Be Someone

Combining the simple wisdom of Epicurus and Eckhart Tolle, and written in the mind-bending style of Alan Watts, this visual thinking manual will help you transform your inner world. Discover how the shapes of empathy can help you think with care and live with purpose. Through awareness of motivations and multiple perspectives, you will learn to connect to the human spirit that lies beyond mere appearance. Begin your journey inward to sharpen your imagination and craft a life of meaning.

'Ian Stone has one of the sharpest comic minds in the country. I would read anything he’s written about anything. This book made me start listening to The Jam' Romesh Ranganathan 'Full of wit, cheek and energy – not just for fans of The Jam, this is for fans of London, of youth, of life itself' Rory Bremner 'This is a funny, fascinating, absorbing, surprising and readable book with the added bonus of Phill Jupitus’s delicious cartoons . . . A book for anyone who is now middle-aged and looking back joyfully at their youth' Jo Brand 'I really liked this book. I'd forgotten how shit it was in the seventies' Paul Weller Ian Stone grew up in a Jewish, working-class house in north London in the mid-1970s. Everywhere around him, adults were behaving badly. His parents' relationship was in freefall so he tried not to spend too much time at home. But outside, there was industrial unrest, football violence, racism and police brutality. As for the music, it was all 'Save All Your Grandma's Kisses for My Love Sweet Jesus'. It made him feel physically sick. Then The Jam appeared. This is Ian's story of that time. Of weekend jobs so that he could go to gigs. Of bunking into the Hammersmith Odeon and ending up on the roof. Of going to see The Jam in Paris and somehow finding himself being interviewed for Melody Maker. Of attempting to keep out of the way of skinheads and trying (and failing) to work out how to talk to girls. And of devastation when in 1982 Paul Weller announced that the band were splitting up. There will never be another band like The Jam. For those who went on that journey with them, the love ran deep. And still does. They helped Ian and thousands like him to grow up – to be someone.

My book is based loosely on my life and desire to be a songwriter living in Nashville, TN. While I didn't make it, my character, Ty Johnson does, but not without meeting adversaries and heartache along the way. Ty walks away from a divorce, leaving 3 children behind that he loves dearly. He has to prove that he can succeed so his children as well as he will be proud of him. Along the way he finds lasting friendships and true love, yes and success.

Book Summary of Run It Might Be Somebody By Ephraim Romesberg The book covers a span of over 70 years starting with the author as a shy sickly boy who was the last of 11 children living on a farm during the great depression and ends with the author as a 74 year old man, who still runs ultra distant marathons. In the first chapter, the author presents stories and anecdotes, often in a humorous way, to describe some of the joys and hardships of growing up in a large family during the great depression. Compared to today, life was very different then with no TVs, very few radios, no computers, no running water in the home (except in the pantry where there was a hand pump), and very few toys or luxuries of any kind. Also, and perhaps more significantly, kids, for the most part, were given chores and did not have time to get into trouble. There were no drugs, no gangs, and no boredom. Being the youngest in the family and somewhat sickly, the author was to some extent given some slack on farm chores. Even so, he had daily chores to do starting from a very early age such as milking cows, driving the old model T truck, fetching the cows, cleaning stables, feeding livestock, driving a tractor, and helping wherever help was needed. The book describes the one room school house that all kids in the area attended at that time. The authors dad had to quit such a school while in third grade to work on the farm when his father died leaving the family without any money or food. His mother completed school through eighth grade which was all that most people considered necessary in those days especially for women. So there was little or no pressure from the parents to go to school after that. As a result, the three oldest boys in the family never went past eighth grade. There were other reasons to stay home and the most important one was they had no decent clothing. The book tells about the Authors mother removing the white stripes from an old pair of band pants and one of the three boys who never completed high school, then removing all the little white threads so that he could wear the pants to school. He also had no decent shoes so he added home made soles to the bottoms of a pair of his work shoes by attaching them with roofing nails so that he could make the long four mile walk to the school. After several trips the nails poked through the bottoms of the shoes and wore holes in his feet. Because of that and the lure of the upcoming hunting season, and the need to work on the farm, he quit school after only a month or so. Except for the three oldest boys, all of the kids completed high school and several went on to college. The book describes such things as making hay the old fashioned way, husking corn by hand, hoeing corn and then picking rocks while resting, butchering a pig, delivering baby pigs and calves, threshing to separate the grain from the straw, and the authors Mom squirting milk straight from the cows tit at cats and grandkids.. Also described are how the young boys in the family learned to handle a team of horses when they were only 10 years old, how one of the boys accidentally cut off his little sisters finger, how an uncle lost his leg to the stump puller, how the author, when he was only eight years old, tried to explain to a blind preacher how to use the out house and the Sears Roebuck catalog which was used instead of toilet paper. Also described, and a little more on the lighter side, one of the authors sisters claimed that you havent lived until you ran barefoot through a cow pasture and felt the warmth of a fresh cow patty ooze up between your toes. The early chapters also describe the authors time in the US Navy where he was sea sick every time the ship left the dock. Hunting stories tell of deer hunting with more failures than successes. One successful

I don't know why, but for some reason people find my one-two boilermaker punch of Kerouac and Hawkeye Pierce somewhat amusing. I'm a real prize. I lost my glamorous job as a professional drinker, I mean Washington lobbyist, after I won the war but lost the battle with a Lying Cheating Scum. The Wife kicked me to the curb, down the street and all the way out of town. Now I'm back in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the Bedford Falls I thought I had escaped. Just to prove I lost my mind, I go and fall for some sob story about a kid with leukemia and her family going broke, from a peaches and cream siren who distracted me with her allure. So I'm up against the biggest players with the deepest pockets, I don't have any plastic, and I'm not even getting paid. How am I supposed to buy people? Here's the thing: I kind of like the little girl, Rosa, held hostage by a bunch of greedy insurance industry bean counters. She's a fighter. And I hate it when my friends get jerked around by The Man. The players in this little drama will tell you they're not to blame. That it's not personal, it's just business. Look, I'm just a guy with a winning smile and a fabulous wardrobe, but I don't buy it. For me, it's always personal. I may not have a perfect record or always play by the rules, but when I'm in, I'm all the way in. And I'm not joking around anymore.

lt is with great pleasure that I write this preface for Or Li's book, wh ich addresses the venerable and vexing issues surrounding the problem of whether death can be a harm to the person who dies. This problem is an ancient one which was raised long ago by the early Greek philosopher Epicurus, who notoriously argued that death is at no time a harm to its 'victim' because before death there is no harrn and after death there is no victim. Epicurus's conclusion is conspicuously at odds with our prereflective and in most cases our post-reflective-intuitions, and numerous strategies have therefore been proposed to refute or avoid the Epicurean conclusion that death cannot be an evil after all. How then are we to account for our intuition that death is not just an evil, but perhaps the worst evil: that may befall us? This is the key issue that Or Li addresses. Or Li's book explores various alternative approaches to the complex and difficult issues surrounding Epicurus's notorious argument and provides a defence ofthe intuitively plausible conclusion that death can indeed be a harm to the person who dies. This challenge to Epicurus's claim that death is never a harm to the person who dies is developed by way of a detailed exploration of the issues raised not only by Epicurus, but also by his many successors, who have responded variously to the challenging issues which Epicurus raised.

Spot, the beloved hero of Put Me in the Zoo, is back in another Beginner Book classic. When Spot grows tired of doing tricks in the circus, he decides to turn into another animal. But what kind? An elephant? An elephant is too big. A giraffe? A giraffe is too tall. How about a mouse? Can Spot’s friends help him see that the very best thing to be is himself? I Want to Be Somebody New! is a spot-on tale of individuality and friendship. Beginner Books are fun, funny, and easy to read! Launched by Dr. Seuss in 1957 with the publication of The Cat in the Hat, this beloved early reader series motivates children to read on their own by using simple words with illustrations that give clues to their meaning. Featuring a combination of kid appeal, supportive vocabulary, and bright, cheerful art, Beginner Books will encourage a love of reading in children ages 3–7. "Spot changes from elephant to giraffe to mouse, trying to find a new identity, but discovers that every animal shape has its drawbacks. This intelligent, cheerful sequel, with its simple rhyming text, lives up to the reputation of its predecessor." —Publishers Weekly

No matter how the lyrics of your life are written, how you play the song is up to you. Helena Nicholls is no ordinary girl. In fact, she’s famous. For many years she was the bassist and lyricist for Blue Idea, a band worshiped by adoring fans all over the world throughout the eighties. Following their breakup, Helena switched gears and became the most popular morning DJ in London with her all-request show. Listeners could call her and request songs, but Helena wouldn’t play them until the callers gave the details of why they wanted her to play them—where they were when they first heard the song, what they were wearing, who they were with, and why the song means so much to them. The show’s success put Helena back on the map, but now all that’s over. After a night of partying ends in a horrible accident, Helena wakes up in a hospital bed. As she groggily opens her eyes, she realizes that her irresponsible behavior, so completely uncharacteristic of her, has left her bruised and battered. The doctors tell her it will take months to recover—who knows if her wounded ego will ever heal. To make matters worse, the accident has made international headlines. Her boss, unhappy with all the negative publicity, has bad news—she has been fired from her prime time radio show and offered a humilating demotion to the two a.m. slot: the graveyard shift. Desperate, depressed, and sure her life is over, Helena comes up with the Plan. She is going to create a playlist of songs that have defined her life and write her autobiography, using these songs as the chapters. As the Plan begins to unfold, so does this poignant, funny, compulsively readable novel. Stringing the most important aspects of her life together with pop songs from the seventies, eighties, and nineties, Helena starts to deal with all of the unsettled parts of her past and the uncertainty of her future. Whether she’s confronting a new love interest or mourning the recent death of her lifelong best girlfriend, Helena continues to find solace and wisdom in the one thing that has gotten her through every crisis—music. Only one question remains: What will she do for an encore? A High Fidelity for women, To Be Someone is a hip and engaging novel featuring a unique protagonist given to dark self-introspection but with an irrepressibly funny, self-aware voice—a voice that speaks directly to every woman who has had a best friend, felt awkward moving to a new school, dated the wrong guys, obsessed over a new band, or fought with her mother. From the Hardcover edition.