Book picks similar to
Aesthetics of Self-Invention: Oscar Wilde To David Bowie by Shelton Waldrep
music
nonfiction
poetry
__la-belle-Époque
Ocean Star: A Memoir
Christina Dimari - 2006
"Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.
Larry Fink on Composition and Improvisation: The Photography Workshop Series
Larry Fink - 2014
Its goal is to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Each volume is introduced by a well-known student of the featured photographer. In this book, Larry Fink--well-known for his layered pictures in social settings--explores composing photographs and improvising within a scene to create images with both feeling and meaning. Through words and photographs, he reveals insight into his own practice and discusses a wide range of creative issues, from connecting with the subject in front of the lens to shaping a vision that is authentic. Photographer Lisa Kereszi, a student of Larry Fink, provides the introduction.Larry Fink (born 1941) has been a professor at Yale University School of Art; Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture; Parsons the New School for Design; and Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Currently, he is a tenured professor of photography at Bard College. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States, including solo exhibitions at Light Gallery, New York; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.Lisa Kereszi is a photographer and educator. She is now the director of undergraduate studies at the Yale University School of Art, where she has taught since 2004. She has published five books, including "Fun and Games" and "Joe's Junk Yard." Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Brooklyn Museum, and has appeared in the "New Yorker," "Harper's" and the "New York Times Magazine."
How to Stay Bitter Through the Happiest Times of Your Life
Anita Liberty - 2006
But I wrote a lot of good poems.”So maintains Anita Liberty, the caustically funny New York City performance artist who was going along happily healing her hurt by hating and humiliating her detestable ex-boyfriend on stage and in print until the unthinkable happened: she had a good date. And one good date deserves another. And another. And another. And, all of the sudden, Anita Liberty finds herself in a predicament. Getting dumped launched Anita’s career–Will falling in love finish it? Who’s more important: her devoted audience or her newly devoted boyfriend? And on top of everything, Hollywood won’t stop calling and Anita can’t figure out if It wants a serious commitment or just a little bit of no-strings-attached fun. From digging mercilessly into the minutiae of her new relationship to dramatically torching every professional bridge she crosses in L.A., Anita refuses to let a big load of bliss get dumped right in the middle of her career path.“He said that my work was amazing and hilarious and smart and that he can’t wait to see me perform.So I had sex with him.”“My boyfriend asked me to change my look.To something other than contemptuous.”{BARGAIN} Whatever Hollywood ends up paying me for the rights to the story of my life.“It’s easier to go back to fantasizing about perfection . . .than to accept that perfection is just a fantasy.”“Boyfriend thinks I’d rather be right than happy.Boyfriend’s right.But I’m not telling him that.”Through blog entries, film scenes, poems, and to-do lists, Anita Liberty documents the perils and pitfalls of dating, sex, relationships, artistic success, and the kind of true love that sucks the creative life out of you to the point where you just end up staring at a blank computer screen and thinking gooey thoughts about your new boyfriend even though you should be writing.
It's Always Summer Somewhere: A Matter of Life and Cricket
Felix White - 2021
His passion for the game is at the fore on the BBC 's number one cricket podcast and 5Live show, Tailenders, which he co-presents with Greg James and Jimmy Anderson. It's Always Summer Somewhere is his funny, heartbreaking and endlessly engaging love letter to the game.Felix takes us through his life growing up in South West London and describes how his story is forever punctuated and given meaning by cricket. Through his own exploits as a slow left arm spinner of 'lovely loopy stuff', to the tragic illness of his mother, life with The Maccabees and his cricket redemption, Felix touches on both the comedic and the tragic in equal measure. Throughout, there's the ever-present roller coaster of following the England cricket team. The exploits of Tufnell (another bowler of 'lovely loopy stuff'), Atherton, Hussain et al, are given extra import through the eyes of a cricket-obsessed youth. Felix meets them at each signposted moment to find out what was really behind those moments that gave cricket fans everywhere sporting memories that would last forever, sending the book into an exploration of grief, transgenerational displacement and how the people we've known and things we've loved culminate and take expression in our lives. It's Always Summer Somewhere is an incredibly honest detail of a life lived with cricket. It offers a sense of genuine empathy and understanding not just with cricket fans, but sports and music fans across the world, in articulating our reasons for pouring so much meaning into something that we simply cannot control.Culminating in the heart-stopping World Cup Final in 2019, the book finally answers that question fans have so often asked...what is it about this game?
A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the studio
Paul Myers - 2010
If you don't know what you want, I'll do it for you."Few record producers possess the musical facility to back up such a bold promise, but in over forty-plus years behind the glass, Todd Rundgren has willed himself into becoming a not only a rock guitar virtuoso, an accomplished lead vocalist and vocal arranger and visionary keyboard player, not to mention a serviceable drummer. But arguably, Rundgren's greatest instrument of all is the recording studio itself. After learning his craft with Nazz, Rundgren engineered The Band's Stage Fright album and soon became the producer of a string of noteworthy albums for Sparks, Grand Funk, The New York Dolls, Badfinger, Hall & Oates, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith Group, Cheap Trick, The Psychedelic Furs and XTC. Meanwhile, Rundgren played almost every instrument on his solo albums such as Something/Anything?, A Wizard A True Star and Hermit Of Mink Hollow while collaborating on a series of albums by his band, Utopia. A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio by Paul Myers is a fascinating and authoritative trip through the land of flickering red lights inhabited by a studio wizard - and true star - who has rarely enjoyed a proper victory lap along the many trails that he has blazed. Researched and written with the participation and cooperation of Rundgren himself.
The Beatles: 365 Days
Simon Wells - 2005
Arranged chronologically, the photos trace the story of the band, from their emergence on the scene in England, through their rise to international superstardom, to their very public breakup in 1970. Every aspect of their evolution from mop-tops to legends is depicted, including their personal lives, performances, press conferences, recording sessions, public appearances, photo sessions, filmmaking, and more. The captions by Simon Wells are rich in detail and provide both band history and cultural context for the photographs, as well as quotes from members of the band and those associated with them that have never been published. The insatiable hunger for new books about the Beatles has never waned, and this arresting volume-with its wealth of never- and seldom-seen pictures that have long been embargoed at the Getty Images archive-will have a special appeal for all Beatles fans.
Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead
Jim Valvano - 1991
2 cassettes.
Death of a Polaroid - A Manics Family Album
Nicky Wire - 2011
For more than twenty years and from Blackwood, Wales to Tokyo, Japan, Nicky Wire has kept a personal visual history of the band in their various stages from Generation Terrorists through Holy Bible and right up to last year's remarkable album, Postcards from a Young Man. Edited down from over 1,000 of Wire's personal polaroids and with accompanying text by the man himself, Death of The Polaroid promises to be a rich, visual biography of one of the most loved and iconoclastic British bands of the past two decades.
Vintage True Crime Stories Vol 2: An Illustrated Anthology of Forgotten Tales of Murder & Mayhem
Robert Patterson - 2019
Let me test my presumption with a preview of four these ‘old’ stories. If I told you there was once a west coast sex cult with dozens of young girls, single ladies, and married women, who all fornicated with one well-endowed “prophet,” and he occasionally found it necessary to carry-out bondage S&M sessions here and there, you may not be surprised at all. But what if that sex cult began in 1903 and ended in 1906 with a couple of murders and suicides, does that sound like anything you have read about before? Or, how about a cheater who murders his inconvenient wife, disassembles her over a fifteen hour period, then puts her bones in the same stove he cooks breakfast for his sons before sending them off to school? If that doesn’t surprise you, perhaps the ending will–but you’ll have to find out for yourself. In ‘The Dandy and the Squire,’ a smooth-talking peacock from Kentucky visits his northern ‘cousins,’ and charms three of the women into his bed. He’s a big time operator who talks fancy, dresses fancy, and tells great stories of his days as an adventurer, riverboat gambler, and sharp-minded deal maker. He’s so smooth, he’s able to murder the patriarch’s son, make him look like the bad guy, and marry the boy’s tender-hearted sister before the Yankees get wise to his lies. Good thing, too, because he had also talked the father into giving him the family farm. Chapter Five is the stranger-than-fiction story of ‘Shoebox Annie.’ During the early 20th Century, this trollish-looking woman introduced her freakish-looking son to a life of crime. Their decade’s long spree of lyin’, cheatin’, and stealin’ led them to become America’s first mother and son team of serial killers. They were so good at disposing of bodies, none of their four victims have ever been found. If ‘old’ stories sound boring to readers of contemporary true crime, I hope this book will change minds, and fully reveal just how wicked and decadent our ancestors were. And deadly. Volume II in the Vintage True Crime Stories series is a wrecking ball that smashes to pieces that phrase, “The Good Old Days.” Maybe you will believe me when you get to the last page.
Vietnam: A Tale Of Two Tours
James Mooney - 2018
This is a detailed description of the life of one helicopter pilot and what he did in the air, on the ground, with the people during his first tour in the Central Highlands while assigned to and flying for an Infantry Division, the Cambodia Invasion, and what it was really like living in Vietnam. The second tour was in the Saigon area with an Air Cavalry Troop and recounts live for Americans at the final months of the War, final cease fire events, prisoner exchanges, life on the ground, Saigon, the final flight of combat troops to leave Vietnam and the end of American combat operations and involvement. For those who want to know what it was like to be there -- without the hidden agenda, embellishment, or hype normally associated with the Vietnam War
Rivers' Edge: The Weezer Story
John D. Luerssen - 2004
Welcome to Weezer’s weird world, steered by brainchild Rivers Cuomo — perhaps the world’s most unlikely rock star. Exhaustively researched, Rivers’ Edge documents the rise of the band from Cuomo’s beginnings as a failure on Hollywood’s hair metal scene to his reinvention of himself as the undeniable ruler of Weezer. Luerssen uncovers what really happened during Weezer’s strange hiatus and subsequent re-emergence in 2000, which was one of the most successful comebacks in music history. Through key interviews with friends, associates, members of Weezer, and bandmates in their solo projects, Rivers’ Edge is a must-own for any Weezer fan.
Wicked and Weird: The Amazing Tales of Buck 65
Rich Terfry - 2015
Born in a small town in Nova Scotia to a mother who begins yelling at him the moment he is born and a father who keeps his own counsel, Buck imbibes fear and insecurity like other kids guzzle milk. Hobbled by his fears and demons, Buck almost disappears into the “evil in the woods” that lurks just beyond the town's border . . . until he is saved by three gifts: baseball, romantic love and music. His epic journey—full of diversions, coincidences, and larger-than-life characters—out of the darkness of his suicide-plagued childhood and into the bright wide world begins with a killer pitching arm (Buck almost makes it to the pros) and continues with his transformation into hip hop artist Buck 65. Along the way, Buck develops into a hopeless romantic and an obsessively creative, shape-shifting man who both fears life and dives into it with abandon. Wicked and Weird is a lively, sometimes shocking portrait of a life lived on the edge, by turns funny and heartbreaking.
The Coalition Years
Pranab Mukherjee - 2017
It is an insightful account of the larger governance phenomenon in India—coalition politics—as seen through the eyes of one of the chief architects of the post-Congress era of Indian politics.From the inexplicable defeat of the Congress in the 1996 general elections and the rise of regional parties like the TDP and the TMC, to the compelling factors that forced the Congress to withdraw support to the I.K. Gujral government and the singular ability of Sonia Gandhi to forge an alliance with diverse political parties that enabled the Congress to lead the coalitions of UPA I and II, Pranab Mukherjee was a keen observer and an active participant in the contemporary developments that reshaped the course of the country’s political, economic and social destiny.Beyond the challenges, complications and compulsions of coalition governments, this book is also a recollection of Mukherjee’s journey as the Cabinet Minister in the key ministries of defence, external affairs and finance, beginning from 2004. He recounts each of these events with candour—the path-breaking meeting with Henry Kissinger in 2004 that altered the course of the Indo–US strategic partnership, his timely advice to Bangladesh Army Chief Moeen Ahmed in 2008 that led to the release of political prisoners there and the differing views with RBI Governor D. Subbarao on the structure of the FSDC.The third volume of Mukherjee’s autobiography is a sharp and candid account of his years at the helm. It offers the most authoritative account of contemporary Indian politics by one of the tallest leaders and statesmen of our generation.
M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography
T.J.S. George - 2016
S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004), who was popularly known as MS, was one of India’s greatest classical musicians. Born into a humble devadasi home, her talent and dedication to her art made her one of India’s most critically acclaimed classical singers. She was the first Indian musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour, in addition to numerous other awards. Jawaharlal Nehru called her ‘a Queen of Music’ and Sarojini Naidu dubbed her ‘the Nightingale of India’. Her fellow musicians were no less generous in their praise. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan said she was Suswaralakshmi (the Goddess of the Perfect Note) while Kishori Amonkar said she was Aathuvansur or music’s ‘Eighth Note’ (there are only seven notes that are basic to all musical forms). MS’s genius had principally to do with her exquisite voice, her extraordinary range and her unequalled command of all the material she worked with, whether it was Carnatic music, Hindustani music or devotional music such as bhajans.In this, the definitive biography of the musician (previously published as MS: A Life in Music), award-winning biographer T. J. S. George traces her journey from her beginnings as a singer in Madurai, through her breakthrough performance at the prestigious Madras Music Academy in 1932, to her carving out a place for herself as a cultural icon. Besides exploring MS’s genius, the author describes the musical and social milieu that she was part of, and the various barriers she was instrumental in breaking in the course of her journey to superstardom. He covers her stint as an actress and looks at how her career was helped by various mentors and sponsors, including C. Rajagopalachari, India’s last governor general. He pays particular attention to the role of her husband, T. Sadavisam, in the creation and burnishing of MS’s reputation. He examines the various controversies that surrounded her origins, and also underlines her essential humility and generosity. Told with a music connoisseur’s passion and understanding, M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography is an enthralling portrait of a musical legend.