Download or read book The Brain Dead Megaphone written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-05-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, his first collection of essays, Saunders trains his eye on the real world rather than the fictional and reveals it to be brimming with wonderful, marvellous strangeness. As he faces a political and cultural reality saturated with lazy media, false promises and political doublespeak, Saunders invokes the wisdom of American literary heroes Twain, Vonnegut and Barthelme and inspires us to re-examine our assumptions about the world we live in, as we struggle to discover what is really there.
Download or read book The Brain Dead Megaphone written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the same vein as his much-loved weekly column for the Guardian Magazine, this is a hilarious and incisive collection of essays from George Saunders.
Download or read book In Persuasion Nation written by George Saunders and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains a collection of short satirical works, including "The Red Bow," in which a town is consumed by pet-killing hysteria, and "Bohemians," in which two Eastern European widows attempt to fit into suburban America.
Download or read book Tenth of December written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.
Download or read book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip written by George Saunders and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Tenth of December comes a splendid new edition of his acclaimed collaboration with the illustrator behind The Stinky Cheese Man and James and the Giant Peach! Featuring fifty-two haunting and hilarious images, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a modern fable for people of all ages that touches on the power of kindness, generosity, compassion, and community. In the seaside village of Frip live three families: the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her father. The economy of Frip is based solely on goat’s milk, and this is a problem because the village is plagued by gappers: bright orange, many-eyed creatures the size of softballs that love to attach themselves to goats. When a gapper gets near a goat, it lets out a high-pitched shriek of joy that puts the goats off giving milk, which means that every few hours the children of Frip have to go outside, brush the gappers off their goats, and toss them into the sea. The gappers have always been everyone’s problem, until one day they get a little smarter, and instead of spreading out, they gang up: on Capable’s goats. Free at last of the tyranny of the gappers, will her neighbors rally to help her? Or will they turn their backs, forcing Capable to bear the misfortune alone? Featuring fifty-two haunting and hilarious illustrations by Lane Smith and a brilliant story by George Saunders that explores universal themes of community and kindness, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a rich and resonant story for those that have all and those that have not. Praise for The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip “In a perfect world, every child would own a copy of this profound, funny fable. . . . Every adult would own a copy too, and would marvel at how this smart, subversive little book is even deeper and more hilarious than any child could know.”—Entertainment Weekly “Saunders’s idiosyncratic voice makes an almost perfect accompaniment to children’s book illustrator Smith’s heightened characterizations and slightly surreal backdrops.”—Publishers Weekly “A riveting, funny, and sly new fairy tale.”—Miami Herald
Download or read book The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media written by Gawker Media and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-10-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the same deliciously biting irreverence and insider dish that's made Gawker.com addictive to millions of readers every month, The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media serves up a hilarious blueprint for climbing to megawatt power in the media world. While yanking back the curtain on the media elite, The Gawker Guide reveals the secrets of emailing like a mogul, posing for the paparazzi, decoding "agent speak," spotting the next bestseller, landing that holy grail assignment, boosting blog traffic, navigating the six cocktail evening, and all the other weapons readers need to climb high -- and stay there. "I came, I saw, I conquered. With this book, I could've done it quicker." -- Julius Caesar
Download or read book CivilWarLand in Bad Decline written by George Saunders and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way. In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. With a new introduction by Joshua Ferris and a new author’s note by Saunders himself, this edition is essential reading for those seeking to discover or revisit a virtuosic, disturbingly prescient voice. Praise for George Saunders and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline “It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”—The Wall Street Journal “Saunders’s satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it’s also ferocious and very funny.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “George Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice. [CivilWarLand in Bad Decline] is scary, hilarious, and unforgettable.”—Tobias Wolff “Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless.”—Jonathan Franzen “Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith “An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.”—Thomas Pynchon
Download or read book Pastoralia written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny - telling just the kind of stories we need to get us through these times' Thomas Pynchon In PASTORALIA elements of contemporary life are twisted, merged and amplified into a slightly skewed version of modern America. A couple live and work in a caveman theme-park, where speaking is an instantly punishable offence. A born loser attends a self-help seminar where he is encouraged to rid himself of all the people who are 'crapping in your oatmeal'. And a male exotic dancer and his family are terrorised by their decomposing aunt who visits them with a solemn message from beyond the grave. With an uncanny combination of deadpan naturalism and uproarious humour, George Saunders creates a world that is both indelibly original and yet hauntingly familiar ...
Download or read book The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the highly acclaimed cult author of Pastoralia, comes a novella and short-story collection.
Download or read book Creative Types written by Tom Bissell and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist and “one of America's best and most interesting writers" (Stephen King), a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark—unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making. In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises—writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.
Download or read book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain written by George Saunders and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • “[A] worship song to writers and readers.”—Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.
Download or read book Congratulations by the Way written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring message from the inaugural Folio Prize winner, George Saunders, one of today's most influential and original writers
Download or read book Sartre s Sink written by Mark Crick and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2012-02-09 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For too long DIY books have suffered the neglect of the literary establishment. Finally, here in one volume, are the essential DIY tips of the world's greatest writers. Dostoyevsky tells of a young man employed by an elderly lady to retile her bathroom; Caesar puts up a shelf for his rebellious tribe of adolescenti; the existentialist hero of the Sartre pastiche is both disgusted and nauseated to discover in a blocked sink the revelation of his own condition. We also learn how to repair a dripping tap under Conrad's eyes, replace a window pane with a voyeuristic Milan Kundera, and hang wallpaper under the watchful eye of Mark Twain. Other handy hints include how to: replace a roof tile; remedy a squeaking floor board; remove a carpet stain and bleed a radiator, by writers including Bronte, Shakespeare, Duras, Salinger and Paul Auster. As in the companion book, Kafka's Soup, each piece is illustrated by a famous artist, including da Vinci, Hokusai and Rembrandt.
Download or read book Hollywood Hypocrites written by Jason Mattera and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on the author's experiences as an "ambush interview" radio host to confront inconsistencies in the liberal views of leading Hollywood celebrities who support President Obama, from Michael Moore to Angelina Jolie.
Download or read book The Jaguar s Children written by John Vaillant and published by HMH. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “extraordinary” novel of one man’s border crossing reveals “a human history of sorrow and suffering, all of it beginning with the thirst to be free” (NPR). Héctor is trapped. The water truck, sealed to hide its human cargo, has broken down. The coyotes have taken all the passengers’ money for a mechanic and have not returned. Héctor finds a name in his friend César’s phone: AnniMac. A name with an American number. He must reach her, both for rescue and to pass along the message César has come so far to deliver. But are his messages going through? Over four days, as water and food run low, Héctor tells how he came to this desperate place. His story takes us from Oaxaca—its rich culture, its rapid change—to the dangers of the border, exposing the tangled ties between Mexico and El Norte. And it reminds us of the power of storytelling and the power of hope, as Héctor fights to ensure his message makes it out of the truck and into the world. Both an outstanding suspense novel and an arresting window into the relationship between two great cultures, The Jaguar’s Children shows how deeply interconnected all of us are. “This is what novels can do—illuminate shadowed lives, enable us to contemplate our own depths of kindness, challenge our beliefs about fate. Vaillant’s use of fact to inspire fiction brings to mind a long list of powerful novels from the past decade or so: What is the What by Dave Eggers; The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif; The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult.” —Amanda Eyre Ward, The New York Times Book Review “[A] heartbreaker . . . Wrenching . . . with a voice fresh and plangent enough to disarm resistance.” —The Boston Globe “Fearless.” —The Globe and Mail
Download or read book An Age of Progress written by Walter G. Moss and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2008-05-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘An Age of Progress?’ is an advanced examination of major twentieth-century global developments regarding subjects as diverse as violence, capitalism, socialism and communism, imperialism, racism, nationalism, westernization, globalization, international finance, freedom and human rights, physical and mental environmental changes, culture, science, education, religion and social criticism. This momentous study also explores the ways in which the twentieth century made significant progress – and the ways in which it did not.
Download or read book Liberation Day written by George Saunders and published by Random House. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of our most inventive purveyors of the form returns with pitch-perfect, genre-bending stories that stare into the abyss of our national character. . . . An exquisite work from a writer whose reach is galactic.”—Oprah Daily Booker Prize winner George Saunders returns with his first collection of short stories since the New York Times bestseller Tenth of December. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker The “best short-story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose—wickedly funny, unsentimental, and exquisitely tuned—Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: Here is a collection of prismatic, resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality. “Love Letter” is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the (not too distant, all too believable) future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and one another. “Ghoul” is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his reality. In “Mother’s Day,” two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. In “Elliott Spencer,” our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed, his memory “scraped”—a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. And “My House”—in a mere seven pages—comes to terms with the haunting nature of unfulfilled dreams and the inevitability of decay. Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention Saunders does, even in the most absurd of circumstances.
