We all have a reason to love reading. Reading opens your mind.Reading is a shared journey.Reading builds bridges.Reading is an act of faith.Reading can take you to a place called hope.In honor of Scholastic's 100th Anniversary, it asked a hundred of its authors and illustrators to answer the question: What's a reason you love reading? The response is a dazzling collection that gets to the heart of why books matter so much, to so many people. Whether they are remembering a book that meant the world to them or conjuring the magical way that books took them to worlds far beyond their own, these authors show us with exuberance, insight, and humor how the joys of reading are often inseparable from the joys of life itself.

What's so great about reading? Why should you read when you could watch TV instead? This book has lots of answers for those questions. For starters, if you're reading a book, you won't have to worry about losing the remote control. Plus, books will make you smart, and everyone will be impressed with your vocabulary. Books can even help you reach things if you use them to build a ladder. And books never expire, so you don't have to worry about getting sick if you read them years after you buy them. The list of reasons to love books is endless! This clever and colorful guide packed full of laugh-out-loud illustrations will give readers a new appreciation for just how fun-and useful-reading can be.

Make learning: painless, exciting, habitual, and self-motivating. Absorb info like a human sponge. We’ve never been taught how to learn, and that’s a shame. This book is the key to reversing all the misconceptions you have and making learning fun again. Scientifically-proven, step-by-step methods for effective learning. Smart Learning is not a textbook - it’s a guidebook for your journeys in learning. It will show you the most effective methods, the pitfalls we must avoid, and the habits we must cultivate. This book is highly organized and addresses all phases of the learning process, from creating a positive environment, to the biological basis of memory, to learning theories, and more. It borrows from multiple scientific disciplines to present comprehensive techniques to simply learn more, faster. Master your approach and save countless hours. Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience. Smarter, faster, and better ways to achieve expertise. •The physical and psychological pre-conditions to effective learning. •How our memory works and how to make it work for you. •The learning techniques that work - with evidence. •How to never need to cram again. •Why Einstein loved to play violin while working. •The learning mistakes you are probably committing right now. Outpace others, beat the competition, and get where you want to go in record time.

Some love stories are… soul stories Dr. Radhika Sharma is what girls of today aspire to become – educated, financially independent and a woman of substance. But within, she is a broken person who is yet to come to terms with her past, her first love Raen’s sudden death. In comes a nine-year-old patient under her treatment, who is not only infatuated with her, but also keeps asking her non-stop questions. One of those questions leads her to open Raen’s personal diary. By the time she finishes reading the diary, Radhika finds an uncanny similarity between Raen and the young patient. She finds herself in the middle of an unusual situation. One after another, shocking truths emerge, which push her to question if an unexplained attraction is the missing link between souls. A Thing Beyond Forever is a pristine love story which digs deep into human emotions and explores the complexity of it in a soul-stirring manner.

Make learning: painless, exciting, habitual, and self-motivating. Absorb info like a human sponge. We’ve never been taught how to learn, and that’s a shame. This book is the key to reversing all the misconceptions you have and making learning fun again. Scientifically-proven, step-by-step methods for effective learning. The Science of Accelerated Learning is not a textbook - it’s a guidebook for your journeys in learning. It will show you the most effective methods, the pitfalls we must avoid, and the habits we must cultivate. This book is highly organized and addresses all phases of the learning process, from creating a positive environment, to the biological basis of memory, to learning theories, and more. It borrows from multiple scientific disciplines to present comprehensive techniques to simply learn more, faster. Master your approach and save countless hours. Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience. Smarter, faster, and better ways to achieve expertise. •The physical and psychological pre-conditions to effective learning. •How our memory works and how to make it work for you. •The learning techniques that work - with evidence. •How to never need to cram again. Tame distractions and procrastination through specialized habits. •Why Einstein loved to play violin while working. •The learning mistakes you are probably committing right now. •Steps to building true expertise. •How to teach effectively, and teach to learn. Outpace others, beat the competition, and get where you want to go in record time.

Based on his own extraordinary life, Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a mesmerizing novel about a man on the run who becomes entangled within the underworld of contemporary Bombay—the basis for the Apple + TV series starring Charlie Hunnam. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.

“Nothing short of riveting...an engrossing first-person account by one of our finest actors” (Huffington Post)—both a coming-of-age story and a meditation on creativity, devotion, and craft—Bryan Cranston, beloved and acclaimed star of one of history’s most successful TV shows, Breaking Bad. Bryan Cranston began his acting career at the age of seven, when his father, a struggling actor and sometime director, cast him in a commercial for United Way. By fifth grade he was starring in the school play, spending hours at the local movie theater, and re-enacting favorite scenes with his brother in their living room. Cranston seemed destined to be an actor. But then his father left. And his family fell apart. Troubled by his father’s missteps, Cranston abandoned his acting aspirations and resolved to pursue a steadier career in law enforcement. Then, on a two-year cross-country motorcycle journey, Cranston re-discovered his talent for acting and found his mission and his calling. In this “must-read memoir” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Cranston traces the many roles he inhabited throughout his remarkable life, both on and off screen. For the first time he shares the story of his early years as an actor on the soap opera Loving, his recurring spots on Seinfeld, and his time as bumbling father Hal on Malcolm in the Middle, to his tour-de-force, Tony-winning performance as Lyndon Baines Johnson in Broadway’s All the Way, to his most iconic role of all: Breaking Bad’s Walter White. “An illuminating window into the actor’s psyche” (People), Cranston has much to say about creativity, devotion, and craft, as well as innate talent and its challenges and benefits and proper maintenance. “By turns gritty, funny, and sad” (Entertainment Weekly), ultimately A Life in Parts is a story about the joy, the necessity, and the transformative power of simple hard work.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

From the author of the Jack Ryan series comes an electrifying #1 New York Times bestseller—a standalone military thriller that envisions World War 3... A chillingly authentic vision of modern war, Red Storm Rising is as powerful as it is ambitious. Using the latest advancements in military technology, the world's superpowers battle on land, sea, and air for ultimate global control. It is a story you will never forget. Hard-hitting. Suspenseful. And frighteningly real. “Harrowing...tense...a chilling ring of truth.”—TIME

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’ Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë ’ s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’ s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.