All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader


Yona Zeldis McDonough - 2002
    This thought-provoking and wide-ranging collection of essays examines the undiminished incandescence of Marilyn Monroe -- the impact she has had on our culture, the evolution of her legend since her death, and what she tells us now about our lives and times -- and includes previously unpublished work from some of America's best writers, such as: Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Elliot Dark, Albert Mobilo, Marge Piercy, Lore Segal, Lisa Shea, and many more. From her troubled family beginnings to the infamous $13 million auction held at Christie's in New York City, All the Available Light paints an unforgettable portrait of Marilyn as you've never seen her before. This extremely rare cover photo was taken c. 1954, on the set of The Seven Year Itch.

Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers


George Oppen - 2007
    Editor Stephen Cope has made a judicious selection of Oppen's extant writings outside of poetry, including the essay "The Mind's Own Place" as well as "Twenty-Six Fragments," which were found on the wall of Oppen's study after his death. Most notable are Oppen's "Daybooks," composed in the decade following his return to poetry in 1958. iSelected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers is an inspiring portrait of this essential writer and a testament to the creative process itself.

Standing In Two Circles: The Collected Works Of Boyd Rice


Boyd Rice - 2008
    A pioneering noise musician and countercultural maven, from the late 1970s to the present Rice has worked in an array of capacities, playing the roles of: musician, performer, artist, photographer, essayist, interviewer, editor, occult researcher, filmmaker, actor, orator, deejay, gallery curator and tiki bar designer, among others. First coming to prominence as an avant-garde audio experimentalist (recording under the moniker NON), Rice was a seminal founder of the first wave of industrial music in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, through collaborations with Re/Search Publications, Rice further established his position in underground with recountings of his uproarious pranks and the promotion of "incredibly strange" cult films and "industrial" culture. Rice's influence on subculture was further exerted through his vanguard exhibition of found photographs and readymade thrift store art, as well as his adamant endorsements of outsider music, tiki culture and bygone pop culture in general. Rice is also notorious for his public associations with nefarious figures both infamous and obscure, including friendships and ideological collusions with the likes of cult leader Charles Manson and Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey, among others. His work continues to profoundly affect the countercultural underground at large, inspiring and enraging in equal measure. STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES contains: Essays 1986-2007 / Lyrics 1988-2007 / Art & Photography (38 plates) STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES also includes an extensive biography of Boyd Rice from the 1970s to the present, by the book's editor, Brian M Clark.

Let Your Mind Alone! And Other More or Less Inspirational Pieces


James Thurber - 1937
    A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.

Notes on Camp


Susan Sontag - 1964
    Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Stevie Smith; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outerspace.

The Book of Imaginary Beings


Jorge Luis Borges - 1957
    G. Wells' The Time Machine. A lavish feast of exotica brought vividly to life with art commissioned specifically for this volume, The Book of Imaginary Beings will delight readers of classic fantasy as well as Borges' many admirers.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings


Edgar Allan Poe - 2003
    'The Fall of the House of Usher' describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In 'Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. These works display Poe's startling ability to build suspense with almost nightmarish intensity.David Galloway's introduction re-examines the myths surrounding Poe's life and reputation. This edition includes a new chronology and suggestions for further reading.PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS SELECTED WRITINGSChronologyIntroductionFurther ReadingA Note on the TextPOEMSStanzasSonnet — To ScienceA/ AaraafRomanceTO HelenIsrafelThe City in the SeaThe SleeperLenoreThe Valley of UnrestThe RavenUlalumeFor AnnieA ValentineAnnabel LeeThe BellsEldoradoTALESMS. Found in a BottleLigeiaThe Man that was Used UpThe Fall of the House of UsherWilliam WilsonThe Man of the CrowdThe Murders in the Rue MorgueA Descent into the MaelströmEleonoraThe Oval PortraitThe Masque of the Red DeathThe Pit and the PendulumThe Tell-Tale HeartThe Gold-BugThe Black CatThe Purloined LetterThe Facts in the Case of M. ValdemarThe Cask of AmontilladoHop-FrogESSÄYS AND REVIEWSLetter to B—Georgia ScenesThe Drake—Halleck Review (excerpts)Watkins TottleThe Philosophy of FurnitureWyandottéMusicTime and SpaceTwice-Told TalesThe American Drama (excerpts)HazlittThe Philosophy of CompositionSong-WritingOn ImaginationThe Veil of the SoulThe Poetic Principle (excerpts)Notes

End Of The Road


Brian Keene - 2020
    I'm a writer by trade and a road warrior by heart. Neither of these things are wise career or life choices. The tolls add up.Over the last twenty years, things have changed. Book tours have changed, publishing has changed, bookselling has changed, conventions have changed, horror fiction—and the horror genre—have changed. I've changed, too.The only things that haven't changed are writing and the road. They stay the same. The words we type today are the past tomorrow. Everything is connected like the highways on a map are connected. This holds true for the history of our genre, as well.I rode into town twenty years ago. Now I'm riding out. You're all coming with me..."So begins Brian Keene's End of the Road—a memoir, travelogue, and post-Danse Macabre examination of modern horror fiction, the people who write it, and the world they live—and die—in. Exhilarating, emotional, heartfelt, and at times hilarious, End of the Road is a must-read for fans of the horror genre. Introduction by Gabino Iglesias.

The Guest Cat


Takashi Hiraide - 2001
    A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife — the days have more light and color. The novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, but then something happens….As Kenzaburo Oe has remarked, Takashi Hiraide’s work "really shines." His poetry, which is remarkably cross-hatched with beauty, has been acclaimed here for "its seemingly endless string of shape-shifting objects and experiences,whose splintering effect is enacted via a unique combination of speed and minutiae."

[Don't] Call Me Crazy


Kelly JensenStephanie Kuehn - 2018
    Because there’s no single definition of crazy, there’s no single experience that embodies it, and the word itself means different things—wild? extreme? disturbed? passionate?—to different people. (Don’t) Call Me Crazy is a conversation starter and guide to better understanding how our mental health affects us every day. Thirty-three writers, athletes, and artists offer essays, lists, comics, and illustrations that explore their personal experiences with mental illness, how we do and do not talk about mental health, help for better understanding how every person’s brain is wired differently, and what, exactly, might make someone crazy. If you’ve ever struggled with your mental health, or know someone who has, come on in, turn the pages, and let’s get talking.

The Road Most Traveled


Chuck Ragan - 2012
    There couldn't be a better person to put together this tome than Hot Water Music's Chuck Ragan and here he's collected tales from members of the Gaslight Anthem, Rise Against, At The Drive-In and more, all of whom share their own unique perspective on travel. The road isn't always glamorous but for some of us it's in our blood. These are those stories.

On Love


Alain de Botton - 1993
    The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love. He loves her chestnut hair and pale nape and watery green eyes, the way she drives a car and eats Chinese food, the gap that makes her teeth Kantian and not Platonic, her views on Heidegger's Being and Time - although he hates her taste in shoes. On Love plots the course of their affair from the initial delirium of infatuation to the depths of suicidal despair, through the (Groucho) "Marxist" stage of coming to terms with being loved by the unattainable beloved, through a fit of anhedonia, defined in medical texts as a disease resulting from the terror brought on by the threat of utter happiness, and finally through the nausea induced and terrorist tactics employed when the beloved begins, inexplicably, to drift away. Alain de Botton is simultaneously hilarious and intellectually astute, shifting with ease among such seminal romantic texts as The Divine Comedy, Madame Bovary, and The Bleeding Heart, a self-help book for those who love too much. He is schematically flawless, funny, funky, and totally engaging. Filled with profound observations and useful diagrams, On Love displays and examines for all of us the pain and exhilaration of love, asking, "Can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams? Can we not be excused a certain superstitious faith in a creature who will prove the solution to our relentless yearnings?"

Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader


Cassandra ClareGwenda Bond - 2013
    Originally a trilogy (City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass), the series has extended to six titles, plus a prequel trilogy, the Infernal Devices, and a planned sequel series, the Dark Artifices. A feature film is planned for 2013.Shadowhunters and Downworlders, edited by Clare (who provides an introduction to the book and to each piece), is a collection of YA authors writing about the series and its world. Authors Who Contributed: Holly Black / Kendare Blake / Gwenda Bond / Sarah Rees Brennan / Rachel Caine / Sarah Cross / Kami Garcia / Michelle Hodkin / Kelly Link / Kate Milford / Diana Peterfreund / Sara Ryan / Scott Tracey / Robin Wasserman

A Shed of One's Own: Midlife Without the Crisis


Marcus Berkmann - 2012
    One day you are young, free and single; the next you are bald, fat and washed-up, with weird tendrils of hair growing out of your ears. None of it seems fair. With age should come dignity and respect, but instead everyone makes tired jokes about buying a motorbike. Marcus Berkmann isn't having it. Having marked his fiftieth birthday by hiding under the duvet for six weeks, the author of the cricket classics Rain Men and Zimmer Men is now determined to find some light in the all-consuming darkness. Musing over birth, death and all the messy stuff in between, he concludes that however dreadful you look in the mirror today, it will be much worse in ten years' time. His brutally candid despatch from the frontline is not for the faint-hearted, which is to say anyone under thirty-five.

The Loop


Nicholas Evans - 1998
    She struggles for survival and for self-esteem, embarking on a love affair with the 18-year-old son of her most powerful opponent, brutal and charismatic rancher, Buck Calder.