Essays Books
Pan Macmillan Everything in Its Place
Book Synopsis
£10.44
The 87 Press Recupera
Book SynopsisRecupera follows two Catalonian sisters as they recover from drug addiction through a series essays, letters, and art writing fragments.
£13.49
Hyperion BlackTold
Book Synopsis
£19.49
Seven Stories Press,U.S. So Real It Hurts
Book SynopsisLunch pulls the reader into a world that is entirely hers, where she exacts vengeance with an enviable ease and exerts an almost-sexual dominance over authority.
£12.59
Silver Press Airless Spaces
Book SynopsisShulamith Firestone's visionary first book The Dialectic of Sex dared to look at how feminism could shape the future. Finding herself drifting into a new airless space' after her experience of New York City radical feminist groups, Firestone wrote her first work of fiction. Airless Spaces portrays the psychic suffering, bureaucratized poverty and small crises of everyday life. In a series of vignettes about institutions and identity, Airless Spaces follows characters in psychiatric wards and out in the streets of New York City to move beyond the spectacular and frightening surfaces of institutional spaces to record acts of cruelty and kindness. With an accompanying Reader featuring contributions by Laya Seghi, Lourdes Cintron, Susan Faludi, Chris Kraus, Lola Olufemi and Hannah Proctor.
£12.59
Random House Australia Talking About a Revolution
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Guernica Editions,Canada The Mountain Man of Letters
Book SynopsisHoward O''Hagan was one of the first native-born westerners to make a mark on Canadian literature. The purpose of this collection of essays on the works of O''Hagan, edited by Sergiy Yakovenko, is not only to refresh scholarship on his best known work, Tay John, but also to break the vicious circle of ignoring O?Hagan?s other works?his later novel The School-Marm Tree (1977) and his short stories and sketches, collected in Wilderness Men (1958) and The Woman Who Got on at Jasper Station and Other Stories (1963). This volume offers two original articles on The School-Marm Tree, by Renée Hulan and Carl Watts, and Albert Braz?s profound study of O?Hagan?s Wilderness Men. Among the other contributors: Joseph Pivato, D.M.R. Bentley, Kylee-Anne Hingston, Jack Robinson, Sergiy Yakovenko, and something from Howard O?Hagan himself.
£13.56
Profile Books Ltd Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Book SynopsisUntil his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of a lifetime. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'Trade ReviewBangs was one of the best writers ever to appear on newsprint ... when he died, American culture lost one its most astute, ornery, funniest and most soulful observers * New York Times *Still a byword for rock writing at its most unrestrained and passionate ... his two posthumous anthologies ... attest to his brilliance -- John Harris * Guardian *A superb collection ... wild and funny and unpredictable. Lester Bangs was a great American writer who happened to write about rock 'n' roll * Rolling Stone *A marvellous collection ... it will unquestionably teach you more about rock music and the appreciation thereof than a two-year subscription to all of the current British rock papers and mags * Time Out *A powerhouse in the American music journalism scene ... It's one of the oddest yet most original pieces on music you're ever likely to read ... This is rock criticism in its raw state - it is vulgar, conversational, and abusive towards its subjects ... That a collection of music criticism continues to be republished 28 years after its first appearance - and 44 years after the publication of the earliest essay it contains - is perhaps a better testament to the quality of Bangs' writing than anything else. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to listen to 'Astral Weeks' one more time. * Irish Examiner *
£10.44
Pushkin Press Inside the Whale: On Writers and Writing
Book SynopsisUnfailingly elegant and endlessly relevant, the four essays in this collection treat literature as a vital record of our political hypocrisies, our social failings, and the ennobling limits of our ideological aspirations. Delving into the literary canon, George Orwell encounters dusty classics and lesser-known works of literature on his own exhilarating terms. The novels of Henry Miller lead him inside the belly of Jonah's whale, an imagined refuge in a time of total war. A trenchant investigation of Charles Dickens unfolds into a poignant portrait of nineteenth-century liberalism. A minor pamphlet on Shakespeare by Tolstoy provokes a stirring evocation of humanism and the excessive vitality of life. A series of singularly thrilling reading experiences, they celebrate Orwell's engagement with the world of writers and literature.
£10.80
Granta Books The Seven Good Years
Book SynopsisOver the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave. Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, tender ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds. Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, The Seven Good Years takes a life-affirming look at the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.
£8.54
Vintage Publishing Chronicles of a Liquid Society
Book SynopsisDiscover the final book from one of Europe's cultural giants.In this entertaining collection of essays about the modern world the celebrated author of The Name of the Rose explores everything from unbridled individualism to mobile phones.'He brilliantly exposes all that is absurd and paradoxical in contemporary behaviour. Eco's irony is disarming, his cleverness dazzling' Guardian'Eco has left us an intelligent, intriguing, and often hilariously incisive set of observations on contemporary follies and changing mores' Publisher's WeeklyTrade ReviewThere are people you’ve never met and yet you miss them when they are gone… Eco’s famously ironic voice is penetrating … The issues Eco addresses are so enormous in their scale they seem insurmountable, yet his measured, erudite commentary assures you that they can be understood and therefore resolved * Financial Times *He brilliantly exposes all that is absurd and paradoxical in contemporary behaviour. Eco’s irony is disarming, his cleverness dazzling -- Tim Parks * Guardian *A swan song from one of Europe's great intellectuals...Eco entertains with his intellect, humor, and insatiable curiosity...there's much here to enjoy and ponder * Kirkus Reviews *Eco has left us an intelligent, intriguing, and often hilariously incisive set of observations on contemporary follies and changing mores. * Publisher's Weekly *Illuminating, entertaining and humane. -- Emily Beament * UK Press Syndication *
£999.99
Watkins Media Limited The Life Fantastic: Myth, History, Pop and
Book SynopsisExplore the sprawling network of culture to discover the incredible ways in which ideas connect to shape the world we see today. These mind-blowing essays dig down to the roots of stories, myths and literary genres, travelling from art to politics to history to folklore, and from high to popular culture and back again. Through an intricate web of sidenotes, embark on a voyage of discovery from the unluckiest book ever made to Viking horned helmets to the sex life of vampires …. or from mermaids frolicking in the margins to the ancient Amazons to the power of Amazon and on to Utopia and Atlantis … This is western culture as you’ve never seen it before.
£17.09
UCL Press Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches
Book Synopsis
£18.00
Profile Books Ltd The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard: 'The
Book Synopsis'Too good... You should read her and not look away' Anne Enright, Guardian 'The stories are essays, the essays are stories. Even when they are not literally true, they contain the kind of truth that great fiction thrives on' The Times 'Literature's best kept secret' Independent Weaving a complex tapestry drawn from interviews, anecdotes, moments from Beard's own life, and sheer imagination, these extraordinary pieces embody the hospitality of spectacular writing: they are spaces you fall into and are reluctant to leave. From the intimate drama of everyday life - school crushes, dog clinics, divorce - to the terror and excitement of a fox lurking by a campsite or a murderer in your home, Beard flawlessly distils what it means to live deeply as we hurtle through wonder and grief, love and heartbreak. Bringing together pieces from Beard's first collection, The Boys of My Youth, and Festival Days, which was published two decades later, The Collected Works showcases Jo Ann Beard's impressive breadth, quiet brilliance, and timeless prose.Trade ReviewA writer always at the top of her game ... she brings to bear a poet's precision, a novelist's empathy and an essayist's concentrated thought -- Mia Levitin * Irish Times *Violence and death are balanced by hard-won, transcendent joy in Beard's remarkable stories * Spectator *The stories are essays, the essays are stories. Even when they are not literally true, they contain the kind of truth that great fiction thrives on ... the collected works here make me - as a reader - delirious with admiration and - as a writer - furious with envy -- John Self * The Times *Beard has a distinctive, arresting voice, whether she is evoking the frustrations of early childhood, describing desolately beautiful landscapes, or comparing notes with friends about breaking marriages * Sunday Times *As controlled and convincing as art * Times Literary Supplement *Jo Ann Beard's work impresses me no end. Funny without being sitcomish, self-aware without being self-absorbed, scrupulous without being fussy, emotional without being sentimental, pointed without being cruel - I could go on and on with these distinctions, all in Beard's favour, but instead I'll just say that she is a fantastic writer, an Athena born fully formed out of her own painstaking head -- Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin SuicidesBeard's curiosity and amazement are contagious * Financial Times *Jo Ann Beard is a remarkably modest writer, a kind of literary celebrity ... readers who become fans of her work view it with the kind of amazement associated with human and literal stars -- Mary GaitskillJo Ann Beard is a formidable talent. Her writing is darkly moving, full of audacious narrative surprises, and, at times, unexpectedly - almost unbearably - suspenseful -- Geoff DyerA towering talent ... Perhaps instead of an essayist we should think of her as a poet-naturalist, wedding intuition and observation, and forming from this union something unaccountably yet undeniably real * New York Times Book Review *Brilliant, like nobody else -- Elizabeth McCrackenReading Jo Ann Beard is like setting out on a walk with a curious and intelligent friend who is determined to show you how seemingly unrelated things share a secret kinship -- Adrienne BrodeurGenerous, beautifully observed, compassionate and, at times, genuinely funny -- A L KennedyBeard's power comes from phrasings and insights that aren't just screaming for likes. Few writers are so wise and self-effacing and emotionally honest all in one breath... she effects an intimacy that makes us want to sit on the rug and listen -- Sara Lippmann * Washington Post *[Beard's] books are worth the wait. A master of sensory details, she also writes with humor, melancholy and a love of animals that never borders on saccharine... In her work, even everyday moments gleam with significance -- Michele Filgate * Los Angeles Times *A master of creative nonfiction, Beard explores life's most salient moments through facts that she sometimes fractures -- Amy Sutherland * Boston Globe *Intimate, intelligent, intense - and ultimately comforting * People Magazine *Charged with fine detail... Beard is so good at what she does... In Beard's book, writing works like compound interest, each experience building on the last, which built on the one before -- Ellen Akins * Minneapolis Star-Tribune *This writer has blown my mind. The Boys of My Youth and Cheri feature some of the finest writing I've read in many a moon. Obsessed -- Adelle Stripe, author of Ten Thousand Apologies
£16.19
Fitzcarraldo Editions The Observable Universe
Book SynopsisAre we ever truly lost in the internet age? The Observable Universe is a moving, genre-defying memoir of a woman reckoning with the loss of her parents, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyperconnected world. When she was a child, Heather McCalden lost her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died and ten when she lost her mother. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1990s, her personal devastation was mirrored by a city that was ground zero for the virus and its destruction. Years later, after becoming a writer and an artist, she begins to research the mysterious parallels between the histories of AIDS and the internet. She questions what it means to go viral' in an era of explosive biological and virtual contagion and simultaneously finds her own past seeping into her investigation. While connecting her disparate strands of research images, fragments of scientific thought, musings on Raymond Chandler and late-night Netflix binges she makes an unexpected discovery about what happened to her family and who her parents might have been. Entwining an intensely personal search with a history of viral culture and an ode to Los Angeles, The Observable Universe is a prismatic account of loss calibrated precisely to our existence in a post-pandemic, post-internet life.
£13.49
Arsenal Pulp PR Of Floating Isles
£18.90
Granta Books As If
Book Synopsis"A remarkable, indispensable book" - Sunday Telegraph In 1993 toddler James Bulger was beaten to death by two ten-year-old-boys. In the wake of this brutal crime, came one of the most public and shocking trials in living memory. Written in Morrison's supple, beautiful prose As If is a passionate, first-hand testimony of the Bulger case. It is a book about the nature of children, the meaning of childhood innocence and the state of the world we live in today.Trade ReviewA remarkable, indispensable book * Sunday Telegraph *Blake Morrison attended the trial and has written a lyrical personal and intensely painful account of what he heard and felt... This is an important, and, in the true sense of the word, dreadful book. -- Beryl Bainbridge * Evening Standard *Morrison's rich, deep humanity bestows upon this book a rare honesty of tone and of thought which the subject hugely deserves... out of his anxiety and compassion, he has produced a book which is both brave and bathed in mature wisdom. -- Brian Masters * Mail on Sunday *This is a brave book, full of compassion and pity not just for the obvious people - the tiny victim, his parents - but for everyone involved, and underlying the struggle to discover 'why' is a compassion too for the state of childhood both remembered and observed. Beautifully written. -- Margaret Foster * Literary Review *As If is the mature, considered and very personal response of one man to a tragic act. It is what our media should have given us... Morrison's voice is, as ever, eloquent with both passion and intelligence. -- A.L. Kennedy * Scotsman *Very finely written... supple, densely allusive, glittering prose. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Sunday Times *Morrison brings to the case an uneasy conscience which insists that nothing is black and white... he exposes the inability of an adult tribunal to deal with such young defendants. -- Joan Smith * Financial Times *Blake Morrison is interested in the fundamental question of why the two young boys killed another child... he has contributed greatly to the debate and his thought-provoking book should be read by all those who have a serious interest in the vital process of reform. * The Times *
£11.69
Notting Hill Editions Cyclogeography: Journeys of a London Bicycle
Book SynopsisCyclogeography is an essay about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and a portrait of London seen from the saddle. The bicycle enables us to feel a landscape, rather than just see it, and in the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city whilst exploring the relationship between bodies, bikes and geography.Trade ReviewThis is a street-smart, super-sharp exploration of the "soft city" as seen from the saddle; Jon Day has written a bold and clever book about the zone where capital and cycling collide. It fascinated me from first page to last; Robert MacfarlaneTable of Contents- 1 Prologue -- 2 Circulation -- 3 Cartesian Centaurs -- 4 Race -- 5 Off the Map -- 6 On the Road -- 7 Coda: Breaking Away -- References -
£14.24
Cinder House 808s and Otherworlds: Memories, Remixes, &
Book SynopsisThrough storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.
£9.49
Notting Hill Editions Brazil That Never Was
Book SynopsisAs a boy growing up near Liverpool in the 1950s, Andrew Lees would visit the docks with his father to watch the ships from Brazil unload their exotic cargo of coffee, cotton bales, molasses, cocoa - the ships’ names and goods noted down in loving detail in his exercise book. One day, his father gave him a dog-eared book called Exploration Fawcett. The book told the true story of Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who in 1925 had gone in search of a lost city in the Amazon, and never returned. The riveting story of Fawcett’s encounters with deadly animals and hostile tribes, his mission to discover an Atlantean civilization, and the many who lost their own lives when they went in search of him, inspired the young Lees to believe that there were still earthly places where one could ‘fall off the edge’.Lees travelled to Manaus in Fawcett’s footsteps. After a time-bending psychedelic experience in the forest, he understood that his yearning for the imaginary Brazil of his boyhood, like Fawcett’s search for an earthly paradise, was a nostalgia for what never was. Part travelogue, part memoir, Lees paints a portrait of an elusive Brazil, and a flawed explorer whose doomed mission ruined lives.Trade Review"A. J. Lees’s new book Brazil That Never Was is an engaging treasure, urgent in its message, thrilling in its telling. His masterful tale marries the grandeur of the natural historian with the passion of the outlier poet. Like the physician Arthur Conan Doyle, and friend and fellow neurologist Oliver Sacks, Lees is a detective, tracking the mysteries of the human mind....We follow two journeys: Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett’s and Lees’s own...Lees’s eloquent tale urges: support Native peoples, protect other species, help win this battle. For soon the real tropical cornucopia of Brazil will likely be lost, as if it never was." —Kathelin Gray, Los Angeles Review of Books “This is a book about daydreams, melancholy and nostalgia in the very best sense. It is also a dramatic travelogue, from boyhood fantasy about an imagined Brazil to its flawed but life-transforming reality. It is a poetic meditation on time past and present, beautifully written and expertly composed.” —Andrew Hussey “This book is about the quest for a place that, like the mythical Lake Parima on ancient maps of South America, is only an illusion. Following in the maddening footsteps of the lost explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett, Andrew Lees explores his own life, and his longing for the deepest places of the mind and the remotest places on Earth. The trip is beautiful even if, in the end, that place is nowhere to be found.” —Héctor Abad “What begins as a personal reflection on the western world's endless fascination with Amazonia and its mysteries, develops in a most unexpected way, as Andrew Lees' prose becomes our Virgil, taking the reader for a leap into the unknown, way further than any other expedition has ever dreamed of.” —Ciro Guerra, director of the Academy Award–nominated Embrace of the Serpent “Reality is no match, it seems, for the rapture of existence conveyed in a long-ago book. Dr. Lees’s own writing can be such an exercise in enthrallment. . . . sentences in Dr. Lees’s elegy for vanished youth flare up and shimmer with revelation, like lost arrowheads upturned by the plow.” —Danny Heitman, The Wall Street Journal
£14.24
Notting Hill Editions Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe
Book SynopsisOn foot the world comes our way. We get close to the Continent’s alpine ranges, arterial rivers, expansive coastlines. Close to its ancient cities and mysterious thoroughfares; and close to the walkers themselves—the Grand Tourers and explorers, strollers and saunterers, on their hikes and quests, parades and urban drifts. Sauntering features sixty walker-writers—classic and current—who roam Europe by foot. Twenty-two countries are traversed. We join Henriette d’Angeville, the second woman to climb Mont Blanc; Nellie Bly roaming the trenches of the First World War; Werner Herzog on a personal pilgrimage through Germany; Hans Christian Andersen in quarantine; Joseph Conrad in Cracow; Rebecca Solnit reimagining change on the streets of Prague; and Robert Macfarlane dropping deep into underground Paris. Contributors include: Patrick Leigh Fermor; John Hillaby; Robert Walser; Henriette d’Angeville; Joseph Roth; Joanna Kavenna; Richard Wright; Werner Herzog; Robert Antelme; George Sand; Rainer Maria Rilke; Robert Macfarlane; Rebecca Solnit; Kate Humble; Nicholas Luard; Edith Wharton; Elizabeth von Armin; Joseph Conrad; D. H. Lawrence; Vernon Lee; Guy Debord, Mark Twain, Thomas Coryat, and more.Trade Review“Sauntering is a superior feast, a high-class tasting menu, sometimes deliciously incongruous but always organised with intelligent care…It is hard to think that it could be better done." - Times Literary Supplement "Here is an odd development: I have decided to carry a book. For at least the coming season, when, with hope, we head out once again for afternoon or evening walks, I want this book with me. I plan to open it, often, every day. Read one selection and you will smile. Read three and you’ll be lacing your boots… The genius of Sauntering is that it celebrates the act itself, the joy as well as pain of walking. There are narratives of sunny valleys as well as of frightening wartime trenches. The book has nothing to do with exercise and everything to do with a way of seeing.’ —Scott Olsen, Minneapolis Star Tribune “Sauntering is full of those free associations in place and space that are the very essence of walking pursued as a writerly act, and writing undertaken as an ambulatory art. The perfect companion for a summer ramble, or a winter fireside.” —Will Self “A beguiling panorama of wanderers from different eras and geographies. . . Like his subjects, Minshull wanders, lifting contributions from people all over the literary map: philosophers, novelists, essayists, critics, children’s authors. . . . [His] goal, one gathers, is less to trace a historiography of the rambler than to expand the genre of flânerie, with an open-endedness true to its spirit.” —Alejandro Chacoff, The New Yorker
£14.24
Notting Hill Editions A Strange Life: Selected Essays of Louisa May
Book SynopsisLouisa May Alcott (1832–1888) is, of course, best known as the author of Little Women (1868). But she was also a noted essayist who wrote on a wide range of subjects, including her father’s failed utopian commune, the benefits of an unmarried life, and her experience as a young woman sent to work in service to alleviate her family’s poverty. Her first literary success was a contemporary close-up account of the American Civil War, brilliantly depicted in Hospital Sketches drawn from her own experience of serving as an army nurse near the nation’s capitol. As with her famous novel, Alcott writes these essays with clear observation, unforgettable scenes, and one of the sharpest wits in American literature. Blending gentle satire with reportage and emotive autobiography, Alcott’s exquisite essays are as exceptional as the novels she is known for. Published together for the first time, this delightful selection shows us another side to one of our most celebrated writers.Trade Review'Lively, occasionally grim, and genuinely funny essays from a beloved author.' * Kirkus *'A Strange Life is a thorough pleasure. Modest in size and design – it’ll fit in a pocket – the book puts emphasis where it belongs: on the vigorous prose of one of America’s most charming and memorable stylists.' * Wall Street Journal *'In bringing together opinion pieces, travelogues and personal snippets, this pocket-sized volume opens fascinating windows into Alcott’s mind.' * Times Literary Supplement *
£15.19
Renard Press Ltd Politics and the English Language
Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Politics and the English Language, the second in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. In an age where the language used in politics is constantly under the microscope, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play.Trade Review'Anybody who wants to write better will learn much from this essay… It is simultaneously hilarious and a dreadful warning.' (Allan Massie, The Scotsman) 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' (Irish Times)Table of ContentsPolitics and the English Language, Note on the Text, Notes, A Brief Biographical Sketch of George Orwell
£6.79
Influx Press Local Haunts
Book SynopsisFor more than a decade, writer and filmmaker Adam Scovell has been preoccupied by the strange connections between place and culture: curious about the graves of writers, determined to find the locations of iconic films, intrigued by the landscapes that inspired novels.
£10.79
Dead Ink Books Writing the Magic
Book SynopsisAn essential map for anyone wanting to write their own world into being,Writing the Magicexplores the perilous realms of fantasy fiction and arms novice writers with everything they need to embark on their own adventure.
£10.44
Parthian Books Earwitness
Book SynopsisGenre-busting essay collection combining memoir, sound studies and bibliotherapy.
£9.34
McNally Editions New York Sketches
Book SynopsisE. B. White’s greatest stories, asides, essays, jokes, and tall tales about the city he arguably saw clearest, loved best, and skewered most mercilessly.Over more than fifty years at the New Yorker, E. B. White came to define a kind of ideal American prose: clear, casual, democratic, and urbane. He also did more than any writer to define his favorite city. His classic Here Is New York captured a moment in the life of Manhattan with precision and love—but his was no fleeting infatuation. In New York Sketches, the first collection of his casual pieces about the city, White ranges at whim from the nesting habits of pigeons to the aisles of a calculator trade-show on Eighth Avenue, from the behavior of snails in aquariums to the ghosts of old romance that haunt a flower shop or a fire escape or an old hotel. These sketches, some less than a page long, many written for a laugh, or in response to the news of the day, show us White at his most p
£14.39
Double 9 Booksllp An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires
Book Synopsis
£12.34
Double 9 Books If I May
Book Synopsis
£11.39
Little, Brown Book Group No Judgement
Book Synopsis
£16.00
Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Doctor Strange A Decade of Dark Magic
£10.44
Dover Publications Inc. The Republic
Book SynopsisFamous philosophical treatise of the 4th century BC concerns itself chiefly with the idea of justice, as well as such Platonic theories as that of ideas, the criticism of poetry, and the philosopher''s role. Source of the famous cave myth and prototype for other imaginary commonwealths, including those of Cicero, St. Augustine, and More. Benjamin Jowett translation.
£6.49
Faber & Faber Poetry in the Making A Handbook for Writing and
Book SynopsisIn a series of chapters built round poems by a number of writers including himself . . . [Ted Hughes] explores, colourfully and intensively, themes such as ''Capturing Animals'', ''Wind and Weather'' and ''Writing about People''. The purpose throughout is to lead on, via a discussion of the poems (which he does with riveting skill) to some direct encouragement to the children to think and write for themselves. He makes the whole venture seem enjoyable, and somehow urgent . . . '' Times Literary SupplementTrade Review"A classic anthology of creative writing by a 'guardian spirit of the land and language.' (Seamus Heaney) 'In a series of chapters built round poems by a number of writers including himself... [Ted Hughes] explores, colourfully and intensively, themes such as 'Capturing Animals', 'Wind and Weather' and 'Writing about People'. The purpose throughout is to lead on, via a discussion of the poems (which he does with riveting skill) to some direct encouragement to the children to think and write for themselves. He makes the whole venture seem enjoyable, and somehow urgent...' Times Literary Supplement"
£10.44
Granta Books Granta 172
Book Synopsis
£13.49
Pan Macmillan Awakenings
Book Synopsis'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' – Guardian Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients.Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no interest in it – until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug, L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber . . .Trade ReviewA brilliant and humane book. * Observer *It makes you aware of what a knife edge we live on. -- Doris LessingNot only a collection of astonishing case histories, Awakenings is also a memoir, a moral essay and a romance. It is a work of genius. * Washington Post *
£10.44
Verso Books Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism
Book SynopsisContemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. "Flow" is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub. And the bad news is that political turmoil and social challenges require more mediation. Collective will, inspiring ideas, and deliberate construction are the only way out, but our dominant style forgoes them. Considering original streaming TV, popular literature, artworld trends, and academic theories, Immediacy explains the recent obsession with immersion and today's intolerance of representation, and points to alternative forms in photography, TV, novels, and constructive theory that prioritize distance, impersonality, and big ideas instead.Trade ReviewThis brilliantly written, wild ride of a book is an enthralling, gloves-off critical intervention urgently needed in this moment. -- Jonathan Crary, author of 24/7 and Scorched EarthKornbluh offers a swift -- and much needed -- kick to one of the most insidious symptoms of our time: the demand for the now, the immediately felt, the one-off. Armed with a strong imperative: "Think!" which she reiterates in an uncommonly rich vocabulary and from a variety of perspectives, she succeeds at the very least in holding up this runaway trend. Together with her previous critiques of capitalism, Immediacy establishes Kornbluh as one of the most inventive new voices in the field. -- Joan Copjec, Brown University, author of Read My DesireAnna Kornbluh brilliantly reinvigorates critique for an age drowning under the deluge of self-presentation. Embracing structure over style, representation over personalization, and collectivity over narcissism, she creates a space for thinking -- the necessary space for politics. -- Jodi Dean, author of The Communist HorizonThe sensation of reading Anna Kornbluh's Immediacy is of someone turning on the light in a dark room. Suddenly one beholds a world one had only been stumbling through and can begin, with Kornbluh's help, to trace a whole new set of relations between the disparate phenomena that define contemporary culture. The shocking conceptual clarity and rightness of its dialectical reversal of everything we thought we knew about life lived under conditions of postmodern hyper-mediation should make this book the starting point of future discussions of the nature of the present. -- Mark McGurl, Stanford University, author of Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of AmazonTo the things themselves! Fuck no, that's precisely the problem. In this book on the poetics of social forms, Kornbluh has expertly diagnosed the contemporary yen for immediacy and immanence, presence and reality, the indistinct blurs and liquid flows of seemingly authentic experience. Taking it all as a kind of social pathology, she reads contemporary style through the deterritorializations of hyper capitalism, and the crushing lateness of an economic logic that insists on no alternative for society and no future for the planet. What results is a plea for the labor of mediation, and an insistence on dialectics as the central mechanism of art and culture. -- Alexander R. Galloway, author of Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital AgeImmediacy masterfully exposes the common core of many different problems and phenomena that we do not necessarily think of as related. The imperative of immediacy and its suffocating logic are the hallmarks of what Kornbluh calls "too late capitalism". Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis and art she makes a vivid, passionate, and most compelling case for mediation that creates the much-needed capacity to imaginatively break with the merely given. An extremely precious book that goes far beyond purely academic concerns. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of Let Them RotAnna Kornbluh simply nails it in this fearless, witty, and conceptually powerful indictment of contemporary capitalist culture's desire to annihilate negation-while also "negating the negation" by showing how things might be otherwise. A stunning and unignorable book. -- Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form
£17.09
Penguin Books Ltd How to Write About Africa
Book Synopsis
£10.44
Atlantic Books Searches
Book SynopsisVauhini Vara has been a reporter and editor for The Atlantic, The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, and is the prize-winning author of The Immortal King Rao (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) and This is Salvaged. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
£14.24
Octopus Publishing Group Where the Hearth Is Stories of home
Book Synopsis''A celebration of people who live a life less ordinary'' - Country Living''A discovery of what makes us feel we belong'' - Yours Magazine''From crofts to castles... Where the Hearth Is explores what makes a home. It''s hard to define, but drawing on the stories of those she meets, everyone knows when they have found it.'' - The ScotsmanWhat is it about a place that makes us feel truly home? Kate Humble has a knack for sharing her own journey towards a more pleasing and purposeful life in a way that inspires readers, enables them to reassess their own lives and helps them achieve their personal goals. Having encouraged readers to reconnect with nature in Thinking on My Feet and simplify their lifestyles in A Year of Living Simply, she turns now to reimagining whatever we consider ''home'' - examining her own experiences and expectations, ideals and memories, and considering the views of others living uniquely, extraor
£10.44
Granta Magazine Granta 169
Book SynopsisFrom Nobel Prize-winning writers to debut novelists,Britain''s most prestigious literary magazine brings you the best in newwriting, photography and art from around the world.No nation boasts more manufacturing capacity than thePeople''s Republic of China, yet few countries'' literary products are less knownin the English-speaking world. Witnesses to the country''s revolutionarymodernisation, China''s writers have experienced historical whiplashes andsprints forward on an extreme scale. Thezhiqing? theeducated youth whom Mao ''sent down'' to the countryside and who experienced adecade of extreme austerity ? are at a vast distance from the generations belowthem, who have lived through an epoch of self-assertion and creative dreaming.In China today, writers across generations look abroad, to new technologies, aswell as to rich veins in the Chinese literary past for new modes of expression.Granta''sspecial issue on the writing of contemporary Chinacollects the mainland''s most thrilling voices. Featuring memoir from Xiao Haion moving to Shenzhen at fifteen to work in its factories, reportage from HanZhang, who visits the working-class writers carving out a living in Picun, aswell as new fiction from Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Shuang Xuetao, ZhangYueran, Ban Yu,Wang Zhanhei, Zhou Jingzhi, and many more. Poetry by Huang Fan, Lan Lan, Hu Xudong andZheng Xiaoqiong.Photography by Feng Li, Haohui Liu, and Li Jie andZhang Jungang.
£13.49
John Murray Press Style and Substance
Book Synopsis''Compelling'' HARPER''S BAZAAR''Richly textured'' GRAZIA''Completely riveting . . . an eclectic compendium of style, subversion and literary snippets . . . all about the magical meaning of clothes'' CALENDAR MAGAZINEMaya Angelou imagined she''d feel like a movie star in a dress of lavender taffeta. Rachel Weisz loves the democracy of denim. Zadie Smith''s look differs depending on whether she''s in New York or London, while Joan Didion always packed the same clothes. Jarvis Cocker found inspiration at jumble sales, Bella Freud in Colette''s novels and Harris Reed in the gender fluidity of Virginia Woolf''s Orlando. Oscar Wilde understood the importance of proportions, Stanley Tucci favours a narrow stripe and Chloë Sevigny delights in traditional, with a twist. For Bernardine Evaristo style is about a refusal to be stereotyped. Jilly Cooper and Trade ReviewStellar * PANDORA SYKES *A rich and broad-ranging compendium of essays, interviews and eclectic snippets . . . sure to kindle plenty of curiosity and unexpected journeys of discovery; whether literary or sartorial. This curated patchwork of writing - new, old (both rediscovered and iconic) - is a perfect metaphor for the way Garnett works with clothes as a stylist, of course. She has a special skill for putting together a fashion editorial with an unexpected mix of designer and thrifted pieces, that makes the storytelling resonate with personality and vibrant life. * Calendar Magazine *Super stylist Bay Garnett has created a new, brilliant tome for the codes of dressing by excavating how others do it. Everyone from Joan Didion to Oscar Wilde, Chloe Sëvigny to Susie Cave appear in her new book Style and Substance - a perfect read for anyone looking to find a new lease of style life or just interested in examining the way icons dress. * i-D *A richly textured collection of essays . . . all about ideas and about cutting out the white noise of what you think you should do. What each perspective touches on is the importance of wearing clothes that feel true to who you are. * Grazia *Through a collection of essays, extracts and interviews, the esteemed stylist draws together a glorious celebration of the clothes we wear and the meaning behind them. From the looks of Maya Angelou and Zadie Smith to the power of drag and brilliance of thrifting, this is a wide- ranging delight. * i News *Gathering voices from past and present, Style and Substance peeks into the hearts and wardrobes of aesthetes including Chloë Sevigny, Stanley Tucci and Oscar Wilde. * Financial Times *A compelling new encyclopaedia of style. * Harper's Bazaar *Thoughtful and gloriously eclectic . . . a mix of old and new, which only amplifies Bay's ability to storytell. The perfect stocking filler! * Fashion Roundtable *A book where gravity mingles with frivolity, humour with weight, never taking itself or its subject too seriously,but allowing it the attention it deserves. In a world of fleeting trends, Bay Garnett has created an accessory to treasure, earning Style And Substance an enduring place in the canon of fashion literature. * Irish News *
£17.00
Alma Books Ltd Seven Dada Manifestoes and Lampisteries
Book Synopsis
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd Gorgias
Book SynopsisTaking the form of a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, GORGIAS debates perennial questions about the nature of government and those who aspire to public office. Are high moral standards essential or should we give our preference to the pragmatist who gets things done or negotiates successfully? Should individuals be motivated by a desire for personal power and prestige, or genuine concern for the moral betterment of the citizens? These questions go to the heart of Athenian democratic principles and are more relevant than ever in today''s political climate.Table of ContentsGorgiasAcknowledgmentsReference System Used in this EditionChronolgyIntroductionFurther ReadingA Note on the TextGorgiasA: Dialogue with GorgiasB: Dialogue with PolusC: Dialogue with CalliclesNotesGlossary of Greek TermsIndex
£9.89
Penguin Books Ltd Phaedrus
Book SynopsisPhaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato''s most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an introduction, further reading, and full notes on the text and translation that discuss the structure of the dialogue and elucidate issues that might puzzle the modern reader.
£9.49
Oxford University Press The Analects
Book SynopsisFew individuals have shaped their country's civilization more profoundly than Master Kong (Confucius, 551-479 BC). Compulsory reading in the late Imperial period for all who wished to enter the Civil Service or Government, his sayings and those of his disciples form the foundation of a distinct social, ethical, and intellectual system. They have retained their freshness and vigour throughout the two and a half millennia of their currency, and are still admired evenin today's China.This lively new translation with clear explanatory notes by one of the foremost scholars of classical Chinese provides the ideal introduction to the Analects for readers who have no previous knowledge of the Chinese language and philosophical traditions.
£7.99
Pan Macmillan Constellations: Reflections From Life
Book Synopsis*Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*An extraordinarily intimate book of essays that chart the experiences that have made Sinéad Gleeson the woman and the writer she is today, for readers of The Last Act of Love and I Am, I Am, I Am.'Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.' – Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles. How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In the powerful and daring essays in Constellations Sinéad Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself.Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinéad takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. Here is the fierce joy and pain of being alive.'Breathtaking and sublime.' – Nina Stibbe'Absolutely extraordinary and life-enhancing.' – Daisy Buchanan, author of How to be Grown-up.Trade ReviewOutstanding . . . wide-ranging, intimate and expressive . . . it's clear that Gleeson's insight is hard-won, and that, like the women who inspire her, she has found a way to transmute her experience into something powerful that demands to be heard. * Observer *Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read. -- Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed ThingSinéad Gleeson has written one of those rare things, a wise and compassionate book full of truth and humility. There are universal themes here; love, the strength of women, survival against the odds. Beautiful prose, poetry and history woven together to make this a must-read and a masterpiece. -- Kit De Waal, author of My Name Is LeonConstellations is glitteringly brilliant . . . Political, poetic, tender and angry, a remarkable book and an astonishing debut. -- Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost WordsExceptional . . . Bell-clear and immaculately hewn throughout . . . Like Olivia Laing's The Lonely City, this balance between intellect and humanity is what matters . . . besides entertainment and enlightenment, we need writing in our lives that reaches into us and has the potential to leave what's there a little better than it found it. * Irish Independent *Sinéad Gleeson has changed the Irish literary landscape, through her advocacy for the female voice. In Constellations, we finally hear her own voice, and it comes from the blood and bones of her body’s history. Sinéad Gleeson is an absolute force: if you want to know where passion and tenacity are born, read this book. -- Anne EnrightMoving, insightful, beautiful essays about health, art, gender, parenthood, bereavement, the body and her own struggles. * Irish Times *An absolutely astonishing, brilliant and beautiful book. -- Kate Mosse, author of The Burning ChambersBreathtaking and sublime. -- Nina Stibbe, author of Love, NinaThe most beautiful and brilliant book - gorgeous, furious, powerful, tender, funny, compassionate and shockingly wise. Sinéad Gleeson writes with such dazzling talent and vivid insight. Constellations is one of those rare magical books and I feel truly nourished by it. Absolutely extraordinary and life-enhancing. -- Daisy Buchanan, author of How to Be a Grown UpAn absolutely astonishing, brilliant and beautiful book. -- Kate Mosse, author of The Burning ChambersConstellations is an extraordinary piece of writing - beautiful, life affirming, and full of heart -- Louise O’ Neill, author of Asking For ItNimbly written, balletic in style, heartfelt, spirited and thoughtful, Sinéad Gleeson's Constellations is a powerful, inspiring gift to readers everywhere. -- Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown UpConstellations is a truly beautiful book; about the tremendous confines of the body, struck through with almost everything else in the universe, from songs to stars. -- Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter WitherGleeson moves nimbly, within and between individual essays, from the minutiae of the personal to the broad sweep of culture, history and politics . . . The result is taut but unforced, textured and various. * Financial Times *Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection brings together passionate, transcendent essays about bodies and art, ghosts and womanhood, grief and motherhood, and what it’s like to live in a body that fails you. Like the perfect title indicates, this is a glistening ensemble of pieces that live on their own but, all together, form a powerful emotional universe. * Elle *In Constellations, Sinead Gleeson, maps the human body and the the human condition in all its triumphs and failures, leaving us with hope and survival. Her writing is startlingly good and fiercely intelligent, her research is forensic and the result is a gift to readers everywhere. -- Liz Nugent, author of Skin DeepGleeson’s writing is honest and moving and delves deep into personal experiences of sickness, health and motherhood. * Lit Hub *
£10.44
University of Alberta Press A Short History of the Blockade: Giant Beavers,
Book SynopsisSimpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg storytelling to deepen our understanding of Indigenous resistance.
£9.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Job
Book SynopsisWilliam Burroughs' work was dedicated to an assault upon language, traditional values and all agents of control. Produced at a time when he was at his most extreme and messianic, The Job lays out his abrasive, incisive, paranoiac, maddened and maddening worldview in interviews interspersed with stories and other writing. On the Beat movement, the importance of the cut-up technique, the press, Scientology, capital punishment, drugs, good and evil, the destruction of nations, Deadly Orgone Radiation and whether violence just in words is violence enough Burroughs' insights show why he was one of the most influential writers and one of the sharpest, most startling and strangest minds of his generation.
£11.69
