Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean.

 

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The author of The Disappearing Spoon reveals the secret inner workings of the brain through strange but true stories.

 

Early studies of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike, strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, horrendous accidents and see how victims coped.

In many cases their survival was miraculous, if puzzling. Observers were amazed by the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed, altering victims' personalities.

Parents suddenly couldn't recognize their own children.

Pillars of the community became pathological liars.

Some people couldn't speak but could still sing.

 

In The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean travels through time with stories of neurological curiosities: phantom limbs, Siamese twin brains, viruses that eat patients' memories, blind people who see through their tongues.

He weaves these narratives together with prose that makes the pages fly by, to create a story of discovery that reaches back to the 1500's and the high-profile jousting accident that inspired this book's title.

With the lucid, masterful explanations and razor-sharp wit his fans have come to expect, Kean explores the brain's secret passageways and recounts the forgotten tales of the ordinary people whose struggles, resilience, and deep humanity made neuroscience possible.

 

*"The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons" refers to the case of French king Henri II, who in 1559 was lanced through the skull during a joust, resulting in one of the most significant cases in neuroscience history.

For hundreds of years scientists have gained important lessons from traumatic accidents and illnesses, and such misfortunes still represent their greatest resource for discovery.

[Daveo]

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean.

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange Pattaya, Thailand....

 

The author of The Disappearing Spoon reveals the secret inner workings of the brain through strange but true stories.

 

Early studies of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike, strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, horrendous accidents and see how victims coped.

In many cases their survival was miraculous, if puzzling. Observers were amazed by the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed, altering victims' personalities.

Parents suddenly couldn't recognize their own children.

Pillars of the community became pathological liars.

Some people couldn't speak but could still sing.

 

In The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean travels through time with stories of neurological curiosities: phantom limbs, Siamese twin brains, viruses that eat patients' memories, blind people who see through their tongues.

He weaves these narratives together with prose that makes the pages fly by, to create a story of discovery that reaches back to the 1500's and the high-profile jousting accident that inspired this book's title.

With the lucid, masterful explanations and razor-sharp wit his fans have come to expect, Kean explores the brain's secret passageways and recounts the forgotten tales of the ordinary people whose struggles, resilience, and deep humanity made neuroscience possible.

 

*"The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons" refers to the case of French king Henri II, who in 1559 was lanced through the skull during a joust, resulting in one of the most significant cases in neuroscience history.

For hundreds of years scientists have gained important lessons from traumatic accidents and illnesses, and such misfortunes still represent their greatest resource for discovery.

[Daveo]

Watches international : The original annual of the world’s finest wristwatches.

 

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WATCHES INTERNATIONAL.

Showcasing the latest masterpieces from leading manufacturers, this is the most comprehensive and current guide on watches available.

Watches International showcases the latest watches from around the world, from every major watchmaker including Audemars Piguet, Breguet, Bvlgari, Hublot, Longines, Patek Philippe, Richard Mille, TAG Heuer, and Zenith.

[Daveo]

Abhorsen by Garth Nix.

 

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The long-buried Secrets of the Old Kingdom and the Ninth Gate are revealed in the sequel to Sabriel and Lirael.

 

Orannis, the Destroyer, has been freed from its subterranean prison and now seeks to unleash its terrible powers.

Only Lirael, Abhorsen-in-Waiting, has any chance of stopping this enemy of all Life.

As she and her companions, Sameth, the Disreputable Dog and Mogget, set out on their fated journey, Lirael has no idea of what lies ahead.

Only days earlier, Lirael was merely a Second Assistant Librarian.

Now, with only a vision from the Clayr to guide her and without the experience of Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone, she must search both Life and Death for some means to defeat the Destroyer.

Before it is too late…

[Daveo]

Secrets of Mental Math: The Mathemagician's Guide to Lightning Calculation and Amazing Math Tricks.

by Arthur Benjamin & Michael Shermer.

 

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These simple math Secrets and tricks will forever change how you look at the world of numbers.

 

Secrets of Mental Math will have you thinking like a math genius in no time.

Get ready to amaze your friends and yourself, with incredible calculations you never thought you could master, as renowned “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin shares his techniques for lightning quick calculations and amazing number tricks.

This book will teach you to do math in your head faster than you ever thought possible, dramatically improve your memory for numbers, and maybe for the first time, make mathematics fun.

 

Yes, even you can learn to do seemingly complex equations in your head; all you need to learn are a few tricks.

You’ll be able to quickly multiply and divide triple digits, compute with fractions, and determine squares, cubes, and roots without blinking an eye.

No matter what your age or current math ability, Secrets of Mental Math will allow you to perform fantastic feats of the mind effortlessly.

This is the math they never taught you in school.

[Daveo]

Waylaid By the Bimbos by James Eckardt.

 

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The story of a Chinese American boy who struggles to grow up in the grip of an overcharged sexual environment.

And other catastrophes in Thailand.

[Daveo]

The World's Greatest Master and Commander Stories

by Mike Ashley.

 

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Jacland Marmur (Contributor), Harriet Hudson (Contributor), William Hope Hodgson (Contributor), Frederick Marryat (Contributor), Richard Woodman (Contributor), Arthur Conan Doyle (Contributor), Felicia Hemans (Contributor) , Kenneth Bulmer (Contributor), Guy N. Smith (Contributor), Nigel Brown (Contributor), David Donachie (Contributor), Richard Butler (Contributor), Peter Tremayne (Contributor), F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre (Contributor), Derek Wilson (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Jane Jackson (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Keith Taylor (Contributor), C.S. Forester (Contributor), Charles Partington (Contributor), Peter T. Garratt (Contributor), John Frizell (Contributor), M.B. Warriss (Contributor)

 

A compilation of different stories at sea.

[Daveo]

How to Get the Truth Out of Anyone

Top intelligence experts reveal their secret techniques to control conversations and get the information they need.

by Maryann Karinch.

 

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“Through exposing shocking, real-life spy Secrets, this must-read book accelerates results with its dangerously powerful psychological and emotional levers that instantly allow the reader to build and leverage trust, during your everyday and defining moments.

Hell, I’m not sure if it’s even legal to buy this book”

Janine Driver, body language contributor to NBC’s Today Show and best-selling author of You Say More Than You Think and You Can’t Lie to Me

 

“Karinch has amassed an extraordinary compilation of analysis and practical advice by top experts in the field.

There is nothing on the book market quite like it.

It will change the way you look at yourself and other people.

You will find it to be a fun and highly valuable read.”

 

Jack Devine, author of Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story, former head of CIA

 

In How to Get the Truth Out of Anyone, top intelligence experts from the worlds of espionage, business, and law enforcement reveal how they get the information they need and give you the key tools to get the information you need, including:

 

A system to vet sources

Eight conversation motivators that help you drive toward the truth.

Techniques to turn a hostile source into a cooperative one,

the means to control the sequence of a conversation,

getting the truth through email or on the phone.

Whether your aim is to grill suspects and witnesses, help someone with an urgent need, figure out who is lying or cheating, or upgrade your ability to be honest with yourself, How to Get The Truth Out of Anyone will show you how to do it.

[Daveo]

The Gorse Trilogy: The West Pier, Mr Stimpson And Mr Gorse, Unknown Assailant, by Patrick Hamilton.

 

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In Ernest Ralph Gorse, Patrick Hamilton creates one of fiction’s most captivating anti heroes, whose heartlessness and lack of scruple are matched only by the inventiveness and panache with which he swindles his victims.

With great deftness and precision Hamilton exposes how his dupes’ own naivete, snobbery or greed make them perfect targets.

These three novels are shot through with the brooding menace and sense of bleak inevitability so characteristic of the author. There is also vivid satire and caustic humour.

 

Gorse is thought to be based on the real life murderer Neville Heath, hanged in 1946.

 

Patrick Hamilton was born in 1904, and achieved early success as a novelist and playwright, his first novel published in his early twenties.

He wrote several other novels and a play, Rope, before he was thirty.

Both Rope and another play, Gaslight, were adapted for the big screen, the former by Alfred Hitchcock.

His novels include Craven House, The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure, The Plains of Cement (a trilogy later published together under the title Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky),

Hangover Square and The Slaves of Solitude.

He died in 1962, aged fifty-eight, alcoholism undoubtedly a factor in his early death.

[Daveo]

Pool And Its Role in Asian Communism by Colin Cotterill.

 

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The year is 1970. Waldo Monk is 65 years old, a widower, and two months away from retirement after a lifetime at Roundy's pool-ball factory in Mattfield, Indiana.

Enter Saifon, a twenty something Lao-American girl with an attitude, who has come to the US under mysterious circumstances.

She's just arrived at Roundly's, and it's Waldo's task to train her up for his job as pool-ball quality controller.

 

Saifon hates just about everyone, and even though Waldo is tempted to strangle her at first, a friendship soon grows between them.

Two personal disasters in Waldo's life lead to him 'adopting' Saifon instead.

But Saifon's mission at the factory is to make enough money, by hook or crook, to get back to Laos, for she has sworn to discover the truth about her past.

[Daveo]

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

by Mark Kurlansky.

 

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Cod, Mark Kurlansky’s third work of nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James Beard Award, is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character.

Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could.

What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod, frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack.

What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod.

As we make our way through the centuries of cod history, we also find a delicious legacy of recipes, and the tragic story of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once their numbers were legendary.

In this lovely, thoughtful history, Mark Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that changed the world forever changed by the world's folly?

“Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish.

[Daveo]

Interesting Times: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett.

 

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"May you live in interesting times" is the worst thing one can wish on a citizen of Discworld, especially on the distinctly unmagical sorcerer Rincewind, who has had far too much perilous excitement in his life.

But when a request for a "Great Wizzard" arrives in Ankh Morpork via carrier albatross from the faraway Counterweight Continent, it's he who's sent as emissary.

Chaos threatens to follow the impending demise of the Agatean Empire's current ruler.

And, for some incomprehensible reason, someone believes Rincewind will have a mythic role in the war and wholesale bloodletting that will surely ensue.

(Carnage is pretty much a given, since Cohen the Barbarian and his extremely elderly Silver Horde are busily formulating their own plan for looting, pillaging, and, er, looking wistfully at girls.) However, Rincewind firmly believes there are too many heroes already in the world, yet only one Rincewind.

And he owes it to the world to keep that one alive for as long as possible.

[Daveo]

The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian.

 

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An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity."

 

Captain Jack Aubrey, R. N., arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Navy.

He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a dispatch vessel.

But the War of 1812 breaks out while they are en route.

Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen's past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance.

[Daveo]

Great Commanders of the Modern World; 1866-1975

By Andrew Roberts.

 

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What tactics did Montgomery employ to defeat Rommel at El Alamein?

How did General Gap's Viet Minh troops inflict defeat on a French army at Dien Bien Phu, despite the massive artillery superiority of their opponents?

What was the secret behind George S. Patton's masterly control of armoured units?

In Great Commanders of the Modern World, Andrew Roberts has assembled some of our most distinguished historians (including such names as Michael Burleigh, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Richard Overy) to provide an authoritative account of the lives and careers of the 24 greatest military commanders of the period, from Erich Ludendorff to John Pershing, Heinz Guderian to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ivan Konev to Moshe Dayan.

As accessible and informative as it is rigorous and scholarly, Great Commanders of the Modern World is the perfect introduction to its subject for the general reader, but also a stimulating and thought-provoking read for those with greater knowledge of military history.

Along with the other volumes in the Great Commanders series, it is an indispensable guide to the greatest generals the world has seen.

[Daveo]

revayne by Jonathan (aka Robert Ludlum) Ryder.

 

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Brilliant, fearless, incorruptible, Andrew Trevayne was a self-made millionaire at thirty-five, former Undersecretary of State, current head of one of the nation's most prestigious foundations. Now, at the express wish of the president, Trevayne undertakes an investigation into the "secret government" and is swept up in a tidal wave of intrigue and danger beyond the corridors of official power...into a nightmare maze where Mafia leaders and billionaires mingle...where Congress and even the presidency itself can be bought and sold. Here, in this sizzling world of mystery, seduction, and betrayal...where his family's survival and his own hinge on a hair trigger...where sinister forces are poised to exact a chilling conspiracy...here, a man like Trevayne can become a dreaded enemy, a duped pawn or a king.

[Daveo]

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk.

 

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The Museum of Innocence, set in Istanbul between 1975 and today, tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique.

In his romantic pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal compulsively amasses a collection of objects that chronicles his lovelorn progress, a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart.

 

The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long, obsessive love affair; and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul's upper classes that find themselves caught between traditional and westernised ways of being.

Orhan Pamuk's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring love story and exploration of the nature of romance.

 

Pamuk built The Museum of Innocence in the house in which his hero's fictional family lived, to display Kemal's strange collection of objects associated with Fusun and their relationship.

The house opened to the public in 2012 in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul.

[Daveo]

Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz.

 

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A coterie of artists, prostitutes, saints, and seers are all aspiring towards fame and hoping for love and acceptance.

Instead they find high rents, faithless partners, and dead end careers.

Offbeat, funny and bitingly satirical, "Slaves of New York" sheds an incomparable light on the city's denizens and social mores.

[Daveo]

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.

 

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Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )

A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.

Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.'

(Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.

 

[Daveo]

Cool Cars by Quentin Willson.

 

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A comprehensive and compact guide to the world's best cars, Cool Cars features more than a hundred classic cars, from the Bentley R-Type Continental and the Buick Roadmaster to the Datsun 240Z and the Lamborghini Countach.

Stunning multi-angle photography reveals the true craftsmanship and beauty of these classic cars, while the text pays tribute to each vehicle and explains why it's destined to be a classic.

Cool Cars is a must-have gift for motor enthusiasts everywhere.

[Daveo]

he Circle by Dave Eggers.

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When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. 
The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America, even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. 
What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

[Daveo]

The World's Great Letters 1940 by M. Lincoln Schuster.

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Letters make the most interesting reading, especially other people's. 
This anthology is the product of many years of intensive research and collecting on the part of the editor. 
Each letter is prefaced with a biographical prelude and a summary of the historic background behind the correspondence. Among the over 120 letters herein, read as Alexander the Great announces to Darius, King of Persia, that he alone has dominion over the earth; Beethoven writes to his Immortal Beloved; Michelangelo negotiates with the Pope over the Sistine Chapel; Christopher Columbus reports his first impressions of America to the Court of Spain; Dostoyevsky describes his sensations in the minutes before he was to be executed; 
Thomas Mann writing in 1937 hurls his defiance against Hitler and the Nazi regime. 
Here then are love letters, taunting letters, shocking letters, letters dipped in honeyed phrases, letters written with words of gall, bombastic letters, letters breathing fire, letters with good news, letters that spelled disaster, passionate letters, secret letters, casual letters, gushing letters, impulsive letters, grandiloquent letters, crafty letters, short letters, voluminous letters, letters of courage, letters of hatred, letters of adoration, letters of fury, letters that people forgot to burn, letters that people did not dare to send, letters that glorified literature, thundering letters, tender letters, inspired letters, diabolical letters, letters that made history.

[Daveo]

Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia by Roberto Saviano.

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Published to coincide with the eponymous blockbuster film, Roberto Saviano's groundbreaking and utterly compelling book is a major international bestseller and has to date sold 750,000 copies in Italy alone. 
Since publishing his searing expose of their criminal activities, the author has received so many death threats from the Camorra that he has been assigned police protection. 
Known by insiders as 'the System', the Camorra, an organized crime network with a global reach and large stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs and toxic-waste disposal, exerts a malign grip on cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast is the deciding factor in why Campania has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and why cancer levels there have skyrocketed in recent years.

In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer and on a construction site, both controlled by 'the System', and as a waiter at a Camorra wedding. 
Born in Naples, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, and how his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to help an eighteen year old victim, left for dead in the street.

Gomorrah is both a bold and engrossing piece of investigative writing and one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.

[Daveo]

The Leper Colony by Ron McKay.

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Gilbert Downe's search for what he thought was his family leads him to uncover what he has begun to suspect: his name is no more his than the new one he has to adopt, John Hamilton Bone. 
His new home, Glasgow, is as welcoming as Christmas, and as cold as frost, and he becomes an outsider in a war.

[Daveo]

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.

 

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With his masterful first collection, multiple award winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.

From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality. . . Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasia invites us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it

[Daveo]

My Other Life by Paul Theroux.

 

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In the Washington Post Book World, Sven Birkerts called this exuberant novel "a complex and gripping work of invention and confession.

I understood again how the prose of a true writer can bring us to a world beyond."

The book spans almost thirty years in the life of a fictional "Paul Theroux," who moves through young bachelorhood in Africa, in and out of marriage, affairs, and employment, and between continents.

It's a wry, worldly, erotic, and deeply moving account of one man's first half century "among the strongest things Theroux has ever written"