Download or read book Independent People written by Halldor Laxness and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author: a magnificent novel that recalls Iceland's medieval epics and classics, set in the early twentieth century starring an ordinary sheep farmer and his heroic determination to achieve independence. • "A strange story, vibrant and alive…. There is a rare beauty in its telling." —Atlantic Monthly If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to free himself is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic. Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

Download or read book Living Witness written by Jane Haddam and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a 91-year-old woman, known for sparking controversy in her small town, is attacked, former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian is called in to consult on the case and finds himself matching wits with dueling Darwinists, devout Christians, and one dangerous criminal.

Download or read book Even This I Get to Experience written by Norman Lear and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary creator of iconic television programs All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear remade our television culture, while leading a life of unparalleled political, civic, and social involvement. Sharing the wealth of Lear's ninety years, this is a memoir as touching and remarkable as the life he has led.

Download or read book Night Train written by Martin Amis and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-12-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sharp twist on the noir genre from one of England’s finest fiction writers 'I worked one hundred murders,' says Detective Mike Hoolihan, an American policewoman. 'In my time I have come in on the aftermath of maybe a thousand suspicious deaths, most of which turned out to be suicides, accidentals or plain unattendeds. So I've seen them all: jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters. But of all the bodies I have ever seen none has stayed with me, in my gut, like the body of Jennifer Rockwell. I say all this because I am part of the story I am going to tell, and I feel the need to give you some idea of where I'm coming from.' Night Train is a mystery story which lingers in the reader's mind even after Mike Hoolihan declares the case closed. ‘Tough, noir, Chandleresque’ Independent ‘Night Train is both delicate and bruising - a long drawn-out blue note. The book hangs around in the mind like smoke in a jazz club’ Telegraph Magazine

Download or read book Richer Wiser Happier written by William Green and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William Green, a financial journalist who has written for The New Yorker, Time, and Fortune, comes a fresh and unexpectedly profound book that draws on interviews with more than 40 of the worlds super-investors to demonstrate that the keys for building wealth hold other life lessons as well.

Download or read book The Memory Chalet written by Tony Judt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-11-11 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year “[A] tremendously moving memorial to a first-class historian and essayist . . . humane, fearless, unsparingly honest.” —The Financial Times “[A] memorable collection from a memorable man.” —BookPage "It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head." —Tony Judt The Memory Chalet is a memoir unlike any you have ever read before. Each essay charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt's prodigious mind. His youthful love of a particular London bus route evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through the divergent sex politics of Europe, before concluding that his generation "was a revolutionary generation, but missed the revolution." A series of road trips across America lead not just to an appreciation of American history, but to an eventual acquisition of citizenship. Foods and trains and long-lost smells all compete for Judt's attention; but for us, he has forged his reflections into an elegant arc of analysis. All as simply and beautifully arranged as a Swiss chalet-a reassuring refuge deep in the mountains of memory.

Download or read book Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain 1750 1850 written by Devoney Looser and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

Download or read book The Souls of China written by Ian Johnson and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2017 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist: a revelatory portrait of religion in China today, its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China's future. Following a century of violent antireligious campaigns, China is now awash with new temples, churches, and mosques as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese, and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is still searching for new guideposts. Ian Johnson lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world s newest superpower. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout).

Download or read book Making Your Own Days written by Kenneth Koch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-04-08 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Bollingen Prize in poetry and author of the classic bestseller "Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?" comes a unique, highly entertaining book for anyone who wants to be a better reader and writer of poetry.

Download or read book Reflections on a Life in Exile written by J.F. Riordan and published by Beaufort Books. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of the 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Award A collection of essays by novelist J.F. Riordan, Reflections on a Life in Exile is easy to pick up, and hard to put down. By turns deeply spiritual and gently comic, these brief meditations range from the inconveniences of modern life to the shifting nature of grief. Whether it's an unexpected revelation from a trip to the hardware store, a casual encounter with a tow-truck driver, the changing seasons, or a conversation with a store clerk grieving for a dog, J. F. Riordan captures and magnifies the passing beauty of the ordinary and the extraordinary that lingers near the surface of daily life.

Download or read book Life Is Short But Wide written by J. California Cooper and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An irresistible story of faith and perseverance, Life Is Short But Wide follows two families as they prove that no matter who you are or what you do, you are never too old to chase your dreams. Like the small towns J. California Cooper has so vividly portrayed in her previous novels, Wideland, Oklahoma, is home to ordinary Americans with big hearts. Among them are newlyweds Irene and Val, who graciously allow their neighbors, Bertha and Joseph, to build a house on their land. Together the couples have three daughters, all who struggle to find love and success in the changing world. But although the years may bring hardship and heartache, they also teach the importance of living one’s life boldly and squeezing out every possible moment of joy.

Download or read book Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book This Old Man written by Roger Angell and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roger Angell, the acclaimed New Yorker writer and editor, steps up with a selection of writings that celebrate a view from the tenth decade of an engaged, vibrant life. Whether it’s a Fourth of July in rural Maine, the opening game of the 2015 World Series, editorial exchanges with John Updike, a letter to a son, or his award-winning essay on aging, “This Old Man,” what links the pieces is Angell’s unique perceptions and humor, his utter absence of self-pity, and his appreciation of friends and colleagues encountered over a fruitful career unlike any other.

Download or read book The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington written by Leonora Carrington and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Complete Stories, a collection of Carrington’s published and unpublished short stories—many newly translated from their original French and Spanish—is a terrific introduction to her bizarre, dreamlike worlds.” —Carmen Maria Machado, NPR Surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was a master of the macabre, of gorgeous tableaus, biting satire, roguish comedy, and brilliant, effortless flights of the imagination. Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life. Published to coincide with the centennial of her birth, The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington collects for the first time all of her stories, including several never before seen in print. With a startling range of styles, subjects, and even languages (several of the stories are translated from French or Spanish), The Complete Stories captures the genius and irrepressible spirit of an amazing artist’s life.

Download or read book The Quincunx written by Charles Palliser and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1990-11-27 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Download or read book Still Counting written by Edward B. Marks and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[The] background and adventures make for fascinating autobiography. The writing style of the book is most engaging. And, happily, the material covered is interesting. It chronicles a life that is intriguing and a dedication to public service that is heartening." --Hugh Downs, distinguished broadcaster and Chairman of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF "I've enjoyed reading [this] memoir. Parts of it are hilarious, and parts of it are moving and impressive. . . . 'Still Counting' tells the story of an adventurous, committed, and consistently interesting life." --Justin Kaplan, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

Download or read book Converso Non Conformism in Early Modern Spain written by Kevin Ingram and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the effects of Jewish conversions to Christianity in late medieval Spanish society. Ingram focuses on these converts and their descendants (known as conversos) not as Judaizers, but as Christian humanists, mystics and evangelists, who attempt to create a new society based on quietist religious practice, merit, and toleration. His narrative takes the reader on a journey from the late fourteenth-century conversions and the first blood purity laws (designed to marginalize conversos), through the early sixteenth-century Erasmian and radical mystical movements, to a Counter-Reformation environment in which conversos become the advocates for pacifism and concordance. His account ends at the court of Philip IV, where growing intolerance towards Madrid’s converso courtiers is subtly attacked by Spain’s greatest painter, Diego Velázquez, in his work, Los Borrachos. Finally, Ingram examines the historiography of early modern Spain, in which he argues the converso reform phenomenon continues to be underexplored.