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The Journal of Georgian Gentleman by Mike Rendell


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Hooktheory I: Music Theory


Ryan Miyakawa - 2012
    Hooktheory is an intuitive, modern take on music theory that answers the questions you care the most about: Why do certain chords fit together easily, and others not so easily? How can I get from this chord to that chord? How can I create a great sounding melody? The concepts we teach are applicable to all types of music, but examples are drawn from popular songs you’ve probably heard on the radio. Also, because the explanations are drawn from our TheoryTab format, people that don’t read conventional sheet music will benefit from the concepts we cover just as much as those that do.The book is 6 chapters long with 41 exercises and 94 audiovisual examples from artists like: Aerosmith, Avicii, Beyonce, Bon Jovi, Bruno Mars, Celine Dion, Daughtry, Diana Ross, Green Day, John Mayer, Journey, Kelly Clarkson, Kenny Chesney, Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, Matchbox 20, Pink, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, The Beatles, The Four Seasons, The Killers, Tom Petty, … and more. Table of contents:1. Building Blocks- The building blocks of music- Relative notation- Chords- Combining chords and melody- Wrap up2. Harmony I- The I chord: home base- Basic chord function- The vi chord: a minor sound- Being creative- Check for understanding3. Melody- Introduction- Meter- Stable vs. unstable scale degrees- Rhythmic patterns- Melodic themes- Check for understanding4. Harmony II- The iii chord- The ii chord5. Inversions- Introduction- The I6 chord- The V6 chord- The cadential 64 chord- Pedal harmony- Final Thoughts6. Conclusion - Closing remarks

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader


Vivian Gornick - 2020
    One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2020. One of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life I sometimes think I was born reading . . . I can't remember the time when I didn't have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me.Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader is Vivian Gornick's celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading--and re-reading--as life progresses. Gornick finds herself in contradictory characters within D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, assesses womanhood in Colette's The Vagabond and The Shackle, and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras's The Lover. She revisits Great War novels by J. L. Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity of Elizabeth Bowen's prose, and soaks in Natalia Ginzburg, "a writer whose work has often made me love life more." After adopting two cats, whose erratic behavior she finds vexing, she discovers Doris Lessing's Particularly Cats.Guided by Gornick's trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature's power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker who "still read[s] to feel the power of Life with a capital L."

Angels with Dirty Faces: Five Inspiring Stories


Casey Watson - 2018
    Collection of 5 short stories – The Little Princess, No Place for Nathan, Daddy’s Boy, The Wild Child and Scarlett’s Secret – previously available as individual e-shorts.A collection of inspiring and moving real life short stories from foster carer and New York Times bestselling author Casey Watson.Darby, whose parents keep her locked in her bedroom, and who arrives pale and terrified one Christmas Eve.Nathan, who lives with his cruel, violent father, and no longer knows who he is.Paulie, just five, who’s been rejected by his mother, and accused of a sickening crime.Connor, who, at only eight years of age, is delivered to the Watsons in a secure prison van.Scarlett, who, along with her twin sister, Jade, carries the weight of a devastating secret.

Blogging: Getting To $2,000 A Month In 90 Days (Blogging For Profit)


Isaac Kronenberg - 2017
     Everything in this book is based on real strategies currently used by top-earning bloggers. Whether you're new to blogging or an advanced blogger, if there was some magic pill that could take you from nothing to earning a full-time income from a blog, then this book is the closest thing in existence to that magic pill. If you're serious about earning an income blogging, then this book will be the best book which you've ever read on the subject.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley


Charlotte Gordon - 2015
    Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.Both women became famous writers; fell in love with brilliant but impossible men; and were single mothers who had children out of wedlock; both lived in exile; fought for their position in society; and thought deeply about how we should live. And both women broke almost every rigid convention there was to break: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia. Shelley faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women’s liberty should matter to everyone.Not only did Wollstonecraft declare the rights of women, her work ignited Romanticism. She inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth and a whole new generation of writers, including her own daughter, who – with her young lover Percy Shelley – read Wollstonecraft’s work aloud by her graveside. At just nineteen years old and a new mother herself, Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein whilst travelling around Italy with Percy and roguish Lord Byron (who promptly fathered a child by Mary’s stepsister). It is a seminal novel, exploring the limitations of human nature and the power of invention at a time of great religious and scientific upheaval. Moreover, Mary Shelley would become the editor of her husband’s poetry after his early death – a feat of scholarship that did nothing less than establish his literary reputation.Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.

The Garden Cottage Diaries: My Year in the Eighteenth Century


Fiona J. Houston - 2009
    Find out in this fascinating, funny and honest account how she donned historic dress and lived on a shoestring

Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter


Matthew Dennison - 2017
    They chart her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman, so deeply unusual for the Victorian era in which she grew up. Embellished with photographs of Potter's life and her own illustrations, this biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter's work.For the fans of her children’s literature who want to know the real-life animals behind Mrs. Tiggy Winkle, Jemima Puddle duck, and of course, Peter Rabbit.

The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics


Barton Swaim - 2015
    Through his own experience as the speechwriter for a controversial governor, Barton Swaim tells the story of a band of believers who attach themselves to this sort of ambitious narcissist—and what happens when it all comes crashing down.The Speechwriter is a funny and candid introduction to the world of politics, where press statements are purposefully nonsensical, grammatical errors are intentional, and better copy means more words. Swaim paints a portrait of a man so principled he’d rather sweat than use state money to pay for air conditioning, so oblivious he’d wear the same stained shirt for two weeks, so egotistical he’d belittle his staffers to make himself feel better, and so self-absorbed he never once apologized to his staff for making his administration the laughing stock of the country. On the surface, this is the story of one politician’s rise and fall. But in the end, it’s a story about us—the very real people who want to believe in our leaders and must learn to survive with broken hearts.

For Who the Bell Tolls: One Man's Quest for Grammatical Perfection


David Marsh - 2013
    For four decades, he has worked for newspapers, from the Sun to the Financial Times, from local weeklies that sold a few thousand copies to the Guardian, with its global readership of nine million, turning the sow's ear of rough-and-ready reportage into a passable imitation of a silk purse.The chaos might be sloppy syntax, a disregard for grammar or a fundamental misunderstanding of what grammar is. It could be an adherence to "rules" that have no real basis and get in the way of fluent, unambiguous communication at the expense of ones that are actually useful. Clear, honest use of English has many enemies: politicians, business and marketing people, local authority and civil service jargonauts, rail companies, estate agents, academics ... and some journalists. This is the book to help defeat them.

Pazhya Kanakku (Tamil)


S. Viswanathan
    This is a collection of his memories with famous and notable people and incidents.

James Bond: My Long And Eventful Search For His Father


Len Deighton - 2012
    Len Deighton, author of the classic espionage novel 'The Ipcress File', knew both sides intimately. An acquaintance of Ian Fleming’s (who had praised Deighton’s debut novel in the 'Sunday Times') Deighton was also close to the man who was to become Fleming’s nemesis – Kevin McClory, a veteran of the British film industry. The history of Bond’s development under the arc lights becomes, in Deighton’s expert hands, a saga-like story of inflated egos and poisonous vendettas, exotic locations and claustrophobic courtooms, all involving household names. As an eye witness to the protracted disputes that complicated Bond’s depiction both on screen and on the page, Deighton is in a unique position to tell what he saw. Candid, comical, always steely-eyed, this hefty slice of cinematic memoir reads with all the high-powered pace of a Len Deighton thriller.

The Summing Up


W. Somerset Maugham - 1938
    Autobiographical and confessional, and yet not, this is one of the most highly regarded expressions of a personal credo; both a classic avowal of an author's ideas and his craft.

Betty Smith: A Life of the Author of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn


Valerie Raleigh Yow - 2008
    Over sixty years later, this novel, which was an immediate bestseller when published in 1942, is still selling. The child of German American parents, Betty Smith was born and raised in the immigrant slums of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Forced to go to work at the age of fourteen, she never graduated from high school, but she achieved success as a playwright and novelist, writing four bestsellers over the course of her career. She married three times, was divorced twice, lived for many years with her lover, attended and taught graduate-level courses, raised two daughters, and supported her family during the Depression. While her writing focused on Brooklyn, she lived and worked for most of her adult life in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This is the first published biography of Betty Smith. Valerie Raleigh Yow has a PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin. She has published two previous academic books and a biography of North Carolina novelist Bernice Kelly Harris (Louisiana State University Press, 1999) and is a psychotherapist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America's First Spy


M. William Phelps - 2008
    William Phelps charts the life of this famed patriot and Connecticut’s state hero, following Hale’s rural childhood, his education at Yale, and his work as a schoolteacher. Even in his brief career, he distinguished himself by offering formal lessons to young women. Like many young Americans, he was soon drawn into the colonies’ war for independence and became a captain in Washington’s army. When the general was in need of a spy, Hale willingly rose to the challenge, bravely sacrificing his life for the sake of American liberty.Using Hale’s own journals and letters as well as testimonies from his friends and contemporaries, Phelps depicts the Revolution as it was seen from the ground. From the confrontation in Boston to the battle for New York City, readers experience what life was like for an ordinary soldier in the struggling Continental Army.In this impressive, well-researched biography, Phelps separates historical fact from long-standing myth to reveal the truth about Nathan Hale, a young man who deserves to be remembered as an original American patriot.

Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing


Virginia Woolf - 1976
    In "Reminiscences," the first of five pieces, she focuses on the death of her mother, "the greatest disaster that could happen," and its effect on her father, the demanding Victorian patriarch. Three of the papers were composed to be read to the Memoir Club, a postwar regrouping of Bloomsbury, which exacted absolute candor of its members."A Sketch of the Past" is the longest and most significant of the pieces, giving an account of Virginia Woolf's early years in the family household at 22 Hyde Park Gate. A recently discovered manuscript belonging to this memoir has provided material that further illuminates her relationship to her father, Leslie Stephen, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual and as a writer.