Download or read book When You Catch an Adjective Kill it written by Ben Yagoda and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2007 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sample Text
Download or read book When You Catch an Adjective Kill It written by Ben Yagoda and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. Read If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It and: Learn how to write better with classic advice from writers such as Mark Twain (“If you catch an adjective, kill it”), Stephen King (“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs”), and Gertrude Stein (“Nouns . . . are completely not interesting”). Marvel at how a single word can shift from adverb (“I did okay”), to adjective (“It was an okay movie”), to interjection (“Okay!”), to noun (“I gave my okay”), to verb (“Who okayed this?”), depending on its use. Avoid the pretentious preposition at, a favorite of real estate developers (e.g., “The Shoppes at White Plains”). Laugh when Yagoda says he “shall call anyone a dork to the end of his days” who insists on maintaining the distinction between shall and will. Read, and discover a book whose pop culture references, humorous asides, and bracing doses of discernment and common sense convey Yagoda’s unique sense of the “beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language.”
Download or read book Your First Page First Pages and What They Tell Us about the Pages that Follow Them written by Peter Selgin and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your First Page is unlike any other craft book on writing. It is based on the premise that practically everything that can go right or wrong in a work of fiction or memoir goes wrong or right on the first page. Those first 300 or so words function like canaries in coal mines, forecasting success or predicting trouble. They establish the crucial bond between writer and reader, setting them off together on a path toward the heart or climax of a story—or they fail to do so. From first pages we stand to learn most of what we need to know to succeed as authors. This new workshop and classroom edition of Your First Page has been revised to better fit the needs of creative writing classrooms and workshops.
Download or read book Geese to a Poor Market written by Lonnie D. Whitaker and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geese to a Poor Market is a geographic slice of Americana with an ensemble cast of crooks, moonshiners, preachers, lawyers, and odd-ball characters. It has one leg that wants to boogie and the other firmly planted on a pew.
Download or read book Memoir written by Ben Yagoda and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a critically acclaimed cultural and literary critic, a definitive history and analysis of the memoir. From Saint Augustine?s Confessions to Augusten Burroughs?s Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. Cultural and literary critic Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings and Roman generals? journals all the way up to the banner year of 2007, which saw memoirs from and about dogs, rock stars, bad dads, good dads, alternadads, waitresses, George Foreman, Iranian women, and a slew of other illustrious persons (and animals). In a time when memoir seems ubiquitous and is still highly controversial, Yagoda tackles the autobiography and memoir in all its forms and iterations. He discusses the fraudulent memoir and provides many examples from the past?and addresses the ramifications and consequences of these books. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition?Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Yagoda also describes historical trends, such as Native American captive memoirs, slave narratives, courtier dramas (where one had to pay to NOT be included in a courtesan?s memoir). Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored. Yagoda's elegant examination of memoir is at once a history of literature and taste, and an absorbing glimpse into what humans find interesting--one another.
Download or read book Word Study written by and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Butterfly Crest written by Eva Vanrell and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ancient war. A long-told prophecy. A cursed inheritance. If you were destined to die, how would you choose to live? Join Elena as she finds herself in the middle of a Greek myth and an ancient war between gods, in a world where the old myths are real and human belief has the power to alter the divine! *Finalist - Readers' Favorite Book Awards
Download or read book The Accidental Life written by Terry McDonell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Amazon Best Book of 2016 A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are). You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has top-edited: Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny—playing “acid golf” with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price. Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit—and keep—high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well. Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today’s digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey Eugenides: “Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he's known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it's changed and where it's going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the Swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book.”
Download or read book How to Not Write Bad written by Ben Yagoda and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Yagoda's How to Not Write Bad illustrates how we can all write better, more clearly, and for a wider readership. He offers advice on what he calls "not-writing-badly," which consists of the ability, first, to craft sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction (word choice), punctuation, and grammar, and that also display clarity, precision, and grace. Then he focuses on crafting whole paragraphs—with attention to cadence, consistency of tone, sentence transitions, and paragraph length. In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps we can all take to make our writing more effective, more interesting—and just plain better.
Download or read book A Lifetime with Mark Twain written by Mary Lawton and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which was first published in 1925, is a transcription of an informal account by Katy Leary of her thirty years’ service to the household of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), the 19th century American writer, humourist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, who became world-famous for novels such as Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). It was Mark Twain who suggested that the faithful Katy tell the world all she knew about him. Her reminiscences were locked away in her memory until Miss Mary Lawton, who had known Mr. and Mrs. Clemens for many years, persuaded Katy to reveal them. Katy Leary began to talk and, pencil in hand, Miss Lawton recorded while the old servant poured forth the inimitable words in which she related many a chapter as yet unknown to those outside the family circle. A fascinating read.
Download or read book Word Study written by and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mark My Words written by Mark Twain and published by St Martins Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a personal look at the man behind the writing through an amusing collection of his expressed opinions and thoughts on such topics as such as fellow writers, authors, editors, children's books, humor, and public speakers.
Download or read book Faking It The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music written by Hugh Barker and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musicians strive to "keep it real"; listeners condemn "fakes"; but does great music really need to be authentic? By investigating this obsession in the last century, this title rethinks what makes popular music work.
Download or read book A Leg to Stand On written by Oliver Sacks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-04-29 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Summit Books, 1984.
Download or read book The Violin Maker written by John Marchese and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] magical, profound, and elegant look at the continued need for high quality in our throw away society.” —Douglas Brinkley, Historian This intensely human story, which moves from an ageless workshop in Brooklyn to the rehearsal rooms of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and across the globe to Cremona, the birthplace of Stradivari, opens up for the reader the insular and fascinating realm of music, musicians, and the craftsmanship that is essential to that world. How does a simple piece of wood become the king of instruments? On a quest to learn about what many consider the world’s most perfect instrument, author and musician John Marchese befriends Sam Zygmuntowicz, an old-world craftsman in Brooklyn, New York, along with the man who is waiting for Sam’s next violin, Eugene Drucker of the world famous Emerson String Quartet. The violin does something remarkable, magical, and evocative. It is capable of bringing to life the mathematical marvels of Bach, the moan of a Gypsy melody, the wounded dignity of Beethoven's Concerto in D Major. No other instrument is steeped in such a rich brew of myth and lore—and yet the making of a violin starts with a simple block of wood. The Violin Maker takes the reader on a journey as that block of wood, in the hands of a master craftsman, becomes an instrument to rival one made by the greatest master of all time.
Download or read book As Good as Dead written by Holly Jackson and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE MUST-READ MULTIMILLION BESTSELLING MYSTERY SERIES • The final book in the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series that reads like your favorite true crime podcast or show. By the end, you'll never think of good girls the same way again... Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars. Police refuse to act, so Pip has only one choice: find the suspect herself—or be the next victim. As the deadly game plays out, Pip discovers that everything in her small town is coming full circle . . .and if she doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears. . . And don't miss Holly Jackson's next thriller, Five Surive!
Download or read book Origins of the Specious written by Patricia T. O'Conner and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you cringe when a talking head pronounces “niche” as NITCH? Do you get bent out of shape when your teenager begins a sentence with “and”? Do you think British spellings are more “civilised” than the American versions? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re myth-informed. In Origins of the Specious, word mavens Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman reveal why some of grammar’s best-known “rules” aren’t—and never were—rules at all. This playfully witty, rigorously researched book sets the record straight about bogus word origins, politically correct fictions, phony français, fake acronyms, and more. Here are some shockers: “They” was once commonly used for both singular and plural, much the way “you” is today. And an eighteenth-century female grammarian, of all people, is largely responsible for the all-purpose “he.” From the Queen’s English to street slang, this eye-opening romp will be the toast of grammarphiles and the salvation of grammarphobes. Take our word for it.
