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Exploded view: observations on reading, writing and life
By Jean McKay. 2001
The exploded view is a diagram which shows how each component of an object relates to the whole, and is…
usually applied to machinery. McKay uses it to explode everything from macaroons to metaphors. In her alphabetical essays she explodes language and her world view, taking a variety of things apart, from babies and crabapples to funerals and acorns, and putting them back together in unexpected ways. Some strong language.The merry heart: selections 1980-1995
By Robertson Davies. 1996
A collection of Robertson Davies' reflections on books, reading, and writing. These essays, book reviews, and other writings, taken from…
a selection which he had planned to publish before his death, reveal Davies at his vintage best. 1996.A way of being free
By Ben Okri. 1998
"A way of being free" brings together twelve of Ben Okri's most controversial non-fiction pieces in this beautifully crafted collection…
on the theme of freedom. Lyrical, imaginative and provocative, it confirms Okri's status as one of the most inspiring of contemporary writers.The myth of Sisyphus, and other essays: And Other Essays (Vintage international)
By Albert Camus. 1991
In the title essay, the French philosopher and writer develops an affirmative attitude towards life, even though life is regarded…
as meaningless and absurd. The other essays also deal with the theme of affirmation in the face of absurdity. 1991. Uniform title: Mythe de Sisyphe.The Morningside world of Stuart McLean
By Stuart McLean. 1989
This collection of McLean's humourous essays, originally broadcast on the CBC radio program "Morningside", looks at the extraordinary things in…
everyday life, including popsicles, the neighbourhood barber shop, dust balls and wooden pencils. Uniform title: Morningside (Radio program)Say yes to God: Mary and the revealing of the word made flesh
By Martin Warner. 1999
These essays offer reflection on the process of revelation and response. The title essay points not only to Mary's experience,…
but also to our own progress along the pilgrimage of faith, to our aptitude for reception of God's self-disclosure, and the many different levels, ways, and contexts in which we recognise and receive it. (Given by Guild of Church Braillists) 1999.Wormholes: essays and occasional writings
By John Fowles, Jan Relf. 1998
A collection of non-fiction writing from John Fowles which includes articles written for magazines; book reviews from "The New York…
Times Book Review" and the "Irish Press"; various forewords and introductions; a tribute to William Golding; and some autobiographical pieces.High tide in Tucson: essays from now or never
By Barbara Kingsolver. 1995
Autobiographical essays from novelist Kingsolver, "Pigs in Heaven". In the title selection, Kingsolver, returning from an ocean vacation, inadvertently brings…
a hermit crab back to her desert home. After puzzling over his odd behavior, she decides her new pet is reacting to the tides of Tucson! Other selections discuss being a writer, a mother, and a desert dweller. Bestseller. 1995.Hooking up
By Tom Wolfe. 2001
Letters from London 1990-1995
By Julian Barnes. 1995
This is a collection of Julian Barnes's writing for "The New Yorker". Since 1990, Barnes has written a regular "Letter…
from London" which has covered such subjects as the Lloyd's insurance disaster, the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher, the troubles of the Royal Family, etc. His essays aim to provide a portrait of 1990s Britain.Ordinary Wonder Tales
By Emily Urquhart. 2022
A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine—and reveals the magic in the everyday. “I’ve…
always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.Utopia's Debris: Selected Essays
By Gary Indiana. 2008
Gary Indiana is one of America's leading cultural critics-a public intellectual who has written key essays on every aspect of…
American culture. Utopia's Debris comprises selections of his very best work, revealing him to be an enormously acute, frequently scabrous, and always brilliant observer of the best and worst America has to offer.His writings range from popular culture-trash novels, architectural wonders and horrors-to appreciations of the best of modern literature, art, and cinema. They include his convincing (and highly entertaining) debunking of fashionable conspiracy theories, a spirited and contrarian defense of Bill Clinton's autobiography, a Mencken-like examination of the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the politics of celebrity in what Indiana calls the Age of Contempt.A postmodern Emerson, Indiana wields scalpel-sharp wit and a fealty to logic on issues in which, all too often, irrationalism and emotionalism hold sway. At times rigorously serious, at other times whimsical, Indiana's most conspicuous feature is skepticism-his wildly satirical contempt for conventional wisdom.Near-Death Experiences . . . and Others: And Others
By Robert Gottlieb. 2018
A new collection of immersive essays from the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth centuryThis new…
collection from the legendary editor Robert Gottlieb features twenty or so pieces he’s written mostly for The New York Review of Books, ranging from reconsiderations of American writers such as Dorothy Parker, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe (“genius”), and James Jones, to Leonard Bernstein, Lorenz Hart, Lady Diana Cooper (“the most beautiful girl in the world”), the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth, the scandalous movie star Mary Astor, and not-yet president Donald Trump. The writings compiled here are as various as they are provocative: an extended probe into the world of post-death experiences; a sharp look at the biopics of transcendent figures such as Shakespeare, Molière, and Austen; a soap opera-ish movie account of an alleged affair between Chanel and Stravinsky; and a copious sampling of the dance reviews he’s been writing for The New York Observer for close to twenty years. A worthy successor to his expansive 2011 collection, Lives and Letters, and his admired 2016 memoir, Avid Reader, Near-Death Experiences displays the same insight and intellectual curiosity that have made Gottlieb, in the words of The New York Times’s Dwight Garner, “the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century.”Bermuda Shorts
By James Patterson. 2010
In clothing, Bermuda Shorts are a kind of casual formal wear - and in this collection of essays, Bermuda Shorts…
is the perfect metaphor for James J. Patterson's fundamentally serious but playful literary style. Patterson writes like the love child of Henry Miller and Mary Karr, with all the contradictions that implies -- a philosopher who thinks best over a glass of fine wine; an ex-Catholic still haunted by the image of the Crucifixion; an irreverent political satirist whose patriotism flies the flag of another iconoclast, Thomas Paine. Patterson grew up with a foot planted in each of two worlds -- one in Washington DC, the Capital of the Empire as he calls it, where the wheels of power spin, and one in rural Ontario, where his Canadian mother insisted the family spend their summers. His father, one of the wizards of twentieth century newspaper publishing, introduced him to the city's wheels of money and power, which he would later navigate as an entrepreneur, starting his first business at 20. But those Canadian summers introduced him to a different world - one where a cedar strip boat was better than any car, and where the ghosts of those who'd previously inhabited the family's island house floated out over the water of Lovesick Lake. It is those two worlds that blend in this collection, in reflections both serious and playful, on what it means to be a man, an artist, an iconoclast, a patriot, a lover, as the 20th century rolls over into the 21st.Seek!: Selected Nonfiction
By Rudy Rucker. 1999
The essays and memoirs collected in Seek! trace Rudy Rucker's trajectory through the final decade of the second millennium. His…
topics include artificial life, chaos, the big bang, Pieter Brueghel, the church of the subgenius, live sex, mathematics, science fiction, and TV evangelism. A computer scientist and programmer, Rucker is an articulate, engaging guide to the world on either side of the computer screen.Best Food Writing 2016
By Holly Hughes. 2016
For sixteen years, this annual anthology has served up the cream of each year's crop of food writing. The 2016…
edition continues the tradition with a dynamic mix of writers, from seasoned journalists and authors to star chefs and up-and-coming bloggers. Provocative journalism, intriguing profiles, moving memoir, and more-Best Food Writing 2016 hits the spot for the foodie in all of us.The Impossible will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
By Paul Rogat Loeb. 2014
What keeps us going when times get tough? How do we keep on working for a more humane world, no…
matter how hard it sometimes seems? In a time when our involvement has never been needed more, this anthology of political hope will help readers with the essential work of healing our communities, our nation, our planet--despite all odds. In THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE, a phrase borrowed from Billie Holliday, the editor of Soul of a Citizen brings together fifty stories and essays that range across nations, eras, wars, and political movements. Danusha Goska, an Indiana activist with a paralyzing physical disability, writes about overcoming political immobilization, drawing on her history with the Peace Corps and Mother Teresa. Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, finds value in seemingly doomed or futile actions taken by oppressed peoples. Rosemarie Freeney Harding recalls the music that sustained the civil rights movement, and Paxus Calta-Star recounts the powerful vignette of an 18-year-old who launched the overthrow of Bulgaria's dictatorship. Many of the essays are new, others classic works that continue to inspire. Together, these writers explore a path of heartfelt community involvement that leads beyond despair to compassion and hope. The voices collected in THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE will help keep us all working for a better world despite the obstacles.The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009
By Irving Kristol. 2011
My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop
By Richard Russo, Emily St. John Mandel, Leif Parsons, Ronald Rice. 2012
In My Bookstore our favorite writers-from Elin Hilderbrand, to John Grisham, to Dave Eggers-express their adoration and admiration for their…
favorite bookstores and booksellers. The relationship between a writer and her local bookstore can last for years or even decades. Often it is the author's local store that supported her during the early days of her career and that works tirelessly to introduce her work to new readers. But authors are also readers and customers, just like us. For them, as for most of us, bookstores serve as the anchor for our communities, the place that introduces us to new ideas (and new neighbors), and that sets our children on the path to becoming lifelong readers and lovers of books. Brimming with original, deeply moving, funny, and exceedingly well-crafted tributes to bookstores, from Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine (Ron Currie, Jr.) to Powells City of Books in Portland, Oregon (Chuck Palahniuk) and everywhere in between, My Bookstore is a joyful celebration of our bricks-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops.The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism -- The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens
By Martin Amis, Windsor Mann. 2011
Over the past few decades, the bestselling author of Hitch-22 has crisscrossed the globe debating religious scholars, Catholic clergy, rabbis,…
and devout Christians on the existence of God--appearances that have attracted thousands of people on both sides of the issue. He has been invited to talk shows and events to discuss everything from the death of Jerry Falwell to the sainthood of Mother Teresa, from U.S. policy in the Middle East to the dangers of religious fundamentalism and beyond. And he is always armed with pithy discourse that is as intelligent as it is quotable.The Quotable Hitchens gathers for the first time the eminent journalist, public intellectual, and all-around provocateur Christopher Hitchen's most scathing, inflammatory, hilarious, and clear-cut commentary from the course of his storied career. Drawn from his many TV appearances, debates, lectures, interviews, articles, and books, the quotations are arranged alphabetically by subject--from atheism and alcoholism to George Orwell and Bertrand Russell, from Islamofascism and Iraq to smoking and sex.