Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
What Gives Us Our Names - cover

What Gives Us Our Names

Alvin Pang

Publisher: Ethos Books

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

He’d gotten the idea from a book, not unlike the one you last read and loved, whose lurid covers you have already forgotten. For a canvas, he used not his own skin but his very life, spending his days as if he were made up of the most telling bits of other people. To do this, he learned to watch quietly and look deeply, past the busy surfaces until he could discern the colours beneath, the ones that did not change. One by one he would name them as he wove them into his heart in the deep of night. He touched you once, borrowing pieces of your story in passing. They are here still, in case you wish to look.
Available since: 05/12/2025.
Print length: 56 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Girl Who Drove the Cows - cover

    The Girl Who Drove the Cows

    Lucy Maud Montgomery

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.
    The Girl Who Drove the Cows: "I wonder who that pleasant-looking girl who drives cows down the beech lane every morning and evening is," said Pauline Palmer, at the tea table of the country farmhouse where she and her aunt were spending the summer.
    Show book
  • The Eye of the Camera - From their pens to your ears genius in every story - cover

    The Eye of the Camera - From...

    Fred M White

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Richard Bernard Heldmann was born on 12th October 1857, in St Johns Wood, North London.  
    By his early 20’s Heldmann began publishing fiction for the myriad magazine publications that had sprung up and were eager for good well-written content.  
    In October 1882, Heldmann was promoted to co-editor of Union Jack, a popular magazine, but his association with the publication ended suddenly in June 1883.  It appears Heldman was prone to issuing forged cheques to finance his lifestyle.  In April 1884 he was sentenced to 18 months hard labour. 
    In order to be well away from the scandal and the damage that this had caused to his reputation Heldmann adopted a pseudonym on his release from jail.  Shortly thereafter the name ‘Richard Marsh’ began to appear in the literary periodicals.  The use of his mother’s maiden name as part of it seems both a release and a lifeline. 
    A stroke of very good fortune arrived with his novel ‘The Beetle’ published in 1897.  This would turn out to be his greatest commercial success and added some much-needed gravitas to his literary reputation.   
    Marsh was a prolific writer and wrote almost 80 volumes of fiction as well as many short stories, across many genres from horror and crime to romance and humour.   His unusual characters, plotting devices and other literary developments have identified his legacy as one of the best British writers of his time.   
    Richard Marsh died from heart disease in Haywards Heath in Sussex on 9th August 1915.  He was 57.
    Show book
  • The Island of Dr Moreau - cover

    The Island of Dr Moreau

    H. G. Wells

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked gentleman stranded on a Pacific island, is lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau. He is forced to confront dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life.
    Show book
  • Heart of Darkness - cover

    Heart of Darkness

    Joseph Conrad

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Heart of Darkness (1899) is a short novel by Joseph Conrad, written as a frame narrative, about Charles Marlow's life as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa.    The river is "a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land." In the course of his travel in central Africa, Marlow becomes obsessed with Mr. Kurtz.    The story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel of European imperialism. Originally published as a three-part serial story, in Blackwood's Magazine, the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages.    In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century. Short Summary Aboard the Nellie, anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend, England, Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors about the events that led to his appointment as captain of a river-steamboat for an ivory trading company. He describes his passage on ships to the wilderness to the Company's station, which strikes Marlow as a scene of devastation: disorganized, machinery parts here and there, periodic demolition explosions, weakened native black men who have been demoralized, in chains, literally being worked to death, and strolling behind them a white Company man in a uniform carrying a rifle.    At this station Marlow meets the Company's chief accountant who tells him of a Mr. Kurtz, and explains that Kurtz is a first-class agent.
    Show book
  • Two Tales from Stephen Crane - The Open Boat An Episode of War - cover

    Two Tales from Stephen Crane -...

    Stephen Crane

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Stephen Crane was an American novelist, poet and journalist. Crane is noted for his early employment of naturalism, a literary style in which characters face realistically portrayed and often bleak circumstances, but Crane added impressionistic imagery and biblical symbolism to the austere realism. Here are two of his most famous stories, The Open Boat and An Episode of War.
    Show book
  • The Lonely God - A Short Story - cover

    The Lonely God - A Short Story

    Agatha Christie

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    In the quiet halls of the British Museum, a forgotten stone idol sits unnoticed on a high shelf—its features eroded by time, its purpose long-lost. But for Frank Oliver, a lonely man recently returned to England, the little god becomes something more: a symbol of connection in a world that has passed him by. 
    When Frank notices a young woman visiting the same statue, day after day, something begins to shift. In their quiet devotion to a nameless figure, two strangers begin to find the possibility of something else—companionship, perhaps even love. 
    Agatha Christie’s The Lonely God is a tender and thoughtful departure from her usual crime stories. In this short tale, she explores isolation, identity, and unexpected human connection with quiet grace. 
    Perfect for fans of classic literature, character-driven stories, and emotional fiction with a hint of mystery.
    Show book