Essays Books

Book SynopsisA WATERSTONES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH In this love letter to reading, curated by Pandora Sykes in aid of the National Literacy Trust, bestselling and beloved writers share their favourite books: the ones they hold most dearly, that they return to time and again and that helped make them the writers they are. WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM : NICK HORNBY * RUTH OZEKI * ANN PATCHETT * BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH * MARIAN KEYES * ELIZABETH STROUT * DEBORAH LEVY * TESSA HADLEY * ELIF SHAFAK * GEORGE THE POET * LEILA SLIMANI * ALI SMITH * DEREK OWUSU * DOLLY ALDERTON * PARIS LEES * JOJO MOYES * PAUL MENDEZ * SEBASTIAN FAULKS * DIANA EVANS * MEENA KANDASAMY * LISA TADDEO * NIKESH SHUKLA * TAIYE SELASI * MONICA ALI * NINA STIBBE * CALEB AZUMAH NELSON * ELIZABETH DAY * SARA COLLINS * DAMON GALGUT * NAOISE DOLAN * WILLIAM BOYD * EMMA DABIRI * FATIMA BHUTTO * KIT DE WAALTrade ReviewAll of the essays engage – there isn’t a dud in the bunch – which is perhaps a result of their succinct length . . . but also down to the honesty and thoughtfulness of the contributors . . . Like the best kind of selection box * Irish Times *A treat – one that will propel you on a journey of discovery * Independent *What Writers Read is the perfect stocking filler for the bookish person in your life . . . Gorgeous stuff * Red Magazine *

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Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell, perhaps one of the most perceptive writers of the twentieth century, wrote extensively about English life and politics. This selection of his essays and journalism brings together his most provocative and insightful writing on England and Englishness. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited and introduced by Professor Michael Gardiner.Orwell’s interests were broad. He often wrote about everyday concerns such as transport, food and the weather. Turning to social issues, he exposed the plight of the poor and the unemployed. He dissected the idea of nationalism and he examined the failings of the Left. What emerges from his acute observation of English rituals, habits and attitudes is his belief that these are the very things with which the English people can defend themselves against oppression. His writing remains insightful and prescient to this day.Trade ReviewHis [Orwell’s] real talent was for analysing and explaining a tumultuous period in human history. -- Dorian Lynsky * Guardian *In my 20s, I discovered Orwell’s essays and nonfiction books and reread them so many times that my copies started to disintegrate. -- George Packer * The Atlantic *

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Book SynopsisNUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'A beautiful book of great tenderness, love of life, and wisdom' JOSEPH O'CONNORFor almost fifty years, Michael Harding has been crafting words in a bid to express himself and to explore truths about the human condition. But even still he found himself unable to say certain things he really wanted to. Then, while in recovery from surgery, he travelled to a cottage on the Atlantic coast and thought again about life and the people who had profoundly affected him over the years: mentors, loves and old friends.There at the ocean he wrote letters, with an intimacy not previously risked. Letters that would never be posted but that appear now in All the Things Left Unsaid - a vulnerable and beautifully wrought collection of insights into life, death, friendship and love.PRAISE FOR MICHAEL HARDING'S BOOKSHilarious, and tender ... and always beautifully written' Kevin Barry'Often funny, occasionally disturbing ... Harding has peeled back his soul and held it out on the palm of his hand for all to see' Christine Dwyer Hickey'It's rare for a memoir to demand such intense emotional involvement and rarer still for it to be so fully rewarded' The Sunday Times 'Searingly honest ... Harding's narrative seems to rest on the pulse of Ireland' The Irish Times

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Book SynopsisBestselling author and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik embarks on a wildly creative inquiry into perhaps the oldest question: how do we learn a new skill? For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: how did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The Real Work-the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick-Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor (from the DMV), among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him. He finds that mastering a skill is a process of methodically breaking down and building up, piece by piece-and that true mastery, in any field, requires mastering other people''s minds. Exuberant and profo

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Book SynopsisAn NYRB Classics OriginalShakespeare, Nietzsche wrote, was Montaigne’s best reader—a typically brilliant Nietzschean insight, capturing the intimate relationship between Montaigne’s ever-changing record of the self and Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic register of human character. And there is no doubt that Shakespeare read Montaigne—though how extensively remains a matter of debate—and that the translation he read him in was that of John Florio, a fascinating polymath, man-about-town, and dazzlingly inventive writer himself.Florio’s Montaigne is in fact one of the masterpieces of English prose, with a stylistic range and felicity and passages of deep lingering music that make it comparable to Sir Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the works of Sir Thomas Browne. This new edition of this seminal work, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Peter G. Platt, features an adroitly modernized text, an essay in which Greenblatt discusses both the resemblances and real tensions between Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s visions of the world, and Platt’s introduction to the life and times of the extraordinary Florio. Altogether, this book provides a remarkable new experience of not just two but three great writers who ushered in the modern world.

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Book SynopsisMore than the lifeblood of our natural world, Texas rivers have nourished the human spirit for as long as people have gathered on their banks. A living bond has flowed between Texas writers and rivers ever since the 1960 publication of John Graves’s classic journey along the Brazos, Goodbye to a River.Many of Texas’ leading writers have had their hearts captured by a river, and they have created sparkling accounts of the waterways they love. Now, editors Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester have assembled the best of those works into a revelatory collection of diverse literary voices.Ranging from the desert canyonlands of the Rio Grande to the swampy Big Thicket, from crystal clear Hill Country streams to the Red River’s treacherous quicksand, Viva Texas Rivers! showcases many classic writings along with brand new essays written for this volume. The literary nonfiction is complemented by flashes of poetry that brilliantly reflect these curving ribbons of light.Authoritative and expertly edited, Viva Texas Rivers! offers shimmering accounts of hidden paradises, as well as searing exposÉs of abuse and despoliation. Yet even in the bleakest times, as these writers have found, Texas rivers can bestow a sacred grace —and unexpected redemption.Viva Texas Rivers! brings you as close to the living nirvana of a Texas River as you can get without launching yourself into a canoe and following a great blue heron as it glides just above the breaking rapids, leading you around the bend as the river flows onward toward the best places in our hearts.

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Book SynopsisHuman Heartbeat Detected is a collection of essays that explores how we are wonderfully and terrifyingly human. Hitting on themes such as trauma, emotional abuse, marriage, mental illness, and grief, these essays delve into how humans are simultaneously beautiful and terrible to one another. Though regardless of how we might make each other shatter, our hearts continue beating—even when we might not want them to—and we wade through the wreckage of our lives to find ways to survive. With exquisite language and captivating storytelling, the essays in Human Heartbeat Detected face what it means to be human.

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Book SynopsisCharles R. Kesler, an eminent scholar and prodigious editor, has exerted a profound influence on the study of American politics and the practice of American conservatism.A precocious high-school student, he impressed a visiting William F. Buckley Jr. who, before becoming a life-long friend, wrote him a recommendation letter to Yale. Kesler asked for another—to Harvard, where he completed his undergraduate degree and earned a PhD under the legendary professor Harvey C. Mansfield. An early passion for political journalism, played out largely on the pages of National Review, led Kesler to author an NR cover story on his third great influence, Harry V. Jaffa.Kesler became a faculty colleague of Jaffa’s at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University and is perhaps best known as the editorial helmsman of the Claremont Review of Books. The author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism and Crisis of the Two Const

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Book SynopsisA virtuosic inquiry into the forms and uses of healing, from ancient and modern medicine to contemporary literature, ecology, and protest.In the era of the “chronic acute” long predating COVID-19, Eleni Stecopoulos set out to investigate the imagination, aesthetics, and ideology of healing—its mysteries and mystifications, its many channels and codes. Fusing lyric inquiry with cultural criticism, Dreaming in the Fault Zone explores art’s treatment of our conditions at a time of both increased cynicism about healing and longing for it. Stecopoulos talks to physicians, poets, psychotherapists, disability activists, ethnographers, spiritual seekers; curates performances and takes part in community rituals; documents pilgrimages and visits therapeutic landscapes. Whether writing about the poet H.D.’s psychoanalysis with Freud or madness and apartheid in Bessie Head’s novel A Question of Power, the salve of demagogu

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Book Synopsis'Intelligent, compassionate, and so fiercely, prodigiously brave. This is the essay at its creative, philosophical best' Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries on THE EMPATHY EXAMS A profound exploration of the oceanic depths of longing and obsession, Make It Scream, Make It Burn is a book about why and how we tell stories. It takes the reader deep into the lives of strangers - from a woman healed by the song of 'the loneliest whale in the world' to a family convinced their child is a reincarnation of a lost pilot - and asks how we can bear witness to the changing truths of other's lives while striving to find a deeper connection to the complexities of our own.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics' Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book '...I don't know what comes after, once I decide to let desire have its way with me. How to un-melt the melted? How to turn the ground powder back into a person? This idea points to a knowledge that I don't have: how to love without losing the self.' Plumbing the well of culture for clues about love and loss - from Agnes Martin's abstract paintings to Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean's Blonde - this brilliant work of debut nonfiction explores the state of falling in love, whether with a painting or a person. Pham creates a perfectly fractured portrait of modern intimacy, triumphant in its vulnerability and restlessness. Pop Song is a book about distances: the miles we travel to get away from ourselves, or those who hurt us, and the impossible gaps that can exist between two people sharing a bed. Here is a map to all the routes by which we might escape our own needs before finally finding a way home.Trade ReviewGenerous, insightful, and piercingly honest ... brings new light to the hidden contours of the heart. -- Alexandra Kleeman, author of IntimationsThere are so many times in my past when reading Pop Song could have saved my life. It may very well save yours -- Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected SchizophreniasReading Pop Song is like being deep in a midnight email exchange with the first person who broke your heart. Pham darts between heartbreak and fine art with startling and delightful ease. -- Rowan Hisayo BuchananCombines the thrilling and agonized travails of her young narrator with the lucid and steady eye of a born critic ... A bold and promising debut -- Melissa Febos, author of Abandon MePop Song takes me everywhere I didn't realize I was longing to go ... I am absolutely in love. You will be, too. -- Kristen Radtke, author of Imagine Wanting Only ThisA roadmap to transcendence, in essays that are as intimate as their subjects -- Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private CitizensA vulnerable, nuanced story about the non-linear process of overcoming heartbreak and letting go. Like your favourite song or first love, Pham's words won't just get stuck in your head, they'll stay there * Bust *Her gaze is ceaselessly empathetic, and it is this generosity that binds the reader to her quest for understanding ... even with all the pain of heartbreak, violence and loss, Pham manages to generate sincere hopefulness * Observer *In a manner reminiscent of contemporaries Leslie Jamison and Jia Tolentino, Pham seamlessly blends the personal and the cultural, the confessional and the critical, the cerebral and the sentimental, to create an exciting and imaginative memoir. * Kirkus *A masterclass in emotional vulnerability ... Pop Song pivots between art and personal narrative with such dexterity that they begin to feel inseparable. * Nylon *Pham takes your head in her hands, looks you in the eyes, and makes her desire known. That's what the journey is all about * Bitch magazine *Pham's attention is delicate and lucid, cleaving to her subjects like film... As accessible as it is smart. Pham's introspection is never solipsistic, but rather an insight into a mind tuned to life's minute rhythms. * Columbia Review *Blends memoir with commentary acutely attuned to various art objects and experiences in the present. Pop Song explores what it means to want a life and to strive for it: * LA Review of Books *

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Book Synopsis50 party recipes to suit every occasion, from award-winning food writer Kate Young. It's time to spend time with those we love most. It's time to party. In The Little Library Parties, Kate Young draws on all of her experience catering for weddings and events, and her love of cooking for friends, to provide 50 sensational new recipes for entertaining. From dinner party feasts and canapes for a crowd, to barbeques, tea parties, house parties and that all important morning-after tonic, Kate provides delicious and joyful recipes – as always, inspired by her favourite literature – to ensure your get-together tastes delicious. With beautiful photographs throughout and in a gorgeous, giftable format, this is the perfect book to help you kick off the party season. 'Transportative... [The] recipes are enhancing and useful' Caroline Eden, TLS on The Little Library ChristmasTrade ReviewThe recipes are just as good as the book recommendations. A great present for the literature-loving and the greedy * Daily Telegraph *With gorgeous photography and comforting contemplations, this is the present for the party season, and a lovely gift for anyone who loves books, food or both! * Woman & Home *I'm a keen follower of Kate's and adored her Christmas book. I love that not only do you get great recipes, but also the snippets from literature that inspire them * Prima *PRAISE FOR KATE YOUNG: 'The dishes – ginger beer ham on brioche buns; pear, chocolate and sherry cake – are delightful... This is what I'll be giving to friends who love to cook, love books and love Christmas' Diana Henry, on The Little Library Christmas. 'A work of rare joy, and one as wholly irresistible as the food it so delightfully describes... It is a glorious work that nourishes the mind and spirit as much as the body, and I could not love it more' Sarah Perry, on The Little Library Cookbook. 'A wonderful, brilliant book. Instantly comforting, effortlessly beautiful and suffused with the generosity that's at the heart of any good meal' Ruby Tandoh, on The Little Library Year. 'Combines two of my most favourite things – interesting and flavour-packed recipes, and reading lists. The best present a food-obsessed bookworm could ask for' Olia Hercules, on The Little Library Year. 'A cookbook and culinary almanac that celebrates the books and characters conjured by each season and its food. Leafing through a cookery book has never been so satisfying. Perfect' -- Nina Stibbe, on The Little Library Year

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Book SynopsisPlagued by insomnia for twenty years, Marie Darrieussecq turns her attention to the causes, implications and consequences of sleeplessness: a nocturnal suffering that culminates at 4 a.m. and then defines the next day. In Sleepless, she recounts her own experiences alongside those of fellow insomniacs, mostly writers – ‘as if writing were not sleeping’ – Ovid, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Franz Kafka, Georges Perec and others. With her inimitable humour, she describes her dealings with a somnologist and her attempts to find a remedy – trying sleeping pills, cannabis, alcohol, bedtime rituals, acupuncture, yoga, hypnosis, psychoanalysis, a gravity blanket and a range of sleep-aid devices. Darrieussecq considers bedrooms, beds, clinophilia (‘the tendency to remain in a prone position without sleeping for prolonged periods of time’), her need to be alone in bed, those without beds, the homeless, refugees, trauma and capitalism’s role in sleeplessness, our constant wakefulness online, the forest as a hypnagogic zone and how our relationship with animals is connected to our sleep, or lack of it. Ranging between autobiography, clinical observation and criticism, Sleepless is a graceful, inventive meditation by one of the most daring, inventive novelists writing today.Trade Review‘Marie Darrieussecq invites us on an extended patrol of the corridors of Hotel Insomnia in the company of the ghosts of the famous sleep-deprived, then turns to the story of her own intimate tussle with sleep that will not come. Amid the torrent of publications in the new sleep science, this is the only book I know that concedes to sleep its proper majesty and its own dark poetry.’ — J. M. Coetzee‘Splendidly translated by Penny Hueston, this is a brilliantly creative and playful meditation on the disturbing reality of insomnia, one that weaves together Darrieussecq’s own experiences with quotations, images and biographical anecdotes from other sleep-deprived writers.’ — P. D. Smith, Guardian‘Sleepless is a peculiar book, though it captures the skittering, jittery mood of an insomniac's “white forgetfulness”, of what it’s like to be simultaneously over-stimulated and over-stretched.’ — Roger Lewis, Telegraph‘On the page [Sleepless is] fragmentary, footnoted and studded with photos and illustrations. It’s panoramic in its survey of insomniac literature, and also softly intimate where it touches on the author’s own life. In its range and genre it’s unpindownable. Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work. All her familiar acuity, humour, humility and intensity are evident in Sleepless.’ — Samantha Harvey, Guardian‘[Darrieussecq] shows convincingly that the socioeconomic organization of twenty-first-century life conspires to rob us of sleep…. It is that, in the eyes of capitalism, sleep is a “structural attention deficit” that impedes “non-stop-connectivity” and the possibility of being open for value extraction and commodification twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week…. For her readers, whether they are insomniacs or not, Sleepless is a meditation on a condition that is more widespread than is generally acknowledged, and impinges, at least philosophically, even on those who do not have it.’ — Ryan Ruby, Times Literary Supplement‘Darrieussecq is a prolific and much-lauded novelist, psychoanalyst, and translator; she has also, for a significant portion of her life, been hopelessly unable to sleep. Sleepless tells the story of this near-unrelenting affliction, a recount couched in prose that is, by turns, distractedly diaristic, a socio-political tract, grimly funny, and heartbreaking – all inflected by the dreamy logic of chronic wakefulness. It is the kind of book likely to keep a reader just as wide-eyed.’ — Jack Barron, The Arts Desk ‘Darrieussecq is exceptionally well-read and her prose is roving and referential. The effect is decadent and dexterous…. The narration is high-octane, zooming from big ideas to minute detail within a handful of words. And yet she makes it so easy, so pleasurable to be taken on this ride. The reading experience is exhilaratingly lucid.’ — Fiona Murphy, The Saturday Paper ‘[D]arrieussecq writes as she takes us through treatments (wine, pills), rituals (counting lovers) and other practices (burrowing, gravity blankets). As her investigation expands it pulls in psychiatry, sorcery, genocide, street lighting, first husbands, lobotomies, the despoliation of nature. Drawing on her journals, previously published works, travels, personal photographs and memories of the pandemic years, the result is itself a bit like a sleepless night: hypnagogic, discursive.’ — David Terrien, ArtReview ‘Bad sleepers do not necessarily make great writers, and vice versa, but in Sleepless, Darrieussecq shows she a is a great writer, one who is very much awake, and that maybe all those nocturnal hours were not lost after all; she has provided us with a luminous exploration of life after dark.’ — Joshua Rees, Buzz Magazine ‘[I]t’s a book about living with insomnia that contains within it the feeling and structure of insomnia itself. It’s a sleepless text, company and comfort for insomniacs, and instruction for those heading off to a good night’s sleep. It is ever-awake and ready for the exhausted and the good sleepers alike to pick up in the morning.’ — Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders‘I was kept up – with rapt attention – by Fitzcarraldo’s translation of Marie Darrieussecq’s heady, labyrinthine, and restless exploration of insomnia. Sleepless is an allusive tissue of self-reflection, offering disquieting insights into a chronically wakeful world, covering the personal effects as well as the wider political consequences of a society that values – over anything else – incessant productiveness. Penny Hueston’s translation retains the verve and wit of the original, and even adds the lightest of English lilts. It does great justice to the Darrieussecq’s intricate and sensitive work.’ — Jack Barron, The Arts Desk Books of the Year

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Book Synopsis"...his stories are always interesting, lively and well written, giving an insight to the art world as he experienced it." — Literary Review Julian Spalding's career as a curator and creator of museums was amongst the most controversial and effective of his time. In this collection of essays and memoirs he revisits some of the important events and battles of the last 40 years, when he spearheaded resistance to the cult of conceptual art being promoted from the centre. Witty, illuminating, coruscating and blazingly intelligent, this book is a vital guide to the ways in which we consume art today, for good or ill. Trade Review"Julian Spalding, former director of galleries in Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow, will include the research in his forthcoming book, Art Exposed, to be published by Pallas Athene Books in November. “This evidence absolutely disproves Duchamp’s authorship of the urinal,” he said. “It means that the whole foundation stone of conceptual art just collapses. A work of art is not a work of art just because somebody says it is." - Dalya Alberge"...his stories are always interesting, lively and well written, giving an insight to the art world as he experienced it." - Literary ReviewJulian was interviewed on Times Radio by Ed Vaizey standing in for Mariella Frostrup, on 21st November 2023 - Times Radio"In ‘Art Exposed’, Julian Spalding draws on his 40 years in the art world – as a museum director, curator, and critic – for his series of essays." - Wallpaper*"If you read one book on art this year, it must be this brilliant critique of art today seen through the lens of retired museum curator Julian Spalding." - International Property & Travel

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Book SynopsisMartha Gellhorn's peacetime dispatches bear witness to six decades of change: America in the Great Depression, the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, young Poles undaunted by their Communist government, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Spain in the days after Franco's death, Cuba revisited after forty-one years. Here is history as it looked and felt to the people who lived through it. Intense, courageous and vividly readable, The View from the Ground is a remarkable act of testimony.

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Book SynopsisJapan's capital city of Kyoto was devastated by earthquake, storm, and fire in the late 12th century. Retreating from "this unkind world," the poet and Buddhist priest Kamo-no-Chomei left the capital for the forested mountains, where he eventually constructed his famous "ten-foot-square" hut. From this solitary vantage point Chomei produced Hojoki, an extraordinary literary work that describes all he has seen of human misery and his new life of simple chores, walks, and acts of kindness. Yet at the end he questions his own sanity and the integrity of his purpose. Has he perhaps grown too attached to his detachment?

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Book SynopsisA new edition of Britain's Changing Towns (1967), introduced, edited and updated by Owen Hatherley: "These essays show him writing about cities and towns as wholes rather than as collections of individual buildings. In each of them, there are several things happening at once - assessments of historic townscape, capsule reviews of new buildings, attempts to find the specific character of each place - "Table of ContentsCONTENTS Well worth a boggle - an introduction to Ian Nairn 1 Birmingham 2 Superlative Newcastle-upon-Tyne 3 Canterbury: the happy city 4 Patrician Manchester 5 Glasgow and Cumbernauld New Town 6 Llanidloes, the Pocket Metropolis 7 Exciting Possibilities of Modern Sheffield 8 Friendly Plymouth 9 The Borough of St Marylebone 10 The wise city of Chester 11 Proud Derry 12 Brighton: model for affluence 13 Cardiff, the Welsh Enigma 14 Liverpool: world city 15 Norwich: regional capital 16 The burghs of Fife Europe's Reconstructed Cities: Introduction 17 Cologne and its Churches 18 Regimented Rotterdam 19 Comfortable Munich 20 Good-natured Milan 21 Three French Towns - Caen, St Malo, Le Havre 22 Zurich

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Book SynopsisA new work by a highly acclaimed author - The Big Music(2012) was described as 'One of the finest novels of the past decade' by the TLS The essay will appeal to all fans of Katherine Mansfield A profound meditation on the nature of home and artistic influence When Kirsty Gunn received a Randell Fellowship from the British Academy and Carnegie Foundation in 2009 she returned to spend the winter in Wellington, near the childhood home of Katherine Mansfield, the writer to whom she'd always felt most connected.Trade ReviewIt amalgamates memory and fiction and research and journal so sensitively and in such an original way that I came away feeling Gunn had escaped all the old hackneyed ways of writing about influence and created something wholly her own... It really lives. All of it.': John Carey, chief book reviewer for The Sunday Times:'A beautiful and mood-provoking book...the writing went into my consciousness and I felt the loneliness, the sadness, the love and identification with Katherine Mansfield...It was beautiful.': Jane Campion

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Book SynopsisLook in the mirror - what do you see? We all feel, instinctively, that self exists. That somewhere inside us, under the clothes, the make-up and self-tan, lurks a hard ''pearl'', a kernel of truth called ''me''. And it''s big business uncovering that ''authentic'' kernel. It''s also a fool''s errand, because that ''true self''? It doesn''t exist. Self is no more than a story we tell ourselves. It''s mutable, pliable as Plasticine. Worse, it''s not even strictly autobiographical, but co-authored with those around us. And as such, there is no one version, but myriad, and the number is growing as we are exposed to ever more connections. We are already seeing the effects travel, television, and celebrity culture can have on the formation of self, but as digital and social media exposure grows, and in the advent of AI, what will happen to our sense of self? Can we become ever more multiple and adapt better to our globalised world? Or will we dissolve into narcissitic, detached ''nobodies''?

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Book Synopsis'It was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me, having children. The children's demands on me were things that nobody else ever asked me to do.' -Toni Morrison Children are a miracle, and everyone has an opinion on how we should raise them. From novelists to paediatricians; from Enlightenment philosophers to experimental psychologists; from parenting 'experts' to people whose expertise is simply - and powerfully - being a parent, Tiny Feet is the first anthology of its kind, showcasing a range of influential writing about children over the past four hundred years. Introduced by Lauren Child, and with contributions from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maria Montessori, Dr Spock, D. W. Winnicott, Toni Morrison and many more, this ideal gift book for soon-to-be parents shows the extent to which some of our attitudes have changed while others remain absolute, and reminds us of the joy that children bring to our lives.Trade Review"For parents in the throes of babydom: Tiny Feet is a slim miscellany of historical and literary extracts about how children see the world and how adults see children. Introduced with humor and charm by author and illustrator Lauren Child, this collection offers perspectives that are sometimes captivating, sometimes amusingly anachronistic....Small enough to fit in a Christmas stocking, Tiny Feet is ideal for browsing in fugitive moments of calm amid the squalls." —Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal "Showcasing a range of the most influential writing about children over the past four hundred years. . . . the extracts featured in this delightful compendium show the extent to which some of our attitudes have changed while others remain absolute, and remind us of the joy that children have always brought to our lives." —Motherwell

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Book Synopsisa series of biographical and nature essays following the yearly cycle.

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Book SynopsisIn 1995 Alice’s mother collapsed with pneumonia. She never fully recovered and was eventually diagnosed with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Then Alice got ill. Their symptoms mirrored their mother’s and appeared to have no physical cause; they received the same diagnosis a few years later. Ill Feelings blends memoir, medical history, biography and literary non-fiction to uncover both of their case histories, and branches out into the records of ill health that women have written about in diaries and letters. Their cast of characters includes Virginia Woolf and Alice James, the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, John Ruskin’s lost love Rose la Touche, the artist Louise Bourgeois and the nurse Florence Nightingale. Suffused with a generative, transcendent rage, Alice Hattrick’s genre-bending debut is a moving and defiant exploration of life with a medically unexplained illness.Trade Review‘Ill Feelings is a deeply personal and deeply political reckoning with the nature of illness, inheritance, time, silence, bodies and invisibility. Alice Hattrick offers both a radical redefinition of the dominant narratives surrounding health and pain, and the knowledge we need in order to name, understand and resist them. Hattrick has found a voice and form which open up new and exciting possibilities for writing the self and making sense of the collective past: I read this remarkable book with outrage, fascination and immense admiration.’ — Francesca Wade, author of Square Haunting‘I love the quality of attentiveness that Alice Hattrick brings to their poised and pointillistic exploration of the mysterious aetiologies and affects of chronic fatigue. They excel in listening out for echoes and whispers, their narrative of illness wriggling into uncomfortable places that medicine dismisses or ignores. Their book makes you pause to think – and rethink – page by page.’ — Marina Benjamin, author of Insomnia‘Ill Feelings defies neat conclusions as well as easy categorization of the book itself, so that attempting to describe it here seems like misdiagnosis, and to try and name the paradox at its heart seems like a betrayal of its rewards. But the thrill of Alice Hattrick’s writing stems from its struggle to be free of its constraints, communicating with unspooling fury the mutability of lived experience rather than presuming to define it. In doing so, they remind us that the undefined – our own ill feelings – reveals not weakness so much as our inherent capacity for resistance.’ —Olivia Sudjic, author of Exposure‘I read Ill Feelings with a sense of wonder at the courage required not just to live with a medically unexplained illness, but to write about it with such descriptive clarity and probing intelligence. Alice Hattrick’s book is a powerful cure for ignorance or indifference about a complex form of suffering.’ — Edmund Gordon, author of The Invention of Angela Carter‘Ill Feelings is a necessary, urgent book that I feel I have been waiting my whole life to read. A beautiful combination of memoir, reportage and razor-sharp analysis, it made me think very deeply and critically and feel powerfully understood all at once – a testament to what truly accomplished non-fiction writers can achieve. This book makes me excited for the future of literary non-fiction writing and it’s power to change the world and how we see it.’ — Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of My Body Keeps Your Secret‘“Poetry is not the same to the ill, the clouds look different, and so too does the rest of nature.” Alice Hattrick brilliantly geographies sick time and ill feelings. They chronicle not just how pain is located in the body but how it stretches outside of itself, across time and generations, through society and literature. The weight or unweight that is given to it; how disabled voices are heard (or not heard); the toxic way society views unrecovery. This book, and others like it, are always needed, but this feels especially needed right now, when 60 per cent of those who have died of Covid-19 in England have been disabled, and online disability hate crime has risen 46 per cent.’ —Jen Campbell, author of The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night

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Book Synopsis"Today the ideal home remains a site of illusory ease, a space that can be wiped clean of the residues of living..." In this radical and elegiac essay, Sam Johnson-Schlee invites readers to consider the dreams and fantasies we have about our homes, and their underlying reality. Living Rooms blends history, theory, and memoir as it moves between the colonial trade in house plants, Proustian reminiscence, and razor-sharp critique of rentier capitalism. Johnson-Schlee suggests that, by looking closely at the places where we live, we can confront political realities that extend out into the world. In the way we furnish our homes, might we be unconsciously imagining a different kind of life? In the way we arrange our sofas, picture frames, and our pot plants, are we dreaming of a better world? And what would it mean to reject the notion that a house should be a commodity, and to embrace the idea of a truly living room?

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Book SynopsisIn October 1928 Virginia Woolf was asked to deliver speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on the subject of 'Women and Fiction'; she spoke about her conviction that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. The following year, the two speeches were published as A Room of One's Own, and became one of the foremost feminist texts. Knitted into a polished argument are several threads of great importance - women and learning, writing and poverty - which helped to establish much of feminist thought on the importance of education and money for women's independence. In the same breath, Woolf brushes aside critics and sends out a call for solidarity and independence - a call which sent ripples well into the next century.Trade Review'Brilliant interweaving of personal experience, imaginative musing and political clarity' (Kate Mosse, The Guardian) 'Probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in this century.' (Hermione Lee, The Financial Times)Table of ContentsA Room of One's Own, Note on the Text, Notes, Extra Material: A Brief Introduction to Virginia Woolf, More Information about Virginia Woolf, Background Information about A Room of One's Own, Critical Reaction to A Room of One's Own

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Book SynopsisThe pinnacle of Fuster’s essay writing, Final Judgements is a book of aphorisms that, used to teach moral and/or philosophical truths, reveal things that are relevant to the universal human experience. As Adam Gopnick of The New Yorker puts it, “the aphorism is, in its algebraic abbreviation, a micro-model of empirical inquiry.” And Fuster uses the aphoristic tradition, less to establish truths than to undermine them, to question the conceits contained in the established truism. Despite the seriousness of its subject matter, however, this book is laugh-out-loud funny, Fuster’s wit revealing that the best aphorisms are based in stripping language of its artifice and revealing its contradictions, and the cumulative effect is a quintessentially Mediterranean kind of playfulness.Trade Review‘Joan Fuster is one of Catalan literature’s most enduring voices. His sense of humour and insight into the human condition is inspiring.’ -Jordi Llavina, author of London Under Snow and Poetry & Prose ‘Catalan language’s most important essayist of the 20th century and a key figure in the culture and recent history of the Valencian region.’ -Mètode magazine ‘Without doubt, Fuster should be placed up there with Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Voltaire, Mann and Bertrand Russell.’ -Josep Ballester, Visat

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Book Synopsis"Renee Gladman has always struck me as being a dreamer--she writes that way and the dreaming seems to construct the architecture of the world unfolding before our reading eyes." --Eileen Myles A collection of linked essays concerned with the life and mind of the writer by one of the most original voices in contemporary literature. Each essay takes a day as its point of inquiry, observing the body as it moves through time, architecture, and space, gradually demanding a new logic and level of consciousness from the narrator and reader. I was reading a line in a book, then reading a line in another book, and performing small acts in between: I sat at intervals on the toilet, I slept sporadically, I ate kale and "fish food," and called myself "Renee" for a time. Nobody knew who I was at the grocery store, but going there was my big event. I knew the books of these people; I knew these people and I didn't change their names, but when they appeared in my books it wasn't really their stories I was telling, so they didn't need my protection and I could go "Danielle, Danielle" all day. Born in Atlanta, GA, in 1971, Renee Gladman studied Philosophy at Vassar College and Poetics at New College of California. In addition to Calamities (Wave Books, 2016), she is the author of eight works of prose, including the Ravicka novels Event Factory (2010), The Ravickians (2011), and Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (2013), as well as a book of poetry, A Picture-Feeling. Her most recent work of fiction Morelia is forthcoming in 2016. A longtime publisher and bookmaker, her projects include Clamour (1996-1999), Leroy Chapbook series (1999-2003), and Leon Works (since 2005). She is the recipient of a 2014-2015 fellowship from The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a 2016 grant to artists from Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She lives in New England with poet-ceramicist, Danielle Vogel.Trade Review"Renee Gladman has always struck me as being a dreamer--she writes that way and the dreaming seems to construct the architecture of the world unfolding before our reading eyes." --Eileen Myles "Gladman's talent for linguistic architecture makes for a supple, tight promenade through heady ideas whose appeal rests on the implicit connection it draws between a people, their language, and the shape of communication." --Publishers Weekly "She offers entry into a deliciously unsettling "narrative," really, a sort of adventure. She reassembles art she likes and makes new art--all in service of creating a new art "experience," suggesting a chain-letter of creation." --Olivia Cronk, Bookslut "Her wrestling with the basic ideas of fiction--and its osmotic border with poetry--can lead to spectacular instances of art, passages at home in strangeness, maneuvering with uncanny grace in fields of indeterminacy and unknowing." --Eugene Lim

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Book SynopsisUnlike many Wave titles, this paperback edition follows the hardcover by one year and will arrive in the market enjoying a year's worth of very strong publicity and word-of-mouth, attracting new readers with the new format and lower price. All of Mary Ruefle's books are continually among Wave's topselling titles. We expect this newest collection to sell similarly to her Trances of the Blast hardcover. My Private Property is comprised entirety of short prose pieces, similar to her prose poetry collection The Most of It, which is a very high seller and received glowing praise. The collection is a light, pleasant read, offering a more casual reading experience but with a similar appeal to Ruefle's most recent collection of prose, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. Madness, Rack, and Honey was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. The book also received a full-page write-up in the January 16, 2013 New York Times Book Review. Ruefle is the recipient of numerous high profile awards, including the William Carlos Williams award for her Selected Poems in 2011, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.Table of ContentsLittle Golf Pencil Keys Please Read Lucky Observations on the Ground Blue The Woman Who Couldn’t Describe a Thing If She Could Pause Lullaby Take Frank Recollections of My Christmas Tree Purple Black One Girl’s Theory To a Magazine Milkshake Gray Red Among the Clouds My Private Property Old Immortality Green Pink In the Forest The Hooded Dream of Dining Like a Scarf Orange Yellow Wild Forest Blood Inky Flourish Personalia Outcast Towards a Carefree World Self-Criticism White Brown They Were Wrong The Gift The Invasive Thing The Sublime A Strange Thing

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Book SynopsisCops on bikes, undercover security in the supermarket, TSA agents wondering why there appears to be a gun in his bag, Keith Lowell Jensen has a lot of run-ins with all manner of cops. Sometimes they arrest him. Sometimes they beat him up and arrest him. And sometimes he gets away scot free.In his second memoir collection Jensen tells the hilarious tales of his various arrests and other run-ins with the law. Getting his charges dropped after making the public defender and the judge laugh, performing an hour of jokes for his cell mates in the drunk tank, the comedian has used his sense of humor to get in and out of trouble, and that same sense of humor makes this a fun and engaging read.Storytelling comedian Keith Lowell Jensen has performed all over the world, including headlining the First International China Comedy Festival in Shanghai. He has recorded 8 comedy specials, including his latest Not For Rehire. This is his second memoir collection following 2018’s Punching Nazis And Other Good Ideas.Trade Review"Hilarious. A demented masterpiece."— The Washington Post on "Atheist Christmas""You're gonna love Jensen's style of subtle, smart storytelling"— Austin Chronicle“Lowell's subtle humor shines through his meandering storytelling style. And at the same time, he reminds us that the streak of emboldened racist groups in our current political climate isn't new—punks have been punching Nazis for decades.”—East Bay Express, “Your Summer Reading List”“[Punching Nazis] is a unique portal into America’s white supremacy problem, specifically the country’s short-term memory, and it’s done with a lot of humor.”—Sacramento News and Review

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Book SynopsisThe work of the Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba is distinguished by her conceptual exploration of film. In this publication she devises a progressive vision for the cinema of the future. Barba translates questions of composition and plasticity into precisely staged arrangements that open up new ways of looking at both the material and the conceptual conditions of the medium of film. Starting with Barba’s artistic research, this volume deals with the concept of an anarchical organization of filmic spaces—a work principle that could shape a new way of thinking by destabilizing traditional cinematic structures. Through this, the author undertakes a journey to an imaginary political trope for today’s cinema.

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Book Synopsis“Farnsworth beautifully integrates his own observations with scores of quotations from Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and others. This isn’t just a book to read—it’s a book to return to, a book that will provide perspective and consolation at times of heartbreak or calamity.”—The Washington PostSee more clearly, live more wisely, and bear the burdens of this life with greater ease—here are the greatest insights of the Stoics, in their own words. Presented in twelve lessons, Ward Farnsworth systematically presents the heart of Stoic philosophy accompanied by commentary that is clear and concise.A foundational idea to Stoicism is that we appear to go through life reacting directly to events. That appearance is an illusion. We react to our judgments and opinions—to our thoughts about things, not to things themselves. Stoics seek to become conscious of those judgments, to find the irrationality in them, and to choose them more carefully.In chapters including Emotion, Adversity, Virtue, and What Others Think, here is the most valuable wisdom about living a good life from ages past—now made available for our time.Trade ReviewPraise for Ward Farnsworth:The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual:“As befits a good Stoic, Farnsworth’s expository prose exhibits both clarity and an unflappable calm… Throughout The Practicing Stoic, Farnsworth beautifully integrates his own observations with scores of quotations from Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and others. As a result, this isn’t just a book to read—it’s a book to return to, a book that will provide perspective and consolation at times of heartbreak or calamity.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“It is reported that upon Seneca’s tomb are written the words, Who’s Minding the Stoa? He would be pleased to know the answer is Ward Farnsworth.”—David Mamet“This is a book any thoughtful person will be glad to have along as a companion for an extended weekend or, indeed, for that protracted journey we call life.”—The New Criterion“This sturdy and engaging introductory text consists mostly of excerpts from the ancient Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers, especially Seneca, Epictetus through his student Arrian, and Marcus Aurelius as well as that trio’s philosophical confreres, from the earlier Hellenic Stoics and Cicero to such contemporaries as Plutarch to moderns, including Montaigne, Adam Smith, and Schopenhauer… A philosophy to live by, Stoicism may remind many of Buddhism and Quakerism, for it asks of practitioners something very similar to what those disciplines call mindfulness.”—Booklist The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook:“Amid 21st-century rancor, a voice from ancient Athens offers an alternative: truth and a little humility....None should be discouraged from seeking out this remarkable book. By presenting the Socratic method as invitingly as it does, it eases the daunting task of taming the fanatical, irrational, censorious beasts in the American political zoo.”—Wall Street Journal“Learned, erudite, and elegant.”—The Millions“The Socratic method decelerates reasoning, making space for deliberation when disagreements arise. So, the Socratic method is, Farnsworth says, an antidote to some social pandemics of our day.” —George F. Will Farnsworth’s Classical English Style:“Mr. Farnsworth has written an original and absorbing guide to English style. Get it if you can.”—Wall Street Journal“For writers aspiring to master the craft, Farnsworth shows how it’s done. For lovers of language, he provides waves of sheer pleasure.”—Steven Pinker“An eloquent study of the very mechanisms of eloquence.”—Henry Hitchings“A great and edifying pleasure.”—Mark Helprin“A storehouse of effective writing, showing the techniques you may freely adapt to make music of your own.”—The Baltimore SunFarnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric:“I must refrain from shouting what a brilliant work this is (præteritio). Farnsworth has written the book as he ought to have written it – and as only he could have written it (symploce). Buy it and read it – buy it and read it (epimone).”—Bryan A. Garner“The most immediate pleasure of this book is that it heightens one’s appreciation of the craft of great writers and speakers. Mr. Farnsworth includes numerous examples from Shakespeare and Dickens, Thoreau and Emerson, Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. He also seems keen to rehabilitate writers and speakers whose rhetorical artistry is undervalued; besides his liking for Chesterton, he shows deep admiration for the Irish statesman Henry Grattan (1746-1820), whose studied repetition of a word (‘No lawyer can say so; because no lawyer could say so without forfeiting his character as a lawyer’) is an instance, we are told, of conduplicatio. But more than anything Mr. Farnsworth wants to restore the reputation of rhetorical artistry per se, and the result is a handsome work of reference.”—Henry Hitchings, Wall Street JournalFarnsworth’s Classical English Metaphor:“Ward Farnsworth is a witty commentator…It’s a book to dip in and savor.”—The Boston Globe“Most people will find it a grab-bag of memorable quotations, an ideal browsing book for the nightstand.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“I want this book to be beside my bed for years to come, a treasure-house of the liquid magic of words.”—Simon Winchester“A feat of elegant demystification…Farnsworth is able to focus on the finite material of metaphorical referents…a brilliant strategy, both in its utility for writers and the inherent insight Farnsworth’s divisions suggest about metaphors.”—Jonathan Russell Clark, The Millions

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Book Synopsis“Wade Davis is a true wayfinder, and these essays offer new insight into his visionary approach to culture, landscape, and the planet he loves as fiercely as any writer working today.”—John Vaillant, author of Fire WeatherA timely and eclectic collection from one of the foremost thinkers of our time, “a powerful, penetrating and immensely knowledgeable writer” (The Guardian).The essays in this collection came about during the unhurried months when one who had traveled incessantly was obliged to stay still, even as events flared on all sides in a world that never stops moving. Wade Davis brings his unique cultural perspective to such varied topics as the demonization of coca, the sacred plant of the Inca; the Great War and the birth of modernity; the British conquest of Everest; the endless conflict in the Middle East; reaching beyond climate fear and trepidation; on the meaning of the sacred. His essay, ̶

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Book SynopsisEusebius, Bishop of Caesarea from about AD 314, was the most important writer in the age of Constantine. His history of the Christian church from the ministry of Jesus to AD 324 is a treasury of information, especially on the Eastern centers.

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