Download or read book Charles written by Shirley Jackson and published by Tale Blazers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shirley Jackson [RL 6 IL 7-10] A boy's kindergarten career surprises his parents. Themes: change; perception versus reality. 24 pages. Tale Blazers.

Download or read book Interior Chinatown written by Charles Yu and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes "one of the funniest books of the year.... A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire" (The Washington Post). A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it? After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.

Download or read book Call Me Ishmael written by Charles Olson and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences—especially Shakespearean ones—on Melville’s writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the “theory of the two Moby-Dicks,” Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville’s reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the saga: “the first book did not contain Ahab,” writes Olson, and “it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick.” If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the “theory of the two Moby-Dicks,” it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy. Passionate in his poetry, Olson was no less passionate in his reading of Melville. Impatient with what he regarded as traditional forms of literary criticism, Olson engaged his own creativity to write a book as robust, original, and compelling as Melville’s masterpiece. “Not only important, but apocalyptic.”—New York Herald Tribune “One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby-Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville’s dispersed library.”—Lewis Mumford, New York Times “Records, often brilliantly, one way of taking the most extraordinary of American books.”—W. E. Bezanson, New England Quarterly “The most important contribution to Melville criticism since Raymond Weaver’s pioneering contribution in 1921.”—George Mayberry, New Republic

Download or read book Memoir of the Life of Charles Short written by Charles Lancaster Short and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Farther and Wilder written by Blake Bailey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Jackson’s novel The Lost Weekend—the story of five disastrous days in the life of an alcoholic—was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Although he tried to escape its legacy, Jackson is often remembered only as the author of this thinly veiled autobiography. In Farther & Wilder, the award-winning biographer of Richard Yates and John Cheever goes deeper, exploring Jackson’s life—from growing up in the scandal-plagued village of Newark, New York, to a career in Hollywood and friendships with everyone from Judy Garland and Billy Wilder to Thomas Mann and Mary McCarthy. This is the fascinating biography of a writer whose life and work encapsulated what it meant to be an addict and a closeted homosexual in mid-century America, and who was far ahead of his time in bringing these forbidden subjects into the popular discourse.

Download or read book Into the Garden with Charles written by Clyde Phillip Wachsberger and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the tiny village of Orient, Long Island, and in New York City, Into the Garden with Charles is a memoir about falling in love. As a boy in suburban New York in 1940s, Clyde Wachsberger daydreams about storybook gardens where magic happens under the huge leaves. Through the 1960s and 1970s, when most gay men disdained monogamy, the author—an artist and set-designer in New York City—searches unsuccessfully for a soul mate. In 1983, approaching middle-age and having given up on finding love, he moves to a three-hundred-year-old house on a third of an acre, where he channels his passion into creating a garden appropriate to his historical home. Then remarkable circumstances lead him to Charles—a connoisseur of art, a gardener, and the man who will become his life-partner. Together they create a garden of sensuous wild beauty. Into the Garden with Charles is infused with the author's artistic sensibility and is written in a voice that is unaffected, generous, and straightforward. Enriched with the author's paintings—giving it the look and feel of an antique children's book—Into the Garden with Charles is a unique and moving memoir about growing old and falling in love.

Download or read book Charles Laughton written by Charles Higham and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Dead Fish Museum written by Charles D'Ambrosio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In the fall, I went for walks and brought home bones. The best bones weren’t on trails—deer and moose don’t die conveniently—and soon I was wandering so far into the woods that I needed a map and compass to find my way home. When winter came and snow blew into the mountains, burying the bones, I continued to spend my days and often my nights in the woods. I vaguely understood that I was doing this because I could no longer think; I found relief in walking up hills. When the night temperatures dropped below zero, I felt visited by necessity, a baseline purpose, and I walked for miles, my only objective to remain upright, keep moving, preserve warmth. When I was lost, I told myself stories . . .” So Charles D’Ambrosio recounted his life in Philipsburg, Montana, the genesis of the brilliant stories collected here, six of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. Each of these eight burnished, terrifying, masterfully crafted stories is set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike in the Pacific Northwest. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in the bleak corridors of a Manhattan psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A Thanksgiving hunting trip in Northern Michigan becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily beneath a surface of sexual tension toward a racial violence they will never fully comprehend. Taking place in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations, the backloads of Iowa and the streets of Seattle, this collection of stories, as muscular and challenging as the best novels, is about people who have been orphaned, who have lost connection, and who have exhausted the ability to generate meaning in their lives. Yet in the midst of lacerating difficulty, the sensibility at work in these fictions boldly insists on the enduring power of love. D’Ambrosio conjures a world that is fearfully inhospitable, darkly humorous, and touched by glory; here are characters, tested by every kind of failure, who struggle to remain human, whose lives have been sharpened rather than numbed by adversity, whose apprehension of truth and beauty has been deepened rather than defeated by their troubles. Many writers speak of the abyss. Charles D’Ambrosio writes as if he is inside of it, gazing upward, and the gaze itself is redemptive, a great yearning ache, poignant and wondrous, equal parts grit and grace. A must read for everyone who cares about literary writing, The Dead Fish Museum belongs on the same shelf with the best American short fiction.

Download or read book Fire Shut Up in My Bones written by Charles M. Blow and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A respected journalist describes the abuse he suffered at the hands of a close family relative, the effect this had on his formative years and how he overcame the anger and self-doubt it left behind.

Download or read book The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story written by John Freeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John Freeman In the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of styles have brought this unique genre a thrilling burst of energy. The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story celebrates this avalanche of talent. This rich anthology begins in 1970 and brings together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including—for the first time in a collection of this scale—science fiction, horror, and fantasy, placing writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, and Stephen King next to some beloved greats of the literary form: Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Denis Johnson. Culling widely, John Freeman, the former editor of Granta and now editor of his own literary annual, brings forward some astonishing work to be regarded in a new light. Often overlooked tales by Dorothy Allison, Percival Everett, and Charles Johnson will recast the shape and texture of today’s enlarging atmosphere of literary dialogue. Stories by Lauren Groff and Ted Chiang raise the specter of engagement in ecocidal times. Short tales by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and Lydia Davis rub shoulders with near novellas by Susan Sontag and Andrew Holleran. This book will be a treasure trove for readers, writers, and teachers alike.

Download or read book I Was Looking for a Street written by Charles Willeford and published by Orion. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I Was Looking For a Street tells the story of Charles Willeford's childhood and adolescence as, orphaned, he moved from railroad yard to hobo tent city to soup kitchen and desert around Los Angeles, and across the United States. The tale is at once a picaresque adventure through Depression-era America and a portrait of the writer as a young man of apparently little promise but great spirit. Written late in Willeford's career, this memoir is the work of a writer at the height of his powers, looking back without nostalgia or regret, and preserving in his clear and forceful prose the great American adventure of his youth.

Download or read book Night Hawks written by Charles Johnson and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, “the celebrated novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and essayist…comes a small treasure, one to be read and considered and reread” (The New York Times Book Review), showcasing his incredible range and resonant voice. Charles Johnson’s Night Hawks presents an eclectic, masterful collection of stories tied together by Buddhist themes and displaying all the grace, heart, and insight for which he has long been known. Spanning genres from science fiction to realism, “Johnson’s writing, filled with the sort of long, layered sentences you can get happily lost in, conveys a kindness; a sense that all of us…have our own stories” (The Seattle Times). In “The Weave,” Ieesha and her boyfriend carry out a heist at the salon from which she has just been fired—coming away with thousands of dollars of merchandise in the form of hair extensions. “Night Hawks,” the titular story, draws on Johnson’s friendship with the late playwright August Wilson to construct a narrative about two writers who meet at night to talk. In “Kamadhatu,” a lonely Japanese abbot has his quiet world upended by a visit from a black American Buddhist whose presence pushes him toward the awakening he has long found elusive. “Occupying Arthur Whitfield,” about a cab driver who decides to rob the home of a wealthy passenger, reminds readers to be grateful for what they have. And “The Night Belongs to Phoenix Jones” combines the real-life story of a “superhero” in the city of Seattle with an invented narrative about an aging English professor who decides to join him. With precise, elegant, and moving language, Johnson creates an “arresting” array of “indelible moments that show Johnson to be a master of the short form” (Library Journal, starred review). Night Hawks is “a masterpiece…[that] ultimately offers a message of empowerment and hope” (Oprah.com).

Download or read book Stories from Quarantine written by The New York Times and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Previously published as The decameron project."

Download or read book A Relative Stranger written by Charles Baxter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the Michigan landscape that Charles Baxter has made his own, these thirteen exquisite stories illuminate the often curious connections of relatives and strangers. "You can't just get a brother off the street," says the narrator of the title story, but indeed he does. In another, a woman tries to elude her lover's voice by spending an entire day without words. A marriage is jostled by the departure of a friend during a snowstorm. Baxter's stories tend to be love stories, but it is love tinged with fear, even danger, where shock, comedy, and love combine in unexpected ways. Book jacket.

Download or read book Degrees of Elevation written by Charles Dodd White and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 16 stories of Appalachia today by some of our top writers. This collection brings us into the present with its struggles and beauty. Human character remains strong in these stories of life in Appalachia. Writers include: Rusty Barnes, Sheldon Lee Compton, Jarrid Deaton, Richard Hague, Silas House, Chris Holbrook, Denton Loving, Mindy Beth Miller, John McManus, Jim Nichols, Valerie Nieman, Chris Offutt, Mark Powell, Ron Rash, Alex Taylor, Crystal Wilkinson

Download or read book How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe Enhanced Edition written by Charles Yu and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This enhanced eBook includes video, audio, photographic, and linked content, as well as a bonus short story. Hear TAMMY talk. Learn the origins of Minor Universe 31. See the TM-31. Take a trip in it. Photos and illustrations appear as hyperlinked endnotes. Video and audio are embedded directly in text. *Video and audio may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for details. National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time. Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life. Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.

Download or read book Prince Charles written by Sally Bedell Smith and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “masterly account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the life and loves of King Charles III, Britain’s first king since 1952, shedding light on the death of Diana, his marriage to Camilla, and his preparations to take the throne Sally Bedell Smith returns once again to the British royal family to give us a new look at the man who was the oldest heir to the throne in more than three hundred years. This vivid, eye-opening biography—the product of four years of research and hundreds of interviews with palace officials, former girlfriends, spiritual gurus, and more, some speaking on the record for the first time—is the first authoritative treatment of Charles’s life. Prince Charles brings to life the real man, with all of his ambitions, insecurities, and convictions. It begins with his lonely childhood, in which he struggled to live up to his father’s expectations and sought companionship from the Queen Mother and his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten. It follows him through difficult years at school, his early love affairs, his intellectual quests, his entrepreneurial pursuits, and his intense search for spiritual meaning. It tells of the tragedy of his marriage to Diana; his eventual reunion with his true love, Camilla; and his relationships with William, Kate, Harry, and his grandchildren. Ranging from his glamorous palaces to his country homes, from his globe-trotting travels to his local initiatives, Smith shows how Prince Charles possesses a fiercely independent spirit and yet spent more than six decades waiting for his destined role, living a life dictated by protocols he often struggles to obey. With keen insight and the discovery of unexpected new details, Smith lays bare the contradictions of a man who is more complicated, tragic, and compelling than we knew, until now.