Book picks similar to
Where Silence Reigns by Rainer Maria Rilke
poetry
nonfiction
german
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
Richard P. Feynman - 1985
Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
A Poem for Every Night of the Year
Allie Esiri - 2016
The poems - together with introductory paragraphs - have a link to the date on which they appear. Shakespeare celebrates midsummer night, Maya Angelou International Women's Day and Lewis Carroll April Fool's day.Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it contains a full spectrum of poetry from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, A. A. Milne and Christina Rossetti sit alongside Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Departmental Ditties & Barrack Room Ballads
Rudyard Kipling - 1892
John Whitehead, critic and biographer who himself served with the Indian Army in Burma, has provided this in full measure in his entertaining and scholarly Introduction and comprehensive textual Notes. This Centenary Edition of the ballads is unlikely ever to be superseded.
Making It Up As I Go Along
Marian Keyes - 2016
There's the pure and bounteous joy of the nail varnish museum. Not to mention the very best lies to tell if you find yourself on an Arctic cruise. She has words of advice for those fast approaching fifty. And she's here to tell you the secret secret truth about writers - well, this one anyway.You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life - because each and every one of us is clearly making it up as we go along.
The Essential Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg - 2015
He was also the dynamic leader of war protesters, artists, Flower Power hippies, musicians, punks, and political radicals.The Essential Ginsberg collects a mosaic of materials that displays the full range of Ginsberg’s mental landscape. His most important poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews are displayed in chronological order. His poetic masterpieces, “Howl” and “Kaddish,” are presented here along with lesser-known and difficult to find songs and prose. Personal correspondence with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is included as well as photographs—shot and captioned by Ginsberg himself—of his friends and fellow rogues William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and more.Through his essays, journals, interviews, and letters, this definitive volume will inspire readers to delve deeper into a body of work that remains one of the most impressive literary canons in American history.
Animalish
Susan Orlean - 2011
The life and times of a girl who has always loved animals, or how I went from dreaming about Rin Tin Tin to having dogs, cats, chickens, fish, cattle, turkeys, and guinea fowl, with guest appearances by horses, lions, and canaries.
On the Suffering of the World
Arthur Schopenhauer - 1850
Schopenhauer's perception of the importance of art, morality and self awareness in a blind struggle against a Godless, meaningless world radically transformed our understanding of the individual and remains a searing vision of the human condition.
It's Not OK to Feel Blue [and other lies]
Scarlett CurtisTravon Free - 2019
So we asked:What does yours mean to you? THE RESULT IS EXTRAORDINARY.Over 70 people have shared their stories. Powerful, funny, moving, this book is here to tell you:It's OK.With writing from: Adam Kay - Alastair Campbell - Alexis Caught - Ben Platt - Bryony Gordon - Candice Carty-Williams - Charlie Mackesy - Charly Cox - Chidera Eggerue - Claire Stancliffe - Davina McCall - Dawn O'Porter - Elizabeth Day - Elizabeth Uviebinené - Ella Purnell - Emilia Clarke - Emma Thompson - Eve Delaney - Fearne Cotton - Gabby Edlin - Gemma Styles - GIRLI (Milly Toomey) - Grace Beverley - Hannah Witton - Honey Ross - Hussain Manawer - Jack Rooke - James Blake - Jamie Flook - Jamie Windust - Jessie Cave - Jo Irwin - Jonah Freud - Jonny Benjamin - Jordan Stephens - Kai-Isaiah Jamal - Kate Weinberg - Kelechi Okafor - Khalil Aldabbas - KUCHENGA - Lauren Mahon - Lena Dunham - Maggie Matic - Martha Lane Fox - Mathew Kollamkulam - Matt Haig - Megan Crabbe - Michael Kitching - Michelle Elman - Miranda Hart - Mitch Price - Mona Chalabi - Montana Brown - Nadia Craddock - Naomi Campbell - Poorna Bell - Poppy Jamie - Reggie Yates - Ripley Parker - Robert Kazandjian - Rosa Mercuriadis - Saba Asif - Sam Smith - Scarlett Curtis - Scarlett Moffatt - Scottee - Sharon Chalkin Feldstein - Shonagh Marie - Simon Amstell - Steve Ali - Tanya Byron - Travon Free - Yomi Adegoke - Yusuf Al Majarhi
The Tent
Margaret Atwood - 2006
Chilling and witty, prescient and personal, delectable and tart, these highly imaginative, vintage Atwoodian mini-fictions speak on a broad range of subjects, reflecting the times we live in with deadly accuracy and knife-edge precision.In pieces ranging in length from a mere paragraph to several pages, Atwood gives a sly pep talk to the ambitious young; writes about the disconcerting experience of looking at old photos of ourselves; gives us Horatio's real views on Hamlet; and examines the boons and banes of orphanhood. Bring Back Mom: An Invocation; explores what life was really like for the "perfect" homemakers of days gone by, and in The Animals Reject Their Names she runs history backward, with surprising results.Chilling and witty, prescient and personal, delectable and tart, The Tent is vintage Atwood, enhanced by the author's delightful drawings.
Sun and Steel
Yukio Mishima - 1968
It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end fits into none of them.At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used in bodybuilding. At another level, it is a discussion by a major novelist of the relation between action and art, and his own highly polished art in particular. More personally, it is an account of one individual's search for identity and self-integration. Or again, the work could be seen as a demonstration of how an intensely individual preoccupation can be developed into a profound philosophy of life.All these elements are woven together by Mishima's complex yet polished and supple style. The confession and the self-analysis, the philosophy and the poetry combine in the end to create something that is in itself perfect and self-sufficient. It is a piece of literature that is as carefully fashioned as Mishima's novels, and at the same time provides an indispensable key to the understanding of them as art.The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal. The book is therefore a moving document, and is highly significant as a pointer to the future development of one of the most interesting novelists of modern times.
Confessions of a Pretty Lady: Stories True and Otherwise
Sandra Bernhard - 1988
8 pages of illustrations.
Selected Short Stories
Maxim Gorky - 1969
He spent his early childhood in Astrakhan where his father worked as a shipping agent, but when the boy was only five years old, his father died, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents. This was not a happy time for the young Gorky as conditions were poor and often violent. At the age of eight, the boy's grandfather forced him to quit school and apprenticed him to several tradesmen including a shoemaker and an icon painter. Fortunately, Gorky also worked as a dishwasher on a Volga steamer where a friendly cook taught him to read, and literature soon became his passion. At the age of twelve, Gorky ran away from home and barely survived, half starving, moving from one small job to the next. He was often beaten by his employers and seldom had enough to eat. The bitterness of these early experiences led him to choose the name Maxim Gorky (which means "the bitter one") as his pseudonym.
The World As I See It
Albert Einstein - 1934
Their attitude towards Einstein is like that of Mark Twain towards the writer of a work on mathematics: here was a man who had written an entire book of which Mark could not understand a single sentence. Einstein, therefore, is great in the public eye partly because he has made revolutionary discoveries which cannot be translated into the common tongue. We stand in proper awe of a man whose thoughts move on heights far beyond our range, whose achievements can be measured only by the few who are able to follow his reasoning and challenge his conclusions. There is, however, another side to his personality. It is revealed in the addresses, letters, and occasional writings brought together in this book. These fragments form a mosaic portrait of Einstein the man. Each one is, in a sense, complete in itself; it presents his views on some aspect of progress, education, peace, war, liberty, or other problems of universal...
Third Factory
Victor Shklovsky - 1926
In part it is a memoir of the three "Factories" that influenced his development as a human being and as a writer, yet the events depicted within the book are fictionalized and conveyed with the poetic verve and playfulness of form that have made Shklovsky a major figure in twentieth-century world literature. In addition to its fictional and biographical elements, Third Factory includes anecdotes, rants, social satire, literary theory, and anything else that Shklovsky, with an artist's unerring confidence, chooses to include.
Meditations in an Emergency
Frank O'Hara - 1957
O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.” This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.”