What We Are Reading Today: Foreshadow by Leena Al-Thekair

Updated 19 October 2018
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Foreshadow by Leena Al-Thekair

  • 'Foreshadow' is the author Leena Al-Thekair’s debut novel
  • The book certainly does not feel like it has been written by a 15-year-old

Steady yourself, you are about to go on a rollercoaster ride. This book gives insight into the life of Meghan, a high-school freshman, who experiences everything a normal high-schooler does: Sore teachers, anxiety about not being able to fit in, finding friends, keeping up with the old ones. But that isn’t anything she can’t handle.

Meghan’s brother is a physics nerd, and Meghan helps him in his lab until one day she survives a near-lethal accident. She is left with a permanent change and so the year in front of her doesn’t look very bearable.

A beautiful story doesn’t just tell you a series of events — it intertwines feelings, emotions, moments you can relate to, and most of all it makes you live the story yourself. All such qualities can be found in Foreshadow.

It is hard to put down the book once you pick it up. What makes the novel even more notable is its author Leena Al-Thekair. This is her debut novel; with its publication she earned the title of the youngest English-language author in the Kingdom. She wrote the book when she was 14 and it was published when she was 15. But Foreshadow does not feel like it has been written by a 15-year-old. 

The book is available in Virgin megastores in all the branches of the Kingdom and at Amazon as a paperback and on Kindle. 


What We’re Reading Today: Work Life Well-lived

Updated 25 April 2024
Follow

What We’re Reading Today: Work Life Well-lived

Author: Kelly Mackin

This book will disrupt how you think about creating your best work life and workplace and give you a road map to get you there, says a review published on goodreads.com.

Through years of research and truth-finding, Kelly Mackin and her company, Motives Met, have discovered a completely new mindset and approach around what well-being at work is all about, how to get there, and why it’s so important that we do get there.

This book is a personal guide and a call to action for a shift in our approach to work.


What We Are Reading Today: Natural Magic

Updated 25 April 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Natural Magic

Author: Renee Bergland 

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls.

The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts.

“Natural Magic” intertwines the stories of these two luminary 19th-century minds whose thought and writings captured the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time strove to preserve the magic of nature.


What We Are Reading Today: Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family

Updated 24 April 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family

Authors: Mark O’Shea & Simon Maddock

With more than 7,600 known species, frogs exhibit an extraordinary range of forms and behaviors, from those that produce toxins so deadly that they could kill a human many times over to those that can survive being frozen in ice.

“Frogs of the World” is an essential guide to this astonishingly diverse group of animals. An in-depth introduction covers everything from the origins and evolution of frogs to their life cycles and defense strategies.


What We Are Reading Today: Sixty Miles Upriver

Updated 23 April 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Sixty Miles Upriver

Author: Richard E. Ocejo

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some 28,000 people located 60 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley.

Like many similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents.

“Sixty Miles Upriver” tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways.


What We Are Reading Today: A Death in the Rainforest

Updated 22 April 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: A Death in the Rainforest

Author: Don Kulick

As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native Tayap, an endangered Papuan language.

“A Death in the Rainforest” takes readers inside the village, revealing what it is like to live in a place carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest.

This book offers insight into the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe — and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.

An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, the book takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever.