Download or read book Why Fiction written by Jean-Marie Schaeffer and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Why Fiction?—one of the most important works of narrative theory to come out of France in recent years—Jean-Marie Schaeffer understands fiction not as a literary genre but, in contrast to all other literary theorists, as a genre of life. The result is arguably the first systematic refutation of Plato’s polemic against fiction and a persuasive argument for regarding fiction as having a cognitive function. For Schaeffer fiction includes not only narrative fiction but also children’s games, videos, film, drama, certain kinds of painting, opera—in short, all the intentional structures arising from shared imaginative reality. Because video games and cyber-technologies are the new sites of entry for many children into such an imagined universe, studying these cyber-fictions has become integral to our understanding of fiction. Through these avenues, Schaeffer also explores the foundations of mimeticism in order to explain the important effect fiction has on human beings. His work thus establishes fiction as a universal aspect of human culture and offers a profound and resounding answer to the question: Why fiction?

Download or read book Azadi written by Arundhati Roy and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

Download or read book A Closed and Common Orbit written by Becky Chambers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller! Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Series! A Publishers Weekly "Best Books of 2017" pick! Nominated for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel! Shortlisted for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award! Winner of the Prix Julia-Verlanger! Embark on an exciting, adventurous, and dangerous journey through the galaxy with the motley crew of the spaceship Wayfarer in this fun and heart-warming space opera—the sequel to the acclaimed The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in a new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns to negotiate the universe and discover who she is, she makes friends with Pepper, an excitable engineer, who’s determined to help her learn and grow. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet introduced readers to the incredible world of Rosemary Harper, a young woman with a restless soul and secrets to keep. When she joined the crew of the Wayfarer, an intergalactic ship, she got more than she bargained for—and learned to live with, and love, her rag-tag collection of crewmates. A Closed and Common Orbit is the stand-alone sequel to that beloved debut novel, and is perfect for fans of Firefly, Joss Whedon, Mass Effect, and Star Wars.

Download or read book Give the Word Responses to Werner Hamacher s 95 Theses on Philology written by Werner Hamacher and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Werner Hamacher’s witty and elliptical 95 Theses on Philology challenges the humanities—and particularly academic philology—that assume language to be a given entity rather than an event. In Give the Word eleven scholars of literature and philosophy (Susan Bernstein, Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Peter Fenves, Sean Gurd, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Jan Plug, Gerhard Richter, Avital Ronell, Thomas Schestag, Ann Smock, and Vincent van Gerven Oei) take up the challenge presented by Hamacher’s theses. At the close Hamacher responds to them in a spirited text that elaborates on the context of his 95 Theses and its rich theoretical and philosophical ramifications. The 95 Theses, included in this volume, makes this collection a rich resource for the study and practice of “radical philology.” Hamacher’s philology interrupts and transforms, parting with tradition precisely in order to remain faithful to its radical but increasingly occluded core. The contributors test Hamacher’s break with philology in a variety of ways, attempting a philological practice that does not take language as an object of knowledge, study, or even love. Thus, in responding to Hamacher’s Theses, the authors approach language that, because it can never be an object of any kind, awakens an unfamiliar desire. Taken together these essays problematize philological ontology in a movement toward radical reconceptualizations of labor, action, and historical time.

Download or read book Get to the Point written by Joel Schwartzberg and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this indispensable guide for anyone who must communicate in speech or writing, Schwartzberg shows that most of us fail to convince because we don't have a point-a concrete contention that we can argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. He lays out, step-by-step, how to develop one. In Joel's Schwartzberg's ten-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across-one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail-is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. A point is something more. It's a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. A point offers a position of potential value. Global warming is real is not a point. Scientific evidence shows that global warming is a real, human-generated problem that will have a devastating environmental and financial impact is a point. When we have a point, our influence snaps into place. We communicate belief, conviction, and urgency. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

Download or read book They written by Kay Dick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

Download or read book My Life with Bob written by Pamela Paul and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For twenty-eight years, Pamela Paul has been keeping a diary that records the books she reads, rather than the life she leads. Or does it? Over time, it's become clear that this Book of Books, or Bob, as she calls him, tells a much bigger story. For Paul, as for many readers, books reflect her inner life--her fantasies and hopes, her dreams and ideas. And her life, in turn, influences which books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, diversion or self-reflection, information or entertainment. My Life with Bob isn't about what's in those books; it's about the relationship between books and readers"--

Download or read book The Lonely Soldier written by Helen Benedict and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lonely Soldier--the inspiration for the documentary The Invisible War--vividly tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006--and of the challenges they faced while fighting a war painfully alone. More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine." In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L.A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D.C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers-including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful, The Lonely Soldier is a clarion call for change.

Download or read book In Order to Live written by Yeonmi Park and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” - Yeonmi Park "One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard - and one of the most inspiring." - The Bookseller “Park's remarkable and inspiring story shines a light on a country whose inhabitants live in misery beyond comprehension. Park's important memoir showcases the strength of the human spirit and one young woman's incredible determination to never be hungry again.” —Publishers Weekly In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea—and to freedom. Park confronts her past with a startling resilience. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Park’s testimony is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable.

Download or read book Convenience Store Woman written by Sayaka Murata and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The English-language debut of one of Japan’s most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction—many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual—and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action... A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

Download or read book Why Women Read Fiction written by Helen Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian McEwan once said, 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.' This book explains how precious fiction is to contemporary women readers, and how they draw on it to tell the stories of their lives. Female readers are key to the future of fiction and—as parents, teachers, and librarians—the glue for a literate society. Women treasure the chance to read alone, but have also gregariously shared reading experiences and memories with mothers, daughters, grandchildren, and female friends. For so many, reading novels and short stories enables them to escape and to spread their wings intellectually and emotionally. This book, written by an experienced teacher, scholar of women's writing, and literature festival director, draws on over 500 interviews with and questionnaires from women readers and writers. It describes how, where, and when British women read fiction, and examines why stories and writers influence the way female readers understand and shape their own life stories. Taylor explores why women are the main buyers and readers of fiction, members of book clubs, attendees at literary festivals, and organisers of days out to fictional sites and writers' homes. The book analyses the special appeal and changing readership of the genres of romance, erotica, and crime. It also illuminates the reasons for British women's abiding love of two favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Taylor offers a cornucopia of witty and wise women's voices, of both readers themselves and also writers such as Hilary Mantel, Helen Dunmore, Katie Fforde, and Sarah Dunant. The book helps us understand why—in Jackie Kay's words—'our lives are mapped by books.'

Download or read book The Queen Of The Night written by Alexander Chee and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, and others. The mesmerizing story of one woman's rise from circus rider to courtesan to world-renowned diva—"a brilliant performance" (Washington Post). The Queen of the Night tells the captivating story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role—her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? With epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details, Alexander Chee shares Lilliet’s cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals. “It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera.”—The New Yorker “Sprawling, soaring, bawdy, and plotted like a fine embroidery.”—NPR

Download or read book Wolf Season written by Helen Benedict and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Reading Group Month "Great Group Reads" selection "[Helen Benedict] has emerged as one of our most thoughtful and provocative writers of war literature." —David Abrams, author of Fobbit and Brave Deeds, at the Quivering Pen "No one writes with more authority or cool-eyed compassion about the experience of women in war both on and off the battlefield than Helen Benedict. . . . Wolf Season is more than a novel for our times; it should be required reading." —Elissa Schappell, author of Use Me and Blueprints for Building Better Girls "Fierce and vivid and full of hope, this story of trauma and resilience, of love and family, of mutual aid and solidarity in the aftermath of a brutal war is nothing short of magic. . . . To read these pages is to be transported to a world beyond hype and propaganda to see the human cost of war up close. This is not a novel that allows you to walk away unchanged." —Cara Hoffman, author of Be Safe I Love You and Running "A novel of love, loss, and survival, Wolf Season delves into the complexities and murk of the after-war with blazing clarity. You will come to treasure these characters for their strengths and foibles alike. Helen Benedict has delivered yet again, and contemporary war literature is much the better for it." —Matt Gallagher, author of Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War and Youngblood After a hurricane devastates a small town in upstate New York, the lives of three women and their young children are irrevocably changed. Rin, an Iraq War veteran, tries to protect her blind daughter and the three wolves under her care. Naema, a widowed doctor who fled Iraq with her wounded son, faces life-threatening injuries and confusion about her feelings for Louis, a veteran and widower harboring his own secrets and guilt. Beth, who is raising a troubled son, waits out her marine husband's deployment in Afghanistan, equally afraid of him coming home and of him never returning at all. As they struggle to maintain their humanity and find hope, their war-torn lives collide in a way that will affect their entire community. Helen Benedict is the author of seven novels, including Sand Queen, a Publishers Weekly "Best Contemporary War Novel"; five works of nonfiction, including The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq; and the play The Lonely Soldier Monologues. She lives in New York.

Download or read book The War for Kindness written by Jamil Zaki and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2019 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Stanford psychologist offers a bold new understanding of empathy, revealing it to be a skill, not a fixed trait, and showing, through science and stories, how we can all become more empathetic"--

Download or read book The Reluctant Dragon Children s Book written by Kenneth Grahame and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eBook edition of " The Reluctant Dragon" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. A young boy discovers an erudite, poetry-loving dragon living in the Downs above his home. The two become friends, but soon afterwards the dragon is discovered by the townsfolk, who send for St George to rid them of it. The boy introduces St George to the dragon, and the two decide that it would be better for them not to fight. Eventually, they decide to stage a fake joust between the two combatants.

Download or read book What Makes This Book So Great written by Jo Walton and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The House of the Scorpion written by Nancy Farmer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Newberry Honour Award Winner & National Book Award Winner. Matt is six years old when he discovers that he is different from other children and other people. To most, Matt isn't considered a boy at all, but a beast, dirty and disgusting. But to El Patron, lord of a country called Opium, Matt is the guarantee of eternal life. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself - for Matt is himself. They share the exact same DNA. As Matt struggles to understand his existence and what that existence truly means, he is threatened by a host of sinister and manipulating characters, from El Patron's power-hungry family to the brain-deadened eejits and mindless slaves that toil Opium's poppy fields. Surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards, escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But even escape is no guarantee of freedom . . . because Matt is marked by his difference in ways that he doesn't even suspect. Praise for The House of Scorpions: 'It's a pleasure to read science fiction that's full of warm, strong characters... that doesn't rely on violence as the solution to complex problems of right and wrong. It's a pleasure to read.' Ursula K. LeGuin 'Fabulous' Diana Wynne Jones Also by Nancy Farmer: The Sea of Trolls Land of the Silver Apples The Islands of the Blessed The Lord of Opium