Download or read book Misfortune and Fame written by Paul Berton and published by Douglas & McIntyre. This book was released on 2023-10-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Berton, Canada’s antidote to the waste and excess of consumer culture, is back with another dose of satire at the expense of the rich, famous and totally miserable There is little argument that having enough money to meet needs is important. But beyond that, what makes us happy? Is a lot of money the answer? Is a glamorous life actually glamorous? Must we have thousands of followers on social media, only to have the internet rabble criticize us at every turn? Amid all the fun and frivolity, there is inevitable misery and madness. A double-edged sword. A poisoned chalice. That’s what this book is about: In ten punchy chapters full of anecdotes about the miseries and misfortunes of the affluent, Berton offers readers ten reasons NOT to wish for fame or fortune. Paul Berton’s previous book about consumerism, Shopomania, was described as “a must-read primer for understanding how our thirst for acquiring and showcasing things has exacted heavy tolls on our psychology, on our society, and on the environment. Cataloguing the symptoms of our shopaholic culture, Berton shares wisdom about breaking the shackles imposed by our possessions.” (Mark Cleveland, PhD, professor and Dancap Chair in Consumer Behavior, University of Western Ontario)
Download or read book Andy Warhol written by Galison and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If one Andy Warhol Mini Journal is portable pop fun, a set of three is even better! Galison's Andy Warhol Mini Journal Set holds three different mini journals, each with a photo of a sunglass-wearing Warhol and one of his quotations: "Everybody should like everybody," "The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting," and "Art is what you can get away with." Andy Warhol (1928-87) was one of the preeminent American artists of the twentieth century. This set of journals was created in conjunction with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Download or read book Signing Their Lives Away written by Denise Kiernan and published by Quirk Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the lives, deaths, and scandals involving the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, including John Adams, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson.
Download or read book Signing Their Rights Away written by Denise Kiernan and published by Quirk Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book jacket unfolds to reveal a full-color reproduction of the U.S. Constitution.
Download or read book Shoot Out written by Peter Bart and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood thrives on shoot outs - that series of stand-offs, skirmishes and power struggles that mark every stage of the film-making process - be it a director insisting on final cut, a star demanding a bigger trailer, or a grip with a gripe. Shoot Out is about how movies are made - from the first pitch to the final cut. For film buffs, aspiring film-makers, students and anyone else intrigued by the inner workings of Hollywood, this is the quintessential take on the how, who, what and why of the film business. 'Packed with insider gossip and some astonishing revelations about the incompetence and self-indulgence that goes on, this is a truly engrossing read. Yet to the authors' credit, none of their stories smack of vindictiveness, whilst the snappy prose ensures that the pages skip by in an entertaining blur. In fact it could be said that this Shoot Out scores a bulls-eye!' Film Review (Book of the Month)
Download or read book Winner of the National Book Award written by Jincy Willett and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Award, the long-awaited novel from the author of the acclaimed collection, Jenny and the Jaws of Life, is an unusual and wonderful novel that is somehow able to be at once bleak and hilarious, light-hearted and profound. It's the story of two sisters. Abigail Mather is a woman of enormous appetites, sexual and otherwise. Her fraternal twin Dorcas couldn't be more different: she gave up on sex without once trying it, and she lives a controlled, dignified life of the mind. Though Abigail exasperates Dorcas, the two love each other; in fact, they complete each other. They are an odd pair, set down in an odd Rhode Island town, where everyone has a story to tell, and writers, both published and unpublished, carom off each other like billiard balls. What is it that makes the two women targets for the new man in town, the charming schlockmeister Conrad Lowe, tall, whippet-thin and predatory? In Abigail and Dorcas he sees a new and tantalizing challenge. Not the mere conquest of Abigail, with her easy reputation, but a longer and more sinister game. A game that will lead to betrayal, shame and, ultimately, murder. In her darkly comic and unsettling first novel, Jincy Willett proves that she is a true find: that rare writer who can explore the shadowy side of human nature with the lightest of touches.
Download or read book A Memoir of Misfortune written by Xiaokang Su and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2002-07-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Su Xiaokang had faced calamity before: in 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he became the object of a government manhunt and was forced to flee China, leaving behind his wife and young son. Eventually his family was allowed to join him in exile in the United States, and he believed the worst was behind him. Then a terrible automobile accident left his wife, Fu Li, unable to move or speak. In this remarkably honest account, Su, who blamed himself for his family's disaster, writes wrenchingly of his inner torment and despair. He describes the pain of living in exile, his desperate search for a miracle cure for Fu Li, and his bemusement at his teenage son's increasing Americanization. Above all, Su's moving memoir invites us along on a deeply personal odyssey, as a man who had once been at the center of an international political drama dedicates himself to the far more demanding task of remaking an emotional world for his wife and son.
Download or read book Misfortune s Daughters written by Joan Collins and published by Robson Books Limited. This book was released on 2005-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High charged family saga rich with sibling rivalry, insatiable ambition, eroticism and addiction. The story revovles around two sisters, Venetia and Atlanta, and traces the sisters' desperate struggles to find their own individual identities.Laura Marlowe the mother, is a Hollywood movie star and their father is Greek billionaire Nicholas Stephanolooplis a cold and cruel tycoon who controls and dominates his women as ruthlessly as he does his international business empire.
Download or read book Acute Misfortune written by Erik Jensen and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2019-04-29 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008, the artist Adam Cullen invited journalist Erik Jensen to stay in his spare room and write his biography. What followed were four years of intense honesty and a relationship that became increasingly claustrophobic. At one point Cullen shot Jensen, in part to see how committed he was to the book. At another, he threw Jensen from a speeding motorbike. The book contract Cullen used to convince Jensen to stay with him never existed. Acute Misfortune is a riveting account of the life and death of one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, the man behind the Archibald Prize–winning portrait of David Wenham. Jensen follows Cullen through drug deals and periods of deep self-reflection, onwards into his court appearance for weapons possession and finally his death in 2012 at the age of forty-six. After much critical acclaim, Acute Misfortune was developed into a feature film, winning The Age Critics Award at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2018. The story is by turns tender and horrifying: a spare tale of art, sex, drugs and childhood, told at close quarters and without judgement. Winner of the 2015 Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature Shortlisted in the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and for the 2015 Walkley Book Award ‘Erik Jensen is a Boswell or Vasari for our baffled, fractured, fucked-up times. Acute Misfortune is the most intimate, revealing, and original take on an artist’s life I know of.’ —Sebastian Smee ‘Erik Jensen gives us that ingenious place where biography is also art.’ —Jennifer Clement ‘This is supposed to be about an artist, a wild man, his lifetime, and it is; but Jensen has written such a beautiful window that all art and life is shining through. I'm supposed to be an artist but I cannot put this down.’ —DBC Pierre
Download or read book Fame and Misfortune Broken Hearts Broken Rules written by Jan Mount and published by . This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Ladder to the Sky written by John Boyne and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A satire of writerly ambition wrapped in a psychological thriller . . . An homage to Patricia Highsmith, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, but its execution is entirely Boyne’s own.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel. Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall. . . . Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso. Praise for A Ladder to the Sky “Boyne's mastery of perspective, last seen in The Heart's Invisible Furies, works beautifully here. . . . Boyne understands that it's far more interesting and satisfying for a reader to see that narcissist in action than to be told a catchall phrase. Each step Maurice Swift takes skyward reveals a new layer of calumny he's willing to engage in, and the desperation behind it . . . so dark it seems almost impossible to enjoy reading A Ladder to the Sky as much as you definitely will enjoy reading it.”—NPR “Delicious . . . spins out over several decades with thrilling unpredictability, following Maurice as he masters the art of co-opting the stories of others in increasingly dubious ways. And while the book reads as a thriller with a body count that would make Highsmith proud, it is also an exploration of morality and art: Where is the line between inspiration and thievery? To whom does a story belong?”—Vanity Fair
Download or read book Feelings Poetry written by Gary McLauchlan and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All poetry, no matter what genre, has to come from the heart. For without feeling behind the words then the words are but shallow empty shells upon the page. Poetry has to be felt by the writer in order to pass on that same feeling to the reader of the piece. In Feelings Poetry, author Gary Mclauchlan presents a poignant collection of poems that expresses his innermost feelings deep within his heart.
Download or read book Treading the Winepress written by Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Every life hath its chapter of sorrow. No matter how rich the gilding or fair the pages of the volume, Trouble will stamp it with his sable signet."So begins the novel Treading the Winepress; or, A Mountain of Misfortune by Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, which, had it appeared in book form in 1885-1886 instead of serialized in The Boston Advocate, would have been the second novel published by a black woman in the United States. Instead, Allen has been mostly forgotten by literary history. Now, thanks to the painstaking efforts of editors Gabrielle Brown, Eric Willey, and Jean MacDonald, an edition of Allen's Treading the Winepress; or, A Mountain of Misfortune is available to readers for the first time as an open access, hybrid book from Downstate Legacies, part of its ongoing translation and lost books series, Undiscovered Americas. In this novel of manners set in Capitolia (a thinly veiled stand-in for Columbia, South Carolina, the author's hometown), Allen recounts the entangled lives of the De Vernes and the Tremaines, two well-to-do black families. The novel unfurls the stories of multiple tragedies endured by each family through episodes of romance, mystery, and murder. Chief among these is the love triangle involving protagonist Gertie Tremaine, esteemed doctor Will De Verne, and Gertie's sister Lenore "Gypsy" Tremaine. The intrigue that follows leads Gertie to lament the "mountains of misfortune" she and her family endure. Even though Allen regarded the novel as "a girlish protest against what seemed to be serious dangers threatening our race," she insists her "object was not to gain 'name and fame' but to call the attention of thinking people to these blots in our social firmament." It is with great excitement that we reintroduce this overlooked classic to contemporary readers.
Download or read book The Cochin Tribes and Castes written by L. Krishna Anantha Krishna Iyer (Diwan Bahadur) and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Hous of Fame written by Geoffrey Chaucer and published by Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1893.. This book was released on 1893 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fame and Misfortune written by John Jones and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Adaptation Intermediality and the British Celebrity Biopic written by Márta Minier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the premise that the biopic is a form of adaptation and an example of intermediality, this collection examines the multiplicity of 'source texts' and the convergence of different media in this genre, alongside the concurrent issues of fidelity and authenticity that accompany this form. The contributors focus on big and small screen biopics of British celebrities from the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, attending to their myth-making and myth-breaking potential. Related topics are the contemporary British biopic's participation in the production and consumption of celebrated lives, and the biopic's generic fluidity and hybridity as evidenced in its relationship to such forms as the bio-docudrama. Offering case studies of film biographies of literary and cultural icons, including Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Diana Princess of Wales, John Lennon, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Beau Brummel, Carrington and Beatrix Potter, the essays address how British identity and heritage are interrogated in the (re)telling and showing of these lives, and how the reimagining of famous lives for the screen is influenced by recent processes of manufacturing celebrity.
