Download or read book Catalog Living at Its Most Absurd written by Molly Erdman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Started in 2010, Catalog Living takes a humorous look at the people who live inside home furnishing catalogs. The site has received over 4.3 million hits and has been featured in stories by The Chicago Tribune, NPR’s Marketplace, and The Associated Press. Catalog Living was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 25 Blogs of 2011. Millions have already been to Gary and Elaine’s. Isn’t it time you dropped by? Have you ever flipped through the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog and thought, “Who actually lives that way?” Rest assured, you are not alone. Pushed too far by a photo depicting a plate of figs placed under a table, actor and Second City-alum Molly Erdman created Gary and Elaine, a well-heeled and deeply superficial couple living happily amongst abundantly pillowed chairs, giant abacuses, and decorative fruit. Inspired by Erdman’s popular blog Catalog Living, Decorating Takes (Wicker) Balls takes home décor catalog photos and sends them up with wickedly funny captions mockumenting Gary and Elaine, their lives, and their absurdly over-decorated rooms. Praise for www.catalogliving.net: “‘Catalog Living’” taps into thoughts many have had … about how things are sold to us.”—Chicago Tribune "Hilarious."—TheFrisky.com "Laugh-out-loud."—Country Living

Download or read book A Peculiar Peril written by Jeff VanderMeer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Peculiar Peril is a head-spinning epic about three friends on a quest to protect the world from a threat as unknowable as it is terrifying, from the Nebula Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer. Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion—a veritable cabinet of curiosities—once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables). Swept into encounters with allies more unpredictable than enemies, Jonathan pieces together his destiny as a member of a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora. But as the ground shifts and allegiances change with every step, he and his friends sink ever deeper into a deadly pursuit of the profound evil that is also chasing after them.

Download or read book SkyMaul written by Kasper Hauser Comedy Group and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The funniest catalog in America. Guaranteed. Let award-winning comedy troupe Kasper Hauser transport you into the sublime universe that is SkyMaul, where Banana-ganizers and Reality-Canceling Headphones coexist with Crack Pipe Chess Sets and Llamacycles. More than just a catalog parody, SkyMaul explodes with razor-sharp wit, boundless creativity, and a keen eye for the absurd. This smart, edgy satire will earn your laughter again and again.

Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Download or read book Motherhood written by Sheila Heti and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

Download or read book Temporary written by Hilary Leichter and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.

Download or read book Management of the Absurd written by Richard Farson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-03-13 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "Business Week" bestseller, this original, contrarian philosophy challenges today's leaders to look past the quick fix and deal thoughtfully with the real complexities of managing people.

Download or read book Solutions and Other Problems written by Allie Brosh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This follow-up to Hyperbole and a Half "includes humorous stories from [cartoonist] Allie Brosh's childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; [and] reflections on the absurdity of modern life"--Publisher marketing.

Download or read book Is Human Life Absurd A Philosophical Inquiry into Finitude Value and Meaning written by Raymond Angelo Belliotti and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belliotti unravels the paradoxes of human existence to reveal paths for crafting meaningful, significant, valuable, even important lives. He argues that human life is not inherently absurd; examines the implications of mortality; contrasts subjective and objective meaning, and evaluates contemporary renderings of meaningful human lives.

Download or read book Living in the Theater of the Absurd written by Susan H. McIntyre and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-08-10 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living in the Theater of the Absurd: Chronic Illness presents a unique look at adapting to chronic illness. With an active imagination, an outrageous sense of humor, and personal experience with chronic illnesses, the author provides an alternative to living as a victim. The first half of the book presents a new perspective and examples of thriving with specific chronic conditions. The second half of the book addresses issues that are common in all chronic illnesses. Household chores, clutter, family life, friendships, thought life, and more are addressed with both humor and solutions. This book empowers the reader to go beyond diagnosis and create a new lifestyle.

Download or read book Equivocation in the Theatre of the Absurd written by Haidar Kareem Al-Aabedi and published by Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH. This book was released on 2015-07-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first attempt made to analyse the equivocal language of the Absurd Theatre via pure linguistic models carefully employed and illustrated by a wide range of significant examples, questions, and discussions. It provides the multiple tools necessary for understanding this language from various perspectives. Dr. Haidar K. Al-Abedi was Lecturer in English at University of Baghdad, Al-Muthana University, and Al-Israa University College. ``Haidar has to be complimented at the outset for selecting a very interesting topic . . . It is not surprising that a person from Iraq – and the ravages the country is sadly facing these days – is interested in an area which has its significant socio-cultural origin in the ravages of the World War II. The scope of the research also effectively covers the entire school of the British exponents of the Absurd Theatre. In fact, the first chapter discusses the central keyword – equivocation – in scholarly detail. There is an interesting discussion about the various types of equivocation from chapter two to five quite elaborately conducted by the researcher.'' Dr. Sanjay Mukherjee, Saurashtra University, India ``This book is an elaborate analysis of a number of plays written by different dramatists. By elucidating the equivocal verbal and non-verbal communication used by characters, the book addresses a wide range of social, religious, cultural, and political themes and issues which appeal to its audience/readers and are involved in constructing meaning through its peculiar use of language.'' Dr. Adel Saleh, Wasit University, Iraq

Download or read book The Specter of the Absurd written by Donald A. Crosby and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is our century's most comprehensive and wise treatment of nihilism in all of its guises, comparing favorably with Rosen, Cavell, and indeed with Spengler. Crosby argues that our culture is genuinely haunted by nihilism expressing itself in the fideism of fundamentalism as well as in the debilitating alienation from all orientation. This results from a one-sided development of Western culture. Unlike most writers on this topic, Crosby acknowledges many sources colluding to frame the culture of nihilism, including "the death of God," the objectification of nature, the meaninglessness of suffering in a mechanical universe, the ephemerality of time in a world where value does not accumulate, the arbitrariness of historicized reason, the reduction of value to will, and the alienation of the Cartesian ego. These sources are reviewed in the first two parts of the book with the result that the phenomenon of nihilism becomes understandable. In its third and fourth parts, Crosby provides a critical analysis of the religious and philosophical forces leading to nihilism by discussing authors from the early modern period through Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Russell, and Derrida. He shows that these forces are skewed and impoverished and should not be allowed to determine our situation. The comprehensive attention to detail and the multi-perspectival interpretation demonstrates as well as asserts the richness of the culture that puts nihilism in its place. Part Five, finally, rephrases the criticism of the sources of nihilism in positive ways. Part Four in particular is a tour de force of philosophical argument. Its richness of nuance, plurality of views examined, and adroitness of critical interpretation provide cumulatively a powerful, non-nihilistic reading of the philosophic tradition. The force of the argument derives from its comprehensive, cumulative character. Crosby distinguishes and relates five areas of nihilism: political, moral, epistemological, cosmic, and existential. Throughout the book, he illustrates and examines these as they are expressed in literature and art, in daily life and practical affairs, and in philosophy. The book is richly erudite in its marshalling of consciousness from so many domains.

Download or read book An Approach to Absurd Theatre in the Twentieth Century written by Pradip Lahiri and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-07 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present study contributes to the corpus of later 20th-century drama and theatre, examining how absurdist theatre works to show the playwrights’ deep insights into humanity’s angst through a confrontation of the deeply subconscious self and the manifest socio-moral façade around us. The book, as a consolidated study, will allow students to form a comprehensive understanding of 20th-century experimental theatre, replete with theories and discernible techniques from as early as the 1950s. It highlights the decisive turn taken by Western playwrights and the dramatic revolution that took place around the mid-20th century through the plays of Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Genet, Adamov, Albee, and others. The book strives to familiarize the learners systematically through scaling, surveying and scanning the multifarious literary movements and metamorphoses that created this theatrical scenario.

Download or read book Starving To Death On 200 Million written by James Ledbetter and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2003-01-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the short life and quick demise of the "Business Week of the Internet economy," the publishing phenomenon founded in 1998 that generated more than $200 million in revenue but was gone, along with the dot-com boom, by 2001.

Download or read book The Little Book of Living Small written by Laura Fenton and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide to small-space secrets and real-life solutions for living in 1,200 square feet or less. The Little Book of Living Small shows readers how to make the most of limited square footage—with grace and style—and serves as the cheerleader readers need to help themselves feel satisfied and proud of their choice to live with less. In addition to exploring both the motivation behind choosing to live in a small space, as well as the practical, everyday advice for managing a tight footprint, The Little Book of Living Small also includes case studies: 12 style-savvy, small-space dwellers open their doors and share their design secrets. Author Laura Fenton covers a range of homes including studio apartments, one- and two-bedroom houses, a tiny house, a co-living space, and even whole houses. Stylistically these homes range from urban, rural, minimalist, and country, with the unifying thread that they are all real homes of less than 1,200 square feet that offer clever solutions that readers can use in their own homes. Laura Fenton is the lifestyle director at Parents magazine. With more than fifteen years of experience, her work has appeared in major publications including Better Homes & Gardens, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and on leading home websites including Remodelista.com, HGTV.com, ElleDecor.com, HouseBeautiful.com, Refinery29, and elsewhere. Through her writing she has explored the topic of living small for more than a decade. She lives small with her husband, a photographer, and their son in Jackson Heights, Queens, in New York.

Download or read book Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd written by Avi Sagi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-08 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an attempt to read the totality of Camus’s oeuvre as a voyage, in which Camus approaches the fundamental questions of human existence: What is the meaning of life? Can ultimate values be grounded without metaphysical presuppositions? Can the pain of the other penetrate the thick shield of human narcissism and self-interest? Solipsism and solidarity are among the destinations Camus reaches in the course of this journey. This book is a new reading of one of the towering humanists of the twentieth century, and sheds new light on his spiritual world.

Download or read book Meaning in Absurdity written by Bernard Kastrup and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an experiment. Inspired by the bizarre and uncanny, it is an attempt to use science and rationality to lift the veil off the irrational. Its ways are unconventional: weaving along its path one finds UFOs and fairies, quantum mechanics, analytic philosophy, history, mathematics, and depth psychology. The enterprise of constructing a coherent story out of these incommensurable disciplines is exploratory. But if the experiment works, at the end these disparate threads will come together to unveil a startling scenario about the nature of reality. The payoff is handsome: a reason for hope, a boost for the imagination, and the promise of a meaningful future. Yet this book may confront some of your dearest notions about truth and reason. Its conclusions cannot be dismissed lightly, because the evidence this book compiles and the philosophy it leverages are solid in the orthodox, academic sense. ,