Morrissey in Conversation: The Essential Interviews
Paul A. Woods - 2006
Collating classic music press and glossy magazine articles, Morrissey in Conversation describes the rocker's crazy-quilt career in his own words. It’s all here — how the Smiths created 1980s indie rock; the anti-rock credentials, feminist sympathies, and militant vegetarianism; Morrisey’s obsession with pop culture and girl groups, his (a)sexuality, and sardonic salvos against the mediocre. This is the story of how one man bewitched the ‘80s, peaked in the ‘90s, and triumphed in the new millennium.
Evening in the Palace of Reason
James R. Gaines - 2005
Their fleeting encounter in 1747 signals a unique moment in history where belief collided with the cold certainty of reason. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and modern world, Evening in the Palace of Reason captures the tumult of the eighteenth century, the legacy of the Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment in this extraordinary tale of two men.
Life... With No Breaks
Nick Spalding - 2010
Turns out that’s impossible... it took 30!He had a dull, drizzly weekend to kill, so made a start on the book he’d been promising to write all his life... and had it finished by midnight Sunday.You’ll laugh out loud reading his odyssey of non-stop writing, in a selection of anecdotes, asides and stories... all dredged up from an over-stimulated brain functioning on caffeine, nicotine and the occasional chocolate biscuit. The book is a conversation with YOU and with Nick you'll venture into the thorny topics of love, life, sex, horribly timed bowel movements and a deathly fear of sponges (among many other things).After you've read Life... With No Breaks, you may never look at the world the same way again!
The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy
Kliph Nesteroff - 2015
Based on over 200 original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past 100 years.Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, Nesteroff introduces the first stand-up comedian - an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian's primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy's part in the Civil Rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the 21st century.
The Secret DJ
The Secret DJ - 2018
The life of an international DJ playing at the most exotic destinations worldwide, in the most precarious of psychic circumstances, is rich to the point of toxicity. A globally-known DJ choosing to keep his identity secret takes us on a journey into the heart of life lived in the hedonistic fast lane of club culture for 30 years. Whether playing to 10,000 fans in Ibiza or in a local pub function room, this is a cautionary tale for the rave generation whose days of pills, thrills, and bellyaches are behind them. It may, as well, contain advice: though we cannot advise that it is always followed.This book is not an instruction manual - more a cautionary tale that may illuminate anyone who has harboured ambition to pack a dancefloor...
Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split
Laurie Perry - 2007
Side-splittingly funny and profoundly moving, Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair is the true-life misadventures of Laurie Perry, aka Crazy Aunt Purl, a slightly neurotic, displaced Southerner trying to create a new life after her husband leaves her to 'get his creativity back.' (Whatever that means.) But will she get her groove back in a tiny rented apartment, with a mountain of boxes, visible panty lines, and a slight wine-and-Cheetos problem?"I was a thirty-something woman living alone with four cats. I was probably going to be divorced. I was on the short bus to crazy. I pictured my grandmother making hoop-skirted yarn cozies for the toilet paper. I pictured myself making doilies for furniture that I did not own. I saw my cats wearing knitted hats with lace appliqués. From my vantage point, knitting seemed like 100 percent of some road I did not want to walk down."Yet, surprisingly, it's knitting that saves her and emboldens her to become fully engaged in life again--to discover new friends; to take risks, however scary; and to navigate the ins and outs of the modern dating scene."Dating has changed in a decade. Now there is a higher chance of meeting someone who has an internet porn addiction than someone who has a job. In Los Angeles, your dinner companion might have served time in Pelican Bay or run a meth lab. Or, worst of all, he might spend all night talking about his agent, his craft, and what it means to grow as an actor. Then he'll ask you to read his screenplay."And such is life in this quirky, irreverent memoir, a spin-off of the blog phenomenon, www.crazyauntpurl.com, one of the most successful online diaries in history, exploding to an international fan base of enthusiastic readers. But don't worry, you don't have to knit to love Aunt Purl. You just have to know what it feels like to have loved, to have lost, or to have taken a leap of faith. We've all been there: Pass the wine.
Yes Please
Amy Poehler - 2014
Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.
Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
Al Franken - 2017
From Senator Al Franken - #1 bestselling author and beloved SNL alum - comes the story of an award-winning comedian who decided to run for office and then discovered why award-winning comedians tend not to do that.This is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect.It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it.It's a book about our deeply polarized, frequently depressing, occasionally inspiring political culture, written from inside the belly of the beast.In this candid personal memoir, the honorable gentleman from Minnesota takes his army of loyal fans along with him from Saturday Night Live to the campaign trail, inside the halls of Congress, and behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic and/or hilarious moments of his new career in politics.Has Al Franken become a true Giant of the Senate? Franken asks readers to decide for themselves.