Desolation Angels


Jack Kerouac - 1958
    Along with such visionaries as William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac changed the face of American literature, igniting a counterculture revolution that even now, decades later, burns brighter than ever in Desolation Angels.In one of the major cinematic events of 2012, Jack Kerouac's legendary Beat classic, On the Road, finally hits the big screen. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries; Paris, Je T'Aime) and with a cast of some of Hollywood's biggest young stars, including Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams (Julie & Julia, The Fighter), Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Road), the film will attract new fans who will be inspired by Kerouac's revolutionary writing.

Excursions


Henry David Thoreau - 1906
    Thoreau's most engaging and popular works, newly edited and based on the most authoritative versions of each. These essays represent Thoreau in many stages of his writing career, ranging from 1842--when he accepted Emerson's commission to review four volumes of botanical and zoological catalogues in an essay that was published in The Dial as "Natural History of Massachusetts"--to 1862, when he prepared "Wild Apples," a lecture he had delivered during the Concord Lyceum's 1859-1860 season, for publication in the Atlantic Monthly after his death. Three other early meditations on natural history and human nature, "A Winter Walk," "A Walk to Wachusett," and "The Landlord," were originally published in 1842 and 1843. Lively, light pieces, they reveal Thoreau's early use of themes and approaches that recur throughout his work. "A Yankee in Canada," a book-length account of an 1850 trip to Quebec that was published in part in 1853, is a fitting companion to Cape Cod and The Maine Woods, Thoreau's other long accounts of explorations of internal as well as external geography. In the last four essays, "The Succession of Forest Trees" (1860), "Autumnal Tints" (1862), "Walking" (1862), and "Wild Apples" (1862), Thoreau describes natural and philosophical phenomena with a breadth of view and generosity of tone that are characteristic of his mature writing. In their skillful use of precisely observed details to arrive at universal conclusions, these late essays exemplify Transcendental natural history at its best.

Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life


Douglas Wilson - 2011
    Through a series of out-of-the-ordinary lessons, each with its own takeaway points and recommended readings, Douglas Wilson provides indispensable guidance, showing how to develop the writer s craft and the kind of life from which good writing comes.

Stressed, Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind


Jonathan Bate - 2016
    Again and again over the centuries great poets return to love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling at peace and at one with the natural world. ‘Stressed Unstressed’ harvests an array of poems on such themes in the hope that they will speak to you when you are processing your worries or when you simply want to fill your mind with different, more positive thoughts.Words can act as drugs, and on the bedside or in a waiting-room this little volume of poetry can help in all sorts of difficult circumstances. So here is a selection of new poems and old, enduring classics and forgotten gems. Next time you are feeling stressed or anxious, worried or sleepless, panicky or unable to cope, ‘Stressed Unstressed’ invites you to join the thousands of others who have read and remembered and loved these poems – to form a very special community. This is bibliotherapy.

Women Who Kill: A Chilling Casebook of True-Life Murders


Al Cimino - 2019
    But this disproportion can make their crimes seem all the more shocking. In this chilling casebook, Al Cimino explores 34 female murderers. We meet 'Angel of Death' Kristen Gilbert who induced multiple cardiac arrests among her patients while working as a hospital nurse, Enriqueta Mart�, the 'Vampire of Barcelona' who killed children to make cosmetics, and many more. These case studies give riveting insight into the lives and motives of women who decided to commit the ultimate transgression. In many of these cases, the women had suffered years of abuse and psychological breakdown before their eventual crimes. Other times their heinous acts seemed to spring from nowhere, with an unpredictability that is haunting. The gruesome details within these pages are not for the faint hearted.

1001 Most Useful Spanish Words


Seymour Resnick - 1996
    Included are definitions of common Spanish words arranged by such categories as foods, numbers, days of the week, months, colors, the seasons, and family. The heart of the book is a dictionary, from a to zapato, in which each word is used in a Spanish sentence (with English translation) demonstrating its proper use. This useful learning and teaching tool was compiled by Seymour Resnick, a noted language teacher. It belongs at the fingertips of anyone studying the Spanish language.

Cornhuskers


Carl Sandburg - 1918
    Includes "Grass," "Prayers of Steel," "Flanders," "Prairie," "Shenandoah," many more. Introduction. Index of First Words.

The Art of Reading Poetry


Harold Bloom - 2005
    By illuminating such subjects as poetic voice, metaphor and allusion, and the nature of poetic value itself, Bloom presents an invaluable learning tool as a key to artistic expression.

Wit


Margaret Edson - 1995
    What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.” In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end?The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson’s writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader. As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.

Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume II: The New Kingdom


Miriam Lichtheim - 1978
    Bibliogs.

The Kappillan of Malta


Nicholas Monsarrat - 1974
    In the fragile safety of catacombs revealed by the explosions, he tends to the flood of homeless, starving, and frightened people seeking shelter, giving messages of inspiration and hope. His story, and that of the island, unfold in superbly graphic images of six days during the siege.

The Sea Lady


H.G. Wells - 1902
    G. Wells, a founder of modern science fiction and one of the genre's greatest writers. In comparison, little attention has been given by critics to his works of fantasy, which in the opinion of many, are just as artistic and worthy of study. This work takes a critical look at Wells' little known fantasy The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine, which is "a parable of dark foreboding that unveils the nothingness of utopian dreams" and foreshadows Franz Kafka's dark fables of the totalitarian age. A lengthy introduction by the editor provides a comprehensive overview of the text and the story of The Sea Lady, and serves to explain the ideas of civil death and every citizen's acting as a public servant, and the concept of totalitarian metaphysics, which deals with a revolt against the limits of the human condition. This work provides a complete, extensively annotated text of the 1902 London first edition of The Sea Lady. Prepared by the world's leading Wellsian scholar, the volume also provides germane appendices and a bibliography."--BOOK JACKET.

Collected Stories


Raymond Carver - 1985
    In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations. Beneath his pared-down surfaces run disturbing, violent undercurrents. Suggestive rather than explicit, and seeming all the more powerful for what is left unsaid, Carver’s stories were held up as exemplars of a new school in American fiction known as minimalism or “dirty realism,” a movement whose wide influence continues to this day. Carver’s stories were brilliant in their detachment and use of the oblique, ambiguous gesture, yet there were signs of a different sort of sensibility at work. In books such as Cathedral and the later tales included in the collected stories volume Where I’m Calling From, Carver revealed himself to be a more expansive writer than in the earlier published books, displaying Chekhovian sympathies toward his characters and relying less on elliptical effects.In gathering all of Carver’s stories, including early sketches and posthumously discovered works, The Library of America’s Collected Stories provides a comprehensive overview of Carver’s career as we have come to know it: the promise of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and the breakthrough of What We Talk About, on through the departures taken in Cathedral and the pathos of the late stories. But it also prompts a fresh consideration of Carver by presenting Beginners, an edition of the manuscript of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that Carver submitted to Gordon Lish, his editor and a crucial influence on his development. Lish’s editing was so extensive that at one point Carver wrote him an anguished letter asking him not to publish the book; now, for the first time, readers can read both the manuscript and published versions of the collection that established Carver as a major American writer. Offering a fascinating window into the complex, fraught relationship between writer and editor, Beginners expands our sense of Carver and is essential reading for anyone who cares about his achievement.Contents--What We Talk About When We Talk About LoveWhy Don’t You Dance?ViewfinderMr. Coffee and Mr. FixitGazeboI Could See the Smallest ThingsSacksThe BathTell the Women We’re GoingAfter the DenimSo Much Water So Close to HomeThe Third Thing That Killed My Father OffA Serious TalkThe CalmPopular MechanicsEverything Stuck to HimWhat We Talk About When We Talk About LoveOne More ThingStories from FiresThe LieThe CabinHarry’s DeathThe PheasantCathedralFeathersChef’s HousePreservationThe CompartmentA Small, Good ThingVitaminsCarefulWhere I’m Calling FromThe TrainFeverThe BridleCathedralFrom Where I’m Calling FromBoxesWhoever Was Using This BedIntimacyMenudoElephantBlackbird PieErrandOther FictionThe HairThe AficionadosPoseidon and CompanyBright Red ApplesFrom The Augustine NotebooksKindlingWhat Would You Like to See?DreamsVandalsCall If You Need MeSelected EssaysMy Father’s LifeOn WritingFiresAuthor’s Note to Where I’m Calling FromBeginners (The Manuscript Version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)Why Don’t You Dance?ViewfinderWhere Is Everyone?GazeboWant to See Something?The FlingA Small, Good ThingTell the Women We’re GoingIf It Please YouSo Much Water So Close to HomeDummyPieThe CalmMineDistanceBeginnersOne More Thing--loa.org

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass


Lana Del Rey - 2020
    Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each word to make the perfect poem. They are eclectic and honest and not trying to be anything other than what they are and for that reason I’m proud of them, especially because the spirit in which they were written was very authentic.” (Lana Del Rey) Lana Del Rey brings her breathtaking poetry to life in an unprecedented audiobook. In this stunning spoken word performance, Lana Del Rey reads 14 poems from her debut book Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass accompanied by music from Grammy Award-winning musician Jack Antonoff. Lana’s debut book solidifies her further as “the essential writer of her times” (The Atlantic). This audiobook features Lana reading select poems from the book, including "LA Who Am I to Love You?", "The Land of 1,000 Fires", "Past the Bushes Cypress Thriving", "Never to Heaven", "Tessa DiPietro", "Happy", and several others. The result is an extraordinary poetic landscape that reflects the unguarded spirit of its creator.

Lauren Conrad Style


Lauren Conrad - 2010
    Now Lauren reveals how you can adapt her classic, understated style for yourself. In her first-ever style guide, Lauren offers tips on how to create your own unique look, shares her favorite sources of inspiration, and identifies the absolute must-haves for any fashionista's wardrobe. Along the way, she examines her fashion evolution, from California-casual teen to camera-ready style icon and clothing designer.From beauty advice and hair secrets to how to shop vintage or find the perfect T-shirt, Lauren Conrad Style unlocks the mysteries of being effortlessly chic. With Lauren's guidance, you'll look and feel stylish every day.