The Digested Read

The Digested Read PDF Author: John Crace
Publisher: RDR Books
ISBN: 9781571431592
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct. From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions of Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross.

The Digested Read

The Digested Read PDF Author: John Crace
Publisher: RDR Books
ISBN: 9781571431592
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct. From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions of Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross.

Brideshead Abbreviated

Brideshead Abbreviated PDF Author: John Crace
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409061744
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
John Crace's 'Digested Read' column in the Guardian has rightly acquired a cult following. Each week fans avidly devour his latest razor-sharp literary assassination, while authors turn tremblingly to the appropriate page of the review section, fearful that it may be their turn to be mercilessly sent up. Now he turns his critical eye on the classics of the last century, offering bite-sized pastiches of everything from Mrs Dalloway to Trainspotting via Lolita and The Great Gatsby. Those who have never quite got around to reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will be delighted to find its essence distilled into a handful of paragraphs. Those who have never really enjoyed Lord of the Flies will be pleased to find it hilariously parodied in an easily swallowable 982 words. And those who find all such works a little highbrow will be relieved to discover, between the covers of this book, John Crace's take on the likes of Ian Fleming, P. G. Wodehouse and the Highway Code. Witty and sharp, this is essential reading both for those who genuinely love literature and for those who merely want to appear ridiculously well read.

Digest

Digest PDF Author: Gregory Pardlo
Publisher: Four Way Books
ISBN: 1935536818
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
From Epicurus to Sam Cooke, the Daily News to Roots, Digest draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of the world through a father's eyes and through their own.

If You’d Just Let Me Finish

If You’d Just Let Me Finish PDF Author: Jeremy Clarkson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1405939060
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Clarkson is back with a brand new book of hilarious stories and observations about our gone-wrong world. ___________ In November 2016 we woke up to the news that the forthright presenter of a popular television programme had become the most powerful man on the planet. His name, sadly, was not Jeremy Clarkson, but we might not have been any more surprised if it had been. Because the world seems to have taken a decidedly odd turn since Jeremy last reflected on the state of things between the covers of a book. But who better than JC to help us navigate our way through the mess? And while he's being trying to make sense of it all he's discovered one or two things along the way, including - The disabling effects of being vegan - How Blackpool might be improved by drilling a hole through it - The problem with meditation - A perfect location for rebuilding Palmyra - Why Tom Cruise can worship lizards if he wants to It's all been a bit unsettling. But don't worry. If You'd Just Let Me Finish is Clarkson at his best. He may be as bemused, exasperated, amused and surprised as the rest of us, but in a world gone crazy, thank God someone has still got his head screwed on ... Praise for Clarkson: 'Brilliant...laugh-out-loud' - Daily Telegraph 'Outrageously funny...will have you in stiches' - Time Out 'Very funny...I cracked up laughing on the tube' - Evening Standard

It

It PDF Author: Alexa Chung
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698406672
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Now available in paperback: musings, inspirations, and styling tips from the darling of the fashion world With influences that range from the sultry beauty of Jane Birkin to the rocker chic of Mick Jagger, it’s no wonder that everything worn by Alexa Chung instantly becomes the latest trend. Already a hugely popular television personality and a muse for Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld, Chung was also a cohost of the nightly music show Fuse News, covering the hottest acts and entertainment news. Chung’s first book, It, provides her legion of fans with a long-awaited inside look at her fascinating world. A wholly unique collection of Chung’s personal writings, drawings, and photographs, It covers everything from her candid thoughts on life, love, and music to her favorite ensembles and how to decide what to wear in the morning. With Chung’s characteristic wit, charm, and refreshingly down-to-earth attitude, this full-color compendium is a must-have for anyone who loves fashion, music, and just about everything Alexa Chung.

Religion for Atheists

Religion for Atheists PDF Author: Alain De Botton
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771025998
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
From the author of The Architecture of Happiness, a deeply moving meditation on how we can still benefit, without believing, from the wisdom, the beauty, and the consolatory power that religion has to offer. Alain de Botton was brought up in a committedly atheistic household, and though he was powerfully swayed by his parents' views, he underwent, in his mid-twenties, a crisis of faithlessness. His feelings of doubt about atheism had their origins in listening to Bach's cantatas, were further developed in the presence of certain Bellini Madonnas, and became overwhelming with an introduction to Zen architecture. However, it was not until his father's death -- buried under a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery because he had intriguingly omitted to make more secular arrangements -- that Alain began to face the full degree of his ambivalence regarding the views of religion that he had dutifully accepted. Why are we presented with the curious choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle and effective rituals and practices for which there is no equivalent in secular society? Why do we bristle at the mention of the word "morality"? Flee from the idea that art should be uplifting, or have an ethical purpose? Why don't we build temples? What mechanisms do we have for expressing gratitude? The challenge that de Botton addresses in his book: how to separate ideas and practices from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them. In Religion for Atheists is an argument to free our soul-related needs from the particular influence of religions, even if it is, paradoxically, the study of religion that will allow us to rediscover and rearticulate those needs.

An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist

An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist PDF Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448152690
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes. But what were the influences that shaped his life? And who inspired him to become the pioneering scientist and public thinker now famous (and infamous to some) around the world? In An Appetite for Wonder we join him on a personal journey from an enchanting childhood in colonial Africa, through the eccentricities of boarding school in England, to his studies at the University of Oxford’s dynamic Zoology Department, which sparked his radical new vision of Darwinism, The Selfish Gene. Through Dawkins’s honest self-reflection, touching reminiscences and witty anecdotes, we are finally able to understand the private influences that shaped the public man who, more than anyone else in his generation, explained our own origins.

Get a Life

Get a Life PDF Author: Vivienne Westwood
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
ISBN: 1782831827
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
Vivienne Westwood began Get A Life, her online diary, in 2010 with an impassioned post about Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Since then, she has written two or three entries each month, discussing her life in fashion and her involvement with art, politics and the environment. Reading Vivienne's thoughts, in her own words, is as fascinating and provocative as you would expect from Britain's punk dame - a woman who always says exactly what she believes. And what a life! One week, you might find Vivienne up the Amazon, highlighting tribal communities' struggles to maintain the rainforest; another might see her visiting Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, or driving up to David Cameron's house in the Cotswolds in a full-on tank. Then again, Vivienne might be hanging out with her friend Pamela Anderson, or in India for Naomi Campbell's birthday party, or watching Black Sabbath in Hyde Park with Sharon Osbourne. The beauty of Vivienne Westwood's diary is that it is so fresh and unpredictable. In book form, generously illustrated with her own selection of images, it is irresistible.

The Quest to Digest

The Quest to Digest PDF Author: Mary K. Corcoran
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
ISBN: 1570916640
Category : Body, Human
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
A humorous but factual look at the human digestion process.

The News

The News PDF Author: Alain De Botton
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771027699
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
From the author of The Architecture of Happiness, a thought-provoking look at the manic and peculiar position that news has achieved in our lives. What does the news do to our brains, our souls and our views of one another? We spend an inordinate amount of time checking on it. It molds how we view reality, we're increasingly addicted to it on our luminous gadgets, we check it every morning when we wake up and every evening before we sleep-and yet the news has rarely been the focus of an accessible, serious, saleable book-length study. Until now. Mixing snippets of current news with philosophical reflections, The News will blend the timeless with the contemporary, and bring the wisdom of thousands of years of culture to bear on our contemporary obsessions and neuroses. The News ranges across news categories-from politics to murders, from economics to celebrities, from the weather to paparazzi shows--in search of answers to the questions: "What do we want from this?" and "Is it doing us any good?" After The News, we'll never look at a celebrity story, the report on a tropical storm, or the sex scandal of a politician in quite the same way again.