The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle PDF Author: Jedah Mayberry
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1938416139
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
From irascible patriarch Alonzo "Grandpa Tuke" Tooker on down, the Hopkins family--altruistic Dottie, dissatisfied Chester, and their sons Langston and Trajan--are no typical residents of the Thames River Valley town of Preston, Connecticut. This is perhaps most true of Langston, a boy whose peers declare him to be the "King of Preston Plains Middle School" a vibrant young man dedicated to his dream of competing in Olympic-level Tae Kwon Do, as well as to his growing passion for his beautiful classmate Angelica Chu. Yet when a terrible accident brings Langston's Olympic dreams to an abrupt close, Trajan Hopkins, the family's youngest son, must learn to cope alone with the coming trials of adult life: his slowly changing relationship with self-destructing childhood friends, his initiation into the world of women at the hands of a former teacher, and his growing awareness of the risky world outside his family's circle within the shadow of a Haitian drug lord's operation and the often-threatening local police who watch over it. Jedah Mayberry's The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle marks the debut of a striking new voice in American fiction: intelligent, richly cadenced, slyly funny, and deeply thoughtful about what it means to be a son, a father, and a man.

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle PDF Author: Jedah Mayberry
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1938416139
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book Here

Book Description
From irascible patriarch Alonzo "Grandpa Tuke" Tooker on down, the Hopkins family--altruistic Dottie, dissatisfied Chester, and their sons Langston and Trajan--are no typical residents of the Thames River Valley town of Preston, Connecticut. This is perhaps most true of Langston, a boy whose peers declare him to be the "King of Preston Plains Middle School" a vibrant young man dedicated to his dream of competing in Olympic-level Tae Kwon Do, as well as to his growing passion for his beautiful classmate Angelica Chu. Yet when a terrible accident brings Langston's Olympic dreams to an abrupt close, Trajan Hopkins, the family's youngest son, must learn to cope alone with the coming trials of adult life: his slowly changing relationship with self-destructing childhood friends, his initiation into the world of women at the hands of a former teacher, and his growing awareness of the risky world outside his family's circle within the shadow of a Haitian drug lord's operation and the often-threatening local police who watch over it. Jedah Mayberry's The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle marks the debut of a striking new voice in American fiction: intelligent, richly cadenced, slyly funny, and deeply thoughtful about what it means to be a son, a father, and a man.

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle PDF Author: Jedah Mayberry
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1938416155
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
A lushly told reflection on a young man’s passage into manhood From irascible patriarch Alonzo “Grandpa Tuke” Tooker on down, the Hopkins family—altruistic Dottie, dissatisfied Chester, and their sons Langston and Trajan—are no typical residents of the Thames River Valley town of Preston, Connecticut. This is perhaps most true of Langston, a boy whose peers declare him to be the “King of Preston Plains Middle School”: a vibrant young man dedicated to his dream of competing in Olympic-level Tae Kwon Do, as well as to his growing passion for his beautiful classmate Angelica Chu. Yet when a terrible accident brings Langston’s Olympic dreams to an abrupt close, Trajan Hopkins, the family’s youngest son, must learn to cope alone with the coming trials of adult life: his slowly changing relationship with self-destructing childhood friends, his initiation into the world of women at the hands of a former teacher, and his growing awareness of the risky world outside his family’s circle within the shadow of a Haitian drug lord’s operation and the often-threatening local police who watch over it. Jedah Mayberry’s The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle marks the debut of a striking new voice in American fiction: intelligent, richly cadenced, slyly funny, and deeply thoughtful about what it means to be a son, a father, and a man.

Sun Is Sky

Sun Is Sky PDF Author: Kate Morrison
Publisher: Jacaranda
ISBN: 9781909762718
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Born to three generations of women burdened with heartache, can Penny finally break the cycle? Filled with heady meanderings and sultry secrets, Sun is Sky remarkably captures the spirit of a slumbering town in the Deep South of America. As a young teen, Penny's Hill's fractious relationship with her mother causes her to be shipped off to live with her maternal grandmother in the town of Picayune, Mississippi. Under her Gram's care, Penny settles into her new rural life, but soon family secrets and sudden tragedies force her to face life head on. Her beloved Gram's death shatters any illusions Penny held about her grandmother's legacy and she is left to decide whether she will accept the responsibility and step into Gram's role as the custodian of secrets for the townspeople. Navigating the trauma familial, sexual and romantic relationships can cause to individual and community psyches, and with the reckoning of many reconciliations, Penny comes to appreciate the power of self-worth, the ability it possesses to heal a person, and the extent to which we are incapacitated without it.

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching PDF Author: Mychal Denzel Smith
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568585292
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
An unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent -- for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.

A Dream About Lightning Bugs

A Dream About Lightning Bugs PDF Author: Ben Folds
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 1984817280
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the genre-defying icon Ben Folds comes a memoir that is as nuanced, witty, and relatable as his cult-classic songs. “A Dream About Lightning Bugs reads like its author: intelligent, curious, unapologetically punk, and funny as hell.”—Sara Bareilles NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND PASTE Ben Folds is a celebrated American singer-songwriter, beloved for songs such as “Brick,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” and “The Luckiest,” and is the former frontman of the alternative rock band Ben Folds Five. But Folds will be the first to tell you he’s an unconventional icon, more normcore than hardcore. Now, in his first book, Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller. In the title chapter, “A Dream About Lightning Bugs,” Folds recalls his earliest childhood dream—and realizes how much it influenced his understanding of what it means to be an artist. In “Measure Twice, Cut Once” he learns to resist the urge to skip steps during the creative process. In “Hall Pass” he recounts his 1970s North Carolina working-class childhood, and in “Cheap Lessons” he returns to the painful life lessons he learned the hard way—but that luckily didn’t kill him. In his inimitable voice, both relatable and thought-provoking, Folds digs deep into the life experiences that shaped him, imparting hard-earned wisdom about both art and life. Collectively, these stories embody the message Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you’ve got nothing to prove, because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds. Praise for A Dream About Lightning Bugs “Besides being super talented, and an incredibly poignant and multifaceted musician, Ben Folds is a fantastic author. I couldn’t put this book down—and not just because I taped it to my hand. Ben takes us into his mind and into his process from the very beginnings of his childhood to where he is today—one of the greatest musicians and writers that has ever graced the art.”—Bob Saget

Competing with Idiots

Competing with Idiots PDF Author: Nick Davis
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 140004183X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
"A dual biography of brothers Herman and Joseph Mankiewicz, each a Hollywood legend"--

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick PDF Author: David Mikics
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300255616
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
An engrossing biography of one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, a doctor’s son. From a young age he was consumed by photography, chess, and, above all else, movies. He was a self†‘taught filmmaker and self†‘proclaimed outsider, and his films exist in a unique world of their own outside the Hollywood mainstream. Kubrick’s Jewishness played a crucial role in his idea of himself as an outsider. Obsessed with rebellion against authority, war, and male violence, Kubrick was himself a calm, coolly masterful creator and a talkative, ever†‘curious polymath immersed in friends and family. Drawing on interviews and new archival material, Mikics for the first time explores the personal side of Kubrick’s films.

60 Stories About 30 Seconds

60 Stories About 30 Seconds PDF Author: Bruce Van Dusen
Publisher: Post Hill Press
ISBN: 1642934038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
1977. New York City. Cool and crime-ridden, cheap and wild. Bruce Van Dusen shows up in town with a film degree and $150 to his name. He wants to make movies. The only ones anyone will pay him to make? Little ones. Thirty seconds long. Commercials. He has no idea what he’s doing and the money sucks. But he’s a director. He gets hired by a client on life support in the most depressing hospital in New York. Gets peed on by a lion. Explains peristalsis to a Tony winner. Makes a movie and goes to Sundance. Goes back to little movies when it bombs. Keeps hustling, shooting anything. Is an a**hole, pays the price, finally learns when and how to be an a**hole and becomes one of the industry’s stars. Years go by and it’s not what he expected. It’s harder, weirder, and funnier. But it worked out. It worked out great, actually.

Kindness and Wonder

Kindness and Wonder PDF Author: Gavin Edwards
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062950754
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
A pop culture celebration of Fred Rogers and the enduring legacy of his beloved, award-winning PBS show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that offers essential wisdom to help us in our troubled times. Won’t you be my neighbor? For more than thirty years, Fred Rogers was a beloved fixture in American homes. Warm and welcoming, he spoke directly to children—and their parents—about the marvels of the world, the things that worried them, and above all, the importance of being themselves. Dressed in his cardigan and sneakers, Fred Rogers offered a wholesome message of generosity and love that changed the landscape of television and shaped a generation of children. Kindness and Wonder pays tribute to this cultural icon: the unique, gentle man who embodied the best of what we could be. Looking back at the history of the show and the creative visionary behind it, pop culture aficionado Gavin Edwards reminds us of the indelible lessons and insights that Mister Rogers conveyed—what it means to be a good person, to be open-hearted, to be thoughtful, to be curious, to be compassionate—and why they matter. Beautifully crafted, infused with Mister Rogers’ gentle spirit, and featuring dozens of interviews with people whose lives were touched by Fred Rogers—ranging from Rita Moreno to NFL Hall of Famer Lynn Swann—Kindness and Wonder is a love letter to this unforgettable cultural hero and role model, and the beautiful neighborhood he created.

Garbo

Garbo PDF Author: Robert Gottlieb
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720819
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | One of Esquire's 125 best books about Hollywood Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world’s subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world—and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed—was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe’s. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world’s most famous actress. In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world—her desperate, futile striving to be “left alone.” He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M’s early presentation of her as a “vamp”—her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed—to the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka (“Garbo Laughs!”), by way of Anna Christie (“Garbo Talks!”), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York—“a hermit about town”—and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee—were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know—and still wants to know. In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls “A Garbo Reader,” brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people’s memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere—in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures—250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots—all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went. Includes Black-and-White Photographs