Download or read book My Elvis Blackout written by Simon Crump and published by Galley Beggar Press. This book was released on 2012-12-26 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is one of the most abnormal books of all time, and also one of the best... No home is complete without this magnificent book." Dan Rhodes Join the King of Rock and Roll as he wreaks crazy havoc with the Memphis Mafia, murders huge numbers of groupies, destroys televisions, sabotages Led Zeppelin gigs with great big bags of pigs' blood and somehow also breaks your heart. The best book you have never read - but really must. Praise for my Elvis Blackout: "Like an episode of South Park, where just as you get into the story something goes splat, Crump's contorted imagination is alarmingly enjoyable." The Guardian "If I was born with a name like Simon Crump, I would spend the rest of my life trying to get all that anger and resentment out of me by being very rude about other people. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Or something like that. No, I wouldn't even give this a passing thought. When you are a famous person, you are there; you are up for grabs for people to have a go at. I know there are comedians who make fun of me. But, you know, I look at my beautiful family, I look at the house I live in and I look at my fans all over the world, and I look at my career and I think, well it's all based on jealousy and envy and really I don't give a toss." Chris De Burgh This ebook edition comes with a brand new introduction by Jon McGregor and a postscript by the author. It also contains the complete text of one of the best book's written in the past twenty years. First published in 2000, but shamefully overlooked ever since, My Elvis Blackout is a work of genius. Of particularly twisted and unsettling genius, but genius all the same. A book so strange, sick and strange again that you'll often wonder what on earth you're reading. But as you wonder, you'll also marvel. In these 37 short stories, the King of Rock and Roll - "hero and model to teenagers the world over" - joins a choir in order to torture and murder Christians, labours under the delusion that he's a major rock-star (when really he's just an inmate in an asylum who's afraid of potatoes), and kills both Barbara Cartland and Chris De Burgh. And then he does some bad things too. Needless to say, it's very funny - but My Elvis Blackout is more than just a laugh riot. This acerbic take on the cult of Elvis' personality tells plenty of uncomfortable truths about our relationship with celebrity, while Simon Crump writes with astonishing force and power about mortality, human cruelty and the horrors that man inflicts upon his fellow man. It's daft. But it's also profound. And don't think that this is disrespectful to the King, either. Elvis remains a strangely sympathetic (albeit psychotic) character throughout. It's one of the best tributes to his unique genius you can hope to read. Just don't buy it if you're a Chris De Burgh fan...

Download or read book Neverland written by Simon Crump and published by Galley Beggar Press. This book was released on 2014-11-19 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We follow a thoroughly unreliable narrator Lamar (a former member of the Memphis mafia who has now been employed by Michael Jackson) as he loses his wife, drinks drugged coffee and sleeps for years at a time, gets shot and dies - an event that only seems to incapacitate him in so far as he can no longer smoke his favourite brand of mini-cigars. His employer, meanwhile, takes part in the last great gold rush of 1898, tries to buy a unicorn from Ebay, starts fights in shopping malls with Uri Geller, forces Lisa Marie Presley to play with his lego and attacks a horse. it took three years to put together Neverland, a novel about "Michael Jackson and his loud mouth friend Uri". Three years during which, Simon Crump said, Michael Jackson was "with me at home, at work and in my car. He shared my meals and even some of my dreams." Crump finished the book around 9pm BST on 25 June. The real Michael Jackson was dead less than four hours later.

Download or read book Neverland written by Simon Crump and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for Simon Crump: "Deliciously obscene and blackly comic. . . . Quentin Tarantino on acid in Graceland. Extraordinary."--The Sunday Times "Like an episode of South Park, where just as you get into the story something goes splat, Crump's contorted imagination is alarmingly enjoyable."--Guardian "Superb."--FHM "There's a lot more to the book than you might think; an undercurrent of despair and depression that leads to an unexpected and thoroughly moving conclusion."The Independent "Simon Crump is a vicious and endearing fellow."Todd McEwen "Crump has a uniquely honest and unflinching vision and he has the talent to tear off the veneer and revel in the insalubrious reality beneath without being gratuitous or heartless. If you have a dark side, Simon Crump will let you see it--but beware, you might not like what you find."--Time Out "Wickedly funny."Uncut "Crump is in total control of his material. His writing is plain, the humor a faded black, the dusting of pathos unobtrusive."Zembla Neverland is Simon Crump's most daring collection yet--surreal, outrageous, and laugh-out-loud funny. Four years in the making (and delivered just hours before Michael Jackson's death), this is a superb piece of writing that transposes the King of Pop into a world of $2,000,000 unicorns bought on eBay, giant whelks, rampaging bodyguards, violence, wonder, mystery, and golf. Outrageous and hilarious, Neverland is nevertheless more than just satire: it is a profound--and profoundly entertaining--fictional exploration of celebrity.

Download or read book The Vivisector written by Patrick White and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-01-27 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join J. M. Coetzee and Thomas Keneally in rediscovering Nobel Laureate Patrick White Hurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle. His sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him-all are used as fodder for his art. It is only when Hurtle meets an egocentric adolescent whom he sees as his spiritual child does he experience a deeper, more treacherous emotion in this tour de force of sexual and psychological menace that sheds brutally honest light on the creative experience. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Download or read book A Is For Angelica written by Iain Broome and published by Legend Press Ltd. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My life is different now. I don't go to work. I don't have an office. I stay at home, hide behind curtains and make notes. I wait for something to happen.' Gordon Kingdom struggles with the fate of his seriously-ill wife while patiently observing and methodically recording the lives of those around him: his neighbours. He has files on them all, including Don Donald (best friend and petty thief), Annie Carnaffan (lives next door, throws footballs over the fence), and Benny (the boy who paints with his eyes closed). Then there's Angelica, the new girl (42) on the street, with her multi-coloured toenails and her filthy temper. It's when she arrives that Gordon's world of half-truths really begins to unravel. Faced with a series of unexpected events and a faltering conscience, he's left with an impossible decision. Because in the banality of everyday life, what would you do if the unthinkable happened?

Download or read book Thanku written by Joseph Bruchac and published by Millbrook Press (Tm). This book was released on 2019 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This poetry anthology, edited by Miranda Paul, explores a wide range of ways to be grateful (from gratitude for a puppy to gratitude for family to gratitude for the sky) with poems by a diverse group of contributors, including Joseph Bruchac, Margarita Engle, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye, Charles Waters, and Jane Yolen.

Download or read book A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks written by Sabrina Mittermeier and published by Intellect (UK). This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writing is academic, but it is not inaccessible. It will have wide disciplinary appeal within academia, as tourism studies cross into a variety of fields including history, American studies, fandom studies, performance studies and cultural studies. It will be invaluable to those working in the field of theme park scholarship and the study of Disney theme parks, theme parks in general and related areas like world's expositions and spaces of the consumer and lifestyle worlds. It will also be of interest to Disney fans, those who have visited any of the parks or are interested to know more about the parks and their cultural situation and context.

Download or read book Out of Sheer Rage written by Geoff Dyer and published by North Point Press. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD "In the spirit of Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot and Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, Mr. Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage keeps circling its subject in widening loops and then darting at it when you least expect it . . . a wild book."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Geoff Dyer was a talented young writer, full of energy and reverence for the craft, and determined to write a study of D. H. Lawrence. But he was also thinking about a novel, and about leaving Paris, and maybe moving in with his girlfriend in Rome, or perhaps traveling around for a while. Out of Sheer Rage is Dyer's account of his struggle to write the Lawrence book--a portrait of a man tormented, exhilarated, and exhausted. Dyer travels all over the world, grappling not only with his fascinating subject but with all the glorious distractions and needling anxieties that define the life of a writer.

Download or read book Giving Thanks written by Jake Swamp and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2002-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Native American Thanksgiving address, offered to Mother Earth in gratitude for her bounty and for the variety of her creatures

Download or read book The Rough Guide Book of Playlists written by Mark Ellingham and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of the Rough Guide Book of Playlistscontains more than 500 lists of which 50 are new to this edition. The lists are recommendations of ten songs (sometimes a couple more, sometimes a couple less), covering artists (Rufus Wainwright to Thelonius Monk, Al Green to Manu Chao, Glenn Gould to Julie Andrews), genres (Bebop Classics to Reggae Toasters to Punk Originals to Hot Club jazz), songs (10 best Dylan covers; 8 classic versions of Summertime; 10 love songs that don't cloy), quirks and silliness (Songs about Chickens and Insects; Who let the frogs out?; Big Pizza Pie crooners; Take this Job and Shove it!). There's even a literary edge with playlists like '10 songs raved about in Murakami novels'. Each of the Playlists has a nugget about the song (why you want it on your iPod), and a listings of where it's from (remember CDs?).

Download or read book Call Me Esteban written by Lejla Kalamujic and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With unapologetic vividness, Lejla Kalamujic depicts pre- and post-war Sarajevo by charting a daughter coping with losing her mother, but discovering herself. From imagined conversations with Franz Kafka to cozy apartments, psychiatric wards, and cemeteries, Call Me Esteban is a piercing meditation on a woman grasping at memories in the name of claiming her identity.

Download or read book Webster s New World Essential Vocabulary written by David Alan Herzog and published by Webster's New World. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-have vocabulary builder for test takers and lifelong learners For the more than 3 million SAT and GRE test takers every year, as well as the millions of non-native English speakers who want to enhance their English vocabulary, Websters New World Essential Vocabulary will be an invaluable resource.

Download or read book Last Night at the Viper Room written by Gavin Edwards and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography elucidating the Academy Award–nominee’s meteoric rise, his tragic end, and his legacy. At the dawn of the 1990s, a new crew of leading men—Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and Brad Pitt—was rocketing toward stardom. River Phoenix, however, stood in front of the pack. But behind Phoenix’s talent and beautiful public face was a young man who had been raised in a cult by nonconformist parents, who was burdened with supporting his family from a young age, and who eventually succumbed to addiction, dying of an overdose in front of the Viper Room, West Hollywood’s storied club, at twenty-three. Last Night at the Viper Room is part biography, part cultural history of the 1990s, and part celebration of a Hollywood icon gone too soon. Full of interviews from his fellow actors, directors, friends, and family, this book shows the role River Phoenix played in creating the place of the actor in our modern culture and the impact his work still makes today.

Download or read book Once written by Enda Walsh and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When an Irish busker and a young Czech mother meet through a shared love of music, their songwriting sparks a deep connection and a tender, longing romance that neither of them could have expected. Based on the much-loved Oscar-winning film, Once is an extraordinary, original and irresistibly joyous celebration of love, friendship and music. With music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, it has a book written by Enda Walsh. Once won eight Tony Awards when it opened on Broadway in 2012, including Best Book and Best Musical. It opened in Dublin in February 2013 before transferring to the West End.

Download or read book The Awfully Big Adventure written by Paul Morley and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Jackson died on June 25 2009 in Los Angeles, from of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication (according to Wikipedia). The one-time King of Pop was preparing for one last assault on the mainstream with a proposed 50 night run of shows at the 02 (thereby trumping his arch-rival, Prince, who had just concluded his legendary 21 Nights). His exhaustion, paranoia and general ill-heath were an open secret. He had lived many lives and inhabited many bodies; PT Barnum, Fred Astaire, and Peter Pan in one mortal coil. His death was mourned by hundreds of millions of fans but it was almost as if he had been dead for some time already. And in his death, in vivid technicolor, we relived the dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and perversions that we had all projected on to him for four decades. Paul Morley's short biographical portrait of Michael Jackson looks at how we turned the most outrageous child star talent of the late 20th century into a monster; how his decline soundtracked the end of Pop and the end of American Imperialism; how his once staggeringly modern and funky music became secondary to the dysfunctional freak show of watching a vulnerable man literally disintegrate. Tender, erudite, and provocative, Morley's monograph documents a tragedy that is so Shakespearean in scale that it obscures the legacy of the last of the great Song and Dance Men.

Download or read book Sweet Revenge written by Tom Bower and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For this definitive biography, acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Tom Bower was granted unprecedented access to Simon Cowell and those around him--and the result is a fascinating multilayered portrait of one of the world's most intriguing television personalities ever to dominate the music industry. Simon Cowell has made an international name for himself as the no-holds-barred judge on the television phenomenon American Idol. He's been called mean, arrogant, brash, and unapologetic, but his stinging barbs and smug personality have also earned him cheers from fans, as well as millions of dollars, a string of exotic beauties, and industry clout to develop his own projects. But Cowell's true reward is revenge. Sweet Revenge is the ultimate insider's account of Simon Cowell's rise to fame--even as others plotted his downfall--from his cheeky exploits as a British school lad to his failures as a frustrated young music exec in London to his explosive rivalry with Simon Fuller over the genesis of the Idol franchise to the PR disaster that nearly sunk his wildly successful show The X Factor. Conducting more than 150 interviews with industry power players, Cowell's inner circle, and Cowell himself on a private jet, chartered yacht, at his L.A. home, and on the studio lot, Tom Bower pulls back the curtain on a man who is at once insecure, ambitious, easily bored, vain, needy, and driven, a man who will go to any limit to secure his success. Cowell is also revealed as a loyal friend and loving son. His father, to whom Cowell was particularly close, became his most trusted adviser and mentor. Packed with juicy details, exclusive interviews, and never-before-revealed facts, Sweet Revenge presents a complete picture of Simon Cowell that few have ever seen.

Download or read book Getty and Townend Praise Classics written by and published by Alfred Music. This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collaborative efforts of Keith and Kristyn Getty, along with Stuart Townend, have produced long-lasting modern hymns for the church. Arranger James Koerts has created these contemporary arrangements of some of their best-loved praise classics. Titles: Across the Lands (You're the Word of God) * By Faith * Come, People of the Risen King * Compassion Hymn * How Deep the Father's Love for Us * In Christ Alone (My Hope Is Found) * My Heart Is Filled with Thankfulness * O Church, Arise * The Power of the Cross (Oh, To See the Dawn) * See, What a Morning (Resurrection Hymn) * Speak, O Lord * Still, My Soul, Be Still (with Be Still, My Soul). "Memorable melodies, chordal accompaniment often in a flowing broken chord pattern, and simple transitions to new keys make these attractive arrangements a delight to learn and to play at an early advanced level." Joyce Janzen, Progressions