Download or read book Arrangements in Blue Notes on Loving and Living Alone written by Amy Key and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Arrangements in Blue] reflects on a life spent as a single woman and how that affects friendships, freedom, domesticity, family, sexuality, the psyche, the self. It observes things about being alone that I have never seen or heard articulated before.... beautiful, effortless.... I haven’t been so obsessed with a book in a long time." —Dolly Alderton “The poet Amy Key’s first book might be the most hyped memoir of 2023 (or at least a close second to Spare)… This raw, gorgeous, pulsing memoir is…the harbinger of a real talent.” —Laura Hackett, Sunday Times [UK] Amy Key—a writer “of rare and strange magic” (Guardian)—probes the art of living without romance in this soul-stirring debut. When British poet Amy Key was growing up, she envisioned a life shaped by love—and Joni Mitchell’s album Blue was her inspiration. “Blue became part of my language of intimacy,” she writes, recalling the dozens of times she played the record as a teen, “an intimacy of disclosure, vulnerability, unadorned feeling that I thought I’d eventually share with a romantic other.” As the years ticked by, she held on to this very specific idea of romance like a bottle of wine saved for a special occasion. But what happens when the romance we are all told will give life meaning never presents itself? Now single in her forties, Key explores the sweeping scales of romantic feeling as she has encountered them, using the album Blue as an expressive anchor: from the low notes of loss and unfulfilled desire—punctuated by sharp, discordant feelings of jealousy and regret—to the deep harmony of friendship, and the crescendos of sexual attraction and self-realization. Finding solace in Mitchell’s songs, Key plumbs Blue’s track list for themes that resonate with her heart’s seasons. Listening to the song “California,” she explores the mixed emotions that come with traveling alone in a world built for couples; she juxtaposes the lonely lyrics of “My Old Man” with the pleasurable art of curating a perfect apartment for one; and with the utmost tenderness, she parses out her decision to not have children with the eloquent “Little Green.” Mapping the evolution of her early conceptions of love through her adulthood, Key offers a tender and nakedly candid celebration of the many forms of intimacy that often go unnoticed. An essential work for both the single and the partnered, Arrangements in Blue is a bold manual for building a life on your own terms.
Download or read book Arrangements in Blue written by Amy Key and published by Jonathan Cape. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible life without romantic love isn't so bad? An essential memoir about building life on your own terms 'Marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy' OBSERVER 'The harbinger of real talent' SUNDAY TIMES 'A tender, subversive study of love' NEW STATESMAN When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love. Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - which shaped Key's expectations of love - as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed. With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss- loneliness, envy, grief and failure. The result is a book which inspires us to live and love more honestly. 5* READER REVIEWS- 'It broke and mended my heart simultaneously' 'Stunning, honest, touching' 'An astonishing work, brilliantly written'
Download or read book High Notes and Low written by Ray W. Moore and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2012 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Amadeus). Everyone loves to laugh, to wonder, and to be amazed. High Notes and Low presents interesting and unusual anecdotal information about classical music and musicians in a down-to-earth, easily readable form. Free of technical jargon, the book is appealing not only to the musician but to the general reader as well, and offers information that all can enjoy. The book is divided into six sections that provide general categories of anecdotes Composers, Performers, Critics, Conductors, Compositions, and This and That and encompasses information from all periods of music history. Whether it's camels onstage during the performance of an opera, a conductor's faux pas with a queen, an enraged wife burning her husband's only copy of a symphony, or a look into the many complexities of the Metropolitan Opera building at Lincoln Center, readers will find a vast assortment of fascinating, unexpected, and often unusual facts to keep them enthralled. No other book on the market provides such a wide, enthusiastic, and all-encompassing look into the facts and foibles of classical music. Originally designed for broadcast on KLRE-FM, Arkansas' premier classical music station, High Notes and Low proves that the world of the classical musician is indeed a wonderful, and sometimes zany, place to visit!
Download or read book Summary of The Art of Living Alone and Loving It by Jane Matthews written by QuickRead and published by QuickRead.com. This book was released on with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to enjoy your own company. Living alone is often regarded as a sad or lonely experience characterized by some form of social failure. But Jane Matthews seeks to transcend this stigma by providing practical and positive tips for those who want to build a fulfilling life on their own. Written with single women in mind, The Art of Living Alone (2018) demonstrates that living alone doesn’t have to be sad and it definitely doesn’t mean you’re a failure! Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a preview and not a replacement for the original book. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended to. If you are the original author of any book on QuickRead and would like us to remove it, please contact us at [email protected].
Download or read book Living Alone written by Stella Benson and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living Alone (1919) is a novel by Stella Benson. Considered a pioneering work of fantasy fiction, Living Alone is a story of magic set in London during the First World War. Benson’s meditative, diaristic prose guides the reader alongside her protagonist, a young woman introduced to a world of witchcraft and wizardry at “the House of Living Alone.” “Nothing else happened in that room. At least nothing more important than the ordinary manifestations attendant upon magic. The lamp had tremulously gone out. Coloured flames danced about the Stranger's head. One felt the thrill of a purring cat against one's ankles, one saw its green eyes glare. But these things hardly counted.” Guided by her political commitments, Sarah Brown dedicates herself to charity work during the First World War. When a witch invites her to stay in a mysterious home, Sarah embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with her loyal dog David. Described by its author in playfully mysterious terms—“This is not a real book.”—Living Alone is a unique and haunting masterpiece that looks upon a tumultuous historical period with fresh perspective, presenting a story of growth and identity in an intoxicating world of magic and mystery. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Stella Benson’s Living Alone is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.
Download or read book The Lonely Hunter written by Aimée Lutkin and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When can we say we’ll be single forever—and that’s okay? One woman questions our society’s pathologizing of loneliness in this crackling, incisive blend of memoir and cultural reporting. “The Lonely Hunter challenged everything I assumed about the nature of loneliness and what it means to lead an authentic life.”—Doree Shafrir, author of Thanks for Waiting and Startup: A Novel ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Cosmopolitan, She Reads One evening, thirtysomething writer Aimée Lutkin found herself at a dinner party surrounded by couples. When the conversation turned to her love life, Lutkin stated simply, “I don’t really know if I’m going to date anyone ever again. Some people are just alone forever.” Her friends rushed to assure her that love comes when you least expect it and to make recommendations for new dating apps. But Lutkin wondered, Why, when there are more unmarried adults than ever before, is there so much pressure to couple up? Why does everyone treat me as though my real life won’t start until I find a partner? Isn’t this my real life, the one I’m living right now? Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with our culture? Over the course of the next year, Lutkin set out to answer these questions and to see if there really was some trick to escaping loneliness. She went on hundreds of dates; read the sociologists, authors, and relationship experts exploring singlehood and loneliness; dove into the wellness industrial complex; tossed it all aside to binge-watch Netflix and eat nachos; and probed the capitalist structures that make alternative family arrangements nearly impossible. Chock-full of razor-sharp observations and poignant moments of vulnerability, The Lonely Hunter is a stirring account of one woman’s experience of being alone and a revealing exposé of our culture’s deep biases against the uncoupled. Blazingly smart, insightful, and full of heart, this is a book for anyone determined to make, follow, and break their own rules.
Download or read book Loneliness as a Way of Life written by Thomas Dumm and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds. A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower. Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.
Download or read book Love and Other Foreign Words written by Erin McCahan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can anyone be truly herself - or truly in love - in a language that's not her own? Sixteen-year-old Josie knows a lot of languages- she speaks High School, College, Friends, Boyfriends, Break-ups, and even the language of Beautiful Girls. But none of these is her native tongue - the only people who speak that are her best friend Stu and her sister, Kate. So when Kate gets engaged to an insufferable guy, how can Josie see it as anything but the mistake of a lifetime? As battles are waged over secrets and semantics, Josie is forced to examine her feelings for the boy who says he loves her, the sister she loves but doesn't always like, and the best friend who hasn't said a word - at least not in a language Josie understands. 'A true-blue lovable weirdo, Josie is the type of character I really enjoy seeing . . . authentically herself, even when being herself gets her into trouble.' Hellogiggles
Download or read book Isn t Forever written by Amy Key and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Oleander Girl written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beloved bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has been hailed by Abraham Verghese as a “gifted storyteller” and by People magazine as a “skilled cartographer of the heart.” Now, Divakaruni returns with her most gripping novel yet, a sweeping, suspenseful coming-of-age tale about a young woman who leaves India for America on a search that will transform her life. THOUGH SHE WAS ORPHANED AT BIRTH, the wild and headstrong Korobi Roy has enjoyed a privileged childhood with her adoring grandparents, spending her first seventeen years sheltered in a beautiful, crumbling old mansion in Kolkata. But despite all that her grandparents have done for her, she is troubled by the silence that surrounds the circumstances of her parents’ death and clings fiercely to her only inheritance from them: the love note she found, years ago, hidden in a book of poetry that had belonged to her mother. As she grows, Korobi dreams of one day finding a love as powerful as her parents’, and it seems her wish has finally come true when she meets the charming Rajat, the only son of a high-profile business family. Shortly after their engagement, however, a sudden heart attack kills Korobi’s grandfather, revealing serious financial problems and a devastating secret about Korobi’s past. Shattered by this discovery and by her grandparents’ betrayal, Korobi decides to undertake a courageous search across post-9/11 America to find her true identity. Her dramatic, often startling journey will ultimately thrust her into the most difficult decision of her life. With flawless narrative instinct and a boundless sympathy for her irrepressible characters, in Oleander Girl Divakaruni brings us a perfect treat of a novel— moving, wise, and unforgettable. As The Wall Street Journal raves, “Divakaruni emphasizes the cathartic force of storytelling with sumptuous prose. . . . She defies categorization.”
Download or read book My Friend Leonard written by James Frey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-06-16 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most unconventional and literally breathtaking father-son story you'll ever read, My Friend Leonard pulls you immediately and deeply into a relationship as unusual as it is inspiring. The father figure is Leonard, the high-living, recovering coke addict "West Coast Director of a large Italian-American finance firm" (read: mobster) who helped to keep James Frey clean in A Million Little Pieces. The son is, of course, James, damaged perhaps beyond repair by years of crack and alcohol addiction-and by more than a few cruel tricks of fate. James embarks on his post-rehab existence in Chicago emotionally devastated, broke, and afraid to get close to other people. But then Leonard comes back into his life, and everything changes. Leonard offers his "son" lucrative—if illegal and slightly dangerous—employment. He teaches James to enjoy life, sober, for the first time. He instructs him in the art of "living boldly," pushes him to pursue his passion for writing, and provides a watchful and supportive veil of protection under which James can get his life together. Both Leonard's and James's careers flourish…but then Leonard vanishes. When the reasons behind his mysterious absence are revealed, the book opens up in unexpected emotional ways. My Friend Leonard showcases a brilliant and energetic young writer rising to important new challenges—displaying surprising warmth, humor, and maturity—without losing his intensity. This book proves that one of the most provocative literary voices of his generation is also one of the most emphatically human.
Download or read book And I Don t Want to Live This Life written by Deborah Spungen and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Honest and moving . . . Her painful tale is engrossing.”—Washington Post Book World For most of us, it was just another horrible headline. But for Deborah Spungen, the mother of Nancy, who was stabbed to death at the Chelsea Hotel, it was both a relief and a tragedy. Here is the incredible story of an infant who never stopped screaming, a toddler who attacked people, a teenager addicted to drugs, violence, and easy sex, a daughter completely out of control—who almost destroyed her parents’ marriage and the happiness of the rest of her family.
Download or read book Eminent Hipsters written by Donald Fagen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A witty, candid, sharply written memoir by the cofounder of Steely Dan In his entertaining debut as an author, Donald Fagen—musician, songwriter, and cofounder of Steely Dan—reveals the cultural figures and currents that shaped his artistic sensibility, as well as offering a look at his college days and a hilarious account of life on the road. Fagen presents the “eminent hipsters” who spoke to him as he was growing up in a bland New Jersey suburb in the early 1960s; his colorful, mind-expanding years at Bard College, where he first met his musical partner Walter Becker; and the agonies and ecstasies of a recent cross-country tour with Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs. Acclaimed for his literate lyrics and complex arrangements as a musician, Fagen here proves himself a sophisticated writer with his own distinctive voice.
Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1962-04-28 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.
Download or read book The Bald Eagle The Improbable Journey of America s Bird written by Jack E. Davis and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best Books of the Month: Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Gulf, a sweeping cultural and natural history of the bald eagle in America. The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation’s founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction. Filled with spectacular stories of Founding Fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers, and the lives of bald eagles themselves—monogamous creatures, considered among the animal world’s finest parents—The Bald Eagle is a much-awaited cultural and natural history that demonstrates how this bird’s wondrous journey may provide inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.
Download or read book Are You My Mother written by Alison Bechdel and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir about Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, becoming the artist her mother wanted to be. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood…and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers. A New York Times, USA Today, Time, Slate, and Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year “As complicated, brainy, inventive and satisfying as the finest prose memoirs.”—New York Times Book Review “A work of the most humane kind of genius, bravely going right to the heart of things: why we are who we are. It's also incredibly funny. And visually stunning. And page-turningly addictive. And heartbreaking.”—Jonathan Safran Foer “Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers. Alison Bechdel has written a graphic novel about this; sort of like a comic book by Virginia Woolf. You won't believe it until you read it—and you must!”—Gloria Steinem
Download or read book Pure Colour written by Sheila Heti and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award in Fiction Shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize in Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vulture, The Times Literary Supplement, and more Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold. Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart. In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.
