Curious Things

Curious Things PDF Author: Hope Silver
Publisher: Thurston Howl Publications
ISBN: 9781088005163
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Curious Things by Hope Silver reveals the hidden lives and innermost thoughts of inanimate objects, giving the gift of emotion and meaning to even the most mundane items people use every day. Among the colorful cast of characters in this collection of flash fiction are a doll with a broken heart, an elevator who acts as a matchmaker, and a video-camera who thinks she was Alfred Hitchcock in a past life. At times poignant, at times silly, but always quirky and clever, Curious Things may cause you to think differently about the sponges in your sink, the sneakers on the telephone line, or the plastic bags drifting across the highway. Like Thomas M. Disch's The Brave Little Toaster, Curious Things lends humanity and dignity to inhuman things that are so often taken for granted. - Amy Fontaine, author of MIST

Curious Things

Curious Things PDF Author: Hope Silver
Publisher: Thurston Howl Publications
ISBN: 9781088005163
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book Here

Book Description
Curious Things by Hope Silver reveals the hidden lives and innermost thoughts of inanimate objects, giving the gift of emotion and meaning to even the most mundane items people use every day. Among the colorful cast of characters in this collection of flash fiction are a doll with a broken heart, an elevator who acts as a matchmaker, and a video-camera who thinks she was Alfred Hitchcock in a past life. At times poignant, at times silly, but always quirky and clever, Curious Things may cause you to think differently about the sponges in your sink, the sneakers on the telephone line, or the plastic bags drifting across the highway. Like Thomas M. Disch's The Brave Little Toaster, Curious Things lends humanity and dignity to inhuman things that are so often taken for granted. - Amy Fontaine, author of MIST

Curious Things

Curious Things PDF Author: Joanne Van Leerdam
Publisher: WordyNerdBird
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
Curious Things. Stories about a black cat, superstition and strange events. Friday is a black cat with a lucky habit of being present when curious things take place. He's highly intelligent, fiercely loyal and devilishly handsome. If you've ever wished for karma to move a little faster, indulged in uncharitable thoughts about certain annoying people, or suspected that having a black cat cross your path was not quite as unlucky as people seem to think, these stories are for you.

1001 Curious Things

1001 Curious Things PDF Author: Kate C. Duncan
Publisher: Seattle : University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295980102
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
For more than one hundred years, tourists and residents alike have flocked to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, located on Seattle's waterfront. Here a mummy nicknamed Sylvester, a collection of shrunken heads from Ecuador, a two-headed calf, and a mermaid preside over walls and cases crammed with an incredible jumble of souvenirs and trinkets, intermixed with authentic Northwest Coast and Alaskan Eskimo carvings, baskets, blankets, and other artworks. The guestbook records visits by Theodore Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Jack Dempsey, Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, and Queen Marie of Rumania, among many others. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop was founded in 1899 by Joseph E. "Daddy" Standley, an Ohio-born curio collector who came to Seattle in the late 1890s during the Yukon gold rush. Although Native American material vied for space with exotica from all corners of the globe, it soon grew to be the mainstay of the shop, which became identified with the whalebones displayed outside and the "piles of old Eskimo relics" within. Also to be found were baskets, moccasins, ivory carving from Alaska, Tlingit spruce root baskets, Haida "jadeite" totem poles, masks, paddles, and other curiosities from the Northwest Coast. Indians from the Olympic Peninsula brought baskets, coming up to the back door of the shop in their canoes. Others, originally from British Columbia but now living on the flats not far from the shop, carved miniature totem poles by the hundreds and full-size poles on commission. Trading companies supplied Indian curios from the Plains, Southwest, and California. An art historian trained in the classic arts of the Northwest Coast, Kate Duncan became interested in the history of the shop when she learned that it had not only been an active participant in Seattle's 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition but had also been a major source of important Northwest Coast collections in many museums, including, among others, the Royal Ontario Museum, the George G. Heye Collection (now in the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian), the Washington State Museum, the Newark Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History. Granted full access by the present owners - grandson and great-grandson of "Daddy" Standley - to the remarkably complete archives maintained from the time the shop opened, Duncan has provided a fascinating chapter in the history of Seattle, especially in its early years, as well as a significant contribution to the literature on tourist arts and collecting. Kate Duncan, professor of art at Arizona State University, is also the author of Northern Athapaskan Art: A Beadwork Tradition, and coauthor of A Special Gift: The Kutchin Beadwork Tradition and Out of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.

Speck

Speck PDF Author: Peter Gordon Buchanan-Smith
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568982977
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In Speck, Peter Buchanan-Smith, Art Director of the New York Times Op-Ed page, asks artists, designers, lawyers, writers, collectors, and photographers to explore our obsessions with the small objects that loom large in our everyday lives.To wit: Maira Kalman empties people's pocketbooks; Nicholas Blechman and Jesse Gordon trace the history of the oldest piece of dust; David Horrowitz catalogs manhole covers; and Peter Buchanan-Smith unearths a 1966 high school yearbook and transcribes the inscriptions ("To a real sweet and cute guy with a great personality. Remember English III").Speck also shows how "ordinary" people can fascinate as much as "ordinary" objects: an interview with shoe shiner Harry Kitt, Manhattan's last practitioner of the dry-shine, photographs taken by a blind man on a sight-seeing tour, and a barber's extensive collection of earth, water, and air from around the world ask us to re-think our assumptions about the commonplace.

Why People Believe Weird Things

Why People Believe Weird Things PDF Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 1429996765
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.

Paraphernalia

Paraphernalia PDF Author: Steven Connor
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847652824
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
From keys and handkerchiefs to sweets and rubber bands, the curious objects we surround ourselves with, though often seemingly mundane, have a magical quality. Their surprising power to disturb, soothe, seduce or absorb give these quirky objects histories and meanings we rarely ponder. Yet we would be lost without them. Take bags, for example. Why do most women carry handbags, while men rely on pockets? Why do so many houses have bags of bags? And why do we 'let the cat out the bag' or 'give someone the sack'? What significance do our bags hold for us? In this highly imaginative and entertaining book, Steven Connor embarks on a historical, philosophical and linguistic journey that explores our relationships with the curious things with which we have a forgotten but daily intimacy.

Seriously Curious

Seriously Curious PDF Author: Tom Standage
Publisher: The Economist
ISBN: 1541730127
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Smart, savvy answers to universal questions, from the highly popular The Economist Explains and Daily Chart blogs-a treat for the knowing, the uninitiated, and the downright curious. Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures that Turn Our World Upside Down brings together the very best explainers and charts, written and created by top journalists to help us understand such brain-bending conundrums as why Swedes overpay their taxes, why America still allows child marriage, and what the link is between avocados and crime. Subjects both topical and timeless, profound and peculiar, are explained with The Economist's trademark wit and verve. The Economist Explains and its online sister, the Daily Chart, are the two most popular blogs on The Economist's website. Together, these online giants provide answers to the kinds of questions, quirky and serious, that may be puzzling anyone interested in the world around them. Want to know why exorcisms are on the rise in France or how porn consumption changed during a false alarm missile strike warning in Hawaii? We have the answers They are sometimes surprising, often intriguing, and always enlightening.

Curious Things of the Outside World

Curious Things of the Outside World PDF Author: Hargrave Jennings
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Supernatural
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description


100 Curious Things to Count

100 Curious Things to Count PDF Author: Rose Nestling
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781680523539
Category : Board books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Curious kids and their curious grown-up will love discovering fascinating things from the Smithsonian and the natural world.

Squirrel & Swan Curious Things

Squirrel & Swan Curious Things PDF Author: M. D. Archer
Publisher: SWARM Publishing
ISBN: 0473591294
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The Face In The Window and the Noises In The Night S & S Investigations: A Prequel Novella Best friends Paige and Sophie will soon graduate with PhDs in psychology. But before they start thinking about what the future holds, a break! They take up an invitation to stay at a beautiful holiday home in the Coromandel, both excited for a week of cocktails, barbecues, walks along the beach and chilling out. But when they meet the people staying next door—a fading American actress, her devoted husband, and her nervous assistant—things get interesting. Faced with a slew of curious events, Paige and Sophie start wondering what’s going on. And when things take a more sinister turn, they race figure things out before it’s too late. Squirrel & Swan Curious Things is the prequel novella to the S & S Investigations Series but can be enjoyed at any time.