Download or read book Always Being Born written by Mrinal Sen and published by . This book was released on 2023-03-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An outspoken memoir by a much-celebrated Indian filmmaker. "I am a filmmaker by accident and an author by compulsion," claims Mrinal Sen, who became part of the great triumvirate of Bengali cinema--along with Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak--in the 1950s and '60s when he founded the rebellious Indian New Wave. Throughout his career, he kept that fire of protest burning, his acute political awareness and left-wing orientation spurring his creativity. Over decades, the themes that pervaded his cinema mirrored the spectrum of human suffering and experience, and in turn crystallized the anger of a restive mind against social injustice, economic deprivation, and communal divide. In this memoir, a celebrated ambassador of Indian cinema on the global stage, for whom cinema became a lexicon that gave voice to the times, reflects on encounters with the legends of the world of images as well as his inspirations and obsessions--not least among them, the city of Calcutta. Always Being Born is a fascinating memoir of a great artist and a buoyant social commentator who continued to confront, fight, and survive on the very challenges that propelled him to look beyond and dream.
Download or read book Better Never to Have Been written by David Benatar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. David Benatar presents a startling challenge to these assumptions. He argues that people systematically overestimate the quality of their life, and suffer quite serious harms by coming into existence.
Download or read book When a Monster Is Born written by Sean Taylor and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-17 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the options available to a monster from the time it is born, such as becoming the scary monster under someone's bed or playing on the school basketball team.
Download or read book Born Standing Up written by Steve Martin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Martin has been an international star for over thirty years. Here, for the first time, he looks back to the beginning of his career and charmingly evokes the young man he once was. Born in Texas but raised in California, Steve was seduced early by the comedy shows that played on the radio when the family travelled back and forth to visit relatives. When Disneyland opened just a couple of miles away from home, an enchanted Steve was given his first chance to learn magic and entertain an audience. He describes how he noted the reaction to each joke in a ledger - 'big laugh' or 'quiet' - and assiduously studied the acts of colleagues, stealing jokes when needed. With superb detail, Steve recreates the world of small, dark clubs and the fear and exhilaration of standing in the spotlight. While a philosophy student at UCLA, he worked hard at local clubs honing his comedy and slowly attracting a following until he was picked up to write for TV. From here on, Steve Martin became an acclaimed comedian, packing out venues nationwide. One night, however, he noticed empty seats and realised he had 'reached the top of the rollercoaster'. BORN STANDING UP is a funny and riveting chronicle of how Steve Martin became the comedy genius we now know and is also a fascinating portrait of an era.
Download or read book A Guide to Being Born written by Ramona Ausubel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reminiscent of Aimee Bender and Karen Russell, from the author of the new collection, Awayland—an enthralling book of stories that uses the world of the imagination to explore the heart of the human condition. Major literary talent Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, combines the otherworldly wisdom of her much-loved debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, with the precision of the short-story form. A Guide to Being Born is organized around the stages of life—love, conception, gestation, birth—and the transformations that happen as people experience deeply altering life events, falling in love, becoming parents, looking toward the end of life. In each of these eleven stories Ausubel’s stunning imagination and humor are moving, entertaining, and provocative, leading readers to see the familiar world in a new way. In “Atria” a pregnant teenager believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; in “Catch and Release” a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; and in “Tributaries” people grow a new arm each time they fall in love. Funny, surprising, and delightfully strange—all the stories have a strong emotional core; Ausubel’s primary concern is always love, in all its manifestations.
Download or read book The Trouble with Being Born written by E. M. Cioran and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components, birth and death, suggesting that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, "that laughable accident." In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. Through sharp observation and patient contemplation, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience. “A love of Cioran creates an urge to press his writing into someone’s hand, and is followed by an equal urge to pull it away as poison.”—The New Yorker “In the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."—Publishers Weekly "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."—Boston Phoenix
Download or read book Born on the Bayou written by Blaine Lourd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of the modern classics The Tender Bar and The Liars’ Club, Blaine Lourd writes a powerful Gothic memoir set in the bayous and oil towns of 1970s Louisiana. In this rags-to-riches memoir of finding your way and becoming a man, Blaine Lourd renders his childhood in rural Louisiana with his larger-than-life father, Harvey “Puffer” Lourd, Jr., a charismatic salesman during the exploding 1980s awl bidness. From cleaning a duck to drinking a beer, Puffer guides Blaine through the twists and turns of growing up, ultimately pointing him to a poignant truth: sometimes those you love the most can inflict the most pain. Set against a lush landscape of magnolia trees and majestic old homes, haunted swamps and swimming holes filled with wildlife, Lourd gets to the heart of being a Southerner with rawness and grace, beautifully detailing what it means to have a place so ingrained in your being. Just as the timeless memoirs All Over but the Shoutin’ and The Liar’s Club evoke the muggy air of a Southern summer and barrels of steaming crawfish, so does Blaine’s contemporary exploration of what it means to find yourself among the bayous and back roads. Charting his journey from his rural home to working the star-studded streets of Los Angeles as a financial advisor to the rich and famous, Blaine’s story is about the complicated path to success and identity. With witty grace and candid prose, he pays homage to family bonds, unwavering loyalty, and deep roots that cannot be severed, no matter how hard you try.
Download or read book Born Round written by Frank Bruni and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and always hungry. His relationship with eating was difficult and his struggle with it began early. When named the restaurant critic for The New York Times in 2004, he knew he would be performing one of the most watched tasks in the epicurean universe. And with food his friend and enemy both, his jitters focused primarily on whether he'd finally made some sense of that relationship. A captivating story of his unpredictable journalistic odyssey as well as his lifelong love-hate affair with food, Born Round will speak to everyone who's ever had to rein in an appetite to avoid letting out a waistband.
Download or read book Before You Were Born written by and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-04-27 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retells a folktale in which Lailah, a guardian angel, places the indentation that everyone has on the upper lip just before a baby is born.
Download or read book A Time to Be Born written by Dawn Powell and published by Steerforth. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scathing “comedy of manners” set in the 1940s “steers us through the lives of women who come to New York . . . for love, money, opportunity, and a good time” (New York Times). At the center of this 1942 novel are a wealthy, self-involved newspaper publisher and his scheming, novelist wife, Amanda Keeler—who ensnares Ohioan Vicky Haven in her social and romantic manipulations. Author Dawn Powell always denied Amanda Keeler was based upon the real-life Clare Boothe Luce until years later when she discovered a memo she’d written to herself in 1939 that said, “Why not do a novel on Clare Luce?” Which prompted Powell to write in her diary, “Who can I believe? Me or myself?” Set against an atmospheric backdrop of New York City in the months just before America’ s entry into World War II, A Time of Be Born is a scathing and hilarious study of cynical New Yorkers stalking each other for various selfish ends.
Download or read book Born with Teeth written by Kate Mulgrew and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised by unconventional Irish Catholics who knew "how to drink, how to dance, how to talk, and how to stir up the devil," Kate Mulgrew grew up with poetry and drama in her bones. But in her mother, a would-be artist burdened by the endless arrival of new babies, young Kate saw the consequences of a dream deferred. Determined to pursue her own no matter the cost, at 18 she left her small Midwestern town for New York, where, studying with the legendary Stella Adler, she learned the lesson that would define her as an actress: "Use it," Adler told her. Whatever disappointment, pain, or anger life throws in your path, channel it into the work. It was a lesson she would need. At twenty-two, just as her career was taking off, she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. Having already signed the adoption papers, she was allowed only a fleeting glimpse of her child. As her star continued to rise, her life became increasingly demanding and fulfilling, a whirlwind of passionate love affairs, life-saving friendships, and bone-crunching work. Through it all, Mulgrew remained haunted by the loss of her daughter, until, two decades later, she found the courage to face the past and step into the most challenging role of her life, both on and off screen. We know Kate Mulgrew for the strong women she's played -- Captain Janeway on Star Trek ; the tough-as-nails "Red" on Orange is the New Black. Now, we meet the most inspiring and memorable character of all: herself. By turns irreverent and soulful, laugh-out-loud funny and heart-piercingly sad, Born with Teeth is the breathtaking memoir of a woman who dares to live life to the fullest, on her own terms.
Download or read book Born to Be Posthumous The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey written by Mark Dery and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. ’A genius book about a bookish genius’ Daniel Handler, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events
Download or read book Always Already Free written by Enza Vita and published by Baraka Publishing (an imprint of InnerSelf Pty Ltd. This book was released on 2015-02 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This brilliant contribution to our modern understanding of authentic identity and Presence brings us to a new awareness of ourselves and our innate wholeness and completeness. Enza’s personal awakening story, in the first few pages, is worth the price of admission. Enlightened wisdom is like an endangered natural resource today, which we overlook at our peril; let’s join in exploring and developing our own innate transformational resources for a change.” — LAMA SURYA DAS, author of Awakening the Buddha Within “This is a great contribution to our appreciation of the genuine voice of Pure Presence. It brings us to a deeper awareness of what it means to study the self and our intrinsic true nature as that which is already perfect, whole and complete. It is certainly worthy of your time and attention. — ZEN MASTER D. GENPO MERZEL, author of Big Mind, Big Heart Based on Enza’s own experience, Always Already Free is a guide to discovering the deepest truth about who we are. In this book, the author: • Presents her own personal direct encounter with the awakened state. • Thoroughly addresses the ongoing debate between the necessity of spiritual practice and the ever-present possibility of sudden awakening, while at the same time offering detailed instructions for the practice “Instant Presence - Allowing Natural Meditation To Happen.” • Lays out what it means to consciously live and embody the truth of one’s being, the phenomenon of “finding and losing” oneself, and the power and seduction of our thoughts and emotions that keep us held in narrow self-definitions and create endless suffering. • Guides the reader from the seeking process through the integration of spiritual enlightenment into everyday life and reveals that enlightenment is not a faraway dream, intellectual knowledge or even an experience but the direct realization of our true nature always available here and now. “While it’s true that we are always the Self"– says Enza Vita “if this hasn’t been truly and directly realized, this knowledge won’t do us any good. Just knowing that there is no gate to pass through doesn’t mean that we are at the end of the search, not if we are still standing outside that gateless gate. Realization is not about you, the wave, realizing it is ocean. The ocean realizes itself in you and reveals itself to have never been just a wave.”
Download or read book Born a Crime written by Trevor Noah and published by One World. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
Download or read book Born Both written by Hida Viloria and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's foremost intersex activists, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of gender identity, self-acceptance, and love. My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing--but it could also be isolating. I had to know if there were other intersex people like me, but when I finally found an intersex community to connect with I was shocked, and then deeply upset, to learn that most of the people I met had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Realizing that the invisibility of intersex people in society facilitated these practices, I made it my mission to bring an end to it--and became one of the first people to voluntarily come out as intersex at a national and then international level. Born Both is the story of my lifelong journey toward finding love and embracing my authentic identity in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or, and of my decades-long fight for human rights and equality for intersex people everywhere.
Download or read book The Twice Born written by Aatish Taseer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Twice-Born, Aatish Taseer embarks on a journey of self-discovery in an intoxicating, unsettling personal reckoning with modern India, where ancient customs collide with the contemporary politics of revivalism and revenge When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism, he was eighteen, the Westernized child of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among the intellectual and cultural elite of New Delhi. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition. Known as the twice-born—first into the flesh, and again when initiated into their vocation—the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing force of modernity collides with the insistent presence of the past. In a globalized world, to be modern is to renounce India—and yet the tide of nationalism is rising, heralded by cries of “Victory to Mother India!” and an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence. From the narrow streets of the temple town to a Modi rally in Delhi, among the blossoming cotton trees and the bathers and burning corpses of the Ganges, Taseer struggles to reconcile magic with reason, faith in tradition with hope for the future and the brutalities of the caste system, all the while challenging his own myths about himself, his past, and his countries old and new.
Download or read book Cosmic Pessimism written by Eugene Thacker and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We’re doomed.” So begins the work of the philosopher whose unabashed and aphoristic indictments of the human condition have been cropping up recently in popular culture. Today we find ourselves in an increasingly inhospitable world that is, at the same time, starkly indifferent to our species-specific hopes, desires, and disappointments. In the Anthropocene, pessimism is felt everywhere but rarely given its proper place. Though pessimism may be, as Eugene Thacker says, the lowest form of philosophy, it may also contain an enigma central to understanding the horizon of the human. Written in a series of fragments, aphorisms, and prose poems, Thacker’s Cosmic Pessimism explores the varieties of pessimism and its often-conflicted relation to philosophy. “Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?”
