One minute we were living life and doing our thing, the next, most of us were advised to stay at home for a month or more.

    It is filled with dozens of humorous tales of musician antics and concert meltdowns. Outsiders are rarely allowed such access, but at last you can have your own personal tour of the mystical and magical realm of professional orchestras and the people who play in them. "Real Men Don't Rehearse" was written by Justin Locke, who spent 18 seasons as a professional freelance double bassist in Boston. He played with the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops, as well as for ballets, operas, and Broadway shows. He is also well known in the symphonic world as the author of "Peter VS. the Wolf" and "The Phantom of the Orchestra," which are internationally acclaimed programs for orchestra family concerts. This is the perfect gift for your favorite music lover! This is a book no musical library should be without!

    Or read this book and find out how you have all the tools you need, but must make the one change to become the writer you have always wanted to be.

    Norrie Epstein - whose The Friendly Shakespeare was called "spirited, informative and provocative" by The New York Times - strips away the polite veneer of Victorian society to reveal Dickens's life and times in all their squalor and glory, from his childhood days toiling in a blacking factory while his father languished in debtor's prison, to his first visit to the United States, where he was hailed as the greatest living writer. The Friendly Dickens includes an illuminating guide to all of Dickens's works and lively appreciations of characters both major and minor, interviews with aficionados from Patrick Stewart to biographer Phyllis Rose, eye-catching illustrations, copious quotations, a highly opinionated filmography and informative sidebars on almost every page.

    In a series of lectures, Czapski described the arc and import of Proust’s masterpiece, sketched major and minor characters in striking detail, and movingly evoked the work’s originality, depth, and beauty. Eric Karpeles has translated this brilliant and ­altogether unparalleled feat of the critical imagination into English for the first time, and in a thoughtful introduction he brings out how, in reckoning with Proust’s great meditation on memory, Czapski helped his fellow officers to remember that there was a world apart from the world of the camp. Proust had staked the art of the novelist against the losses of a lifetime and the imminence of death. Recalling that triumphant wager, unfolding, like Sheherazade, the intricacies of Proust’s world night after night, Czapski showed to men at the end of their tether that the past remained present and there was a future in which to hope.Includes an 8-page color insert of Czapski’s lecture notes.

    Annotations in this edition are keyed both to the reading text of the new critical edition of Ulysses published in 1984 and to the standard 1961 Random House edition and the current Modern Library and Vintage texts.Gifford has incorporated over 1,000 additions and corrections to the first edition. The introduction and headnotes to sections provide general geographical, biographical and historical background. The annotations gloss place names, define slang terms, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, trace literary allusions and references to other cultures.The suggestive potential of minor details was enormously fascinating to Joyce, and the precision of his use of detail is a most important aspect of his literary method. The annotations in this volume illuminate details which are not in the public realm for most of us.

    In these highly individual, penetrating essays he has exposed 'the American whole soul' within some of that continent's major works of literature. In seeking to establish the status of writings by such authors as Poe, Melville, Fenimore Cooper and Whitman, Lawrence himself has created a classic work. Studies in Classic American Literature is valuable not only for the light it sheds on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American consciousness, telling 'the truth of the day', but also as a prime example of Lawrence's learning, passion and integrity of judgement.

    . .When the Atlantic Monthly first published an excerpted version of B.R. Myers' polemic—in which he attacked literary giants such as Don Delillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, quoting their work extensively to accuse them of mindless pretension—it caused a world-wide sensation."A welcome contrarian takes on the state of contemporary American literary prose," said a Wall Street Journal review. "Useful mischief," said Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. "Brilliantly written," declared The Times of London.But Myers' expanded version of the essay does more than just attack sanctified literary heavyweights.It also:* Examines the literary hierarchy that perpetuates the status quo by looking at the reviews that the novelists in question received. It also considers the literary award system. "Rick Moody received an O. Henry Award in 1997," Myers observes, "whereupon he was made an O. Henry juror himself. And so it goes."* Showcases Myers' biting sense of wit, as in the new section, "Ten Rules for 'Serious' Writers," and his discussion of the sex scenes in the bestselling books of David Guterson ("If Jackie Collins had written that," Myers says after one example, "reviewers would have had a field day.")* Champions clear writing and storytelling in a wide range of writers, from "pop" novelists such as Stephen King to more "serious" literary heavyweights such as Somerset Maugham. Myers also considers the classics such as Balzac and Henry James, and recommends numerous other undeservedly obscure authors.* Includes an all-new section in which Myers not only considers the controversy that followed the Atlantic essay, but responds to several of his most prominent critics.Published on the one-year anniversary of original Atlantic Monthly essay, the new, expanded A READER'S MANIFESTO continues B.R. Myers' fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and brilliantly exposing the literary status quo.

    The lifetime work of Professor Alexander Schmidt of Königsberg, this book has long been the indispensable companion for every person seriously interested in Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and prose of any sort, or English literature. It is really two important books in one.Schmidt’s set contains every single word that Shakespeare used, not simply words that have changed their meaning since the seventeenth century, but every word in all the accepted plays and the poems. Covering both quartos and folios, it carefully distinguishes between shades of meaning for each word and provides exact definitions, plus governing phrases and locations, down to the numbered line of the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare. There is no other word dictionary comparable to this work.Even more useful to the general reader, however, is the incredible wealth of exact quotations. Arranged under the words of the quotation itself (hence no need to consult confusing subject classifications) are more than 50,000 exact quotations. Each is precisely located, so that you can easily refer back to the plays or poems themselves, if you wish context.Other features helpful to the scholar are appendixes on basic grammatical observations, a glossary of provincialisms, a list of words and sentences taken from foreign languages, a list of words that form the latter part of word-combinations. This third edition features a supplement with new findings.

    Calling poets away from civilization, back towards the wilderness, Lasky brazenly urges artists away from conceptual programs, resurrecting imagination and faith-in-the-uncertain as saviors from mediocrity.

    To millions of football fans across America, he was the “Voice of the NFL.” And as open and giving as Harry Kalas was throughout his professional and personal life, there are countless layers of the man that have remained unknown . . . until now. Author Randy Miller interviewed more than 160 people—including all of Harry’s surviving family, many of his close friends from childhood to present, numerous colleagues from baseball and the NFL, and even Harry’s longtime personal psychologist—to craft a loving and shockingly honest portrayal of one of the most celebrated broadcasters in the history of sports. With incredible details from all phases of his life—from his upbringing in the Chicago suburbs, to his Hall of Fame broadcasting career in baseball, to his ubiquitous voiceover work with the NFL, to his personal vices for drinking and women, to his legendary friendship with Richie “Whitey” Ashburn, to his ongoing feud with on-air partner Chris Wheeler— Harry the K: The Remarkable Life of Harry Kalas will surprise, delight, and enlighten all fans of the man they called “Harry the K.”

    Now, in his first book of nonfiction, Percy challenges the notion that literary and genre fiction are somehow mutually exclusive. The title essay is an ode to the kinds of books that make many readers fall in love with fiction: science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, horror, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Anne Rice, Ursula K. Le Guin to Stephen King. Percy's own academic experience banished many of these writers in the name of what is "literary" and what is "genre." Then he discovered Michael Chabon, Aimee Bender, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and others who employ techniques of genre fiction while remaining literary writers. In fifteen essays on the craft of fiction, Percy looks to disparate sources such as Jaws, Blood Meridian, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to discover how contemporary writers engage issues of plot, suspense, momentum, and the speculative, as well as character, setting, and dialogue. An urgent and entertaining missive on craft, Thrill Me brims with Percy's distinctive blend of anecdotes, advice, and close reading, all in the service of one dictum: Thrill the reader.

    This outrageous and inventive short story is not just focused solely on crap itself, but the spirituality of crap. This parody of the Tao Te Ching begs the question: Is everything crap? McFergus translates Li Chang's master work from an ancient roll of toilet paper, a minor Chinese national treasure purchased on eBay, to uncover the lost legend of Li Chang.DISCLAIMER: There is no Winnie the Pooh bear in this story. There is no piglet. The only honey pot in this story has crap in it. THIS IS NOT THE TAO OF POOH.

    Dealing with writers such as Nabokov, Barth, Coover, Pynchon, Borges, García Márquez, Beckett, and Calvino, Annie Dillard shows why fiction matters and how it can reveal more of the modern world and modern thinking than all the academic sciences combined. Like Joyce Cary's Art and Reality, this is a book by a writer on the issues raised by the art of literature. Readers of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm will recognize Dillard's vivid writing, her humor, and the lively way in which she tackles the urgent questions of meaning in experience itself.

    His guitarist is trying to get them all killed. Fans are stealing his things. Mechanics are rebuking his lifestyle. Even his own fragile, uptight psyche is antagonizing him. But despite having every odd stacked against him, Project 86's frontman is living the dream and loving it. In It's All Downhill From Here, Andrew Schwab chronicles the highs and lows, the struggles and triumphs of this underground, independent rock band's rocky road to stardom. From a hostage situation on their first day on the road, to a drummer's crushed hand, a haunting female fan and an '80s rocker's halitosis problem, Schwab tells it like it is, with biting wit and rock star charm. This insider's look at the real life of a rock band not only reaffirms that everyone's human, but makes you hungry for a dream of your own to chase after.