The book you are about to read will hopefully prevent you from falling into the same traps as I did. At first I thought traps were invented just for me to fall into but they lie in wait for us all. Sometimes I thought I would never get out of them alive. This book tells you about my life and part of my sisters, who I know suffered as I did. So trust me, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I will take you through my journey from past to present and hopefully you will find the light too. I had a lot of inspiration from my sister and my partner David. They have helped me turn my life around, for that I am eternally grateful. In the beginning you may think there is nothing unusual about my life, that shit happens. I can only tell you my side of the story and how it was for me.

From Queen Latifa to Count Basie, Madonna to Monk, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music traces popular music back to its roots in jazz, blues, country, and gospel through the rise in rock 'n' roll and the emergence of heavy metal, punk, and rap. Yet despite the vigor and balance of these musical origins, Martha Bayles argues, something has gone seriously wrong, both with the sound of popular music and the sensibility it expresses. Bayles defends the tough, affirmative spirit of Afro-American music against the strain of artistic modernism she calls 'perverse.' She describes how perverse modernism was grafted onto popular music in the late 1960s, and argues that the result has been a cult of brutality and obscenity that is profoundly anti-musical. Unlike other recent critics of popular music, Bayles does not blame the problem on commerce. She argues that culture shapes the market and not the other way around. Finding censorship of popular music "both a practical and a constitutional impossibility," Bayles insists that "an informed shift in public tastes may be our only hope of reversing the current malignant mood."

DescriptionHe was born with a hole in his soul.A hole that rendered him vulnerable and weak. A hole that made him constantly search for the unattainable. A search that would prove deadly and leave him, early in his life, emotionally, financially and physically crippled.With better understanding, an earlier diagnosis and different treatment perhaps his and many other souls could have been saved.Hole in my Soul is a collection of short poetic stories that tell of the devastating effects and consequences of his illness. It asks questions of society and its leaders, so corrupted by large corporations, that it treats disease, conflict and poverty with such ignorance and disdain.Hole in my Soul is a rallying call that exposes the ills of modern society and encourages readers to rise up and pressurise for a change in priorities that will better serve the global community.About the AuthorSimon Russell was born in 1959 in South London.The youngest of four children in a middle class family he was privately educated and until his illness overwhelmed him in his early thirties he had a highly paid and rewarding career as managing director of several well known brands, a wonderful home and a loving and supportive family.Inexplicably and piece by piece over an agonising and frightening 15 year period this all evaporated. In the latter stages the pace quickened with periods of mania, madness and hospitalisation.He has now turned to writing in an effort to rebuild his own life and to draw attention to the issues of mental illness. In particular to improve public understanding, to encourage early diagnosis and to increase funding into research so as to identify more successful treatment.Simon would welcome any comments on his work.

When 12-year-old Nora learns that her favourite cousin, Lizzie, is about to have risky open-heart surgery, she wonders if her family will ever feel whole again, and if she can find the courage to mend her own broken heart.

In this Michael L. Printz Honor Book, the Newbery Honor-winning creator of the Joey Pigza books shares the true story of how he became a writer the hard way by learning a valuable lesson while he was in college.

There's a Hole in Your Soul That Only God Can Fill

At age 21 after nursing school in Bangkok, I met an impossibly handsome American GI who taught English to a group of nurses. We quickly fell in love, but it was unrequited. When he asked me to marry him, I could not answer, torn between my strict upbringing and my new and confusing desires. Soon thereafter my true love was gone, sent back to the United States completing his tour of duty in Thailand. Within a few months I received a letter from Freddie's friend John, who wrote that Freddie, the man I loved was getting married. The news devastated me and left me feeling empty and incomplete. A part of me had been torn away and I was left with a hole in my heart. Over the course of the next 40 years I wanted to mend that part of me and heal my heart. The only way was to find Freddie and tell him how I truly felt. If I died without finding Freddie I felt I would leave this earth with my eyes open and die with a hole in my heart.