Lectures on Literature


Vladimir Nabokov - 1980
    Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.

How To Write Descriptions of Eyes and Faces


Val Kovalin - 2011
     (Note: both books (1) How to Write Descriptions of Eyes and Faces and (2) How to Write Descriptions of Hair and Skin are now available in a single, unabridged volume for readers interested in both buying both books together at a cheaper price than buying them individually: How to Write Descriptions of Eyes, Faces, Hair, Skin. ASIN: B00670OUGW.) Here, you get more help than you could possibly imagine on describing eyes and faces. Each section centers on a type of description, such as Eye Color (for example, "Crystal blue eyes"), or Appearance of the Eye (for example, "Beady eyes," or "Bedroom eyes"), or Actions Involving the Eyes (for example, "Darting eyes" or "Gawking"). Each section lists its descriptive terms alphabetically with full explanations. You can read the lists to learn new terms, or you can look up a specific term. The eye section starts with the location of colors in the iris. Through examples, you learn how physical description starts with an accurate, detailed picture of everything you see, which you condense for your fiction. You learn about the appearance of the eyes, actions involving the eyes, and how to describe eyelids, eyebrows, and eyelashes. All of this leads into more than 2,000 words explaining 82 different color names to assign to eyes that are black, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, or violet. The face section shows how to describe facial shapes, forehead, ears, cheekbones, nose, lips, chin, and facial hair, if any. You learn about facial expressions, such as simpering or sneering, and things like the differences between a frown and a scowl. You also get a section on how the face shows different emotions. For example, you can look up "Anger" and read about common physical signs of anger such as blood rising beneath the skin, the forehead tightening, the eyes narrowing, and the nose wrinkling in disgust. Who may benefit from this book? Anyone who wants a quick prompt or idea so as not to lose his writing momentum. Readers for whom English is a second language may enjoy the in-depth explanations of American English terms. Authors in genres that demand much physical description (for example, fantasy fiction and romance fiction) may also find this book useful. How to Write Descriptions of Eyes and Faces is about 15,000 words in total. Thank you for reading.

Insurgent: The Ultimate Interactive Quiz Book (Divergent Series Quiz Books 2)


Sarah Davids - 2014
     This truly unique interactive quiz book game is the perfect addition to your reading enjoyment of this dystopian classic. "I don't have a clue how you turned my book reading device into a game, but I loved it. You're a genius in my book". Kathryn Cooper (KatherineCooperWrites.com) 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, On what floor of Candor HQ is the Interrogation room? 1) 3rd 2) 6th 3) 12th 4) 18th How many conditions are set out by Amity when agreeing to become a faction safe house? 1) 1 2) 2 3) 3 4) 4 There are 10 sections to this quiz. Each section automatic counts your score as you go. If you guess wrong, then you have the option of cheating by going back (you'll be supplied with a clue) or you can continue ahead. 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 - Insurgent.

Poetry is Not a Project


Dorothea Lasky - 2010
    Calling poets away from civilization, back towards the wilderness, Lasky brazenly urges artists away from conceptual programs, resurrecting imagination and faith-in-the-uncertain as saviors from mediocrity.

The Theatre of the Absurd


Martin Esslin - 1961
    Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understand one another. In 1961, Martin Esslin gave a name to the phenomenon in his groundbreaking study of these playwrights who dramatized the absurdity at the core of the human condition.Over four decades after its initial publication, Esslin’s landmark book has lost none of its freshness. The questions these dramatists raise about the struggle for meaning in a purposeless world are still as incisive and necessary today as they were when Beckett’s tramps first waited beneath a dying tree on a lonely country road for a mysterious benefactor who would never show. Authoritative, engaging, and eminently readable, The Theatre of the Absurd is nothing short of a classic: vital reading for anyone with an interest in the theatre.

Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader


Victor Villanueva - 1997
    Expert text includes coverage of various areas, from acid rain and atomic energy, to waste disposal and wetlands. Touches upon the many statutory and common-law regulations shaping the world in which we live.

The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach


Robin Behn - 1992
    A distinctive collection of more than 90 effective poetry-writing exercises combined with corresponding essays to inspire writers of all levels.

Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft


Janet Burroway - 2002
    She investigates a specific element of craft - Image, Voice, Character, Setting and Story - from a perspective that crosses various genres.

Joyce's Voices


Hugh Kenner - 1978
    Joyce's Voices is both a helpful guide through Joyce's complexities, and a brief treatise on the concept of objectivity: the idea that the world can be perceived as a series of reports to our senses. Objectivity, Kenner claims, was a modern invention, and one that the modernists--Joyce foremost among them--found problematic. Accessible and enjoyable, Joyce's Voices is what so much criticism is not: an aid to better understanding--and enjoying more fully--the work of one of the world's greatest writers.

Gray Man: Camouflage for Crowds, Cities, and Civil Crisis


Matthew Dermody - 2017
    He hides in the corners of conformity. He only flaunts a quotidian nature. He meanders through the mundane and occupies the ordinary. Individual expression and exceptionalism are his enemies. The Gray Man is the forgettable face, the ghost guy, the hidden human. Implementing the concepts is more than looking less tactical, less hostile, or less threatening. It is the willful abandonment of anything and everything that defines oneself as different. Using his unique "S" word conceptual approach featured in Appear to Vanish, camouflage and concealment expert Matthew Dermody discusses the concepts, tactics and mindset necessary to assimilate into any urban environment. From the safety-conscious international traveler to the SERE contingencies of the deep cover foreign operative, GRAY MAN is the definitive urban concealment resource.

Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style


D.A. Miller - 2003
    Here, the stigmatized condition of a spinster; there, a writer's unequalled display of absolute, impersonal authority. In between, the secret work of Austen's style: to keep at bay the social doom that would follow if she ever wrote as the person she is.For no Jane Austen could ever appear in Jane Austen. Amid happy wives and pathetic old maids, we see no successfully unmarried woman, and, despite the multitude of girls seeking to acquire "accomplishments," no artist either. What does appear is a ghostly No One, a narrative voice unmarked by age, gender, marital status, all the particulars that make a person--and might make a person peculiar. The Austen heroine must suppress her wit to become the one and not the other, to become, that is, a person fit to be tied in a conjugal knot. But for herself, Austen refuses personhood, with all its constraints and needs, and disappears into the sourceless anonymity of her style. Though often treasured for its universality, that style marks the specific impasse of a writer whose self-representation is impossible without the prospect of shame.D.A. Miller argues this case not only through the close reading that Austen's style always demands, but also through the close writing, the slavish imitation, that it sometimes inspires.

A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose


B.R. Myers - 2002
    . .When the Atlantic Monthly first published an excerpted version of B.R. Myers' polemic—in which he attacked literary giants such as Don Delillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, quoting their work extensively to accuse them of mindless pretension—it caused a world-wide sensation."A welcome contrarian takes on the state of contemporary American literary prose," said a Wall Street Journal review. "Useful mischief," said Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. "Brilliantly written," declared The Times of London.But Myers' expanded version of the essay does more than just attack sanctified literary heavyweights.It also:* Examines the literary hierarchy that perpetuates the status quo by looking at the reviews that the novelists in question received. It also considers the literary award system. "Rick Moody received an O. Henry Award in 1997," Myers observes, "whereupon he was made an O. Henry juror himself. And so it goes."* Showcases Myers' biting sense of wit, as in the new section, "Ten Rules for 'Serious' Writers," and his discussion of the sex scenes in the bestselling books of David Guterson ("If Jackie Collins had written that," Myers says after one example, "reviewers would have had a field day.")* Champions clear writing and storytelling in a wide range of writers, from "pop" novelists such as Stephen King to more "serious" literary heavyweights such as Somerset Maugham. Myers also considers the classics such as Balzac and Henry James, and recommends numerous other undeservedly obscure authors.* Includes an all-new section in which Myers not only considers the controversy that followed the Atlantic essay, but responds to several of his most prominent critics.Published on the one-year anniversary of original Atlantic Monthly essay, the new, expanded A READER'S MANIFESTO continues B.R. Myers' fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and brilliantly exposing the literary status quo.

The Infinity of Lists


Umberto Eco - 2009
    This infinity of lists is no coincidence: a culture prefers enclosed, stable forms when it is sure of its own identity, while when faced with a jumbled series of ill-defined phenomena, it starts making lists. The poetics of lists runs throughout the history of art and literature. We do not only see it at work in ancient bestiaries, the celestial hosts of angels or the naturalist collections of the 16th century. We also find it more obliquely from Homer to Joyce, from the treasures of Gothic cathedrals to the fantastic landscapes of Bosch and cabinets of curiosities, until we get to Andy Warhol and Arman in the 20th century. In this 5-colour illustrated edition, Umberto Eco reflects on how the idea of catalogues has changed over the centuries and how, from one period to another, it has expressed the spirit of the times. His essay is accompanied by a literary anthology and a wide selection of works of art illustrating and analysing the texts presented. This new illustrated essay is a companion volume to On Beauty and On Ugliness.

The 15-Minute Writer: How To Write Your Book In Only 15 Minutes A Day


Jennifer Blanchard - 2016
    Perfect for busy writers or writers who are easily distracted or who want a better way to make consistent progress with their writing. Includes write ups from 15-minute writers who swear by the method. Also covers mindset, getting into a writing flow, how to clear mental clutter so you can focus during your writing session, and more.

Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places


Ursula K. Le Guin - 1989
    But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind — strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos, with an eloquence, wit, and precision that makes for exhilarating reading.