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Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination
By Lee Siegel. 2006
Sex and the City, Saul Bellow, Eyes Wide Shut, Dante and the American self, Barbara Kingsolver, acting in Hollywood, Soviet…
painting in Soho, Angels in America, Jane Austen in the present, J. K. Rowling--nothing escapes Lee Siegel's incandescent eye. Siegel possesses an intellectual range and independent perspective unmatched by his peers, and Falling Upwards brings together the best of his essays, all of them rich with the trades mark wit and intelligence that have won him many friends and a few enemies. In these essential writings, Siegel deftly uses the occasion of a book, film, painting, or television show not merely to appraise it, but to make sense of life in a way that is more defiant of impoverished cultural "norms" than most contemporary artistic expression. Guided by the belief that a calculating self-interest in art-making diminishes the prospects for the imagination in life, Siegel celebrates authentic sensibilities and lambasts manufactured sentiments. With uncanny insight, yet also with incomparable logic and analytical rigor, he has invented a new idiom in which the language of criticism embodies the playful, creative, synthesizing power that has been largely abdicated by the arts in our time. In writing about works of culture, Siegel has created a standard by which to judge them.Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures
By Ellen Heltzel, Margo Hammond. 2008
With wit and wisdom, the bibliophile's Ebert & Roeper recommend more than 600 books based on what women care about…
most. Between the Covers is organized around their wide-ranging curiosity-about themselves, friends and family, the larger world-and their concerns, from health to sex to managing their finances. With such sections as "Babes We Love" (Role Models Real and Imagined), "The Babe Inside" (Focusing on Body and Soul), and "Love, Sex & Second Chances," this unique collection of fiction and nonfiction reflects how women really read.Reputation: Portraits in Power
By Majorie Wiliiams. 2008
Best Music Writing 2008
By Nelson George, Daphne Carr. 2008
Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflection
By Ishmael Reed. 2008
Best Food Writing 2017
By Holly Hughes. 2017
From small-town bakeries to big city restaurants, Best Food Writing offers a bounty of everything in one place. For eighteen…
years, Holly Hughes has scoured both the online and print world to serve up the finest collection of food writing. This year, Best food Writing delves into the intersection of fine dining and food justice, culture and ownership, tradition and modernity; as well as profiles on some of the most fascinating people in the culinary world today. Once again, these standout essays--compelling, hilarious, poignant, illuminating--speak to the core of our hearts and fill our bellies. Whether you're a fan of Michel Richard or Guy Fieri--or both--there's something for everyone here. Take a seat and dig in.Food and Drink: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions: Speeches/quotations Ser.)
By Susan L. Rattiner. 1998
This entertaining little book contains scores of thoughts, opinions, witticisms, and insights on two of the necessities -- and greatest…
pleasures -- of life. Included are humorous comments by Samuel Johnson ("A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.") and Henny Youngman ("My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle."); incisive remarks by George Bernard Shaw ("Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.") and Mark Twain ("Eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."); along with hilarious and frequently thoughtful advice from Robert Morley, G. K. Chesterton, W. C. Fields, Julia Child, Andy Rooney, Marilyn Monroe, Elsa Schiaparelli, and a host of other writers, humorists, and celebrities. Arranged according to subject (alcohol, cheese, cooking, fruits and vegetables, diet, hunger, etc.), this delightful collection will be welcomed by public speakers, speech writers, and general readers.Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book
By Sean Manning. 2010
Lovers of the printed book, arise! Thirty of today's top writers are here to tell you you're not alone. InBound…
to Last,an amazing array of authors comes to the passionate defense of the printed book with spirited,never-before-published essays celebrating the hardcover or paperback they hold most dear--not necessarily because of its contents, but because of its significance as a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceableobject. Whether focusing on the circumstances behind how a particular book was acquired, or how it has become forever "bound up" with a specific person, time, or place, each piece collected here confirms--poignantly, delightfully, irrefutably--that every book tells a story far beyond the one found within its pages. In addition to a foreword by Ray Bradbury,Bound to Lastfeatures original contributions by: Chris Abani, Rabih Alameddine, Anthony Doerr, Louis Ferrante, Nick Flynn, Karen Joy Fowler, Julia Glass, Karen Green, David Hajdu, Terrence Holt, Jim Knipfel, Shahriar Mandanipour, Sarah Manguso, Sean Manning, Joyce Maynard, Philipp Meyer, Jonathan Miles, Sigrid Nunez, Ed Park, Victoria Patterson, Francine Prose, Michael Ruhlman, Elissa Schappell, Christine Schutt, Jim Shepard, Susan Straight, J. Courtney Sullivan, Anthony Swofford, Danielle Trussoni, and Xu XiaobinBest Music Writing 2010
By Ann Powers, Daphne Carr. 2010
Best Music Writing has become one of the most eagerly awaited annuals out there. Celebrating the year in music writing…
by gathering a rich array of essays, missives, and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B to jazz to pop to blues and more, it is essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing. Scribes of every imaginable sort-novelists, poets, journalists, musicians-are gathered to create a multi-voiced snapshot of the year in music writing that, like the music it illuminates, is every bit as thrilling as it is riveting.All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers
By Alana Massey. 2017
"Alana Massey's prose is to brutal honesty what a mandolin is to a butter knife: she's sharper; she slices thinner;…
she shows the cross-section of a truth so deftly--so powerfully and cannily--it's hard to look away, and hard not to feel that something has shifted in you for having read her."--Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy ExamsFrom columnist and critic Alana Massey, a collection of essays examining the intersection of the personal with pop culture through the lives of pivotal female figures--from Sylvia Plath to Britney Spears--in the spirit of Chuck Klosterman, with the heart of a true fan. Mixing Didion's affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, ALL THE LIVES I WANT is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard. But it is, above all, a paean to the celebrities who have shaped a generation of women--from Scarlett Johansson to Amber Rose, Lil' Kim, Anjelica Huston, Lana Del Rey, Anna Nicole Smith and many more. These reflections aim to reimagine these women's legacies, and in the process, teach us new ways of forgiving ourselves.The Rub of Time: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017
By Martin Amis. 2019
The definitive collection of essays and reportage written during the past thirty years from one of most provocative and widely…
read writers--with new commentary by the author.For more than thirty years, Martin Amis has turned his keen intellect and unrivaled prose loose on an astonishing range of topics--politics, sports, celebrity, America, and, of course, literature. Now, at last, these incomparable essays have been gathered together. Here is Amis at the 2011 GOP Iowa Caucus, where, squeezed between "windbreakers and woolly hats," he pores over The Ron Paul Family Cookbook and laments the absence of "our Banquo," Herman Cain. He writes about finally confronting the effects of aging on his athletic prowess. He revisits, time and time again, the worlds of Bellow and Nabokov, his "twin peaks," masters who have obsessed and inspired him. Brilliant, incisive, and savagely funny, The Rub of Time is a vital addition to any Amis fan's bookshelf, and the perfect primer for readers discovering his fierce and tremendous talents for the first time.On Tennis: Five Essays
By David Foster Wallace. 2014
David Foster Wallace's extraordinary writing on tennis, collected for the first time in an exclusive digital-original edition. A "long-time rabid…
fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. ON TENNIS presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time. This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace's own experience as a prodigious tennis player ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"). He also challenges the sports memoir genre ("How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart"), takes us to the US Open ("Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"), and profiles of two of the world's greatest tennis players ("Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and "Federer Both Flesh and Not"). With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace's writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.Both Flesh and Not: Essays
By David Foster Wallace. 2012
Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "aone of the most influential writers of his generation" (New York Times). David Foster…
Wallace was beloved for his inimitable voice and wit-and, for many of his readers, admired as much for his astonishingly perceptive and inventive essays as he was for his fiction. Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more.In addition to these essays, Both Flesh and Not includes a selection from Wallace's personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions that serve as a reminder of Wallace's ferocious love of language. A sweeping, exhilarating collection of some of the author's most emotionally immediate work, Both Flesh and Not reminds us why A.O. Scott, writing in the New York Times, called David Foster Wallace "The best mind of his generation."Due Considerations
By John Updike. 2007
"A drop of truth, of lived experience, glistens in each." This is how John Updike, one of the world's most…
acclaimed novelists, modestly describes his nonfiction work, the brilliant and graceful essays and criticism he has written for more than five decades. Due Considerations is his sixth collection, and perhaps the most moving, stylish, and personal volume yet. Here he reflects on such writers and works as Emerson, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Colson Whitehead, The Wizard of Oz, Don DeLillo, The Portrait of a Lady, Margaret Atwood, The Mabinogion, and Proust. Updike also provides a whimsical and insightful list of "Ten Epochal Moments in the American Libido," from Pocahontas and John Smith to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; muses on how the practice of faith changes but doesn't disappear; and shares his reaction to the attacks on 9/11 (in Brooklyn that day, "Freedom, reflected in the street's diversity and quotidian ease, felt palpable"). Due Considerations proves that John Updike is, as noted in The Boston Globe, "our greatest critic of literature."Praise for Due Considerations:A New York Times Notable Book"The prose is clean, elegant, exquisitely calibrated. . . . [Updike is] one of the best essayists and critics this country has produced in the last century."-Los Angeles Times Book Review"Updike's scope is rather breathtaking. . . . When I do not know the subject well-as in his finely illustrated art reviews of Bruegel, Dürer and Goya-I learn much from what Updike has to impart. When he considers an author I love, like Proust or Czeslaw Milosz, I often find myself appreciating familiar things in a new way."-Christopher Hitchens, The New York Times Book Review"With his pack-rat curiosity . . . his prodigious memory and attendant knack for choosing the 'just-right' fact or quote, and his ever-present astonishment at both the stupidity and genius on display wherever he looks, Updike is in many ways an ideal critic. . . . It is a privilege to be in the company of this wonderfully American voice."-Rocky Mountain News"Updike knows more about literature than almost anyone breathing today. . . . He's beyond knowledgeable-he makes Google look wanting."-Baltimore Sun"Provocative and incisive . . . This volume reminds us that [Updike's] prose sets our literary bar very high indeed."-The Charlotte Observer"Updike offers an effortless mastery of form and content."-The Boston GlobeFrom the Trade Paperback edition.Bound to Last
By Sean Manning. 2010
Lovers of the printed book, arise! Thirty of today's top writers are here to tell you you're not alone. InBound…
to Last,an amazing array of authors comes to the passionate defense of the printed book with spirited,never-before-published essays celebrating the hardcover or paperback they hold most dear--not necessarily because of its contents, but because of its significance as a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceableobject. Whether focusing on the circumstances behind how a particular book was acquired, or how it has become forever "bound up" with a specific person, time, or place, each piece collected here confirms--poignantly, delightfully, irrefutably--that every book tells a story far beyond the one found within its pages. In addition to a foreword by Ray Bradbury,Bound to Lastfeatures original contributions by: Chris Abani, Rabih Alameddine, Anthony Doerr, Louis Ferrante, Nick Flynn, Karen Joy Fowler, Julia Glass, Karen Green, David Hajdu, Terrence Holt, Jim Knipfel, Shahriar Mandanipour, Sarah Manguso, Sean Manning, Joyce Maynard, Philipp Meyer, Jonathan Miles, Sigrid Nunez, Ed Park, Victoria Patterson, Francine Prose, Michael Ruhlman, Elissa Schappell, Christine Schutt, Jim Shepard, Susan Straight, J. Courtney Sullivan, Anthony Swofford, Danielle Trussoni, and Xu XiaobinBest Music Writing 2010
By Ann Powers, Daphne Carr. 2010
Best Music Writing has become one of the most eagerly awaited annuals out there. Celebrating the year in music writing…
by gathering a rich array of essays, missives, and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B to jazz to pop to blues and more, it is essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing. Scribes of every imaginable sort-novelists, poets, journalists, musicians-are gathered to create a multi-voiced snapshot of the year in music writing that, like the music it illuminates, is every bit as thrilling as it is riveting.On Tennis
By David Foster Wallace. 2014
David Foster Wallace's extraordinary writing on tennis, collected for the first time in an exclusive digital-original edition. A "long-time rabid…
fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. ON TENNIS presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time. This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace's own experience as a prodigious tennis player ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"). He also challenges the sports memoir genre ("How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart"), takes us to the US Open ("Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"), and profiles of two of the world's greatest tennis players ("Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and "Federer Both Flesh and Not"). With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace's writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.Both Flesh and Not
By David Foster Wallace. 2012
Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "aone of the most influential writers of his generation" (New York Times). David Foster…
Wallace was beloved for his inimitable voice and wit-and, for many of his readers, admired as much for his astonishingly perceptive and inventive essays as he was for his fiction. Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more.In addition to these essays, Both Flesh and Not includes a selection from Wallace's personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions that serve as a reminder of Wallace's ferocious love of language. A sweeping, exhilarating collection of some of the author's most emotionally immediate work, Both Flesh and Not reminds us why A.O. Scott, writing in the New York Times, called David Foster Wallace "The best mind of his generation."How to Be Alone: Essays
By Jonathan Franzen. 2003
From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of…
our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics. While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private dignity; and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen's controversial l996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay," as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. Jonathan Franzen won the National Book Award for fiction for The Corrections in 2001, and is the author of two other critically acclaimed novels, The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in New York City. A New York Times Notable Book.Salvador (Vintage International)
By Joan Didion. 1983
"Terror is the given of the place." The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its…
civil war. The writer is Joan Didion, who delivers an anatomy of that country's particular brand of terror-its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy.As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear," Didion gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics.From the Trade Paperback edition.