Like those other outstanding comics Spike Milligan and Peter Cook he had an innate belief in absurdity as a way of life - his humour and sheer joy in madness for its own sake was as likely to find its outlet on the street as on the stage. The other Pythons often said that just listening to Graham tell them about one of his wild evenings out was fodder for a dozen sketches. He was inventive, fearless, willing to take chances and make stands. Openly gay, capable of outrageous alcohol-fuelled behaviour, Graham Chapman lived an untidy life, and in some respects this book mirrors that. Inside is everything from television scripts and sketches to humorous essays on serious topics, comic flights of fancy that serve no purpose except to elicit a laugh, letters to friends and fellow hellraisers like Keith Moon and Ringo Starr, his behind-the-scenes account of the filming of Life of Brian, his views on fellow Pythons, and much more.

    But Jen’s success didn’t arrive overnight. Her glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle came from years of hard work, humility, and hustle. In Blowing My Way to the Top, Jen shatters the illusion of effortless, instant success that permeates social media to reveal the sweat, dedication, and drive it really takes to make it.In this inspiring, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny book, Jen chronicles her remarkable journey and shares what she’s learned along the way. From growing up in a conservative Mormon community where girls were discouraged from pursuing their ambitions, to striking out on her own and finding success on the celebrity style circuit, to building the cult-status brand OUAI—Jen reveals with refreshing candour the lessons, mistakes, and memorable moments that have paved her road to success.Jen also offers insight into the values that have allowed her to thrive in the modern, digital landscape, including the importance of creating authentic content, investing in the community, and building social consciousness into the ethos of a business. And as a trailblazer in a male-dominated industry, Jen speaks frankly about the challenges she’s faced and provides crucial advice for other women, from the importance of running your business like a feminist to building camaraderie amid the competition to learning to navigate the work and life issues that impact women most.At the end of the day, Jen has one simple message: If I can do it, you can too. Blowing My Way to the Top is destined to become the must-read career guide for a new generation, empowering readers everywhere with the permission to dream big—and the tools to make those dreams a reality.

    Burroughs has had a range of influence rivalled by few living writers. This meticulously assembled volume of his correspondence vividly documents the personal and cultural history through which Burroughs developed, revealing clues to illuminate his life and keys to open up his texts. More than that, they also show how in the period 1945-1959, letter-writing was itself integral to his life and to his fiction-making. These letters reveal the extraordinary route that took Burroughs from narrative to anti-narrative, from Junky to Naked Lunch and the discovery of cut-ups, a turbulent journey crossing two decades and three continents. The letters track the great shifts in Burroughs' crucial relationship with Allen Ginsberg, from lecturing wise man ("Watch your semantics young man") to total dependence ("Your absence causes me, at times, acute pain.") to near-estrangement ("I sometimes feel you have mixed me up with someone else doesn't live here anymore."). They show Burroughs' initial despair at the obscenity of his own letters, some of which became parts of Naked Lunch, and his gradual recognition of the work's true nature ("It's beginning to look like a modern Inferno.") They reveal the harrowing lows and ecstatic highs of his emotions, and lay bare the pain of coming to terms with a childhood trauma ("Such horror in bringing it out I was afraid my heart would stop."). It is a story as revealing of his fellow Beats as it is of Burroughs: he writes of Kerouac and Cassady in the midst of the journey immortalized as On the Road ("Neal is, of course, the very soul of this voyage into pure, abstract, meaningless motion."), and to Ginsberg as he was writing Howl ("I sympathize with your feelings of depression, beatness: 'We have seen the best of our time.'"). And throughout runs the unmistakable Burroughs voice, the u

    It provides crucial texts for the appreciation of America literature, women's experience in the ninteenth century, and literature in general.

    Willa Cather, wanting to be judged on her work alone, clearly forbade the publication of her letters in her will. But now, more than sixty-five years after her death, with her literary reputation as secure as a reputation can be, the letters have become available for publication. The 566 letters collected here, nearly 20 percent of the total, range from the funny (and mostly misspelled) reports of life in Red Cloud in the 1880s that Cather wrote as a teenager, through those from her college years at the University of Nebraska, her time as a journalist in Pittsburgh and New York, and during her growing eminence as a novelist. Postcards and letters describe her many travels around the United States and abroad, and they record her last years in the 1940s, when the loss of loved ones and the disasters of World War II brought her near to despair. Written to family and close friends and to such luminaries as Sarah Orne Jewett, Robert Frost, Yehudi Menuhin, Sinclair Lewis, and the president of Czechoslovakia, Thomas Masaryk, they reveal her in her daily life as a woman and writer passionately interested in people, literature, and the arts in general. The voice heard in these letters is one we already know from her fiction: confident, elegant, detailed, openhearted, concerned with profound ideas, but also at times funny, sentimental, and sarcastic. Unfiltered as only intimate communication can be, they are also full of small fibs, emotional outbursts, inconsistencies, and the joys and sorrows of the moment. The Selected Letters is a deep pleasure to read and to ponder, sure to appeal to those with a special devotion to Cather as well as to those just making her acquaintance.

    Nearly as frequently, he wrote dense and joyful letters to his wife, Clara Westhoff, expressing his dismay before the paintings and his ensuing revelations about art and life.Rilke was knowledgeable about art and had even published monographs, including a famous study of Rodin that inspired his New Poems. But Cézanne's impact on him could not be conveyed in a traditional essay. Rilke's sense of kinship with Cézanne provides a powerful and prescient undercurrent in these letters -- passages from them appear verbatim in Rilke's great modernist novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Letters on Cézanne is a collection of meaningfully private responses to a radically new art."Rilke makes the feeling and views around great art real, weaving into his letters the indescribable thing that gives us beauty, truth, pleasure."--HELEN FRANKENTHALER, Art & Antiques"[These letters] are themselves extraordinarily peaceful and concentrated, seeping with the sense and recognition of Cézanne's colors, in nature as on canvas, colors which seem a part of Rilke himself, of the words and paper."--JOHN BAYLEY, The New York Review of Books

    Their story is one of hardship, violence, and cautious, heartbreaking attempts toward compassion. Lesley's fearless journey through his family history provides a remarkable portrait of hard living in the Western states, and confirms his place as one of the region's very best storytellers.

    The first of two memoirs by Dora Saint, known as Miss Read

    He was a prolific literary critic and book reviewer. Between the two world wars, before making his name, he kept company with rowdy, hard-up writers and painters--and painters' models--in the London where Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis loomed large. He counted Evelyn Waugh and Henry Green among his lifelong friends, and his circle included the Sitwells, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Philip Larkin, and Kingsley Amis, among many others. Now, drawing on his letters, diaries, and interviews, Hilary Spurling--herself a longtime friend of Powell's-- has written a fresh and masterful portrait of the man, his work, and his time. Insightful, poignant, and cinematic in scope, this biography is as much a brilliant tapestry of a seminal moment in London's literary life as it is a revelation of an iconic literary figure.

    From humble beginnings in New York, Burns and Allen went on to become much-loved stars of stage, radio, television, and the big-screen, one of the few entertainers to be successful in each venue. The book begins with Burns' childhood and early struggles in vaudeville before he meets Gracie Allen. Burns then details his efforts to win her affections; their marriage and adoptions of two children; radio, film, and TV productions (including the script of a 1955 show for their television series). Included are 16 pages of illustrations. George Burns, born in 1896, passed away at age 100 in 1996. Gracie Allen preceded him in death, passing away in 1964.

    In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother House. Nothing is off-limits, from the drama of her relationship with Spencer Matthews, to her issues with her brother Spencer Pratt. But there is more to Stephanie than the glamour of Beverly Hills and the Kings Road. For the first time, she shares her struggles with drug addiction, eating disorders, and the pressures of fame in the internet age.Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful throughout, this is an honest account of the truth behind reality.

    

    Presents the life and career of the Irish novelist, including his childhood, his days as a newspaper columnist, his marriage, and his final days.

    When "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong" exploded in the US charts, worldwide success looked inevitable. Critics compared them musically to the Beatles and fans adored them for their warmth and humour on stage. Four brilliant albums later, their roller-coaster ride of achievements and disappointments came to an end on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, in front of one of the largest audiences in Australian history. The dream was over, the band broken up, their enormous promise only partly fulfilled. In this definitive account, New Zealand journalist Chris Bourke has written the true story of Crowded House. With unparalleled access to all band members, their families, friends, musical collaborators, managers, and record company personanel, he has captured their essence. It is a unique tale of musical chemistry, family bonds and the personal costs of pursuing an artistic vision. From the manic energy of the recording studio to the machinations of the record industry, this riveting account is a book for every Crowded House fan.

    The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien sheds much light on Tolkien's creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world: Middle-earth. Featuring a radically expanded index, this volume provides a valuable research tool for all fans wishing to trace the evolution of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.