The Vice of Reading

The Vice of Reading PDF Author: Edith Wharton
Publisher: Eris
ISBN: 9781912475773
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"No vices are so hard to eradicate as those which are popularly regarded as virtues. Among these the vice of reading is foremost." A great American novelist offers a scathing attack on the worst kinds of reading. Edith Wharton argues that the growing cultural influence of "mechanical" readers is having a disastrous impact on the world of letters. A subtly devastating work of social criticism, The Vice of Reading is also a celebration of the voracious and amoral consumption that marks out the very best readers. Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.

The Vice of Reading

The Vice of Reading PDF Author: Edith Wharton
Publisher: Eris
ISBN: 9781912475773
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"No vices are so hard to eradicate as those which are popularly regarded as virtues. Among these the vice of reading is foremost." A great American novelist offers a scathing attack on the worst kinds of reading. Edith Wharton argues that the growing cultural influence of "mechanical" readers is having a disastrous impact on the world of letters. A subtly devastating work of social criticism, The Vice of Reading is also a celebration of the voracious and amoral consumption that marks out the very best readers. Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.

The Solitary Vice

The Solitary Vice PDF Author: Mikita Brottman
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458759199
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The Solitary Vice will make you rethink your own relation to reading. Brottman is wonderful at reminding us what a very complicated act - of fantasy, recompense, adventurism and (sometimes) perversity - reading a book can be....

The Unpunished Vice

The Unpunished Vice PDF Author: Edmund White
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635571189
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A new memoir from acclaimed author Edmund White about his life as a reader. Literary icon Edmund White made his name through his writing but remembers his life through the books he has read. For White, each momentous occasion came with a book to match: Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, which opened up the seemingly closed world of homosexuality while he was at boarding school in Michigan; the Ezra Pound poems adored by a lover he followed to New York; the biography of Stephen Crane that inspired one of White's novels. But it wasn't until heart surgery in 2014, when he temporarily lost his desire to read, that White realized the key role that reading played in his life: forming his tastes, shaping his memories, and amusing him through the best and worst life had to offer. Blending memoir and literary criticism, The Unpunished Vice is a compendium of all the ways reading has shaped White's life and work. His larger-than-life presence on the literary scene lends itself to fascinating, intimate insights into the lives of some of the world's best-loved cultural figures. With characteristic wit and candor, he recalls reading Henry James to Peggy Guggenheim in her private gondola in Venice and phone calls at eight o'clock in the morning to Vladimir Nabokov--who once said that White was his favorite American writer. Featuring writing that has appeared in the New York Review of Books and the Paris Review, among others, The Unpunished Vice is a wickedly smart and insightful account of a life in literature.

On Reading Well

On Reading Well PDF Author: Karen Swallow Prior
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1493415468
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
★ Publishers Weekly starred review A Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers Weekly Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken. The hardcover edition was named a Best Book of 2018 in Religion by Publishers Weekly. "[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Great Mental Models, Volume 1

The Great Mental Models, Volume 1 PDF Author: Shane Parrish
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593719972
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

How to Sell

How to Sell PDF Author: Clancy Martin
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429989602
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Bobby Clark is just sixteen when he drops out of school to follow his big brother, Jim, into the jewelry business. Bobby idolizes Jim and is in awe of Jim's girlfriend, Lisa, the best saleswoman at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. What follows is the story of a young man's education in two of the oldest human passions, love and money. Through a dark, sharp lens, Clancy Martin captures the luxury business in all its exquisite vulgarity and outrageous fraud, finding in the diamond-and-watch trade a metaphor for the American soul at work.

In Praise of Reading and Fiction

In Praise of Reading and Fiction PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429930780
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
On December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lLecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute—the foundation of the human condition—and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."

How to Read Now

How to Read Now PDF Author: Elaine Castillo
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593489632
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
“How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories.” “A book that doesn’t seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up.” (The New York Times Book Review) Offering “its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we’re all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity — a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return." (Los Angeles Times) "I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed while reading these essays from the phenomenal Elaine Castillo. What powerful writing, what a rigorous mind. For as long as I live, I want to read anything Castillo writes, and you probably do, too." —R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words—beautiful, aspirational—are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, “she moves to wrest reading away from the cotton-candy aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work.” (Vulture) How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico. At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman’s reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy—within ourselves, and with each other.

The Vice

The Vice PDF Author: Jennifer R. Jensen
Publisher: Jennifer R. Jensen
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
When Harper Jones was 20, she lost not only her plans for the future but her ambition for it as well. Now, at 28, her life is spiraling out of control—torn apart by lies, meaningless sex, and excessive drinking. She faces a critical choice: let the chaos consume her or fight for the second chance she never thought possible. A glimmer of hope emerges through a former flame, the one person who was part of that failed future. But to reclaim that love and rebuild her life, Harper must confront the lies she’s been hiding behind, or risk losing him all over again—this time, for good. Her best friend, the one person who has stood by her through it all, is also caught in the crossfire. Harper’s deception threatens to destroy their bond, leaving her truly alone. Will Harper find the strength to confront her darkest truths and salvage the relationships that matter most, or will the ghosts of her past keep her trapped forever? In this gripping tale of heartbreak, resilience, and redemption, Harper's journey reveals that the toughest battles are often fought within—and that true love and friendship may be worth facing your darkest fears.

The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse

The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse PDF Author: Lonely Christopher
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1936070804
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Two boys lie on a bed, one of them is already dead; they listen to Glenn Gould playing Bach and talk about suicide and love. A lonely narrator mourns the end of a relationship and the disappearance of a mysterious object as a frustrated artist jumps out of a moving car on his birthday and runs for the last street lamp in the universe. The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse, a radical map of shortcomings in daily experiences in the form of a debut story collection, presents thematically related windows into serious emotional trouble and monstrous love.