Book picks similar to
The Other Glass Teat by Harlan Ellison
non-fiction
essays
harlan-ellison
nonfiction
Maeve's Times
Maeve Binchy - 2013
But for many years Maeve was a journalist, writing for The Irish Times.From 'The Student Train' to 'Plane Bores', 'Bathroom Joggers' to 'When Beckett met Binchy', these articles have all the warmth, wit and humanity of her fiction. Arranged in decades, from the 1960s to the 2000s, and including Maeve's first and last ever piece of writing for The Irish Times, the columns also give a fascinating insight into the author herself.With an introduction written by her husband, the writer Gordon Snell, this collection of timeless writing reminds us of why the leading Irish writer was so universally loved.
Antarctica
Kim Stanley Robinson - 1997
He arrives on the frozen continent and immediately begins making contact with the various scientific and political factions that comprise Antarctic society.What he finds is an interesting blend of inhabitants who don't always mesh well but who all share a common love of Antarctica and a fierce devotion to their life there. He also begins to uncover layers of Antarctic culture that have been kept hidden from the rest of the world, and some of them are dangerous indeed. Things are brought to a head when the saboteurs—or “ecoteurs” as they call themselves—launch an attack designed to drive humans off the face of Antarctica.
The Great Movies
Roger Ebert - 2002
The Great Movies collects one hundred of these essays, each one of them a gem of critical appreciation and an amalgam of love, analysis, and history that will send readers back to that film with a fresh set of eyes and renewed enthusiasm–or perhaps to an avid first-time viewing. Ebert’s selections range widely across genres, periods, and nationalities, and from the highest achievements in film art to justly beloved and wildly successful popular entertainments. Roger Ebert manages in these essays to combine a truly populist appreciation for our most important form of popular art with a scholar’s erudition and depth of knowledge and a sure aesthetic sense. Wonderfully enhanced by stills selected by Mary Corliss, film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, The Great Movies is a treasure trove for film lovers of all persuasions, an unrivaled guide for viewers, and a book to return to again and again.The Great Movies includes: All About Eve • Bonnie and Clyde • Casablanca • Citizen Kane • The Godfather • Jaws • La Dolce Vita • Metropolis • On the Waterfront • Psycho • The Seventh Seal • Sweet Smell of Success • Taxi Driver • The Third Man • The Wizard of Oz • and eighty-five more films.From the Hardcover edition.
The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno & the Network Battle for the Night
Bill Carter - 1994
This is the inside account of this high-pressure confrontation.
Clarkson on Cars
Jeremy Clarkson - 2004
As coal mines closed and house prices exploded to a soundtrack of men in make-up playing synthesizers, Jeremy was already waxing lyrical on topics as useful and diverse as:* The perils of bicycle ownership * Why Australians - not Brits - need bull bars* Why soon only geriatrics will be driving BMWs* The difficultly of deciding on the best car for your wedding * Why Jesus's dad would have owned a Nissan Bluebird * And why it is that bus lanes cause traffic jamsIrreverent, damn funny and offensive to almost everyone, this is writing with its foot to the floor, the brake lines cut and the speed limit smashed to smithereens. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson:'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time Out'Very funny . . . I cracked up laughing on the tube' Evening Standard
Naked Pictures of Famous People
Jon Stewart - 1998
In these nineteen whip-smart essays, Jon Stewart takes on politics, religion, and celebrity with seething irreverent wit, a brilliant sense of timing, and a palate for the absurd -- and these one-of-a-kind forays into his hilarious world will expose you to all it's wickedly naked truths.
Paperweight
Stephen Fry - 1992
It includes selected wireless essays of Donald Trefusis, the ageing professor of philology brought to life in Fry's novel The Liar, and the best of Fry's weekly column for the Daily Telegraph.Perfect to dip into but just as enjoyable to read cover to cover, this book, perhaps more than any other, shows the breadth of Fry's interests and the depth of his insight. He remains a hilarious writer on whatever topic he puts his mind to.
The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories
Gene Wolfe - 1980
The stories within are mined with depth charges, explosions of meaning and illumination that will keep you thinking and feeling long after you have finished reading.Contents11 • The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories • [Archipelago] • (1970) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe26 • Alien Stones • (1972) • novelette by Gene Wolfe55 • La Befana • (1973) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe60 • The Hero as Werwolf • (1975) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe74 • Three Fingers • (1976) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe80 • The Death of Dr. Island • [Archipelago] • (1973) • novella by Gene Wolfe131 • Feather Tigers • (1973) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe138 • Hour of Trust • (1973) • novelette by Gene Wolfe167 • Tracking Song • (1975) • novella by Gene Wolfe225 • The Toy Theater • (1971) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe232 • The Doctor of Death Island • [Archipelago] • (1978) • novella by Gene Wolfe277 • Cues • (1974) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe281 • The Eyeflash Miracles • (1976) • novella by Gene Wolfe336 • Seven American Nights • (1978) • novella by Gene Wolfe
Novels and Social Writings
Jack London - 1901
His prose, always brisk and vigorous, rises in The People of the Abyss to italicized horror over the human degradations he saw in the slums of East London. It also accommodates the dazzling oratory of the hero of The Iron Heel, an American revolutionary named Ernest Everhard, whose speeches have the accents of some of London’s own political essays, like the piece (reprinted in this volume) entitled “Revolution.” London’s prophetic political vision was recalled by Leon Trotsky, who observed that when The Iron Heel first appeared, in 1907, not one of the revolutionary Marxists had yet fully imagined “the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capitalism and labor aristocracy.”Whether he is recollecting, in The Road, the exhilarating camaraderie of hobo gangs, or dramatizing, in Martin Eden, a life like his own, even to the foreshadowing of his own death at age forty, or confessing his struggles with alcoholism in the memoir John Barleycorn, London displays a genius for giving marginal life the aura of romance. Violence and brutality flash into life everywhere in his work, both as a condition of modern urban existence and as the inevitable reaction to it.Though he is outraged in The People of the Abyss by the condition of the poor in capitalist societies, London is even more appalled by their submission, and in the novel he wrote immediately afterward, The Call of the Wild (in the companion volume, Novels and Stories), he constructed an animal fable about the necessary reversion to savagery. The Iron Heel, with its panoramic scenes of urban warfare in Chicago, envisions the United States taken over by fascists who perpetuate their regime for three hundred years. It constitutes London’s warning to his fellow socialists that mere persuasion is insufficient to combat a system that ultimately relies on force.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide, Volume 1
Christopher Golden - 1998
One girl in all the world, to find them where they gather and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their members. She is the Slayer.
Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card - 1990
For those readers who have followed this remarkable talent since the beginning, here are all those amazing stories gathered together in one place, with some extra surprises as well. For the many who are newly come to Card, here is chance to experience the wonder of a writer so versatile that he can handle everything from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction with equal ease and grace. The brilliant story-telling of the Alvin Maker books is no accident; the breathless excitement evoked by the Ender books is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In this enormous volume are forty-six stories, plus ten long, intensely personal essays, unique to this volume. In them the author reveals some of his reasons and motivations for writing, with a good deal of autobiography into the bargain.Contents: Introduction (Book 1: The Hanged Man, Tales of Dread) • essay by Orson Scott Card Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory (1979) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Quietus (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card Deep Breathing Exercises (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card Fat Farm (1980) / short story by Orson Scott Card Closing the Timelid (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card Freeway Games (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card A Sepulchre of Songs (1981) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Prior Restraint (1986) / short story by Orson Scott Card The Changed Man and the King of Words (1982) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Memories of My Head (1990) / short story by Orson Scott Card Lost Boys (1989) / short story by Orson Scott Card Afterword (Book 1: The Hanged Man, Tales of Dread) • essay by Orson Scott Card Introduction (Book 2: Flux, Tales of Human Futures) • essay by Orson Scott Card A Thousand Deaths [Tales of Capitol] (1978) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Clap Hands and Sing (1982) / short story by Orson Scott Card Dogwalker (1989) / novelette by Orson Scott Card But We Try Not to Act Like It (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card I Put My Blue Genes On (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card In the Doghouse (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card and Jay A. Parry The Originist [Foundation] (1989) / novella by Orson Scott Card Afterword (Book 2: Flux, Tales of Human Futures) • essay by Orson Scott Card Introduction (Book 3: Maps in a Mirror, Fables and Fantasies) • essay by Orson Scott Card Unaccompanied Sonata (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card A Cross-Country Trip to Kill Richard Nixon (1980) / novelette by Orson Scott Card The Porcelain Salamander (1981) • short story by Orson Scott Card Middle Woman (1981) / short story by Orson Scott Card The Bully and the Beast (1979) / novella by Orson Scott Card The Princess and the Bear (1980) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Sandmagic [Mither Mages] (1979) / novelette by Orson Scott Card The Best Day (1984) / short story by Orson Scott Card A Plague of Butterflies (1981) / short story by Orson Scott Card The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All in Fun (1979) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Afterword (Book 3: Maps in a Mirror, Fables and Fantasies) • essay by Orson Scott Card Introduction (Book 4: Cruel Miracles, Tales of Death, Hope, and Holiness) • essay by Orson Scott Card Mortal Gods (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card Saving Grace (1987) / short story by Orson Scott Card Eye for Eye (1987) / novella by Orson Scott Card St. Amy's Tale (1980) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Kingsmeat (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card Holy (1980) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Afterword (Book 4: Cruel Miracles, Tales of Death, Hope, and Holiness) • essay by Orson Scott Card Introduction (Book 5: Lost Songs, The Hidden Stories) • essay by Orson Scott Card Ender's Game [Ender Wiggin] (1977) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Mikal's Songbird (1978) / novelette by Orson Scott Card Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow [The Alvin Maker Saga] (1989) • poem by Orson Scott Card Malpractice (1977) / short story by Orson Scott Card Follower (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card Hitching (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card Damn Fine Novel (1989) / short story by Orson Scott Card Billy's Box (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card The Best Family Home Evening Ever (1978) / short story by Orson Scott Card Bicicleta (1977) / short story by Orson Scott Card I Think Mom and Dad Are Going Crazy, Jerry (1979) / short story by Orson Scott Card Gert Fram (1977) / short story by Orson Scott Card Afterword (Book 5: Lost Songs, The Hidden Stories) • essay by Orson Scott Card
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In...
Liz Shannon Miller - 2012
Liz may never recover from "Zardoz".)
How to Tell a Story and Other Essays
Mark Twain - 1996
A hilarious and cutting critique of what not to do, this deliciously wicked essay also lays out what writers should and must do if they wanttheir fiction to live and breathe--as Twain's own fiction always does. In How to Tell a Story, the title piece, Twain takes on such mysteries as the perfectly-timed pause and the uses of the dead-pan mask, and candidly describes his own efforts to hone his platform skills. In What Paul BourgetThinks of Us, Twain lays out a job description for the native novelist that is as fresh and accurate today as when Twain first wrote it. Anyone who cares about storytelling or writing will find Twain's sage suggestions in this volume compelling and engaging.
Wizard's Bane
Rick Cook - 1989
Then, one day the master computer hacker is called to a different world to help fight an evil known as the Black League. Suddenly, the Wiz finds himself in a place governed by magic--and in league with a red-headed witch who despises him.
Voices
John Vornholt - 1995
In Book #1, telepath Talia Winters must run for her life through a perilous universe, when she's accused of sabotaging a convention on Babylon 5.