Author: Chris McCormick
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006290857X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
“The Gimmicks is a gorgeous epic that astounds with its scope and beauty. With empathy and humor, McCormick unravels the ties between brotherhood and betrayal, love and abandonment, and the fictions we create to live with the pain of the past. This novel will blow you away.” —Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The Mothers Set in the waning years of the Cold War, a stunning debut novel about a trio of young Armenians that moves from the Soviet Union, across Europe, to Southern California, and at its center, one of the most tragic cataclysms in twentieth-century history—the Armenian Genocide—whose traumatic reverberations will have unexpected consequences on all three lives. This exuberant, wholly original novel begins in Kirovakan, Armenia, in 1971. Ruben Petrosian is a serious, solitary young man who cares about two things: mastering the game of backgammon to beat his archrival, Mina, and studying the history of his ancestors. Ruben grieves the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, a crime still denied by the descendants of its perpetrators, and dreams of vengeance. When his orphaned cousin, Avo, comes to live with his family, Ruben’s life is transformed. Gregarious and physically enormous, with a distinct unibrow that becomes his signature, Avo is instantly beloved. He is everything Ruben is not, yet the two form a bond they swear never to break. But their paths diverge when Ruben vanishes—drafted into an extremist group that will stop at nothing to make Turkey acknowledge the genocide. Unmoored by Ruben’s disappearance, Avo and Mina grow close in his absence. But fate brings the cousins together once more, when Ruben secretly contacts Avo, convincing him to leave Mina and join the extremists—a choice that will dramatically alter the course of their lives. Left to unravel the threads of this story is Terry “Angel Hair” Krill, a veteran of both the US Navy and the funhouse world of professional wrestling, whose life intersects with Avo, Ruben, and Mina’s in surprising and devastating ways. Told through alternating perspectives, The Gimmicks is a masterpiece of storytelling. Chris McCormick brilliantly illuminates the impact of history and injustice on ordinary lives and challenges us to confront the spectacle of violence and the specter of its aftermath.
Author: Miki Aihara
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
ISBN: 9781421501093
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
All-out warfare between their families has Hatsumi and Ryoki wondering about their future, forcing Hatsumi to choose between Ryoki and her brother.
Author: Sianne Ngai
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674984544
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
Christian Gauss Award Shortlist Winner of the ASAP Book Prize A Literary Hub Book of the Year “Makes the case that the gimmick...is of tremendous critical value...Lies somewhere between critical theory and Sontag’s best work.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Ngai exposes capitalism’s tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks.” —New Statesman “One of the most creative humanities scholars working today...My god, it’s so good.” —Literary Hub “Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and life...Highly original.” —4Columns “It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngai’s analyses of aesthetic categories so appealing...is simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly.” —Bookforum “A page turner.” —American Literary History Deeply objectionable and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). When we call something a gimmick, we register misgivings that suggest broader anxieties about value, money, and time, making the gimmick a hallmark of capitalism. With wit and critical precision, Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann, Helen DeWitt, and Henry James; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised, the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.
Author: David Shoemaker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1592408818
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
A breakthrough examination of the professional wrestling, its history, its fans, and its wider cultural impact The Squared Circle grows out of David Shoemaker’s writing for Deadspin, where he started the column “Dead Wrestler of the Week” (which boasts more than 1 million page views)—a feature on the many wrestling superstars who died too young because of the abuse they subject their bodies to—and his writing for Grantland, where he covers the pro wrestling world, and its place in the pop culture mainstream. Shoemaker’s sportswriting has since struck a nerve with generations of wrestling fans who—like him—grew up worshipping a sport often derided as “fake” in the wider culture. To them, these professional wrestling superstars are not just heroes but an emotional outlet and the lens through which they learned to see the world. Starting in the early 1900s and exploring the path of pro wrestling in America through the present day, The Squared Circle is the first book to acknowledge both the sport’s broader significance and wrestling fans’ keen intellect and sense of irony. Divided into eras, each section offers a snapshot of the wrestling world, profiles some of the period’s preeminent wrestlers, and the sport’s influence on our broader culture. Through the brawling, bombast, and bloodletting, Shoemaker argues that pro wrestling can teach us about the nature of performance, audience, and, yes, art. Full of unknown history, humor, and self-deprecating reminiscence—but also offering a compelling look at the sport’s rightful place in pop culture—The Squared Circle is the book that legions of wrestling fans have been waiting for. In it, Shoemaker teaches us to look past the spandex and body slams to see an art form that can explain the world.
Author: Al Snow
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1773053027
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Professional wrestler Al Snow delivers highlights from his onscreen antics and never-before-heard tales from the road in this high-flying memoir spanning 30 years in the ring In the late 90s, wrestling journeyman Al Snow looked in the mirror and saw a man who needed help. A man whose reputation within the wrestling industry was excellent but whose career was going nowhere. Channeling his frustration into the gimmick for which he would become best known, Al began talking to (and through) a mannequin head. With Extreme Championship Wrestling, Al reinvented himself as an unhinged neurotic and became one of the hottest acts in the most cutting-edge promotion in America when wrestlingÕs popularity was at its peak. This led to a journey back to the industryÕs main stage, World Wrestling Entertainment, during the wildly popular Attitude Era, and in the central role as a trainer and father figure on the MTV reality show, Tough Enough. Now, after 35 years in the industry, Al Snow tells the stories of the unbelievable yet true events that formed his career, from his in-ring recollections to out-of-ring escapades, including drunken midnight journeys with a vanfull of little people, overuse of Tasers at autograph signings, and continual attempts on his life by assorted members of the animal kingdom. Self Help is Al Snow at his best, delivering what everybody wants and needs.
Author: Paul Campos
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226823482
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
"Sports fandom is defined by obsession, irrationality, and a love of rabbit holes. But in 2020, most professional sports had few games and no fans present. This led lawyer and University of Michigan superfan Paul Campos to ponder the ways that fandom is conditioned by social circumstance and collective psychology. In limning the structural unhappiness of a fan's life, he found deep and resonant political and personal meanings to loving a sports team-some obvious, others revealed only over time. Campos's own lifelong obsessions help him index fandom-related manias and provides an entry point to grasping their history, nature, and surprisingly broad import"--
Author: V. E. Schwab
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 0765387581
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine #1 Library Reads Pick—October 2020 #1 Indie Next Pick—October 2020 BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) FINALIST—Book of The Month Club A “Best Of” Book From: Oprah Mag * CNN * Amazon * Amazon Editors * NPR * Goodreads * Bustle * PopSugar * BuzzFeed * Barnes & Noble * Kirkus Reviews * Lambda Literary * Nerdette * The Nerd Daily * Polygon * Library Reads * io9 * Smart Bitches Trashy Books * LiteraryHub * Medium * BookBub * The Mary Sue * Chicago Tribune * NY Daily News * SyFy Wire * Powells.com * Bookish * Book Riot * Library Reads Voter Favorite * In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force. A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget. France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. Also by V. E. Schwab Shades of Magic A Darker Shade of Magic A Gathering of Shadows A Conjuring of Light Villains Vicious Vengeful At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Author: M. Casper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230119530
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Corpus begins with the argument that traditional disciplines are unable to fully apprehend the body and embodiment and that critical study of these topics urgently demands interdisciplinary approaches. The collection's 14 previously unpublished essays grapple with the place of bodies in a range of twenty-first century knowledge practices, including trauma, surveillance, aging, fat, food, feminist technoscience, death, disability, biopolitics, and race, among others. The book's projected audience includes teachers and scholars of bodies and embodiment, interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners, and scholars interested in the any of the substantive content covered in the book. The collection could be adopted in courses on the body at advanced undergraduate and graduate levels, including: cultural studies; queer, gender and sexuality studies; body and power; biopolitics; intersectional approaches to the body; anthropology of the body; sociology of the body; embodiment and space; digital bodies; anthropology of knowledge production; health, illness, and medicine studies; science, knowledge, and technology studies; and philosophy and social theory.
Author: Megumi Nishizaki
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
ISBN: 9781421511429
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
Think you know everything about Hot Gimmick? Well, think again! Hot Gimmick S, an original novelization inspired by the super-popular shojo series Hot Gimmick, boasts an ending that is completely different than how the manga series concludes. Hatsumi Narita, a somewhat indecisive coed, must navigate the choppy waters of company housing life and try to keep her love life on track too. She starts dating her extremely bossy neighbor Ryoki, but how will her dreamy older brother Shinogu feel about this? It¿s the ending that manga fans are dying to read and are bound to be talking about for a long time to come! Plus, a bonus, heart-pounding manga episode that¿s all about Hatsumi and Shinogu!
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804172706
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 833
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
