Animal Truth and Other Stories

Animal Truth and Other Stories PDF Author: Sharona Muir
Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
ISBN: 1608012395
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
In Sharona Muir’s unique eco-fabulist tales, fantastic animals and real science lead people through adventure and crisis to metamorphoses of the heart, and surprising truths about being human in the living system. In “Menu: Extinction”, an artist obsessed with the mass extinction of species creates a “banquet” installation in which a mermaid is served as a dish, while the banquet’s imaginary, satanic chef stalks his wife. In “Animal Truth,” a fiercely independent woman researching the genome of a mysterious fish discovers that her lover-collaborator is her own son, given away at birth, and wrestles with the meanings of truth and motherhood. A time travelling billionaire escaping the complexities of contemporary life, in “The Bath of Venus,” has his heart broken by a beautiful creature in Earth’s remote past. Each of these stories spins into gold the prickling straw of contemporary anxieties about our continued life on the planet. By turns playful, terrifying, haunting, and sensuous, the stories in this collection inspire wonder at the interwoven lives of human and nonhuman beings. They are both madly inventive and scientifically literate, and (to cite Anthony Doerr’s praise for her work) “absolutely original.”

Animal Truth and Other Stories

Animal Truth and Other Stories PDF Author: Sharona Muir
Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
ISBN: 1608012395
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Sharona Muir’s unique eco-fabulist tales, fantastic animals and real science lead people through adventure and crisis to metamorphoses of the heart, and surprising truths about being human in the living system. In “Menu: Extinction”, an artist obsessed with the mass extinction of species creates a “banquet” installation in which a mermaid is served as a dish, while the banquet’s imaginary, satanic chef stalks his wife. In “Animal Truth,” a fiercely independent woman researching the genome of a mysterious fish discovers that her lover-collaborator is her own son, given away at birth, and wrestles with the meanings of truth and motherhood. A time travelling billionaire escaping the complexities of contemporary life, in “The Bath of Venus,” has his heart broken by a beautiful creature in Earth’s remote past. Each of these stories spins into gold the prickling straw of contemporary anxieties about our continued life on the planet. By turns playful, terrifying, haunting, and sensuous, the stories in this collection inspire wonder at the interwoven lives of human and nonhuman beings. They are both madly inventive and scientifically literate, and (to cite Anthony Doerr’s praise for her work) “absolutely original.”

The Truth and Other Stories

The Truth and Other Stories PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262366657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English. Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought provoking and scathingly funny. Written from 1956 to 1993, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, "The Truth," a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; "The Journal" appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in "An Enigma," beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer that can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.

The Truth About Animals

The Truth About Animals PDF Author: Lucy Cooke
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465094651
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Mary Roach meets Bill Bryson in this "surefire summer winner" (Janet Maslin, New York Times), an uproarious tour of the basest instincts and biggest mysteries of the animal world Humans have gone to the Moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it comes to understanding animals, we've still got a long way to go. Whether we're seeing a viral video of romping baby pandas or a picture of penguins "holding hands," it's hard for us not to project our own values -- innocence, fidelity, temperance, hard work -- onto animals. So you've probably never considered if moose get drunk, penguins cheat on their mates, or worker ants lay about. They do -- and that's just for starters. In The Truth About Animals, Lucy Cooke takes us on a worldwide journey to meet everyone from a Colombian hippo castrator to a Chinese panda porn peddler, all to lay bare the secret -- and often hilarious -- habits of the animal kingdom. Charming and at times downright weird, this modern bestiary is perfect for anyone who has ever suspected that virtue might be unnatural.

The Truth About Bears

The Truth About Bears PDF Author: Maxwell Eaton, III
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
ISBN: 1250306221
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Maxwell Eaton III's The Truth About Bears is a lighthearted nonfiction picture book, filled with useful facts about bears that will make you laugh so hard you won’t even realize you’re learning something!

Snowball's Chance

Snowball's Chance PDF Author: John Reed
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612191266
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
This unauthorized companion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a controversial parable about September 11th by one of fiction’s most inventive and provocative writers Written in 14 days shortly after the September 11th attacks, Snowball’s Chance is an outrageous and unauthorized companion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which exiled pig Snowball returns to the farm, takes charge, and implements a new world order of untrammeled capitalism. Orwell’s “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” has morphed into the new rallying cry: “All animals are born equal—what they become is their own affair.” A brilliant political satire and literary parody, John Reed’s Snowball’s Chance caused an uproar on publication in 2002, denounced by Christopher Hitchens, and barely dodging a lawsuit from the Orwell estate. Now, a decade later, with America in wars on many fronts, readers can judge anew the visionary truth of Reed’s satirical masterpiece.

The Storytelling Animal

The Storytelling Animal PDF Author: Jonathan Gottschall
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547391404
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
A provocative scholar delivers the first book on the new science of storytelling: the latest thinking on why we tell stories and what stories reveal about human nature.

Eleanor the Hippo Learns to Tell the Truth

Eleanor the Hippo Learns to Tell the Truth PDF Author: Andy McGuire
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780736926652
Category : Hippopotamus
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Eleanor has a habit of making up stories about the other jungle residents until one day when her lies get her into trouble with the king.

The Hills Remember

The Hills Remember PDF Author: James Still
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813139716
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
James Still remains one of the most beloved and important writers in Appalachian literature. Best known for his acclaimed novel River of Earth (1940), the Alabama native and adopted Kentuckian left an enduring legacy of novels, stories, and poems during his nearly seventy year career. The Hills Remember: The Complete Short Stories of James Still honors the late writer by collecting all of Still's short stories, including his stories from On Troublesome Creek (1941), Pattern of a Man and Other Stories (1976), and The Run for the Elbertas (1980), as well as twelve prose pieces originally published as short stories and later incorporated into River of Earth. Also included are several lesser-known stories and ten never-before-published stories. Recognized as a significant writer of short fiction in his day -- many of his stories initially appeared in The Atlantic and The Saturday Evening Post and were included in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories and The Best American Short Stories collections -- Still's short stories, while often overshadowed in recent years by his novels and poetry, are among his most enduring literary works. Editor Ted Olson offers a reassessment of Still's short fiction within the contexts of the author's body of work and within Appalachian and American literature. Compiling all of James Still's compelling and varied short stories into one volume, The Hills Remember is a testament to a master writer.

Nabokov's Butterfly and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books

Nabokov's Butterfly and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books PDF Author: R. A. Gekoski
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780786714520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A collector of rare books shares his personal experiences with twenty important volumes and other literary items, including a signed copy of Sylvia Plath's The Colossus, a copy of Nabokov's Lolita from Graham Greene, and the sale of J. R. R. Tolkien's college gown.

Fado and Other Stories

Fado and Other Stories PDF Author: Katherine Vaz
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822978849
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
• Winner of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize This collection is filled with narrative and character grounded in the meaning and value the earth gives to human existence. In one story, a woman sleeps with the village priest, trying to gain back the land the church took from her family; in another, relatives in the Azores fight over a plot of land owned by their expatriate American cousin. Even apparently small images are cast in terms of the earth: Milton, one narrator explains, has made apples the object of a misunderstanding by naming them as Eden's fruit: "In the Bible, no fruit is named in the Garden of Eden - and to this day apples are misunderstood. They were trying to tempt people not into sin but into listening to the earth more closely. . . . their white meal runs wet with the knowledge of the language of the land, but people do not listen."Vaz's beautiful, intensely conscious language often delicately slips her stories into the realm of the fado, the Portuguese song about fate and longing. "Listen for the nightingale that presses its breast against the thorns of the rose," on character sings, "that the song might be more beautiful." Such a verse might describe Vaz's own motive behind her willingness to confront her subject's ambiguities and her characters' conflicts - the simultaneous joy and sorrow of some of life's discoveries, the pain sometimes hidden within passion and pleasure.