Download or read book My Unsentimental Education written by Debra Monroe and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both the story of Monroe's steady rise into the professional class and a parallel history of unsuitable exes, this memoir reminds us how accidental even a good life can be. Funny, poignant, wise, My Unsentimental Education explores the confusion that ensues when a working-class girl ends up far from where she began.
Download or read book An Unsentimental Education written by Molly McQuade and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Unsentimental Education is a collection of candid interviews with twenty-one of our leading novelists and poets. Presented as first-person essays, the interviews are with contemporary writers who have studied or taught at the University of Chicago. The book provides an occasion for the writers to reflect on their Chicago experiences and on ideas about education in general. What education does a writer need? How can formal learning impel the writing life? What school stories or tales told out of school do Philip Roth, Hayden Carruth, Marguerite Young, George Steiner, Charles Simic, Susan Sontag, and Saul Bellow have in store and want to share?
Download or read book Jigsaw written by Sybille Bedford and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Bedford's autobiographical novel paints a vivid picture of life in 1920s Europe between the wars. Sybille Bedford placed the ambiguous and inescapable stuff of her own life at the center of her fiction, and in Jigsaw—her fourth and final novel, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize—she did it with particular artistry. “What I had in mind,” she was later to say, “was to build a novel out of the events and people who had made up, and marked, my early youth...Truth here was an artistic, not moral, requirement...It involved...writing about myself, my feelings, my actions.” And so she assembled the puzzle pieces of her singular past into a picture of her “unsentimental education.” We learn of a childhood spent alone with her father, “a stranded man of the world” living a life of “ungenteel poverty in quite grand surroundings,” a château, that is, deep in the German countryside, with wine but little else for him and his young daughter to hold body and soul together. We learn of her return to Italy and her mother, “the one character I wished to keep minor and knew all along that it could not be done,” and the dark secret consuming her mother’s life. Finally, she tells us how she lived with and learned from Aldous and Maria Huxley on the French Riviera, developing the sense of purpose and determination that made her the great writer she would become.
Download or read book Nothing Daunted written by Dorothy Wickenden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Agitators, the acclaimed and captivating true story of two restless society girls who left their affluent lives to “rough it” as teachers in the wilds of Colorado in 1916. In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, bored by society luncheons, charity work, and the effete men who courted them, left their families in Auburn, New York, to teach school in the wilds of northwestern Colorado. They lived with a family of homesteaders in the Elkhead Mountains and rode to school on horseback, often in blinding blizzards. Their students walked or skied, in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with string. The young cattle rancher who had lured them west, Ferry Carpenter, had promised them the adventure of a lifetime. He hadn’t let on that they would be considered dazzling prospective brides for the locals. Nearly a hundred years later, Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter of Dorothy Woodruff, found the teachers’ buoyant letters home, which captured the voices of the pioneer women, the children, and other unforgettable people the women got to know. In reconstructing their journey, Wickenden has created an exhilarating saga about two intrepid women and the “settling up” of the West.
Download or read book Everafter Vol 2 The Unsentimental Education written by Dave Justus and published by Vertigo. This book was released on 2017-12-26 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spinning off from Bill Willingham’s FABLES saga! young ally, the deadliest class of all time is now in session. Will it prove to be a learning experience? Or will the Fable and Mundy worlds both discover that school is out—forever? Infamous Mundy writers Dave Justus and Lilah Sturges join acclaimed artists Travis Moore and FABLES’ own Mark Buckingham to add to the legacy of creator Bill Willingham’s modern classic with EVERAFTER VOL. 2: THE UNSENTIMENTAL Peter Piper. Bo Peep. Connor Wolf. As members of the elite network of agents known as the Shadow Players, these three legendary Fables share a single purpose: to protect the newly merged magical and mundane worlds from all threats. But what happens when the greatest threat of all comes from within? Bobby Speckland may look like any other Texas high school student, but as the first Mundy to gain magical abilities in the post-Everafter world, he’s also a sorcerer of incredible power. So when a trio of bullied teens take over their school using stolen Fable weapons and unleash the Lone Star State’s supernatural shock troops to consolidate their coup d’école, it’s up to Bobby to find a way to bring them down—by any means necessary. For the three veteran agents and their volatile EDUCATION—the final chapter in the Shadow Players saga! Collects issues #7-12.
Download or read book Things I Didn t Know written by Robert Hughes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-06-03 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Hughes has trained his critical eye on many major subjects, from the city of Barcelona to the history of his native Australia. Now he turns that eye inward, onto himself and the world that formed him. Hughes analyzes his experiences the way he might examine a Van Gogh or a Picasso. From his relationship with his stern and distant father to his Catholic upbringing and school years; and from his development as an artist, writer, and critic to his growing appreciation of art and his exhilaration at leaving Australia to discover a new life, Hughes’ memoir is an extraordinary feat of exploration and celebration.
Download or read book An Italian Education written by Tim Parks and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “marvelous” Mediterranean memoir of an expatriate father raising his children in Italy—from the author of Italian Neighbors (The Washington Post). Tim Parks offers another lively firsthand account of Italian society and culture—this time focusing on all the little things that turn an ordinary newborn infant into a true Italian. When British-born Tim Parks heard a mother at the beach in Pescara shout to her son, “Alberto, don’t sweat! No you can’t go in the sea till eleven, it’s still too cold, go and see your cousin in row three number fifty-two,” he was inspired to write about parenting in Italy—which he was doing himself at the time after adopting the country as his own. In this humorous memoir, Parks offers an enchanting portrait of Italian childhood that shifts from comedy to despair in the time it takes to sing a lullaby. The result is “a wry, thoughtful, and often hilarious book . . . a parable of how our children, no matter what, are other than ourselves” (The New Yorker). “Glimpses of Italy that are fond, critical, pithy and penetrating.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Download or read book The Rules Do Not Apply written by Ariel Levy and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true.
Download or read book Breaking Night written by Liz Murray and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.
Download or read book Dirt Work written by Christine Byl and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and lyrical account of one woman’s unlikely apprenticeship on a national park trail crew—and what she discovers about nature, gender, and the value of hard work Christine Byl first encountered the national parks the way most of us do: on vacation. But after she graduated from college, broke and ready for a new challenge, she joined a Glacier National Park trail crew as a seasonal “traildog” maintaining mountain trails for the millions of visitors Glacier draws every year. Byl first thought of the job as a paycheck, a summer diversion, a welcome break from “the real world” before going on to graduate school. She came to find out that work in the woods on a trail crew was more demanding, more rewarding—more real—than she ever imagined. During her first season, Byl embraces the backbreaking difficulty of the work, learning how to clear trees, move boulders, and build stairs in the backcountry. Her first mentors are the colorful characters with whom she works—the packers, sawyers, and traildogs from all walks of life—along with the tools in her hands: axe, shovel, chainsaw, rock bar. As she invests herself deeply in new work, the mountains, rivers, animals, and weather become teachers as well. While Byl expected that her tenure at the parks would be temporary, she ends up turning this summer gig into a decades-long job, moving from Montana to Alaska, breaking expectations—including her own—that she would follow a “professional” career path. Returning season after season, she eventually leads her own crews, mentoring other trail dogs along the way. In Dirt Work, Byl probes common assumptions about the division between mental and physical labor, “women’s work” and “men’s work,” white collars and blue collars. The supposedly simple work of digging holes, dropping trees, and blasting snowdrifts in fact offers her an education of the hands and the head, as well as membership in an utterly unique subculture. Dirt Work is a contemplative but unsentimental look at the pleasures of labor, the challenges of apprenticeship, and the way a place becomes a home.
Download or read book Inside a Pearl written by Edmund White and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary treat: a memoir of Edmund White's years among the cultural and intellectual elite of 1980s Paris
Download or read book The Finishing School written by Muriel Spark and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Muriel Spark, the grande dame of literary satire, comes this swift, deliciously witty tale of writerly ambition that recalls her beloved The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.College Sunrise is a somewhat louche and vaguely disreputable finishing school located, for now, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves while he works, somewhat falteringly, on his novel. Into Rowland’s creative writing class comes seventeen-year-old Chris Wiley, a red-haired literary prodigy whose historical novel-in-progress, on Mary Queen of Scots, has already excited the interest of publishers. The inevitable result: keen envy, and a game of cat and mouse fraught with jealousy and attraction, both literary and sexual.
Download or read book Source of Trouble written by Debra Monroe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1995-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portraying characters who dwell on the outer edge of the American dream, the winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction creates a world where happiness is always half heartache and plans frequently dwindle into disaster. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Download or read book Everything Happens for a Reason written by Kate Bowler and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising
Download or read book Democracy written by Joan Didion and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1995-04-25 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean—a gorgeously written, bitterly funny look at the relationship between politics and personal life. Moving deftly between romance, farce, and tragedy, from 1970s America to Vietnam to Jakarta, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase. Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam. As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class.
Download or read book Edge Play written by Jane Boon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Masters of the Universe have a new mistress—a protagonist who learns to wield power in the excessive, fascinating cultures of Wall Street and BDSM-for-hire. BOW DOWN.” —WEDNESDAY MARTIN, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Primates of Park Avenue and Untrue EDGE PLAY by Jane Boon National Leather Association's Pauline Reage Novel Award, Finalist CORRECTION: Amy Lefevre’s second language is risk. A gorgeous young investment banker, she navigates Wall Street’s toxic culture with ease—until the stock market collapses. CRISIS: Amy starts investigating the failed deals her boss engineered. Drawn to a treacherous ride on the edge, will her efforts to expose him cause her to lose it all? CONSENT: Amy’s best friend is a dominatrix with an offer: take over her elite S&M dungeon, catering to the pervy needs of millionaires and billionaires and learn the true nature of power. EDGE PLAY is a universe beyond Fifty Shades of Grey and The Big Short, set in the most elite, twisted circles of Wall Street mega-power and S&M. Amy Lefevre dives into an underground realm of Big Swinging Dicks only to find that, in this arena, the women wield the whips and the men submit. “Edge Play explores obsession and ambition with a fetishist's eye for detail. From the sleek Syren latex to the sexy Louboutins, to power moves found in both the dazzling hustle of high finance and the darkness of the dungeon, this book delivers.” —LILY BURANA, Author of Strip City “This is such a fun book! Smart, sexy, and full of surprises. It's also full of stingingly authentic details of Wall Street and the BDSM culture simmering just below it. It's a New York where everyone wants to come out on top, and power is a skill that can be learned.” —JO WELDON, Author of Fierce: The History of Leopard Print and The Burlesque Handbook
Download or read book Surrender on Demand written by Varian Fry and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Varian Fry, a young editor from New York, traveled to Marseilles after Germany defeated France in the summer of 1940. As the representative of the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization, he offered aid and advice to refugees who found themselves threatened with extradition to Nazi Germany under Article 19 of the Franco-German armistice — the “Surrender on Demand” clause. Fry risked his life to rescue those targeted by the Gestapo in “the most gigantic man-trap in history.” Working day and night with a few associates in opposition to France’s Vichy government and to American authorities, his elaborate rescue network managed to spirit more than 1,500 people — including prominent European politicians, artists, writers and scientists — to safety by the time Fry was expelled from France after 13 months. “Surrender on Demand is by turns wildly exciting, horrifying and exalting. Certainly, there has never been another book like it... Varian Fry is a good man. Through the people he has helped rescue — the doctors, the painters, the writers, the sculptors, the teachers — he has added to the sum total of the world’s happiness... an astonishingly good book.” — Russell Maloney, The New York Times “Surrender on Demand contains enough intrigue and conspiracy, enough narrow escapes and shady and flamboyant characters for three or four spy stories. But Mr. Fry has not written it for excitement... He has put down some plain and eloquent facts.” — Orville Prescott, The New York Times “I have read and heard many accounts of escapes from Europe... but none surpasses this restrained and factual narrative in suspense and excitement... It tells of many triumphs and some defeats: it depicts with vividness and often with humor a large number of interesting and frequently distinguished persons; it describes the endless obstacles encountered and the ingenious and constantly changing shifts and devices contrived to overcome them; and throughout it makes one feel the undercurrent of potential tragedy which too often became actual.” — New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review “A novelist would hardly dare pack a novel with so many hair-breath escapes.” — Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune “... a brilliant exposé of the work accomplished by [Fry] in Marseille during the tragic days that followed the French defeat... Surrender on Demand is a unique contribution to the underground history of the war.” — Josef Forman, Free World “There are a larger number of highly exciting and almost unbelievable stories in this deeply moving but often also highly amusing book. Friends of light adventure novels will undoubtedly like it. And friends of humanity will see much more in it than an adventure story although it deals with forging passports, with hiding and escaping from detectives, with secret messages hidden in a toothpaste tube, and with an underground railroad over a well protected border. They will see in it a memorial to the man who made what he modestly calls ‘an experiment in democratic solidarity’ and also to the women and men who sent him on his dangerous mission.” — Henry B. Kranz, Saturday Review