Wheat That Springeth Green, J. F. Powers's beautifully realized final work, is a comic foray into the commercialized wilderness of modern American life. Its hero, Joe Hackett, is a high school track star who sets out to be a saint. But seminary life and priestly apprenticeship soon damp his ardor, and by the time he has been given a parish of his own he has traded in his hair shirt for the consolations of baseball and beer. Meanwhile Joe's higher-ups are pressing for an increase in profits from the collection plate, suburban Inglenook's biggest business wants to launch its new line of missiles with a blessing, and not all that far away, in Vietnam, a war is going on. Joe wants to duck and cover, but in the end, almost in spite of himself, he is condemned to do something right.J. F. Powers was a virtuoso of the American language with a perfect ear for the telling clich? and an unfailing eye for the kitsch that clutters up our lives. This funny and very moving... Views: 72
It's 1957 and, after the death of her husband, pianist Ilona Talivaldis and her nine-year-old daughter Zidra, travel to the remote coastal town of Jingera in New South Wales. Ilona, a concentration camp survivor from Latvia, is searching for peace and the opportunity to start anew. In her beautiful vine-covered cottage on the edge of the lagoon, she has plans to set herself up as a piano teacher. The weeks pass, and slowly mother and daughter get to know the townsfolk - including kind-hearted butcher George Cadwallader, who is forever gazing at the stars; his son, Jim, a boy wise beyond his years; Peter Vincent, former wartime pilot and prisoner-of-war; and Cherry Bates, the publican's wife who is about to make a horrifying discovery... For Jingera is not quite the utopia Ilona imagines it to be - and at risk is the one thing Ilona holds dear... Views: 66
Like Sherlock Holmes' dog in the night time, sometimes the true significance of things lies in their absence. Rick Gekoski tells the very human stories that lie behind some of the greatest losses to artistic culture - and addresses the questions such disappearances raise. Some of the items are stolen (the Mona Lisa), some destroyed (like Philip Larkin's diaries) and some were lost before they even existed, like the career of the brilliant art deco architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which floundered amid a lack of cash - but behind all of them lies an often surprising story which reveals a lot about what art means to us. Gekoski explores the greater questions these tremendous losses raise - such as the rights artists and authors have over their own work, the importance of the search for perfection in creativity, and what motivated people to queue to see the empty space where the Mona Lisa once hung in the Louvre. Views: 64
Homunculus is a collection of 16 fairy tales for adults, with something for every reader. The author has largely retained the classical fairy-tale structure with its elements of surprise and the constant intertwining of the real and unreal, but he transcends the sugarsweet endings we are familiar with. Along with typical fairy-tale features like the interplay of humans and animals, he presents us with a wide range of more mature themes—the erotic, the tragic, the absurd—set amidst dichotomies on an adult wavelength: mythical vs. urban, banality vs. wisdom, as well as issues of guilt and longing. Some of the stories are related to existing internationally known fairy tales such as "Tom Thumb," where the main character struggles with an oedipal bond with his mother, or "The Huntsman," told from the perspective of the hunter sent out to kill Snow White. Others go back to Macedonian folk roots or have been freely composed by Prokopiev himself, but all of them are... Views: 63
A heart-breaking novel of family and friendships, from the author of Stillwater Creek.It is the spring of 1961, and the sleepy little town of Jingera is at its most perfect with its clear blue skies, pounding surf and breath-taking lagoon. Yet all is not so perfect behind closed doors. George Cadwallader - butcher by day and star-gazer by night - is loved by everyone, except his wife. He only wants the best for his family - yet it's all falling apart. Philip Chapman is a sensitive young boy, a musical prodigy - and a target for bullies. But with his wealthy parents indifferent to his cries for help, his entire future is at risk... Then there's Ilona Vincent and her daughter Zidra, former refugees, now fully-fledged 'Jingeroids'. When a voice from the past reaches out to them, they're soon in a race against time to reunite a family that has been cruelly torn apart... Once again weaving together the enchanting stories of Jingera and its townsfolk, Alison Booth offers up a... Views: 62
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. Groucho MarxOutside of a Dog is the captivating account of twenty-five books drawn from the fields of literature, psychology and philosophy, and a memoir of a reading self.Tracing the formative role books have played in his life, Rick Gekoski trains the same ironic and analytic eye on these books and their authors as he does on himself. The result is unique: a sustained, witty book dedicated to the proposition that we are what we read. Outside of A Dog might be described as an intellectual bibliomemoir, except that the author regards the noun 'intellectual' as a term of abuse.Gekoski's twenty-five include: Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg; Magnus Hirschfeld Sexual Anomalies and Perversions; Allen Ginsberg, Howl; J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Descartes,... Views: 61
Purchase one of 1st World Library\'s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Captain Luke Chilton counted over the five-dollar notes with a greater care than I thought was necessary, considering that there were only ten of them; and cautiously examined each separate one, as though he feared that I might be trying to pay for my passage in bad money. His show of distrust set my back up, and I came near to damning him right out for his impu-dence - until I reflected that a West Coast trader must pretty well divide his time between cheating people and seeing to it that he isn\'t cheated, and so held my tongue. Views: 60
A sparkling and eye-opening history of the Broadway musical that changed the worldIn the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark.In a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. It is a story of the theater, following Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last big book musicals, and his ultimate destination—a major Hollywood picture.Solomon reveals how the show spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires of its time: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past, whether in Warsaw, where it unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a story that is “so Japanese.”Rich, entertaining, and original, Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising and enduring legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition.** Views: 59
Product DescriptionWilliam Hulbert Footner (1879-1944) was a Canadian writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. His first published works were travelogues of canoe trips on the Hudson River and in the Northwest Territory along the Peace River, Hay River and Fraser River. He also wrote a series of northwest adventures during the period 1911 through 1920, including The Sealed Valley (1914) and The Fur Bringers (1920). About 1920 Footner began to write detective fiction. His first series detective character was Madame Rosika Storey. Footner's other series detective is Amos Lee Mappin, a successful, middle aged mystery writer whose crimes tend to occur in New York's cafe society. Mappin is unusual in that his "Watson" (at least in some of his tales) is a young woman, his secretary Fanny Parran. She is one of the few female "Watsons" in fiction, an example of how female-oriented Footner's fiction is. Amongst his other works are: Two on the Trail (1911), New Rivers of the North (1912), Jack Chanty (1913), The Huntress (1917), Thieve's Wit (1918), The Substitute Millionaire (1919), The Fur Bringers: A Story of the Canadian Northwest (1920) and The Owl Taxi (1921). Views: 55
Most of the things Pillow really liked to do were obviously morally wrong. He wasn't an idiot; clearly it was wrong to punch people in the face for money. But there had been an art to it, and it had been thrilling and thoughtful for him. The zoo was also evil, a jail for animals who'd committed no crimes, but he just loved it. The way Pillow figured it, love wasn't about goodness, it wasn't about being right, loving the very best person, or having the most ethical fun. Love was about being alone and making some decisions.Pillow loves animals. Especially the exotic ones. Which is why he chooses the zoo for the drug runs he does as a low-level enforcer for a crime syndicate run by André Breton. He doesn't love his life of crime, but he isn't cut out for much else, what with all the punches to the head he took as a professional boxer. And now that he's accidentally but sort-of happily knocked up his neighbor, he wants to get out and go straight. But first there's the... Views: 52
A spiritual journey through history and lifeFollowing in the footsteps of Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda, Mphuthumi Ntabeni's writing in The Broken River Tent brings to life what James Baldwin said when he wrote that the responsibility of the writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.'I am gathering the wind from the four corners of the earth. Before my body became the property of maggots, I had no wisdom in me. But when I joined the ancestors, wisdom became my companion. I have come to you as a friend, and a guide for your thoughts ... My duty is to teach you the message I denied with my own life on earth. I have been a man of misfortunes. Yet my heart is not bitter. And that, I carry to Qamata as my prize.'The story is told through the eyes of a young Xhosa man, Phila, who, after being under immense mental and emotional pressure in the pursuit of his history and the history of his people, enters a sacred space of intense spiritual recognition between... Views: 45
Land of No Rain takes place in Hamiya, a fictional Arab country run by military commanders who treat power as a personal possession to be handed down from one generation to the next. The main character was forced into exile from Hamiya twenty years earlier for taking part in a failed assassination attempt on the military ruler known as the Grandson. On his return to his homeland, he encounters family, childhood friends, former comrades and his first love, but most importantly he grapples with his own self, the person he left behind. Land of No Rain is a complex and mysterious story of the hardship of exile and the difficulty of return. Views: 45
