📚Science - 26 April 2024

📚Little Things: A positive toolkit for when life feels stressful by Fearne Cotton


How to make small changes to feel better, even when under stress.

Stress is a normal part of life, but it can be overwhelming. The habits, tools and advice in these pages will help you cope better, understand your own worries, and learn how to pause and respond rather than react when life feels too much.

This is the advice I’ve received – the lessons I’ve learned in my own ups and downs, the expert conversations from my Happy Place podcast, the therapies I’ve tried and the habits I’ve created – to keep working towards good days.

By focusing on the little things, practising self-awareness, and getting creative with the exercises and simple ideas, daily tricks and practical tools in this book, you can find balance in our hectic world and unlock daily happiness.

📚100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles

“You mean delegate, not relegate, right?”
“I think the word is cachet, not cache.” At one time or another we’ve all suffered the embarrassment of having our remarks corrected by a family member, colleague, or stranger.

100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles presents fifty pairs of words that people have trouble getting right and keeping straight—words that tend to get corrected when we’re least expecting it. These words include near-synonyms—words with subtle but important distinctions in meaning—like baleful vs. baneful, and effectual vs. efficacious. Other pairings bring together notorious sound-alikes, like faze (bother) vs. phase (stage), pour (put in fluid) vs. pore (read closely), and waive (forgo) vs. wave (say hello). The book also addresses some classic spelling blunders and “nonwords,” like beyond the pale, full reign, injust, and inobstrusive.

Each word has a definition and a pronunciation, and most have etymologies explaining the word’s origin. The mix-ups themselves are described in fun-to-read notes that provide clear solutions to help readers avoid making needless, uncomfortable gaffes. 100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles gives readers the chance to improve their command of words that are often heard but not so well expressed.

Who’s Whose? – A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words

You'll never again confuse affect and effect!

Have you ever been fazed by the spelling of phased, or fretted over the difference between anxiety and angst, stationery and stationary? If so, you are not alone: the English language is a minefield, full of words that look and sound alike but mean different things in different places.

Who's Whose? is an entertaining and essential A to Z guide to the most commonly confused words in English today, with real examples of good and bad usage to make differences crystal clear. In addition to documenting these verbal confusions, it offers a sympathetic guide to the seriousness of each gaffe (the Embarassment rating), an explanation of why it happens, and some handy hints on how to avoid it in future. With Who's Whose in your corner, you'll never again mistake a principle for a principal.

📚Ancient Worlds: Travel Back in Time and Discover the First Great Civilizations

Step back in time and witness how the greatest ancient cultures lived and thrived in this tour through history’s civilizations.

Ancient Worlds is a tour through history's most influential civilisations between 3000 BCE and 750 CE, capturing moments that reveal the culture and technology that made them great.

Children aged 7-11 will discover how deep knowledge of the Sun, sea, and stars enabled ancient seafarers to navigate the Pacific Ocean; witness the highs and lows of a thrilling chariot race in the Roman Empire's greatest hippodrome, and marvel at the military might of the Mauryan Empire and its incredible war elephants.

Dive straight into this book on ancient civilisations for kids, offering
• 12 impressive landscape pages capturing the daily life of different periods in time.
• A fascinating world tour of history, covering civilisations from Ancient Egypt to the Maya.
• A moment in time on each page, from battle action to a busy market, with annotations that break down each scene.

From Sumer, the world's earliest civilisation, to the heyday of the Maya, the tour crosses every continent, taking in developments in urban planning, art and architecture, religion, warfare, trade, and cultural exchange. Children and parents can enjoy exploring the similarities and differences of cultures around the world today, looking at each scene as a window into the lives of the most powerful and innovative peoples in times past.

At DK, we believe in the power of discovery. So why stop here?
If you like Ancient Worlds, then why not complete the collection? Take a peek at the earth beneath our feet with Life Underground, explore the different environments around us with Habitats of the World, and see how our ancestors lived with Life Through Time.

📚New Zealand Listener - 4/10 May, 2024