Book picks similar to
Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life by Yoshiko Yamaguchi
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Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings
Ron Burgundy - 2010
His life reads like an adventure story complete with knock down fights, beautiful women and double-fisted excitement on every page. He has hunted jackalopes with Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford, had more than his share of his amorous exploits, and formed the greatest on-air team in the history of televised news. Along the way, he hobnobbed with people you wish you knew and some you honestly wish you didn't -- celebrities, presidents, presidents' wives, celebrities' wives, dogs, and, of course Veronica Corningstone, the love of his life. Walter Cronkite, Barbra Streisand, Katie Couric, the list goes on. Who didn’t Mr. Burgundy, or “Ron” as he is known to his friends, rub elbows with in the course of his colorful and often criminal life? This may well be the most thrilling book ever written, by a man of great physical, moral and spiritual strength and not surprisingly a great literary talent as well. This book deserves a real shot at a Pulitzer Prize. In fact if it doesn’t win one then we will finally have proof that the Pulitzer is rigged. Ron Burgundy has taken the time to write a book. We owe it to him, as honest Americans, to read it.
Cowboy Bebop Set: The Complete Manga Collection
Yutaka Nanten - 2003
In keeping with the popular but off-beat anime, the manga begins a series of original stories that take the action to a whole new level. Spike, Jet and Faye all end up after the same bounty, Spike goes after a convict who's already in prison, and Faye (the con-artist she is) ends up the victim of a con not once, but twice.
Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies
Owen Gleiberman - 2016
Owen Gleiberman has spent his life watching movies-first at the drive-in, where his parents took him to see wildly inappropriate adult fare like Rosemary's Baby when he was a wide-eyed 9 year old, then as a possessed cinemaniac who became a film critic right out of college. In Movie Freak, his enthrallingly candid, funny, and eye-opening memoir, Gleiberman captures what it's like to live life through the movies, existing in thrall to a virtual reality that becomes, over time, more real than reality itself. Gleiberman paints a bittersweet portrait of his complicated and ultimately doomed friendship with Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic who was his mentor and muse. He also offers an unprecedented inside look at what the experience of being a critic is really all about, detailing his stint at The Boston Phoenix and then, starting in 1990, at EW, where he becomes a voice of obsession battling-to a fault-to cling to his independence. Gleiberman explores the movies that shaped him, from the films that first made him want to be a critic (Nashville and Carrie), to what he hails as the sublime dark trilogy of the 1980s (Blue Velvet, Sid and Nancy, and Manhunter), to the scruffy humanity of Dazed and Confused, to the brilliant madness of Natural Born Killers, to the transcendence of Breaking the Waves, to the pop rapture of Moulin Rouge! He explores his partnership with Lisa Schwarzbaum and his friendships and encounters with such figures as Oliver Stone, Russell Crowe, Richard Linklater, and Ben Affleck. He also writes with confessional intimacy about his romantic relationships and how they echoed the behavior of his bullying, philandering father. And he talks about what film criticism is becoming in the digital age: a cacophony of voices threatened by an insidious new kind of groupthink. Ultimately, Movie Freak is about the primal pleasure of film and the enigmatic dynamic between critic and screen. For Gleiberman, the moving image has a talismanic power, but it also represents a kind of sweet sickness, a magnificent obsession that both consumes and propels him.
Lost in Tokyo: A Year of Sex, Sushi, and Suicide in the Real Japan
Garett Wilson - 2018
until he started a new job and a new life at a high school in downtown Tokyo. Here he discovered the real Japan, not the version sold to tourists, and realized that it was far more thrilling, heartbreaking, and beautiful than anything he had ever experienced. Over the course of one year in Tokyo, Garett navigates the perilous waters of 21st-century Japan, where love and laughter are as common as violence and tragedy. From love hotels to sumo, yakuza gangs to hostess bars, and a Shinto wedding to a KFC Christmas, discover what Tokyo is really like for its 38 million inhabitants. A travel book, a tale of sex and romance, and a love letter to a maddening, wonderful place, Lost in Tokyo provides a new perspective on living, working and playing in the world's most vibrant city.
Moe Howard & The 3 Stooges: The Pictorial Biography of the Wildest Trio in the History of American Entertainment
Moe Howard - 1960
The 007 Diaries: Filming Live and Let Die
Roger Moore - 1973
Taking in the sights of Jamaica before returning to Pinewood Studios, Moore’s razor wit and unique brand of humour is ever present. With tales from every location, including his encounters with his co-stars and key crew members, Moore offers the reader an unusually candid, amusing and hugely insightful behind-the-scenes look into the world’s most successful film franchise.
God's Smuggler To China
Brother David - 2000
This is the story of one man's call to God's service, which culminated in the largest operation of its kind ever seen in China - the smuggling of one million Bibles into the hands of Chinese believers.
Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson
Alistair Owen - 2000
Talking candidly about his entire career; his acting, writing and directing, and the many tussles he has faced with Hollywood moguls, this is Bruce Robinson as you've never seen or heard him before.'The most purely likeable book about cinema I have ever read. Robinson talks about his profession in a way that is astonishingly clear-headed, funny and wise' David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year
China Cuckoo
Mark Kitto - 2009
One weekend, Mark escapes to Moganshan, a dilapidated mountaintop village built by foreigners in the early 1900s as a summer retreat. Mark falls in love with the place and decides to restore one of the villas, as if he were in Tuscany or Provence.
The Further Adventures of An Idiot Abroad
Karl Pilkington - 2012
Taking the Bucket List of "100 Things to Do Before You Die" as his starting point, Karl combines brilliant stories from his recent adventuresto Alaska, Siberia, and beyond with entertaining, highly-opinionated views on what other people aspire to do with their lives. He tackles such questions as Why on earth would anybody want to run with the bulls in Pamplona, or go "storm chasing" through Tornado Alley? and Why would anyone ever want to have lunch with the Queen, or touch hands with the Pope? A fitting finale to two years of eventful globe-trotting, this companion guide is frank, funny, and strangely inspiring.
In the Company of Legends
Joan Kramer - 2015
These were recognized as high-quality, definitive film portraits, which revitalized the genre and made it a mainstay of television programming.This is their insiders’ view of the famous and the powerful: Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, Lew Wasserman, Ronald Reagan, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Jane Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Audrey Hepburn, and Bette Davis, among others. Kramer and Heeley’s behind the scenes stories of the productions and the personalities involved are amusing, sometimes moving, often revealing, and have never been told before.
Running with the Moon
Jonny Bealby - 1996
Two years later, still heartbroken and utterly disillusioned, he took on the challenge of a lifetime. Setting out with only his motorbike for company, he began a daring and dangerous journey around the African continent in a desperate attempt to unearth some meaning in his life. Bittersweet, bold and beautifully told, Running with the Moon is a tale of true love and loss, of exploration, adventure and courage.
Cycling Home From Siberia
Rob Lilwall - 2009
. . My thoughts are filled with frozen rivers that may or may not hold my weight; empty, forgotten valleys haunted by emaciated ghosts; and packs of ravenous, merciless wolves."Having left his job as a high-school geography teacher, Rob Lilwall arrived in Siberia equipped only with a bike and a healthy dose of fear. Cycling Home from Siberia recounts his epic three-and-a-half-year, 30,000-mile journey back to England via the foreboding jungles of Papua New Guinea, an Australian cyclone, and Afghanistan's war-torn Hindu Kush. A gripping story of endurance and adventure, this is also a spiritual journey, providing poignant insight into life on the road in some of the world's toughest corners.
Written in Blood
Mike Silverman - 2013
As one of the UK’s leading forensic scientists, Mike Silverman has helped to identify and convict dozens of murderers, rapists, armed robbers, burglars and muggers, thanks to the evidence they – or their victims – unwittingly left behind at the scenes of their crimes.Mike Silverman started his career in the days when fingerprints were still kept on card files and DNA profiling was just a pipe dream, so Written in Blood is more than just a casebook – it is also a definitive history of the development of forensic science over the course of the past thirty-five years.From collecting blood samples at gangland executions to investigating forensic science failings, including in the murders of Rachel Nickell and Damilola Taylor, Mike Silverman’s unique career provides a fascinating insight into the ways forensic science is used to help solve real-life crimes.Packed with genuine crime scene photographs and original sketches, Written in Blood is the ultimate insider’s account of the fascinating world of forensic science.
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
Paul Theroux - 2008
In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and so much more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot.His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.Brilliant, caustic, and totally addictive, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux at his very best.