A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses

A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses PDF Author: Anne Trubek
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205812
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
There are many ways to show our devotion to an author besides reading his or her works. Graves make for popular pilgrimage sites, but far more popular are writers' house museums. What is it we hope to accomplish by trekking to the home of a dead author? We may go in search of the point of inspiration, eager to stand on the very spot where our favorite literary characters first came to life—and find ourselves instead in the house where the author himself was conceived, or where she drew her last breath. Perhaps it is a place through which our writer passed only briefly, or maybe it really was a longtime home—now thoroughly remade as a decorator's show-house. In A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses Anne Trubek takes a vexed, often funny, and always thoughtful tour of a goodly number of house museums across the nation. In Key West she visits the shamelessly ersatz shrine to a hard-living Ernest Hemingway, while meditating on his lost Cuban farm and the sterile Idaho house in which he committed suicide. In Hannibal, Missouri, she walks the fuzzy line between fact and fiction, as she visits the home of the young Samuel Clemens—and the purported haunts of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Injun' Joe. She hits literary pay-dirt in Concord, Massachusetts, the nineteenth-century mecca that gave home to Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau—and yet could not accommodate a surprisingly complex Louisa May Alcott. She takes us along the trail of residences that Edgar Allan Poe left behind in the wake of his many failures and to the burned-out shell of a California house with which Jack London staked his claim on posterity. In Dayton, Ohio, a charismatic guide brings Paul Laurence Dunbar to compelling life for those few visitors willing to listen; in Cleveland, Trubek finds a moving remembrance of Charles Chesnutt in a house that no longer stands. Why is it that we visit writers' houses? Although admittedly skeptical about the stories these buildings tell us about their former inhabitants, Anne Trubek carries us along as she falls at least a little bit in love with each stop on her itinerary and finds in each some truth about literature, history, and contemporary America.

A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses

A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses PDF Author: Anne Trubek
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205812
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description
There are many ways to show our devotion to an author besides reading his or her works. Graves make for popular pilgrimage sites, but far more popular are writers' house museums. What is it we hope to accomplish by trekking to the home of a dead author? We may go in search of the point of inspiration, eager to stand on the very spot where our favorite literary characters first came to life—and find ourselves instead in the house where the author himself was conceived, or where she drew her last breath. Perhaps it is a place through which our writer passed only briefly, or maybe it really was a longtime home—now thoroughly remade as a decorator's show-house. In A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses Anne Trubek takes a vexed, often funny, and always thoughtful tour of a goodly number of house museums across the nation. In Key West she visits the shamelessly ersatz shrine to a hard-living Ernest Hemingway, while meditating on his lost Cuban farm and the sterile Idaho house in which he committed suicide. In Hannibal, Missouri, she walks the fuzzy line between fact and fiction, as she visits the home of the young Samuel Clemens—and the purported haunts of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Injun' Joe. She hits literary pay-dirt in Concord, Massachusetts, the nineteenth-century mecca that gave home to Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau—and yet could not accommodate a surprisingly complex Louisa May Alcott. She takes us along the trail of residences that Edgar Allan Poe left behind in the wake of his many failures and to the burned-out shell of a California house with which Jack London staked his claim on posterity. In Dayton, Ohio, a charismatic guide brings Paul Laurence Dunbar to compelling life for those few visitors willing to listen; in Cleveland, Trubek finds a moving remembrance of Charles Chesnutt in a house that no longer stands. Why is it that we visit writers' houses? Although admittedly skeptical about the stories these buildings tell us about their former inhabitants, Anne Trubek carries us along as she falls at least a little bit in love with each stop on her itinerary and finds in each some truth about literature, history, and contemporary America.

From Strength to Strength

From Strength to Strength PDF Author: Arthur C. Brooks
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593191498
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The roadmap for finding purpose, meaning, and success as we age, from bestselling author, Harvard professor, and the Atlantic's happiness columnist Arthur Brooks. Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies aging. But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs. What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success? At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life. Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness. Read this book and you, too, can go from strength to strength.

French Authors at Home

French Authors at Home PDF Author: Annie Emma Armstrong Challice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, French
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description


French Authors at Home

French Authors at Home PDF Author: Mrs Annie Emma (Armstrong) Challice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, French
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description


French Authors at Home

French Authors at Home PDF Author: Annie Emma Challice
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3752593806
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Reprint of the original, first published in 1864. Episodes in the Lives and Works of Balzac, Madame de Girardin, George Sand, Lamartine, Leon Gozlan, Lamennais, Victor Hugo, etc.

Home Comforts

Home Comforts PDF Author: Cheryl Mendelson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743272862
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 900

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Book Description
A classic bestselling resource for every household, Home Comforts helps you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home. “Home Comforts is to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food.” —USA TODAY Home Comforts is an engaging and comprehensive book about housekeeping. It is a lively and readable guide for both beginners and experts in all the domestic arts. From keeping surfaces free of germs, watering plants, removing stains, folding a fitted sheet, cleaning china, tuning a piano, lighting a fire, setting the dining room table—this guide covers everything that people might want to do for themselves in their homes. Further topics include: making up a bed with hospital corners, expert recommendations for safe food storage, reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, this is a practical, good-humored, philosophical guidebook to the art and science of household management.

Unpacking My Library

Unpacking My Library PDF Author: Leah Price
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300170920
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
As words and stories are increasingly disseminated through digital means, the significance of the book as object—whether pristine collectible or battered relic—is growing as well. Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books spotlights the personal libraries of thirteen favorite novelists who share their collections with readers. Stunning photographs provide full views of the libraries and close-ups of individual volumes: first editions, worn textbooks, pristine hardcovers, and childhood companions. In her introduction, Leah Price muses on the history and future of the bookshelf, asking what books can tell us about their owners and what readers can tell us about their collections. Supplementing the photographs are Price's interviews with each author, which probe the relation of writing to reading, collecting, and arranging books. Each writer provides a list of top ten favorite titles, offering unique personal histories along with suggestions for every bibliophile. Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books features the personal libraries of Alison Bechdel, Stephen Carter, Junot Díaz, Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker, Lev Grossman and Sophie Gee, Jonathan Lethem, Claire Messud and James Wood, Philip Pullman, Gary Shteyngart, and Edmund White.

French Authors at Home

French Authors at Home PDF Author: Annie Emma Challice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, French
Languages : en
Pages : 650

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Book Description


The Temptation of Adam

The Temptation of Adam PDF Author: Dave Connis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510707328
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Adam Hawthorne is fine. Yeah, his mother left, his older sister went with her, and his dad would rather read Nicholas Sparks novels than talk to him. And yeah, he spends his nights watching self-curated porn video playlists. But Adam is fine. When a family friend discovers Adam’s porn addiction, he’s forced to join an addiction support group: the self-proclaimed Knights of Vice. He goes because he has to, but the honesty of the Knights starts to slip past his defenses. Combine that with his sister’s out-of-the-blue return and the attention of a girl he meets in an AA meeting, and all the work Adam has put into being fine begins to unravel. Now Adam has to face the causes and effects of his addiction, before he loses his new friends, his prodigal sister, and his almost semi-sort-of girlfriend.

Writers' Houses

Writers' Houses PDF Author: Nick Channer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780719806643
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Part armchair travel, part reference, this is a journey into Britain's impressive literary and architectural heritage and an exploration of how beloved authors drew inspiration from their homes Britain's wealth of historic houses is acknowledged and admired throughout the world, as is its reputation for producing some of the greatest novelists, poets and playwrights of all time. Many of these leading writers lived, worked, and found inspiration in a variety of houses the length and breadth of the land. Offering insight into the daily routines of popular authors, this book looks at several authors' homes, examining how their surroundings affected their works. Among the homes and gardens examined are Agatha Christie's secluded West Country retreat, the Worcestershire country seat that became the model for a grandiose ancestral pile in Evelyn Waugh's enduring novel, Brideshead Revisited, Enid Blyton's much-loved cottage garden in the leafy Thames Valley, the ancient, timber-framed residence in Stratford-upon-Avon where Shakespeare spent his boyhood, and the moated house and garden in East Sussex that inspired the evocative setting for a Sherlock Holmes story.