O estranho Clube Mefisto, que investiga a origem genética do mal, oferece-se para ajudar a polícia, mas mesmo eles, habituados a lidar com a morte, se sentem atemorizados com os sinais deixados pelo serial-killer. Um thriller assinado por Tess Gerritsen, a combinar ciência, crime e romance. Médica de formação, a escritora norte-americana decidiu dedicar-se à ficção aliando os seus conhecimentos em medicina e investigação forense a uma poderosa imaginação criminal. Uma combinação a fazer-nos tremer a cada página...
«...[Tess Gerritsen é] uma das rainhas de um híbrido género entre o romance e o thriller.» Kirkus Reviews
«...a terrífica marca de escrita de Tess Gerritsen passa pelo sinistro detalhe médico/ forense e pelo arrepiante suspense.» Bookmarks Magazine
Tess Gerritsen, M.D., (born June 12, 1953) is a Chinese-American novelist and retired physician.[1] Her first name is really Terry; she decided to feminize it when she was a writer of romance novels. Early lifeTess Gerritsen was the child of a Chinese immigrant and a Chinese American seafood chef in San Diego, California. While growing up, Gerritsen often dreamt of writing her own Nancy Drew novels.[3] Although she longed to be a writer, her family had reservations about the sustainability of a writing career, prompting Gerritsen to choose a career in medicine.[4] In 1975, Gerritsen graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Anthropology, intrigued by the ranges of human behavior.[5] She went on to study medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.[4] She received her medical degree in 1979 and started work as a physician in Honolulu, Hawai'i.[6][7]
While on maternity leave, she submitted a short story to Honolulu Magazine’s statewide fiction contest. Her story, "On Choosing the Right Crack Seed," won first prize and she received $500.[6][8] The story focused on a young male reflecting on a difficult relationship with his mother. Gerritsen claimed the story allowed her to deal with her own childhood turmoil, including the repeated suicide attempts by her mother.
Early writing careerInspired by the romance novels she enjoyed reading while working as a doctor, Gerritsen’s first novels were romantic thrillers.[6] After two unpublished 'practice novels', Call After Midnight was bought by publisher Harlequin Intrigue in 1986 and published a year later.[9] Gerritsen continued on to write another eight romantic thrillers for Harlequin Intrigue and Harper Paperbacks.
Genre shift Gerritsen at a book signing.In 1996, Gerritsen published her first medical thriller novel, Harvest.[9] Having already decided to pursue the medical thriller genre, the plot was inspired by a conversation with a retired homicide detective who had recently been travelling in Russia. He told her that young orphans were vanishing from the streets of Moscow, and police believed the kidnapped children were being shipped abroad as organ donors.[10] Harvest was Gerritsen’s first novel to be published in hardcover, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list at #13. Following Harvest, Gerritsen wrote three subsequent bestselling medical thrillers, Life Support, Bloodstream, and Gravity.
In 2001, Gerritsen's first crime thriller, The Surgeon, was released introducing homicide detective Jane Rizzoli. Although Rizzoli was only a secondary character in The Surgeon, the character has been a central focus of a series of nine books along with medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles[15] and the Rizzoli & Isles television series with Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander portraying the main characters respectively.
Although most recent publications have been in the Rizzoli/Isles series, Gerritsen wrote a stand-alone historical thriller, The Bone Garden in 2007. The Bone Garden, a tale of gruesome murders, takes place primarily in 1830s Boston and includes a character based upon Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.[17][18] Gerritsen's books have been published in thirty-one countries and have sold 15 million copies.
Rizzoli/Isles series
The Surgeon (2001) introduces police detective Jane Rizzoli The Apprentice (2002) introduces medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles The Sinner (2003) Body Double (2004) Vanish (2005) The Mephisto Club (2006) The Keepsake / Keeping the Dead (US / UK, 2008) Ice Cold / The Killing Place (US / UK, 2010) The Silent Girl (US / UK, 2011) [25]
