These Precious Days

These Precious Days PDF Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063092808
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

These Precious Days

These Precious Days PDF Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063092808
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Blindsight

Blindsight PDF Author: Peter Watts
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429955198
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed PDF Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019974369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981

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Book Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

The Ghost Tree

The Ghost Tree PDF Author: Brandon Faircloth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Rachel finds a hidden prison cell in the basement of her new house. Who was kept there and why?Thomas has a job watching a woman trapped in a room. Is she in danger? And are the messages she's sending meant for him?Wally keeps getting deliveries, each more horrific and dangerous than the last. Who's behind it, and what do they want from him?Justin has found the Ghost Tree, and in doing so, he's lost everything. How far will he go to reclaim his life? His soul?This novel of intersecting lives and times and worlds answers all of these questions and more. Read what has been called "powerful and beautiful", "absolutely incredible", "unpredictable" and "amazing". Brandon Faircloth's latest book is filled with horror and suspense that takes the reader at a breathtaking pace through many twists and turns before reaching an ending that is both moving and terrifying.

A Killing Frost

A Killing Frost PDF Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0756412528
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
October Daye finds herself confronted with her family's past and responsible for peace in the Kingdom of the Mists, as she plans for her wedding and for her future.

The Dutch House

The Dutch House PDF Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062963694
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize Finalist | New York Times Bestseller | A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick | A New York Times Book Review Notable Book | TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post; O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Vogue, Refinery29, and Buzzfeed From Ann Patchett, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth, comes a powerful, richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are. At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

Come As You Are

Come As You Are PDF Author: Michael Azerrad
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307833739
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The definitive biography of the revolutionary band Nirvana and its star-crossed frontman Kurt Cobain, hailed by Rolling Stone as “the first [book] to comprehensively tell the band’s tale from Aberdeen, Wash., to world domination” “Amazingly raw and candid . . . an unsparing and extremely honest depiction of the group’s highly tumultuous history . . . Come As You Are is as good as rock bios get.”—Billboard “Just tell the truth. That’ll be better than anything else that’s been written about me.”—Kurt Cobain Nirvana came out of nowhere in 1991 to sell nearly five million copies of their landmark album Nevermind, whose thunderous sound and indelible melodies embodied all the confusion, frustration, and passion of the emerging Generation X. Come As You Are is the close-up, intimate story of Nirvana—the only book with exclusive in-depth interviews with bandmembers Kurt Cobain, Krist Noveselic, and Dave Grohl, as well as friends, relatives, former bandmembers, and associates—now updated to include a final chapter detailing the last year of Kurt Cobain's life, before his tragic suicide in April 1994. Vivid, evocative, and thought-provoking, Come As You Are is an essential document not just for Nirvana fans but for anyone interested in the cultural legacy of the 1990s.

Our Band Could Be Your Life

Our Band Could Be Your Life PDF Author: Michael Azerrad
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316247189
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The definitive chronicle of underground music in the 1980s tells the stories of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and other seminal bands whose DIY revolution changed American music forever. Our Band Could Be Your Life is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties -- when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives re-energized American rock with punk's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith is an indie rock classic in its own right. The bands profiled include: Sonic Youth Black Flag The Replacements Minutemen Husker Du Minor Threat Mission of Burma Butthole Surfers Big Black Fugazi Mudhoney Beat Happening Dinosaur Jr.

Waiting For Daybreak

Waiting For Daybreak PDF Author: Amanda McNeil
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781478153764
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What is normal?Frieda has never felt normal. She feels every emotion too strongly and lashes out at herself in punishment. But one day when she stays home from work too depressed to get out of bed, a virus breaks out turning her neighbors into flesh-eating, brain-hungry zombies. As her survival instinct kicks in keeping her safe from the zombies, Frieda can't help but wonder if she now counts as healthy and normal, or is she still abnormal compared to every other human being who is craving brains?

Take a Sad Song

Take a Sad Song PDF Author: James Campion
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493062387
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
In Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of "Hey Jude," James Campion dives deeply into the song's origins, recording, visual presentation, impact, and eventual influence, while also discovering what makes "Hey Jude" a classic musical expression of personal comfort and societal unity conceived by a master songwriter, Paul McCartney. Within its melodic brilliance and lyrical touchstones of empathy and nostalgia resides McCartney's personal and professional relationship with his childhood friend and songwriting partner, John Lennon, and their simultaneous pursuit of the women who would complete them. There are also clues to the growing turmoil within the Beatles and their splintering generation scarred by war, assassination, and virulent protest. Campion's journey into the song includes the insights of academic experts and professors in the field of musicology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history. Campion also reveals commentary from noted Beatles authors, biographers, music historians, and journalists and, finally, a peek into the craft of songwriting from a host of talented composers across several generations. Take a Sad Song is a tribute to how a song can define, inspire, and affect us in ways we do not always fully comprehend, as well as a celebration of a truly amazing track in the Beatles canon that reveals one band's genius and underscores its lasting voice in our cultural and musical landscape.