Download or read book To Rise Again at a Decent Hour written by Joshua Ferris and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris explores the absurdities of modern life and one man's search for meaning. Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual. At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.
Download or read book Then We Came to the End written by Joshua Ferris and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award finalist and debut novel by the bestselling author of The Dinner Party: "A readymade classic of the office-novel genre. . . . A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness." --Seattle Times No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.
Download or read book The Unnamed written by Joshua Ferris and published by Reagan Arthur Books. This book was released on 2010-01-18 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Unnamed is a dazzling novel about a marriage, family, and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both. He was going to lose the house and everything in it. The rare pleasure of a bath, the copper pots hanging above the kitchen island, his family-again he would lose his family. He stood inside the house and took stock. Everything in it had been taken for granted. How had that happened again? He had promised himself not to take anything for granted and now he couldn't recall the moment that promise had given way to the everyday. Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, aging with the grace of a matinee idol. His wife Jane still loves him, and for all its quiet trials, their marriage is still stronger than most. Despite long hours at the office, he remains passionate about his work, and his partnership at a prestigious Manhattan law firm means that the work he does is important. And, even as his daughter Becka retreats behind her guitar, her dreadlocks and her puppy fat, he offers her every one of a father's honest lies about her being the most beautiful girl in the world. He loves his wife, his family, his work, his home. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out. And keeps walking. The Unnamed is a heartbreaking story of a life taken for granted -- and what happens when that life is abruptly and irrevocably taken away.
Download or read book A Calling for Charlie Barnes written by Joshua Ferris and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a best book of the year by NPR, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review, the hilarious and profound new novel from National Book Award finalist Joshua Ferris is “a fine American novel about family, love, and a decent but flawed man trying to be better" (Stephen King). Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot. Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it—in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love—at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be. A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a profound and tender portrait of a man whose desperate need to be loved is his downfall, and a brutally funny account of how that love is ultimately earned. “A masterpiece that shines a revealing light on both family and fiction itself.” —Michael Schaub, NPR
Download or read book I Saw a Man written by Owen Sheers and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An utterly stunning novel of love, loss, the insidious nature of secrets, and the transformative power of words. I Saw a Man fulfills the promise of Owen Sheers's acclaimed novel, Resistance. When journalist Caroline Marshall dies while on assignment in Pakistan, her grief-stricken husband, Michael, leaves their cottage in Wales and returns to London. He quickly develops a friendship with his neighbors, Josh and Samantha Nelson, and their two young daughters. Michael’s becoming close with the family marks the beginning of a long healing process. But Michael's period of recovery comes to an abrupt end when a terrible accident brings the burden of a shattering secret into his life. How will Michael bear the agonizing weight of guilt as he navigates persistent doubts on the path to attempted redemption? The answer, revealed poignantly in Sheers' masterly prose, is eloquent, resonant, and completely unforgettable.
Download or read book The Wake written by Paul Kingsnorth and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work that is as disturbing as it is empathetic, as beautiful as it is riveting." —Eimear McBride, New Statesman In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French occupiers. In The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world. Accompanied by a band of like-minded men, Buccmaster is determined to seek revenge on the invaders. But as the men travel across the scorched English landscape, Buccmaster becomes increasingly unhinged by the immensity of his loss, and their path forward becomes increasingly unclear. Written in what the author describes as "a shadow tongue"—a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable to the modern reader—The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction. To enter Buccmaster's world is to feel powerfully the sheer strangeness of the past. A tale of lost gods and haunted visions, The Wake is both a sensational, gripping story and a major literary achievement.
Download or read book Rise Again written by Ben Tripp and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rise Again marks a vivid and powerful fiction debut from an author who “balances kinetically choreographed scenes of zombie carnage with studies of well-drawn characters and enough political intrigue to give his tale more gravity and grounding than most zombie gorefests” (Publishers Weekly). A mysterious contagion. Mass hysteria. Sudden death. And a warning that would come all too late... Forest Peak, California. Fourth of July. Sheriff Danielle Adelman, a troubled war veteran, thinks she has all the problems she can handle in this all-American town after her kid sister runs away from home. But when a disease-stricken horde of panicked refugees fleeing the fall of Los Angeles swarms her small mountain community, Danny realizes her problems have only just begun—starting with what might very well be the end of the world. Danny thought she had seen humanity at its worst in war-torn Iraq, but nothing could prepare her for the remorseless struggle to survive in a dying world being overrun by the reanimated dead and men turned monster. Obsessed with finding her missing sister against all odds, Danny’s epic and dangerous journey across the California desert will challenge her spirit . . . and bring her to the precipice of sanity itself. . . .
Download or read book This Accident of Being Lost written by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2017-04-08 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization. This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. These visionary pieces build upon Simpson's powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love. A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while texting “ARE THEY GETTING IT?”; lovers visit the last remaining corner of the boreal forest; three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in an upper middle-class neighbourhood; and Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario. Blending elements of Nishnaabeg storytelling, science fiction, contemporary realism, and the lyric voice, This Accident of Being Lost burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew.
Download or read book The Lost Art of Reading written by David L. Ulin and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading is a revolutionary act, an act of engagement in a culture that wants us to disengage. In The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin asks a number of timely questions - why is literature important? What does it offer, especially now? Blending commentary with memoir, Ulin addresses the importance of the simple act of reading in an increasingly digital culture. Reading a book, flipping through hard pages, or shuffling them on screen - it doesn't matter. The key is the act of reading, and it's seriousness and depth. Ulin emphasizes the importance of reflection and pause allowed by stopping to read a book, and the accompanying focus required to let the mind run free in a world that is not one's own. Are we willing to risk our collective interest in contemplation, nuanced thinking, and empathy? Far from preaching to the choir, The Lost Art of Reading is a call to arms, or rather, to pages.
Download or read book We are All Completely Beside Ourselves written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Jane Austen Book Club," the story of an American family, ordinary in every way but one--their close family relative was a chimpanzee.
Download or read book Visiting Hours written by Shane L. Koyczan and published by Mother Press Media. This book was released on 2005 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gods of the Morning written by John Lister-Kaye and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gods of the Morning follows the year through the turning of the seasons at Aigas, the Highlands estate John Lister-Kaye has transformed into a world-renowned wildlife center. John's affection, wisdom and lyricism sings off every page, bringing the natural world around him to life: from the rookery filled with twenty-nine nests and distinct bird calls to descriptions of the winter morning light, from the wood mice and the squirrels preparing for winter to tracking a fox's path through the snow. In particular it brings John's lifelong love of birds—his gods of the morning—to the fore.In the Highland glens, bird numbers plummet as their food supplies —natural fruits and every kind of creeping, crawling, slithering or flying bug—begin to disappear. By the first frosts the hills will have emptied down to a few hardy stalwarts such as the golden eagles, the raven and the irrepressible hooded crows. Silence settles across the land. The few species that are left frequent a changed world. Soon only the buzzards and wood pigeons will hang on in the woods and the coniferous forests will be host to flocks of chaffinches, tits, siskins, and crossbills passing through.
Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
Download or read book Give Me Everything You Have written by James Lasdun and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate in the crucible of the digital age. Give Me Everything You Have chronicles author James Lasdun's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist," who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him." Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat. James Lasdun's account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.
Download or read book White Jenna written by Jane Yolen and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nebula Award Finalist: A long-awaited savior joins forces with her dark twin to confront the evil threatening their land in the second book of the acclaimed epic fantasy the Great Alta Saga Grown to young womanhood in the mountain region of the Dales and trained for combat by the all-female followers of the goddess Great Alta, Jenna reluctantly accepts the fact that she might well be the Anna, the warrior queen who has long been prophesied. Orphaned three times while still a small child, the now-teenage Jenna is compelled to lend her support and skills to the Dales’ rightful king and his brother, Carum, who holds her heart, for the reign of evil usurper Lord Kalas threatens the future of every worshipper of Alta. But Jenna does not ride alone. Whenever darkness falls, she and her companions—a young priestess in training and an aging warrior—are joined by Skada, white-haired Jenna’s dark sister, who shares her destiny and her soul. But even their combined powers may not be enough to defeat the entrenched malevolence that means to destroy everything and everyone they hold dear. A finalist for the Nebula Award for best novel, Jane Yolen’s White Jenna is a wondrous tale of duty, destiny, peril, romance, and fantasy. Interspersed with the myths and poetry the story engendered, it is a brilliantly imaginative creation of a world, a culture, and their enduring lore.
Download or read book Lurid Cute written by Adam Thirlwell and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dreamy and adrenaline-fueled new novel from a two-time Granta Best Young Novelist Lurid & Cute is a kind of machine for the reader's corruption. It opens with all the things we've come to expect of Adam Thirlwell-"the playfulness of language, the way the mandarin wit, line by line, consorts with grisly or louche material," as Jeffrey Eugenides has said-when the narrator wakes confused in a seedy hotel room. He has had the good education, and also the good job. Together with his wife and dog, he lives at home with his parents. But then the lurid overtakes him-a chain of events that feels to those inside it narcotic and neurotic, like one long and terrible descent: complete with lies, deceit, and chicanery, and including, in escalating order, one orgy, one brothel, and a series of firearms disputes. Lurid & Cute balances the complexity of an interior world-our hero's apparently innocent obsessions with food, old movies, and all the gaudy, shoddy building blocks of pop culture-with a picaresque plot delivered with expert, insidious pacing. For very possibly this is the story of a woebegone and global generation. And our hero, the sweetest narrator in world literature, also may well be the most fearsome. It's the most sophisticated and gruesome novel from an author celebrated for his precocious talents, and it will leave you feeling like you've been on one hell of a bender.
Download or read book The Lives of Others written by Neel Mukherjee and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 733 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own . . . Forgive me . . .’ Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in student unrest, agitation, extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is this note . . . The ageing patriarch and matriarch of his family, the Ghoshes, preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. More than poisonous rivalries among sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the family business, this is a family unraveling as the society around it fractures. For this is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change: the chasm between the generations, and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider. Ambitious, rich and compassionate, The Lives of Others unfolds a family history, and anatomizes a social class in all its contradictions. It asks: can we escape what is in our blood? How do we imagine our place amongst others in the world? Can that be reimagined? And at what cost? This is a novel of rare power and emotional force.
