James Joyce’s big blue book, Ulysses, ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of Ulysses was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. All of the minutiae of Leopold Bloom’s day, including its unspeakable details, unfold with careful precision in its pages. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice immediately banned the novel as "obscene, lewd, and lascivious.” Joyce, along with some of the most important publishers and writers of his era, had to fight for years to win the freedom to publish it. The Most Dangerous Book tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce’s inspiration in 1904 to its landmark federal obscenity trial in 1933.   Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce’s years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain. The long struggle for publication added to the growing pressures of Joyce’s deteriorating eyesight, finances and home life.   Salvation finally came from the partnership of Bennett Cerf, the cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a dogged civil liberties lawyer and founder of the ACLU. With their stewardship, the case ultimately rested on the literary merit of Joyce’s master work. The sixty-year-old judicial practices governing obscenity in the United States were overturned because a federal judge could get inside Molly Bloom’s head.   Birmingham’s archival work brings to light new information about both Joyce and the story surrounding Ulysses. Written for ardent Joyceans as well as novices who want to get to the heart of the greatest novel of the twentieth century, The Most Dangerous Book is a gripping examination of how the world came to say yes to Ulysses.

    Today, the more than 17,000 libraries in America also function as de facto community centers offering free access to the internet, job-hunting assistance, or a warm place to take shelter. And yet, across the country, cities large and small are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operation. Over the last eighteen years, photographer Robert Dawson has crisscrossed the country documenting hundreds of these endangered institutions. The Public Library presents a wide selection of Dawson's photographs— from the majestic reading room at the New York Public Library to Allensworth, California's one-room Tulare County Free Library built by former slaves. Accompanying Dawson's revealing photographs are essays, letters, and poetry by some of America's most celebrated writers. A foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett bookend this important survey of a treasured American institution.

    We’re talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops, this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops.Meet Sarah and her Book Barge sailing across the sea to France; meet Sebastien, in Mongolia, who sells books to herders of the Altai mountains; meet the bookshop in Canada that’s invented the world’s first antiquarian book vending machine. And that’s just the beginning. From the oldest bookshop in the world, to the smallest you could imagine, The Bookshop Book examines the history of books, talks to authors about their favourite places, and looks at over three hundred weirdly wonderful bookshops across six continents (sadly, we’ve yet to build a bookshop down in the South Pole).The Bookshop Book is a love letter to bookshops all around the world.

    Mark Forsyth – author of the Sunday Times Number One bestseller The Etymologicon – reveals in this essay, specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week, the most valuable thing about a really good bookshop.Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for.

     Drawing on her own storyformed childhood and her long study of children's literature, Sarah Clarkson explores and celebrates the soul-forming power of story to help children imagine, and live, a great story of their own.

    J. Fikry, the irascible owner, is about to discover just what that truly means.A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn’t take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J.; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.’s world; or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn’t see coming. As surprising as it is moving, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is an unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances, an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.

    It's a book that has remained current for over half a century, fighting off critics and changing tastes in fiction. But do even its biggest fans know all there is to appreciate about The Great Gatsby?Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for "Fresh Air" and a Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out that while Gatsby may be the novel most Americans have read, it's also the ones most of us read too soon -- when we were "too young, too defensive emotionally, too ignorant about the life-deforming powers of regret" to really understand all that Fitzgerald was saying ("it's not the green light, stupid, it's Gatsby's reaching for it," as she puts it). No matter when or how recently you've read the novel, Corrigan offers a fresh perspective on what makes it so enduringly relevant and powerful. Drawing on her experience as a reader, lecturer, and critic, her book will be a rousing consideration of Gatsby: not just its literary achievements, but also its path to "classic" (its initial lukewarm reception has been a form of cold comfort to struggling novelists for decades), its under-acknowledged debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its commentaries on race, class, and gender.With rigor, wit, and an evangelistic persuasiveness, Corrigan will leave readers inspired to grab their old paperback copies of Gatsby and re-experience this great novel in an entirely new light.

    Among the many recognizable jackets he has created are those for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; collections of the works of Joyce, Kafka, Dostoevsky, de Beauvoir, and Foucault; the contemporary works of Martin Amis, Tom McCarthy, Ben Marcus, Jo Nesbø, and James Gleick; and many more. All have greatly benefitted from the care and touch Mendelsund gave them.Cover abounds with Mendelsund's completed book jackets along with ephemera from his previously unseen creative method, including jacket sketches, interior art and editorial illustrations, and scores of rejected drafts. These images are punctuated by Mendelsund's reflections on his work and his process, as well as by texts from writers with whom he has worked and designed for.Cover is a compendium of beautiful design and a beautiful design object itself; a profile and celebration of one of the publishing world's most talented and prolific contemporary creators, and a brilliant showcase of his deft touch for balanced and innovative design.

    Jane Austen Cover to Cover compiles two centuries of design showcasing one of the world’s most beloved and celebrated novelists. With over 200 images, plus historical commentary, Austen trivia, and a little bit of wit, this fascinating and visually intriguing look back is a must for Janeites, design enthusiasts, and book lovers of every age.

    In fact, he doesn't just dream about them, he wants to read them ALL THE TIME. Soon his obsession sends him spiralling into a life of crime!A wonderfully funny story from a talented new author/illustrator.

    With over 70 entertaining and thought-provoking list topics ranging from the quintessential (favorite books by genre, authors to explore) to the lovably idiosyncratic (favorite reading spots, books to skip), this illustrated journal will serve as a unique autobiography and reading log for bibliophiles.

    A rambling pink cottage on the edge of the Suffolk village of Melbury Green, its enchanting garden provided a fairy-tale playground of seclusion, a perfect sanctuary to hide from the tragedy which shattered her childhood.Now an adult, Saskia is still living at Ashcombe and as a book restorer devotes her days tending to the broken, battered books that find their way to her, daydreaming about the people who had once turned their pages. When she discovers a notebook carefully concealed in an old Bible - and realising someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to hide a story of their own - Saskia finds herself drawn into a heart-rending tale of wartime love...

    We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. In Faha, County Clare, everyone is a long story...Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil - via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain.The stories -- of her golden twin brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged pursuit of the Swains' Impossible Standard and forever falling just short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland -- pour forth in Ruthie's still, small, strong, hopeful voice.

    Geographically and culturally boundless, with contributions from Great Britain, Ireland, America, Canada, Australia, India, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa; influenced by great novelists working in other languages; and encompassing a range of genres, the story of the novel in English unfolds like a richly varied landscape that invites exploration rather than a linear journey. In The Novel: A Biography, "Michael Schmidt does full justice to its complexity.Like his hero Ford Madox Ford in The March of Literature," Schmidt chooses as his traveling companions not critics or theorists but "artist practitioners," men and women who feel "hot love" for the books they admire, and fulminate against those they dislike. It is their insights Schmidt cares about. Quoting from the letters, diaries, reviews, and essays of novelists and drawing on their biographies, Schmidt invites us into the creative dialogues between authors and between books, and suggests how these dialogues have shaped the development of the novel in English.Schmidt believes there is something fundamentally subversive about art: he portrays the novel as a liberalizing force and a revolutionary stimulus. But whatever purpose the novel serves in a given era, a work endures not because of its subject, themes, political stance, or social aims but because of its language, its sheer invention, and its resistance to cliche--some irreducible quality that keeps readers coming back to its pages."

    Sixth grader Spencer Lemon has a degenerative eye disease—and he’s rapidly losing his eyesight. So he has no idea why he was chosen to guard Pandora’s Book. When Ed, the old guy at the nursing home, hands over the book, he doesn’t get a chance to explain any of the rules to Spencer. Spencer only knows that the book contains famous dead people—people who can be brought back to life. Spencer and his autistic best friend, Gregor, soon figure out how to get people out of the book, but not how to get them back in. Then Ed disappears, and a strange man shows up on Spencer’s doorstep—and he seems to know a lot about Spencer and about Pandora’s Book. Is he one of the bad guys? Or is here to help Spencer unravel the secrets of the book? But there are others interested in Pandora’s Book, others who might use its powers to take over the world. And it’s up to Spencer, along with Gregor and Ed’s mysterious (and cute) granddaughter Mel, to protect the book—and save the world.

    Cocktails for Book Lovers blends these in a delectable book that will delight both readers and cocktail enthusiasts alike. This irresistible collection features 50 original and classic cocktail recipes based on works of famous authors and popular drinks of their eras, including Orange Champagne Punch, Salted Caramel and Bourbon Milkshakes, and even Zombie Cola. So dip in, pick your favorite author or book, and take a sip--or start at the beginning and work your way through. Cheers!Cocktails inspired by your favorite authors: - Charlotte Bronte - Dani Shapiro - Dorothy Parker - Ernest Hemingway - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Flannery O'Connor - Jhumpa Lahiri - Junot Diaz - Virginia Woolf - Wally Lamb - And 40 more!

    Did Laura Ingalls cross paths with a band of mass murderers? Why was a Garth Williams bunny tale dubbed "integrationist propaganda"? For adults who are curious about children’s books and their creators, here are the little-known stories behind the stories. A treasure trove of information for a student, librarian, new parent, or anyone wondering about the post–Harry Potter book biz, Wild Things! draws on the combined knowledge and research of three respected and popular librarian-bloggers. Told in affectionate and lively prose, with numerous never-before-collected anecdotes, this book chronicles some of the feuds and fights, errors and secret messages found in children’s books and brings contemporary illumination to the warm-and-fuzzy bunny world we think we know.

    To read and reread Tolkien is to share his sense of wonder and holiness, to be invited into the presence of a "beauty beyond the circles of the world." It is to fall in love with a universe that has a beginning and an end, where good and bad are not subjective choices, but objective realities; a created order full of grace, though damaged by sin, in which friendship is the seedbed of the virtues, and where the greatest warriors finally become the greatest healers. A correspondent once told J. R. R. Tolkien that his work seemed illumined "by an invisible lamp." That lamp is the Church, and its light is the imaginative sensibility that we live in a sacramental world. This new book by the author of The Trial of Man examines in depth the influence of Catholic sacramentality on the thought and work of Tolkien, with major emphasis on The Lord of the Rings, but including his literary essays, epistolary poem "Mythopoeia," short story "Leaf by Niggle," and The Silmarillion. Here is a signal contribution to a deeper understanding of Tolkien, whose mythological world is meant to "recover" the meaning of our own as a grace-filled place, pointing toward its Creator.

    A wonderfully eccentric character with strong opinions and a poetic turn of phrase, Book tells of a journey from papyrus scrolls to medieval manuscripts to printed paper and beyond—pondering, along the way, many bookish things, including the evolution of the alphabet, the library (known to Egyptians as "the healing place of the soul"), and even book burning. With bold, black-and-white illustrations by Neil Packer, Book is a captivating work of nonfiction by one of England's leading poets.

    By reading for just 15 minutes a day throughout the year, you can discover text from “twelve main divisions of knowledge” including History, Poetry, Natural Science, Philosophy, Biography, Prose Fiction, Criticism and the Essay, Education, Political Science, Drama, Voyages and Travel and Religion. Based on Dr. Eliot's “reading guide” for The Harvard Classics, a complete chapter of reading material is included for each day of the year (even February 29th, in case you are reading during a Leap Year): "These selections assigned for each day in the year as you will see, are introduced by comments on the author, the subjects or the chief characters. They will serve to introduce you in the most pleasant manner possible to the Harvard Classics. They will enable you to browse enjoyably among the world’s immortal writings with entertainment and stimulation in endless variety.." Each reading is framed by an introduction, a context in which the text can be read and understood, often with insightful information about the author, it's wider history, or why that particular selection is appropriate reading for that day.

    "Bears don't read!"George isn't happy doing the usual bear things like chatting and fishing. But what else is there? Then one day, he finds a book beneath a tree and knows… More than anything he wants to learn to read!But, arriving in town, George soon discovers that it's not easy to be a bear at school! If only he could find someone to teach him the alphabet and change his life forever… Perhaps a little girl called Clementine can help?A feel-good story of determination and friendship – sure to encourage a lifelong love of books.

    For parents helping with their children’s homework, casual theatre-goers who want to enhance their enjoyment of the most popular plays and the general reader who feels they should probably know more about Britain’s most splendid scribe, Shakespeare for Grown-ups covers Shakespeare's time; his personal life; his language; his key themes; his less familiar works and characters; his most famous speeches and quotations; phrases and words that have entered general usage, and much more. With lively in-depth chapters on all the major works including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard II, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, Shakespeare for Grown-ups is the only guide you’ll ever need.

    You're a genius in my book". Kathryn Cooper (KatherineCooperWrites.com) "This is my first Kindle formatted quiz book and I have to say I'm quite impressed with the author's ingenuity." Gerry Marrs "Very well done book- great gift for the Divergent fan" PookieGalore "It literally turned a book into an interactive quiz that readers/fans can indulge in! It's a great addition for those who are fans of the Divergent series!" Cassaundra Aunna "Well this series of book game quizzes will certainly round out your fan collection!" Samara Sant Divergent is the first book in the Divergent Series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant) by Veronica Roth. This truly unique interactive quiz book game is the perfect addition to your reading enjoyment of this dystopian classic. You may think you know all about the factions (Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Amity & Candor) including symbols, values & mottos? You may think you know the characteristics & what happens with of all of the characters? BUT, how much do you really know? For example, Which of the transfers has a soft spot for Tris? 1) Al 2) Caleb 3) Drew 4) Edward How does Tobias stop the program? 1) He removes the hard drive 2) He shoots out the processor 3) He throws water over it 4) He shuts down the power supply Where did the remaining Abnegation citizens go for safety during the war? 1) The Erudite compound 2) The Amity compound 3) The Dauntless compound 4) The Candor compound I know you'll like the quiz so much that I'm even offering another one absolutely free which you can access just by looking in the 'Look Inside' feature of Amazon. This amazing quiz book is really a must if you are a true fan of this spectacular post-apocalyptic novel - Divergent.

    But it is also about war and family, and how an unexpected background can give you the insight and the courage to say the unexpected thing.

    "Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future." So said the iconic Ray Bradbury, and indeed history as we know it begins with the invention of the library. Libraries is a visual exploration of how cultures around the world have responded to the impulse to protect and interact with the written word; for the story of the human experience is told not only in the books on a library's shelves, but also in its architecture. Lavishly illustrated with stunning photography, readers are invited into the most ornate libraries, lauded universities and innovative design works on earth; the mannerist and the ultra-modern, the opulent and the austere. As libraries and their architecture continue to evolve at breakneck speed, Libraries captures the particular atmosphere of hushed reverence evoked by these cornerstones of society.

    Not only are there hundreds and hundreds of them, but some can be difficult to pronounce and tough to remember. All The Names in the Bible is a fun and engaging handbook that includes every name in the Bible in one handy volume. This comprehensive resource lists every person and place mentioned in the Bible and cites helpful information, including the pronunciation of the name, the Greek or Hebrew meaning of the name, a paragraph of description, and a list of Scripture passages where the name is found. No other resource supplies such a comprehensive list with so many valuable pieces of information. For anyone looking to broaden their knowledge of the Bible’s many people and places, All the Names in the Bible is the perfect choice. Features include: Complete list in one convenient volume Includes the names of all people, towns, cities, rivers, mountains, and nations in the Bible  Meaning of the name, a paragraph of description, and Scripture passages where the name is found

    But the idea that Grace wants to be a writer, a dream McFarlane gave up when she was young, captures McFarlane. She helps Grace write her book and travels with Grace when she gives a copy of it to her grandfather. Writing with Grace is the inspiring and informative story of the journey Grace and Judy have taken together. It relates the often dark history of Down Syndrome, something the Canadian Down Syndrome Society maintains is "not a birth defect or illness" but "a naturally occurring chromosomal arrangement that has always been part of the human condition." It also tells a universal story of moving from a deep fear of the 'other,' to seeing the world through the eyes of the 'other,' to Judy truly understanding when Grace says, "my real truth is too scary. I like to hide my real truth."With honest introspection and keen insight, McFarlane delves into what it takes to face one's own prejudice, what it means to live a full life and believe you are worthy. From a young woman who is marginalized by society, McFarlane learns how much courage it takes to follow a dream when everyone tells you it’s impossible.

    In the third and final volume, legendary photographer Martin Parr and co–author Gerry Badger bring the series fully up to date with a curated selection of more than 200 photobooks dating from World War II to the present day.With the fresh eye to curation that fans of the series have come to appreciate, Parr and Badger present classics of the medium, such as Ryan McGinley’s The Kids are Alright and Paul Graham’s A Shimmer of Possibility, alongside new discoveries and lesser–known works, such as Tano d’Amico’s E Il ’77 and Mao Ishikawa’s Hot Nights in Camp Hansen.Richly illustrated with more than 800 color photographs, The Photobook: A History, Volume III completes the series’ unprecedented visual timeline of photography in its published form.

    Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire saga to give the most comprehensive deconstruction – and explanation – yet offered. Each one of Thrones's 73 chapters is broken down in meticulous detail in four key areas. The Political and Historical Analyses explore the political ramifications that each character's decisions entail while digging into the real-world historical incidents that inspired Martin's narrative twists and turns. What If? offers up a tantalizing look at how these political and historical elements could have played out in dozens of alternative scenarios, underscoring the majesty and complexity of Martin's storytelling. And Book vs. Show looks at the key differences – both good and bad – between the story as originally conceived on the printed page and as realized in HBO's Game of Thrones. At nearly 204,000 words, it's literally impossible to imagine a more exhaustive or authoritative reading companion for any novel ever before published. Note: there are spoilers for all five published novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series.

    How do you prevent your prodigy from taking a bullet to the heart? By learning the basics and making sure your manuscripts are as clean and professional as possible. Whether you're a new writer or a seasoned author, the ability to edit and proofread your own material is crucial. Along with recognizing common errors, a writer should know the lingo of the writing and publishing industry, and have a good grasp of plotting, POV, crafting dialog, and so much more. Murder of a Manuscript will test your knowledge and give you the tools to polish your prose so the epitaph won't read: Here lie the remains of my first book. It never had a chance to show the world how wonderful it could have been.

    . . . Perfect Bound is a treasure trove of practical advice for aspiring authors and others who want to understand what it takes to get a book published." --Warren H. Phillips, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, co-publisher of Bridge Works book publishing company, and author of Newspaperman "The publishing industry can be difficult to navigate, even for the most seasoned professionals. For self-publishers or those new to the process, having an experienced guide is critical. Katherine Pickett's Perfect Bound is an indispensable resource for anyone who dreams of making it on his or her own." --Adam Motin, managing editor, Triumph Books With a balanced treatment of fiction and nonfiction books as well as traditional and indie publishing, Katherine Pickett's collaborative and down-to-earth approach to the publishing process makes Perfect Bound the ideal reference for new authors. - Learn from the experts: Get inside tips, advice, and real-life stories from the author and 11 Roadside Assistants�--publishing professionals and other successful authors ready to help you succeed - Avoid the potholes: Identify and overcome some of the biggest mistakes new authors make, from manuscript to book - Prepare for success: Take steps today to create a high-quality and highly marketable book

    series of books have delighted new generations of admirers and sold close to a million copies since Universe began reissuing them in 2003.A charming biography of the artist behind the "This is..." series of children's books - illustrated with archival documents, drawings, and illustrations in the style of M. Sasek

    . . books! Books make the perfect pets, the boy decides, and chooses a bright red one. When it goes missing, a lively adventure is in store for readers who love a happy ending. Soon kids everywhere will wish for a pet book of their very own.

    What makes this library even more unusual are the two teenagers chosen to oversee its operation. Johanna Charette and Jackson Roth must use their wits to deal with the sometimes humorous, sometimes dangerous situations that arise when enchanted books spring to life. As the teens learn about the library, themselves, and each other, their fates become intertwined, and when they stumble upon a scheme by someone in a distant realm to take control of all knowledge in the universe, Johanna and Jackson are forced to put their lives on the line to battle an ancient foe.

    If he wrote non-fiction about drying paint, I would still be the first in line to read it.” – Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch. An award winning author in his own right, Adam Roberts makes no concessions when appraising the work of others. His reviews are honest, forthright, and never timid. In Sibilant Fricative Adam considers a broad spectrum of speculative fiction, from fantasy to science fiction, from literature to films. The book opens with insightful consideration of Philip K Dick’s oeuvre followed by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and closes with a volume-by-volume analysis of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time opus. Along the way we stop off for a review by text among other amusements – one thing the author never loses sight of is the need to entertain. “Titan is one of the blandest pieces of fiction I have come across in four decades of reading novels. If the Campbell shortlist is a high-class curry restaurant of delicious, spicy and stimulating food, then Titan is a single slice of white bread and margarine on a white plate under the neon light of a truck drivers’ café.” (on Titan by Ben Bova) “Let me see if I can boil down Crossroads of Twilight’s 700-pages for you. Drivel. There you go.” (on Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan)

    Keleny offers readers a behind-the-scenes look at the dedicated and determined creators of the series. She also reveals the competing—and often conflicting—visions each author had for Nancy. This novel is entertaining, smart, and exceptionally well researched. It is certain to interest anyone who is curious about the surprising mystery behind the Nancy Drew mysteries." ~ Jenna Nelson, PhDEnter for a chance to win a signed copy!

    "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, please let down your hair!"Called the prince from down on the bottom stair.But Rapunzel just sat -As still as a wall;She didn't think much of the prince at all.Rapunzel sits on the sixteenth floor of an inner city block, bored, dreaming and looking out at the rain.ÿ No one can rouse her from her apathy, not the milkman or the postman or the baker or her aunt - or even the prince. But when at last a letter is delivered, it contains news that has Rapunzel on her feet again. She has a new job at the library! And suddenly her life is busy, sparkling, exciting and stimulating. "For despite her long hair and her ravishing looks, she loved nothing better than reading good books!"

    A lot of books want to teach you just that. How is this one different?Think of it less as an instructional book and more as an invitation. For the reader new to poetry, this guide will open your senses to the combined craft and magic known as "poems". For the well versed, if you will, this book might make you fall in love again.How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry")-to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology included.

    The fastest reader is the best reader and gets the gold star and the certificate for free ice cream! This, of course, punishes deliberate, careful students and booklovers who delight in the process and incorporate what they read into their everyday lives. The dominant method of reading works for simple linear texts, but it is by no means the only way to go about reading and excludes many other types of texts. In How to Read,, veteran novelist, editor and educator Eckhard Gerdes reveals 81 different approaches for reading, opening up new horizons that restrictive educators have been blocking from view for far too long. This innovative guidebook will enrich the experience of textuality for young and old readers alike.

    His focus is on the major writers in the field.

    Christian boldness in the face of totalitarianism and modernism. Sacrificial love in the City of God. Sure, you’ve heard of these classic books already. You might even have seen the movies. But have you caught the vision?Fiction with a solid Christian worldview drills us in right action and reaction in a host of different circumstances. It runs war games for the Christian life, showing how wisdom might apply in hypothetical scenarios. It prepares us for battle.Journey through eighteen classic works of fiction from Beowulf and Njal’s Saga to Mansfield Park and The Lord of the Rings, discovering the exceptional wisdom hidden inside the world’s best-loved stories.

    Even with a to-write list including accounts of a shape-shifting cat creature, gentle knight-in-training, vigilante skater girl, and a mystery boy smothering in unspoken fear, the most remarkable saga created between author and muse just may turn out to be one stranger than fiction.Their own.

    In Re-collection, Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito argue that the vulnerability of new media art illustrates a larger crisis for social memory. They describe a variable media approach to rescuing new media, distributed across producers and consumers who can choose appropriate strategies for each endangered work.New media art poses novel preservation and conservation dilemmas. Given the ephemerality of their mediums, software art, installation art, and interactive games may be heading to obsolescence and oblivion. Rinehart and Ippolito, both museum professionals, examine the preservation of new media art from both practical and theoretical perspectives, offering concrete examples that range from Nam June Paik to Danger Mouse. They investigate three threats to twenty-first-century creativity: technology, because much new media art depends on rapidly changing software or hardware; institutions, which may rely on preservation methods developed for older mediums; and law, which complicates access with intellectual property constraints such as copyright and licensing. Technology, institutions, and law, however, can be enlisted as allies rather than enemies of ephemeral artifacts and their preservation. The variable media approach that Rinehart and Ippolito propose asks to what extent works to be preserved might be medium-independent, translatable into new mediums when their original formats are obsolete.

    And at 1,500 pages, it’s no wonder why. Still, new editions keep appearing. In July 2009 Newsweek put War and Peace at the top of its list of 100 great novels and a 2007 edition of the AARP Bulletin, read by millions, included the novel in their list of the top four books everybody should read by the age of fifty. A New York Times survey from 2009 identified War and Peace as the world classic you’re most likely to find people reading on their subway commute to work. What might all those Newsweek devotees, senior citizens, and harried commuters see in a book about the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s? A mirror of our times. War and Peace is many things. It is a love story, a family saga, a war novel. But at its core it’s a novel about human beings attempting to create a meaningful life for themselves in a country torn apart by war, social change, political intrigue, and spiritual confusion. Give War and Peace a Chance takes readers on a journey through War and Peace that reframes their very understanding of what it means to live through troubled times and survive them. Touching on a broad range of topics, from courage to romance, parenting to death, Kaufman demonstrates how Tolstoy’s wisdom can help us live fuller, more meaningful lives. The ideal companion to War and Peace, this book will also be enjoyable to those who have never read a word of Tolstoy, making that masterpiece more approachable, relevant, and fun.

    The ancient Roman philosopher and cynical power broker, Seneca? The 16th century French philosopher Montaigne certainly brought it to a peak of perfection. There were many 19th century masters, not so many after that. Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? That requires no debate at all. It is unquestionably Joseph Epstein. He is not only the best living essayist; he is right up there in the company of Seneca and Montaigne, but one of our own, living in our era and dealing with our pleasures and travails. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Epstein reads omnivorously and brings us the best of what he reads, passages that we would never have found on our own. How easy it is today, in the digital age, drowning in emails and other ephemera, to forget the simple delight of reading for no intended purpose. Like any master essayist, however, this one brings us more than the shared experience of a lifetime of reading. He brings us himself, alternately scolding and charming, sparkling and deep, buoyant and sad, zany and wise, rebellious and conservative, bookworm and sports fan, clever and everyman, debunker and preservationist, deep into high culture, deep into low culture, curious, fresh, and settled in his ways. This is the friend we all wish we could have, the ideal, humane companion who is completely comfortable in his own human skin. Like Plutarch, he gives us life teaching by example, but with a wry smile and such a sure hand that we hardly notice the instruction. It is pure pleasure.

    Much recent criticism of Austen has concentrated on the social, historical and intellectual context of her work, but Wiltshire turns attention back to Austen's prose techniques. Arguing that each of Austen's works has its own distinct focus and underlying agenda, he shows how Austen's interest in psychology, and especially her treatment of attention and the various forms of memory, helped shape her narratives. Through a series of compelling close readings of key passages in each novel, Wiltshire underscores Austen's unique ability to penetrate the hidden inner motives and impulses of her characters, and reveals some of the secrets of her narrative art.

    History and intrigue combine in G.J. Meyer’s The Borgias: The Hidden History. Fans of Flannery O’Connor will love Barry Hannah’s Ray, a raw and scorching tale of self-destruction set in a small southern town. Plus a food autobiography with a twist: cartoonist Lucy Knisley’s delectable graphic memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen.

    As with past editions, Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers hundreds of listings for book publishers, literary agents, fiction publications, contests, and more. Each listing includes contact information, submission guidelines, and other important tips.New to this year's edition: Gain access to the exclusive webinar Blockbuster Fiction: Exploring Emotional High Points in Popular Films from best-selling author Cheryl St. John. This 45-minute webinar explores the ten most popular films of 2013--including Frozen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and more--to show you how to create intense, emotional, engrossing moments in your fiction. When you make your readers care about your characters and your story, you'll evoke excitement, indignation, fear, anxiety, tears, and laughter--and keep them hooked from start to finish.You'll also find articles and interviews on all aspects of the writing life, from in-depth lessons on craft and technique to helpful advice on getting published and marketing your work. The 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers everything a fiction writer needs to achieve publishing success, including articles and essays like these:J.T. Ellison, New York Times best-selling author, reveals how to capture - and keep - reader interest.Ransom Riggs, mega-popular YA novelist, shares advice on writing out-of-the-ordinary fiction.Chuck Wendig, hybrid author extraordinaire, talks about the pros and cons of traditional and self-publishing.You'll also receive: A free digital download of Writer's Yearbook featuring the 100 Best Markets If you're looking for the best resource for connecting with publishers who are hungry for your fiction, you've found it. Ten novels ago I got my start as an author using Writer's Market guides. -Steven James, writing instructor and best-selling author of The King and Story Trumps StructureIf you can't go to every literary cocktail party in New York, get this book. It's an instant network. -Elizabeth Sims, best-selling author of You've Got a Book in You

    Lewis has long been recognized as a beloved author of children's literature and an apologist for Christian belief to a skeptical modern world. In this new volume, Gregory S. Cootsona shows us how Lewis can also serve as a guide to the ups and downs of the Christian journey. Like many of us, Lewis suffered from a variety of crises of faith and personal experience. Like us, he came to faith in a world that no longer respects Christian commitment or offers much room for belief in God. Like us, he felt the absence of God when those closest to him died. Like us, he wrestled with doubt, wondering if God is real, or simply the projection of his own wishes onto the screen of the universe. Like us, he knew the kinds of temptations he described with such poignancy and humor in The Screwtape Letters.By examining these and the other crises of C.S. Lewis's life, Cootsona shows us how Lewis found God in each one, and how he shared those discoveries with us in his writing. All those wishing to deepen and enrich their own spiritual journey will find much guidance and wisdom in these pages.

    Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

    Crossway's Christian Guides to the Classics series is designed to help readers enjoy the greatest literature in history with the aid of a gifted teacher to answer questions along the way. Popular professor, author, and literary expert Leland Ryken situates each work in its cultural context, incorporates published criticism, includes brief bibliographies for further study, and wisely evaluates classic texts from a Christian worldview through penetrating commentary. This particular volume will help readers understand and engage with the devotional poetry of three seventeenth-century poetic geniuses—John Donne, George Herbert, and John Milton.

    P. Lovecraft was one of the most asexual beings in history at least by his own admission. Whether we accept this view of his own sexual instincts or not, there is no denying that sexuality normal and aberrant underlies a number of significant tales in the Lovecraft oeuvre. The impregnation of a human woman by Yog-Sothoth in "The Dunwich Horror" and the mating of humans with strange creatures from the sea in "The Shadow over Innsmouth" are only two such examples. In this pioneering study, Bobby Derie has presented an objective and scholarly analysis of the significant uses of love, gender, and sex in the work of H. P. Lovecraft and some of his leading disciples. Along the way, Derie treats such matters as Lovecraft's relations with his wife, portrayals of women in his work, and the question of homosexuality in his life and work. Many Lovecraft stories are subject to detailed examination for their sexual implications. Derie then examines the work of such significant writers of the Lovecraft tradition as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsey Campbell, W. H. Pugmire, and Caitlin R. Kiernan, whose work features far more explicit sexuality than anything Lovecraft could have imagined. Derie goes on to study sexual themes in other venues, such as Lovecraftian occultism, Japanese manga and anime, and even Lovecraftian fan fiction. The result is a comprehensive and incisive examination of a delicate subject but one whose significance in Lovecraftian writing can hardly be denied."

    Librarians new on the job need expert advice on what to expect and how thrive, and since its publication in 2006 this guide has served as a wise mentor for the new school librarian. From job search strategies and discovering work philosophy to the nitty-gritty details of creating acceptable use policies, this revised and updated edition, which includes a new foreword from Sarah Kelly Johns, shares the joys and perils of the profession along with a wealth of practical advice from decades of experience in school library programs.

    Best known for his role in the labor movement of the 1930s and his leadership of the peace movement in the postwar era, Muste was one of the most charismatic figures of the American left in his time. Had he written the story of his life, it would also have been the story of social and political struggles in the United States during the twentieth century.In American Gandhi, Leilah Danielson establishes Muste's distinctive activism as the work of a prophet and a pragmatist. Muste warned that the revolutionary dogmatism of the Communist Party would prove a dead end, understood the moral significance of racial equality, argued early in the Cold War that American pacifists should not pick a side, and presaged the spiritual alienation of the New Left from the liberal establishment. At the same time, Muste was committed to grounding theory in practice and the individual in community. His open, pragmatic approach fostered some of the most creative and remarkable innovations in progressive thought and practice in the twentieth century, including the adaptation of Gandhian nonviolence for American concerns and conditions.A biography of Muste's evolving political and religious views, American Gandhi also charts the rise and fall of American progressivism over the course of the twentieth century and offers the possibility of its renewal in the twenty-first.

    As an adult, she played the guitar and the harpsichord, dancedregularly, and took a connoisseur's interest in all the arts.In this comprehensive interdisciplinary biography, James Winn tells the story of Anne's life in new breadth and detail, and in unprecedented cultural context. Winn shows how poets, painters, and musicians used the works they made for Anne to send overt and covert political messages to the queen, thecourt, the church, and Parliament. Their works also illustrate the pathos of Anne's personal life: the loss of her mother when she was six, her troubled relations with her father and her sister (James II and Mary II), and her own doomed efforts to produce an heir. Her eighteen pregnancies producedonly one child who lived past infancy; his death at the age of eleven, mourned by poets, was a blow from which Anne never fully recovered. Her close friendship with Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, a topic of scabrous ballads and fictions, ended in bitter discord; the death of her husband in 1708 lefther emotionally isolated; and the wrangling among her chief ministers hastened her death.Richly illustrated with visual and musical examples, Queen Anne draws on works by a wide array of artists-among them the composer George Frideric Handel, the poet Alexander Pope, the painter Godfrey Kneller, and the architect Christopher Wren-to shed new light on Anne's life and reign. This is thedefinitive biography of Queen Anne.

    In that time, I have asked hundreds of questions and have received some of the most honest, passionate and intelligent answers from Mrs. Rice on such varied subjects as independent publishers, the vampire genre and faith and religion. The portrait of the woman behind the world famous author shines with lustrous clarity through our many exchanges and provides a unique perspective into the life of one of the most popular literary figures in modern history. It was and is my pleasure to talk to her, learn more about her and introduce the author to her readers in a totally different way. And now, “Anne Rice The Interviews”

    K. RowlingThis is the definitive bibliography of the writings of J. K. Rowling. In addition to complete bibliographic details of each edition of all her books, pamphlets and original contributions to published works, there is detailed information on the publishing history of her work, including fascinating extracts from correspondence, and information on Rowling at auction. This will be the first source on Rowling consulted by textual scholars, book dealers and collectors, auction houses, critics and researchers. The aim of the book is to record fact and dispel rumour on the fascinating publishing history of the Harry Potter series.

    Alan Kaiser draws on the private scrapbook that budding archaeologist Mary Ross Ellingson compiled during that dig, as well as her personal correspondence and materials from major university archives, to paint a fascinating picture of gender, power, and archaeology in the early twentieth century. Using Ellingson's photographs and letters as a guide, Kaiser brings alive the excavations led by David Robinson and recounts how the unearthing of private homes-rather than public spaces-emerged as a means to examine the day-to-day of ancient life in Greece. But as Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal clearly demonstrates, a darker story lurks beneath the smiling faces and humorous tales: one where Robinson stole Ellingson's words and insights for his own, and where fellow academics were complicit in the theft.

    This accessible guide features over 250 alphabetically arranged entries explaining common literary forms found in the Bible. Each entry contains a succinct definition, helpful illustrations, and a representative list of passages where that particular literary form is present.More than merely a dictionary, this indispensable resource will help Bible readers better understand the underlying structure of Scripture--giving a clearer shape and deeper meaning to each and every page of God's Word.

    In Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales, author Ann Schmiesing analyzes various representations of disability in the tales and also shows how the Grimms' editing (or "prostheticizing") of their tales over seven editions significantly influenced portrayals of disability and related manifestations of physical difference, both in many individual tales and in the collection overall. Schmiesing begins by exploring instabilities in the Grimms' conception of the fairy tale as a healthy and robust genre that has nevertheless been damaged and needs to be restored to its organic state. In chapter 2, she extends this argument by examining tales such as "The Three Army Surgeons" and "Brother Lustig" that problematize, against the backdrop of war, characters' efforts to restore wholeness to the impaired or diseased body. She goes on in chapter 3 to study the gendering of disability in the Grimms' tales with particular emphasis on the Grimms' editing of "The Maiden Without Hands" and "The Frog King or Iron Henry." In chapter 4, Schmiesing considers contradictions in portrayals of characters such as Hans My Hedgehog and the Donkey as both cripple and "supercripple"--a figure who miraculously "overcomes" his disability and triumphs despite social stigma. Schmiesing examines in chapter 5 tales in which no magical erasure of disability occurs, but in which protagonists are depicted figuratively "overcoming" disability by means of other personal abilities or traits. The Grimms described the fairy tale using metaphors of able-bodiedness and wholeness and espoused a Romantic view of their editorial process as organic restoration. Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales shows, however, the extent to which the Grimms' personal experience of disability and illness impacted the tales and reveals the many disability-related amendments that exist within them. Readers interested in fairy-tales studies and disability studies will appreciate this careful reading of the Grimms' tales.

    This useful resource has over 180 pages of full color Bible charts, maps, time lines and illustrations. It features 114 pages of full-color bible charts of: General Bible Charts, Old Testament Charts, New Testament Charts, Maps, Illustrations and Diagrams, Christianity, Cults & Religions, and Index.It also contains 22 Pages of time lines including: A Bonus Time Line 22" wide foldout, How We Got the Bible, Kings and Prophets, Christian History Time Line, and 19 Pages of "Then and Now" Bible Maps and Other Full color maps of Bible Lands, and 25 Pages of Colorful Illustrations include: Noah's Ark, The Tabernacle, Solomon's Temple, Herod's Temple, and Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.Volume 2: Perfect for Sunday school, homeschool, pastors, and teachers, these 32 full-color resources are also great for personal Bible study! Includes "Bible Translations Comparison Chart," "Heroes of the Old Testament," "Women of the Bible," "Life of Paul," "Christ in the Old Testament," "Christ in the Passover," "Names of Jesus," "Beatitudes," "Lord's Prayer," "Worldviews Comparison," and more! 192 reproducible pages, spiralbound hardcover.Volume 3: Ideal for Sunday school teachers, college and seminary professors, pastors, and homeschoolers, the resources in this easy-to-use anthology include more than 220 reproducible charts, photographs, maps, and handouts, many of which are new to this edition. Topics include spiritual gifts; the lives of Esther and David; the parables of Jesus; the attributes of God; and more. Perfect for busy people who want hundreds of facts at a glance.Charts include:Favorite Bible topics including forgiveness, money, prayer, heaven, and moreComparisons of Christian views on baptism, communion, revelation, and spiritual giftsBible characters including Jospeh, Moses, David, Ruth, and moreBook of the Bible overviews

    The milestone fifth issue of DIRTY DIAMONDS, and this one's a doozy! Our first professionally printed book features 32 artists from six different contries all telling stories about the medium that means the most to them - comics! Read stories about these artists' best, worst, and first experiences with comics.Order the Digital Download and you can enjoy DIRTY DIAMONDS #5 from the comfort of your own computer screen.FEATURED ARTISTS: Alexis Cooke Alison Wilgus Ann Uland Anne Mondeel Ashley Austin Carey Pietsch (Guest cover artist) Claire Folkman (Editor) Crystal Kan Cyn Why Denise Clamors Dre Grigoropol Faye Stacey Jackie Huskisson Jenny McKeon Jillian Fleck Julie Mills Kelly Froh Kelly Phillips (Editor) Miranda Harmon Mouna Toure Nicole Rodrigues Patsy Chen Sage Coffey Sara Goetter Scotty (Crystal Jayme) Silvia Carrus Stevie Wilson Tamara Ansing Vicky Leta Win Evans Yao Xiao Yui Wei Tan

    A must-read for devotees of Virginia Woolf.”—Panthea Reid, author of Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf “This revealing book gives us a diarist with greater literary range than Pepys and affords us a second pleasure: the infinitely varied voices of the diaries Virginia read. They fascinate us as they fascinate her: those writers who encouraged, warned, comforted, and trained a developing genius.”—Nancy Price, author of Sleeping with the Enemy “Lounsberry’s deeply researched and gracefully written book shows not only Woolf’s development into a great diarist but also her evolvement into the fiction and nonfiction writer revered today.”—Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life Encompassing thirty-eight handwritten volumes, Virginia Woolf’s diary is her lengthiest and longest-sustained work—and her last to reach the public. In the only full-length book to explore deeply this luminous and boundary-stretching masterpiece, Barbara Lounsberry traces Woolf’s development as a writer through her first twelve diaries—a fascinating experimental stage, where the earliest hints of Woolf’s pioneering modernist style can be seen.Starting with fourteen-year-old Woolf’s first palm-sized leather diary, Becoming Virginia Woolf illuminates how her private and public writing was shaped by the diaries of other writers including Samuel Pepys, James Boswell, the French Goncourt brothers, Mary Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Woolf’s “diary parents”—Sir Walter Scott and Fanny Burney. These key literary connections open a new and indispensable window onto the story of one of literature’s most renowned modernists.

    This copy might well make its appearance tucked away in a backpack and taken aboard a subway to read. This is the premise of "The Last Book," the latest body of work by Amsterdam-based photographer Reinier Gerritsen. Gerritsen has taken up the current plethora of books and their readers on New York City's subways as the proverbial canary-in-the-coal-mine, an indicator of the still robust nature of public readership, in the face of its ostensible decline. The work began for Gerritsen as a series of modest observations, and has turned into a series of unexpected, documentary portraits, set against a visual landscape of bestsellers, classics, romance novels, detective thrillers, Bibles, biographies and other printed books. Gerritsen depicts groups of individuals engrossed in the worlds they hold in their hands. From the subtle interactions of passengers and facial expressions to the sociological clues of book titles, a complexly layered narrative is informed by the choices of readers and the melange of New York City's subway riders as they are transported both literally and figuratively, by the books in their hands. "The Last Book" also includes an index/bibliography charting the titles and authors that populate our minds during our daily commutes.

    The love of these keepsakes, which included hair, teeth, and other remains, speaks of an intimacy with the body and death, a way of understanding absence through its materials, which is less widely felt today. Deborah Lutz analyzes relic culture as an affirmation that objects held memories and told stories. These practices show a belief in keeping death vitally intertwined with life - not as memento mori but rather as respecting the singularity of unique beings. In a consumer culture in full swing by the 1850s, keepsakes of loved ones stood out as non-reproducible, authentic things whose value was purely personal. Through close reading of the works of Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, and others, this study illuminates the treasuring of objects that had belonged to or touched the dead.

    His adventures are offered as a model for understanding how art history is shaped by life experiences, and he describes the influence of his parents, Jean and Leonard Brown, noted collectors of documentation of 20th-century avant-garde movements.His turn to research on the Golden Age of Spanish art was motivated by a year in Madrid, 1958-59. Art history in Spain was modeled on the policies of the Franco regime, and Brown sought to find different ways to interpret Spanish painting. His approach is demonstrated by fresh insight into painters, including Velázquez. A new interpretation of Las Meninas is proposed and the perils of attribution are examined. Later in his career, Brown began to study the transformation of Spanish art in the Americas. The book originated as a series of six lectures delivered at the Museo Nacional del Prado in 2012.

    Although the pictogram-only narrative in Xu Bing's Book from the Ground can be read by anyone, there is much more to the story of Xu Bing's wordless book than can be gleaned from icons alone. This companion volume to Book from the Ground chronicles the entire project, mapping the history of Xu Bing's novel creation from inspiration to exhibition to publication.In the 1980s, Xu Bing created Book from the Sky. Using garbled and nonsensical faux-Chinese characters, this installation expressed Xu's doubts about written language and provoked questions about the Chinese language. Thirty years later, with Book from the Ground, the artist expresses his hope for a single, universally understood language. Inspired by airport signs that communicate instantaneously through images--directing a temporary community of modern nomads where to eat, shop, sit, and find a bathroom--Xu began to collect images, icons, and logos from which he could construct a story. This book describes Xu's research, showing notebook pages and bulletin boards full of clipped-out images; offers commentary by the artist and discussions of reading, alphabets and languages; documents, with text and photographs, exhibitions and installations connected to the work (including a Book from the Ground pop-up concept store); provides a list of works; describes Xu's "icon lab"; and "translates" Xu's pictographic narrative into English.

    In this follow-up to her 1994 Firetalking, picture-book creator Patricia Polacco gives more information about her life, and her career as an author and artist.

    This digital exclusive is a free extract from 'A Mysterious Something in the Light', the chapter devoted to Raymond Chandler's writing of The Big Sleep - the novel that changed Chandler's life and defined modern crime fiction.

    Finally, book marketing advice from people who’ve actually written and marketed bestsellers. Ryan Holiday, Tucker Max, and Nils Parker have led the marketing campaigns for dozens of famous bestsellers that sold millions of copies, and this book details their exact methods. No more guessing, groping in the dark, wasted time on social media, or vague advice. The BookStrapper Guide To Book Marketing, is all specific, actionable things you can do to ensure you get results, from the book marketers that the bestselling authors go to for advice. Some of what you’ll learn:- The one thing that journalists actually care about, and how to use it to ensure they write about you (including email templates)- How to make every part of your marketing look and feel professional- The trick to running successful pre-order giveaways and multiplying first week sales- How to use social media in a way that actually translates to sales- How the bestseller lists work and what exactly you can do to get on them- Detailed, specific case studies from the campaigns of 3 bestselling books that you can model your launch after- And much, much more...Just Some of the Testimonials About The Book Marketing Abilities of Ryan & Tucker:"Ryan Holiday wrote the playbook for the dark arts of exploiting the media."-Robert Greene, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mastery and The 48 Laws Of Power"Digital ninjitsu at it's finest. Whatever your master plan, you can't beat Ryan Holiday as a partner. Highly insightful, extremely agile, and deadly effective." -Steven Kotler #1 New York Times bestselling author of Abundance and WSJ bestseller The Rise of Superman"I had never before used outside marketers, always trusting either my own basic platform or a publisher. What Ryan and Tucker provided was unbelievable. Between his Rolodex and mine we scheduled about 60 podcasts, radio interviews, speaking engagements and guest posts on popular blogs and websites. My schedule the month after launch was non-stop marketing."-James Altucher, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Choose Yourself"Ryan is part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy, and all results. From American Apparel to quiet campaigns he's run but not taken credit for, this whiz kid is the secret weapon you've never heard of." -Tim Ferriss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4 Hour Work Week, The 4 Hour Body, and The 4 Hour Chef"Ryan and Tucker were always there when I had questions, they know the ins and outs of the industry better than anyone, and they helped make this book a bestseller." -Matthew Berry, New York Times bestselling author of Fantasy Life"I do a lot of marketing for my business--and I'm pretty good at it--but Ryan and Tucker's book marketing strategies were another level. They helped me with all aspects of book marketing--not only did they help me to leverage my existing platform, they also showed me how to turn this into incredible amounts of attention. These guys know their stuff."-John Romaniello, New York Times bestselling author of Man 2.0: Unleashing the Alpha

    The structure of apocalyptic science fiction reveals what is at stake in Japanese society - cultural continuity, tradition, politics, ideology, reality, communities, and interpersonal relationships - and suggests ways to cope with these crises and visions for the future, both positive and negative. By looking at the postwar period, Motoko Tanaka observes how Japanese apocalyptic discourse has changed in its role as a tool according to the zeitgeists of various decades.

    His subjects can be as commonplace as golfing with close friends, amateur astronomy, birding, or learning to fly at the age of sixty. But he asks difficult questions about how we are grounded in space and time, how we are affected by our names, how a healthy person can turn into a hypochondriac, and how we might commune with the dead. And throughout he measures, compares and interprets his experiences through the lens of six decades of reading. The tools of the writer’s trade fascinate him as do eateries in his small college town, male dress habits, American roads, and roadside shrines. He lives on the Blood River in Kentucky when he is not in the Tucson Mountains.

    Citysketch London provides instruction on sketching and doodling various parts of London's culture through more than 100 creative prompts and over 200 illustrations.

    It has produced new interpretations of major historical events, has made possible new approaches to history, literature, media, and culture, and presents a distinctive historical perspective on current debates about the future of the book. The Broadview Introduction to Book History provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to this field.Written in a lively, accessible style, chapters on materiality, textuality, printing and reading, intermediality, and remediation guide readers through numerous key concepts, illustrated with examples from literary texts and historical documents produced across a wide historical range. An ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in book history, it offers a road map to this dynamic inter-disciplinary field.

    A lot of authors have gone to the effort of sharing their 'craft', but not many can think back to the very start of the writing journey. Ian M Pindar can, that is why he has produced this book. By the end you will know whether the psychological, emotion and time-consuming toil will be worth the effort!

    Touching on war, environmental issues, modern technology, and our ever-changing world, Chappell is a generous author whose honesty is tangible. Readers are taken on a magic carpet ride from Alaska to the Mediterranean, Asia, and beyond. Captured here is the true essence of culture, people, and animals from all edges of the world. Nuances of rose quartz, Dickinson, and Parker are present in the poems written and inspired by the many experiences of love and loss, which truly inspire an open mind and heart. And, if that wasn’t enough for the average reader, the magic abounds with a series of folkloric poetry to set the imagination afire.” - Apryl Skies, A Song Beneath the Silence

    Even in antiquity, the library at Alexandria was nearly legendary. Until now there has been relatively little research to discover what was inside these libraries, how the collections came into being and evolved, and who selected and maintained the holdings. In this engaging and meticulously researched study, George W. Houston examines a dozen specific book collections of Roman date in the first comprehensive attempt to answer these questions.Through a careful analysis of the contents of the collections, Houston reveals the personalities and interests of their owners, shows how manuscripts were acquired, organized, and managed, and identifies the various purposes that libraries served. He considers the life expectancy of manuscripts, the sizes of libraries, and dangers to books, as well as the physical objects within libraries from scribal equipment to works of art. The result is a clearer, more specific, and more detailed picture of ancient book collections and the elements of Roman libraries than has previously been possible.

    When describing exceptional accomplishments like these—and the men and women behind them—we use the word “genius.” And while genius is difficult to define, we all recognize that elusive, special quality when we encounter it.            Marks of Genius pays tribute to some of the most remarkable testaments to genius throughout human history, from ancient texts on papyrus and the extraordinary medieval manuscript The Douce Apocalypse to the renowned children’s work The Wind in the Willows. Bringing together some of the rarest and most impressive treasures in the collections of the Bodleian Libraries, it tells the story of each work’s creation and its journey through time, offering insight into the breadth and depth of its influence as well as and its power to fascinate. Published to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, Marks of Genius celebrates with two hundred full-color illustrations works that constitute the pinnacle of human creativity and which we continue to restore and revisit—perhaps in the hopes that some of their remarkable brilliance will rub off.