Download or read book Samuel Johnson Is Indignant written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the "true originals of contemporary American short fiction" ("San Francisco Chronicle") comes this crystalline collection of investigations into the ways in which human being perceive each other and themselves. An ALA Notable Book of the Year.
Download or read book Varieties of Disturbance written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times), "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon), an innovator who attempts "to remake the model of the modern short story" (The New York Times Book Review). Her admirers include Grace Paley, Jonathan Franzen, and Zadie Smith; as Time magazine observed, her stories are "moving . . . and somehow inevitable, as if she has written what we were all on the verge of thinking." In Varieties of Disturbance, her fourth collection, Davis extends her reach as never before in stories that take every form from sociological studies to concise poems. Her subjects include the five senses, fourth-graders, good taste, and tropical storms. She offers a reinterpretation of insomnia and re-creates the ordeals of Kafka in the kitchen. She questions the lengths to which one should go to save the life of a caterpillar, proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the bus, probes the limits of marital fidelity, and unlocks the secret to a long and happy life. No two of these fictions are alike. And yet in each, Davis rearranges our view of the world by looking beyond our preconceptions to a bizarre truth, a source of delight and surprise. Varieties of Disturbance is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
Download or read book Essays One written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her “a magician of self-consciousness,” while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, “Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive.” Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades. In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashbery’s translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote’s painting, and from the Shepherd’s Psalm to early tourist photographs. On display is the development and range of one of the sharpest, most capacious minds writing today.
Download or read book Can t and Won t written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody has called "the best prose stylist in America" Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends. What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.
Download or read book The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis written by Lydia Davis and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find out why fellow authors like Ali Smith, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen love Lydia Davis's writing so much in this landmark collection of all of her stories to date from across three decades. And why James Wood described this book in the New Yorkeras 'a body of work probably unique in American writing' and 'one of the great, strange American literary contributions'. 'Remarkable. Some of the most moving fiction - on death, marriage, children - of recent years. To read The Collected Storiesis to be reminded of the grand, echoing mind-chambers created by Sebald or recent Coetzee. A writer of vast intelligence and originality.' Independent on Sunday 'What stories. Precise and piercing, extremely funny. Nearly all are unlike anything you've ever read.' Metro 'I loved these stories. They are so well-written, with such clarity of thought and precision of language. Excellent.' William Leith, Evening Standard 'Remarkable. Some of the most moving fiction - on death, marriage, children - of recent years. To read Collected Stories is to be reminded of the grand, echoing mind-chambers created by Sebald or recent Coetzee. A writer of vast intelligence and originality.' Independent on Sunday 'A body of work probably unique in American writing, in its combination of lucidity, aphoristic brevity, formal originality, sly comedy, metaphysical bleakness, philosophical pressure and human wisdom.' New Yorker 'One of the most respected writers in America.' Financial Times 'Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail. She can make the most ordinary things, such as couples talking, or someone watching television, bizarre, almost mythical. I felt I had encountered a most original and daring mind.' Colm Tóibín, Daily Telegraph
Download or read book The Vanity of Human Wishes written by Samuel Johnson and published by . This book was released on 1749 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Almost No Memory written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1997 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories by an experimental writer, ranging in length from a sentence to several pages. One story describes the way a few ill-chosen words can turn a minor dispute into high drama, another is on the bad luck of an explorer who accomplishes a perilous expedition, only to die on his way home. By the author of The End of the Story.
Download or read book Johnson s Dictionary written by David Dabydeen and published by Peepal Tree Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An historical adventure through London and the sugar-cane colony of Demerara, British Guyana. David Dabydeen takes inspiration from the art of Hogarth and its dens of iniquity: we meet slaves, lowly women on the make, lustful overseers and pious Jews. But it is in his master's copy of Johnson's Dictionary that the slave Francis finds the transformative power of words, and his own path to freedom and redemption.
Download or read book Alfred Ollivant s Bob Son of Battle written by Alfred Ollivant and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bob, Son of Battle, is a sheepdog so canny and careful of his flock, so deeply devoted to his master, James Moore, and so admired for his poise and wisdom by the residents of a small village in the rugged mountains of England’s North Country, that young though he is, he is already known as Owd Bob. In a recent contest, Bob has proved himself a matchless sheepdog, and if he wins the trophy two more times, he’ll be seen as equal to the legendary sheepdogs of yore. But Bob has a real rival: Red Wull, with his docked tail and bristling yellow fur, a ferocious creature, just like his diminutive master, Adam McAdam, a lonely Scot, estranged not only from his English neighbors but from his son, David. McAdam just can’t stop belittling this strapping young man, all the more so since David began courting Moore’s beautiful daughter Maggie. But what McAdam really wants is for his beloved Wullie to wrest the prize from Bob once and for all. The story takes a darker turn when a troubling new threat to the local flocks emerges. A dog has gone rogue, sneaking out at night to feast on the flesh and blood of the sheep he is bound to protect. Again and again, new sheep fall prey to this relentless predator; again and again, he slips away undetected. This master hunter can only be among the boldest and sharpest of dogs . . . Bob, Son of Battle has long been a beloved classic of children’s literature both in America and in England. Here the celebrated author and translator Lydia Davis, who first read and loved this exciting story as a child, has rendered the challenging idioms of the original into fluent and graceful English of our day, making this tale of rival dogs and rival families and the shadowy terrain between Good and Bad accessible and appealing to readers of all ages.
Download or read book The End of the Story written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The End of the Story is an energetic, candid, and funny novel about an enduring obsession and a woman's attempt to control it by the telling of the story of it. With ruthless honesty, artful analysis, and crystalline depictions of human and natural landscapes, Lydia Davis's novel offers a compelling illumination of the dilemmas of loss and the process of remembering.
Download or read book The Lives of the English Poets written by and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Potemkin written by Simon Sebag Montefiore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2005 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A racy page-turning history of one of Russia's greatest leaders explores the life and incredible career of Potemkin, lover of Catherine the Great and architect of Russian imperial power. Originally published as Prince of Princes. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Download or read book Break It Down written by Lydia Davis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-09-16 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “These stories . . . offer a peephole into a distinct fictional world . . . they attest to the author’s gift as an observer and archivist of emotion.” —The New York Times The thirty-four stories in this seminal collection powerfully display what have become Lydia Davis’s trademarks—dexterity, brevity, understatement, and surprise. Although the certainty of her prose suggests a world of almost clinical reason and clarity, her characters show us that life, thought, and language are full of disorder. Break It Down is Davis at her best. In the words of Jonathan Franzen, she is “a magician of self-consciousness.” Praise for Lydia Davis “Davis is one of the most precise and economical writers we have.” —Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s “An American virtuoso of the short story form.” —Salon “The best prose stylist in America.” —Rick Moody “[Davis has] a capacity to make language unleash entire states of existence.” —Siddhartha Deb, The New York Times
Download or read book The Factory written by Hiroko Oyamada and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work—days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while—it could be weeks or years—the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, The Factory casts a vivid—and sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.
Download or read book London and The Vanity of Human Wishes written by Samuel Johnson and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Satires of Juvenal written by Decio Junio Juvenal and published by . This book was released on 1739 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits written by Laila Lalami and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2005-10-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A dream of a debut, by turns troubling and glorious, angry and wise.” —Junot Diaz Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, the debut of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Laila Lalami, evokes the grit and enduring grace that is modern Morocco. The book begins as four Moroccans illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain.What has driven them to risk their lives? And will the rewards prove to be worth the danger? There’s Murad, a gentle, unemployed man who’s been reduced to hustling tourists around Tangier; Halima, who’s fleeing her drunken husband and the slums of Casablanca; Aziz, who must leave behind his devoted wife in hope of securing work in Spain; and Faten, a student and religious fanatic whose faith is at odds with an influential man determined to destroy her future. Sensitively written with beauty and boldness, this is a gripping book about what propels people to risk their lives in search of a better future.
