Book picks similar to
The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror by Justin Everett
non-fiction
fantasy
horror
literary-criticism
90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality
Allison Yarrow - 2018
However, the iconic women of the 1990s—such as Hillary Clinton, Courtney Love, Roseanne Barr, Marcia Clark, and Anita Hill—earned their places in history not as trailblazers, but as whipping girls of the media. During this decade, American society grew increasingly hostile to women who dared to speak up, challenge power, or defy rigid expectations for female behavior.Deeply researched yet thoroughly engaging, 90s Bitch untangles the complex history of women in the 1990s, exploring how they were maligned by the media, vilified by popular culture, and objectified in the marketplace. In an age where even a presidential nominee can be derided as a “nasty woman,” it’s clear that the epidemic of casting women as bitches persists. To understand why we must take a long, hard look back at the 1990s—a decade in which female empowerment was twisted into bitchification and exploitation.Yarrow’s thoughtful, clear-eyed, and timely examination is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand gender politics and how we might end the “bitch epidemic” for the next generation.
Why Read the Classics?
Italo Calvino - 1991
Zhivago, and why Cyrano de Bergerac is the forerunner of modern-day science-fiction writers. Learn how many odysseys The Odyssey contains, and why Hemingway's Nick Adams stories are a pinnacle of twentieth-century literature. From Ovid to Pavese, Xenophon to Dickens, Galileo to Gadda, Calvino covers the classics he has loved most with essays that are fresh, accessible and wise. Why Read the Classics? firmly establishes Calvino among the rare likes of Nabokov, Borges, and Lawrence--writers whose criticism is as vibrant and unique as their groundbreaking fiction.
The Moth Presents Occasional Magic: True Stories about Defying the Impossible
Catherine Burns - 2019
Inside, storytellers from around the world share times when, in the face of seemingly impossible situations, they found moments of beauty, wonder, and clarity that shed light on their lives and helped them find a path forward.From a fifteen-year-old saving a life in Chicago to a mother of triplets trekking to the North Pole to a ninety-year-old Russian man recalling his standoff with the KGB, these storytellers attest to the variety and richness of the human experience, and the shared threads that connect us all. With honesty and humor, they stare down their fear, embrace uncertainty, and encourage us all to be more authentic, vulnerable, and alive.
Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest
Jennifer Crusie - 2007
With the show in its seventh season on the fledgling CW, Coffee at Luke's is the perfect look at what has made the show such a clever, beloved part of the television landscape for so long.What are the risks of having your mother be your best friend? How is Gilmore Girls anti-family, at least in the traditional sense? What’s a male viewer to do when he finds both mother and daughter attractive? And how is creator Amy Sherman-Palladino like Emily Gilmore? From the show’s class consciousness to the way the characters are shaped by the books they read, the music they listen to and the movies they watch, Coffee at Luke's looks at the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking underpinnings of smart viewer’s Tuesday night television staple, and takes them further into Stars Hollow than they’ve ever been before.
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory
Raphael Bob-Waksberg - 2019
In "A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion," a young couple planning a wedding is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices. "Missed Connection--m4w" is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. The members of a rock band in "Up-and-Comers" discover they suddenly have superpowers--but only when they're drunk. And in "The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important New York City Landmarks," a woman maps her history of romantic failures based on the places she and her significant others visited together.Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (or both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability. The resulting collection is a punchy, perfect bloody valentine.
How Proust Can Change Your Life
Alain de Botton - 1998
For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work—his fiction, letter, and conversations—and distills from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognizing love and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris. At once slyly ironic and genuinely wise,
How Proust Can Change Your Life
is an unqualified delight.
A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction
Terry Pratchett - 2014
A Slip of the Keyboard brings together for the first time the finest examples of Pratchett's non fiction writing, both serious and surreal: from musings on mushrooms to what it means to be a writer (and why banana daiquiris are so important); from memories of Granny Pratchett to speculation about Gandalf's love life, and passionate defences of the causes dear to him.With all the humour and humanity that have made his novels so enduringly popular, this collection brings Pratchett out from behind the scenes of the Discworld to speak for himself - man and boy, bibliophile and computer geek, champion of hats, orang-utans and Dignity in Dying.
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Peter Boxall - 2006
Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word.The featured works have been handpicked by a team of international critics and literary luminaries, including Derek Attridge (world expert on James Joyce), Cedric Watts (renowned authority on Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene), Laura Marcus (noted Virginia Woolf expert), and David Mariott (poet and expert on African-American literature), among some twenty others.Addictive, browsable, knowledgeable--1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die will be a boon companion for anyone who loves good writing and an inspiration for anyone who is just beginning to discover a love of books. Each entry is accompanied by an authoritative yet opinionated critical essay describing the importance and influence of the work in question. Also included are publishing history and career details about the authors, as well as reproductions of period dust jackets and book designs.
The Great American Read: The Book of Books: Explore America's 100 Best-Loved Novels
Jessica Allen - 2018
What are America's best-loved novels? PBS will launch The Great American Read series with a 2-hour special in May 2018 revealing America's 100 best-loved novels, determined by a rigorous national survey. Subsequent episodes will air in September and October. Celebrities and everyday Americans will champion their favorite novel and in the finale in late October, America's #1 best-loved novel will be revealed. The Great American Read: The Book of Books will present all 100 novels with fascinating information about each book, author profiles, a snapshot of the novel's social relevance, film or television adaptations, other books and writings by the author, and little-known facts. Also included are themed articles about banned books, the most influential book illustrators, reading recommendations, the best first-lines in literature, and more. Beautifully designed with rare images of the original manuscripts, first-edition covers, rejection letters, and other ephemera, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is a must-have book for all booklovers.
Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love
Anne Fadiman - 2005
Her chosen authors include Sven Birkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante; the objects of their literary affections range from Pride and Prejudice to Sue Barton, Student Nurse.These essays are not conventional literary criticism; they are about relationships. Rereadings reveals at least as much about the reader as about the book: each is a miniature memoir that focuses on that most interesting of topics, the protean nature of love. And as every bibliophile knows, no love is more life-changing than the love of a book.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1999
In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes.What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century
M.H. AbramsKatharine Eisaman Maus - 1962
Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
Ruth Franklin - 2016
In this “remarkable act of reclamation” (Neil Gaiman), Ruth Franklin envisions Jackson as “belonging to the great tradition of Hawthorne, Poe and James” (New York Times Book Review) and demonstrates how her unique contribution to the canon “so uncannily channeled women’s nightmares and contradictions that it is ‘nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era’ ” (Washington Post). Franklin investigates the “interplay between the life, the work, and the times with real skill and insight, making this fine book a real contribution not only to biography, but to mid-20th-century women’s history” (Chicago Tribune). “Wisely rescu[ing] Shirley Jackson from any semblance of obscurity” (Lena Dunham), Franklin’s invigorating portrait stands as the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary genius.
The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends
David H. Richter - 1989
This bestseller balances a comprehensive and up-to-date anthology of major documents in literary criticism and theory — from Plato to the present — with the most thorough editorial support for understanding these challenging readings.
The Weird Fiction Megapack: 25 Stories from Weird Tales
Steve Rasnic Tem - 2014
Included are works by many famous authors, such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, E. Hoffmann Price, Tennessee Williams, and many more—with an emphasis on great but less-well-known stories that readers may not have encountered before. "To Become a Sorcerer," by Darrell Schweitzer (included here) was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.Included are:BOY BLUE, by Steve Rasnic TemTAP DANCING, by John Gregory BetancourtTO BECOME A SORCERER, by Darrell SchweitzerTHE GOLGOTHA DANCERS, by Manly Wade WellmanTHE DEATH OF ILALOTHA, by Clark Ashton SmithTHE SALEM HORROR, by Henry KuttnerTHE DISINTERMENT, by H.P. Lovecraft and D.W. RimelTHE SEA-WITCH, by Nictzin DyalhisVINE TERROR, by Howard WandreiTHE PALE MAN, by Julius LongWEREWOLF OF THE SAHARA, by G.G. PendarvesTRAIN FOR FLUSHING, by Malcolm JamesonTHE DIARY OF PHILIP WESTERLY, by Paul ComptonMASK OF DEATH, by Paul ErnstTHE GIRL FROM SAMARCAND, by E. Hoffmann PriceTHE MONKEY SPOONS, by Mary Elizabeth CounselmanTHE VENGEANCE OF NITOCRIS, by Tennessee WilliamsTHE NINTH SKELETON, by Clark Ashton SmithBIMINI, by Bassett MorganTHE CURSE OF YIG, by H.P. Lovecraft and Zealia BishopTHE HAUNTER OF THE RING, by Robert E. HowardTHE MEDICI BOOTS, by Pearl Norton SwetTHE LOST DOOR, by Dorothy QuickDOOM OF THE HOUSE OF DURYEA, by Earl Peirce, Jr.IN THE DARK, by Ronal KayserAnd don't forget to check out the other volumes in this series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, westerns, single author collections -- and much, much more! Search this ebookstore for "Wildside Megapack" to see the complete list.