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› Find signed collectible books: 'Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay'
Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age.
But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways.
More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. --Mary Park [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity'
With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.
This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe, and has, in the four years since its publication, spawned a remarkable number of support groups for artists dedicated to practicing the exercises it contains. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beyond the Words: The Three Untapped Sources of Creative Fulfillment for Writers'
Much attention has been paid by experts to the raw creative process. But, says Bonni Goldberg, to be fulfilled as a writer, you have to do more than write. How do you get ideas? How do you shape those ideas as creatively as possible? And how can you share your work with others once you've created it? The answers to these questions can be found in three key aspects of writing that often get short shrift:
* Percolation: what takes place before a first draft is written;
* Revision: the writer's role after the initial draft; and
* Going Public: the writer's mission once the writing is done.
In Beyond the Words, Goldberg presents anecdotes, essays, examples, and exercises to help writers realize and maintain balance, flow, and health in their work by being mindful of the whole writing process. Supplying tools for invoking maximum creativity through and beyond a first draft, she offers motives, options, and encouragement to help writers become more passionate and grounded in their writing lives. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life'
Think you've got a book inside of you? Anne Lamott isn't afraid to help you let it out. She'll help you find your passion and your voice, beginning from the first really crummy draft to the peculiar letdown of publication. Readers will be reminded of the energizing books of writer Natalie Goldberg and will be seduced by Lamott's witty take on the reality of a writer's life, which has little to do with literary parties and a lot to do with jealousy, writer's block and going for broke with each paragraph. Marvelously wise and best of all, great reading. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Blind Assassin'
Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling new novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist. For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin , she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a- novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin , it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience. The novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace. As everything comes together, readers will discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what it seems to be--but, in fact, much more. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale , it is destined to become a classic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book Of J'
Scholars agree that the first strand in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers was written by an author whom they call J, who lived in the tenth century before Christ.
In The Book of J, accompanying David Rosenberg's startling new translation, America's greatest literary critic, Harold Bloom, asserts that J was a writer of the stature of Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy and puts forth the revolutionary idea that J was very likely a woman.
J was a genius with unmatched powers of irony and characterization, as shown in her unforgettable and very human portraits of Abram and Sarai, Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph, Tamar, and Moses -- and, above all, God, or Yahweh. The Book of F reclaims the Bible's first and greatest author and presents us with the full grandeur of her creation. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of J'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Booknotes: America's Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas'
Brian Lamb is the most self-effacing man on television. So, all the questions he asks on his C-SPAN history, politics, and public policy author-interview show, Booknotes, are focused on the book and author at hand. What a concept! As a result, this collection of the show's interviews since its inception in 1989 (divided into "Storytellers," "Reporters," and "Leaders"--the latter including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher) is a treasure trove. Where else could you learn that presidential historian Forrest McDonald writes in the nude? Or that New York Times reporter Malcolm Browne started out as a chemist but left the profession after he accidentally blew up his laboratory? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cayman Islands: The Beach & Beyond'
From the author of the critically acclaimed "The Handmaid's Tale" comes this 2000 novel-within-a-novel centering on entangled relationships in 1930s-40s Ontario, Canada. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Changes for Kit: A Winter Story, 1934'
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What can we say? This weighty tome is the essential reference for all who work with words--writers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, publishers, and students. Discover who Ibid is, how to deftly avoid the split infinitive, and how to format your manuscripts to impress any professor or editor (no, putting it in a blue plastic folder is just not enough). [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Chicago Manual of Style: For Authors, Editors, and Copywriters'
Writers Style Manual Grammar Check Guide- For English Majors and Wordsmith's this book is the magic spell put on an author's works. Here's your Charm- it weighs only 3lbs. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creative Writing'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death & the Penguin'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death and the Penguin'
The publication of Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov's debut novel, heralds a unique new voice in post-soviet satire. Set in the Ukraine in the years immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this dark, deadpan tale chronicles the journalistic career of Victor, who shares a flat with Misha, his depressed Penguin, rescued from the under-funded zoo in Kiev. Victor is asked to write obelisks, obituaries, for a prominent city paper about notable figures in the community, and quickly transforms himself from struggling writer to wealthy journalist. It soon becomes apparent that there is a more sinister motive at play, and Victor finds himself descending in a Kafkaesque realm of suspicion and unease.
This strange, thoughtful and gentle novel will leave the reader satisfied and perplexed at its conclusion. Kurkov seems to question whether Victor or the Penguin is lonelier and more out of place in his environment. The Death in the title is ever present, though not in an oppressive way, but this also makes one want to question Victor's belief that a long hard life is better than a quick death. Many comparisons will undoubtedly be made between Kurkov's novel and the writing of other authors from the former Soviet republics to make it to print in the United Kingdom. Certainly it's fair to say that this belongs to the tradition of Russian satire made well known in this country by writers such as Mikhail Bulgakov and Venedikt Yarofeev. It is also interesting to read this alongside the works of contemporaries such as Evgenev Popov and Viktor Pelevin. However, where Pelevin drifts off into the fantastical and esoteric, Kurkov keeps it deadpan and very real. It is important to remember that many of the strange events that occur in this book are grounded in fact: amals really were given away by Kiev zoo--truth is often stranger than fiction. --Iain Robinson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Degre Zero De L.Ecriture'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Disappointment Artist: and Other Essays'
In a volume he describes as a series of covert and no-so-covert autobiographical pieces, Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsessionin his case, with examples as diverse as western films, comic books, the music of Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these voyages out from himself have led him homehome to his father's life as a painter, and to the source of his beginnings as a writer. THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST is a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Lethems richly imaginative, searingly honest perspective on life as a human creature in the jungle of culture at the end of the twentieth century.
From a confession of the sadness of a Star Wars nerd to an investigation into the legacy of a would-be literary titan, Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In The Disappointment Artist, a letter from his aunt, a childrens book author, spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In Defending The Searchers Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In Identifying with Your Parents, an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generations cultural artifacts. And 13/1977/21, which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty-one times, slipping past ushers whod begun to recognize me . . . occult as a porn customer, becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary movie-goer.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST confirms Lethem's unique ability to illuminate the way life, his and ours, can be read between the lines of art and culture.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elements of Style'
Every English-language writer knows Strunk and White's famous little writing manual, The Elements of Style. Many people between the ages of seventeen and seventy can recite the book's mantramake every word telland still refer to their tattered grade school copy when in need of a hint on how to make a turn of phrase clearer, or a reminder on how to enliven prose with the active voice. Considering that millions of copies have been sold to millions of devotees, you might not think to ask what could enhance this (almost) perfect classic. In fact, the addition of illustrations allows readers to experience the book's contents in a completely new way, making the whole learning experience more colorful and clear, as well as adding a whimsical element that compliments the subtly humorous tone of the prose. The Elements of Style Illustrated will come to be known as the definitive, must-have edition.
Maira Kalman is the offbeat and wildly talented illustrator of twelve children's books, numerous covers for The New Yorker magazine, fabrics for the fashion designers Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade, watches and accessories for the Museum of Modern Art, and a mural at the elegant Wavehill estate in Riverdale, among other projects. Her sophisticated and witty images that are yet bright and fanciful have won her a devoted following, especially among young urbanites. Maira Kalman is acknowledged by the E. B. White estate as the single artist trusted to illustrate the revered The Elements of Style.
The Elements of Style Illustrated brings a fresh immediacy to the well-loved, much-valued, and still on-point work that has become an institution. While giving the classic work a jolt of new energy to appeal to contemporary readers, Kalman's illustrations are themselves timeless, designed to sit alongside the ever-enduring manual for another fifty years and more.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'End of I'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Faith of a Writer'
A tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of our most distinguished writers, providing valuable insight into her inspiration and her method
Joyce Carol Oates is widely regarded as one of America's greatest contemporary literary figures. Having written in a number of genres -- prose, poetry, personal and critical essays, as well as plays -- she is an artist ideally suited to answer essential questions about what makes a story striking, a novel come alive, a writer an artist as well as a craftsman.
In The Faith of a Writer, Oates discusses the subjects most important to the narrative craft, touching on topics such as inspiration, memory, self-criticism, and "the unique power of the unconscious." On a more personal note, she speaks of childhood inspirations, offers advice to young writers, and discusses the wildly varying states of mind of a writer at work. Oates also pays homage to those she calls her "significant predecessors" and discusses the importance of reading in the life of a writer.
Oates claims, "Inspiration and energy and even genius are rarely enough to make 'art': for prose fiction is also a craft, and craft must be learned, whether by accident or design." In fourteen succinct chapters, The Faith of a Writer provides valuable lessons on how language, ideas, and experience are assembled to create art.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First Five Pages: A Writers Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile'
The difference between The First Five Pages and most books on writing is that the others are written by teachers and writers. This one comes from a literary agent--one whose clients include Pulitzer Prize nominees, New York Times bestselling authors, Pushcart Prize recipients, and American Book Award winners. Noah Lukeman is not trying to impart the finer points of writing well. He wants to teach you "how to identify and avoid bad writing," so that your manuscript doesn't come boomeranging back to you in that self-addressed, stamped envelope. Surprise: Agents and editors don't read manuscripts for fun; they are looking for reasons to reject them. Lukeman has arranged his book "in the order of what I look for when trying to dismiss a manuscript," starting with presentation and concluding with pacing and progression. Each chapter addresses a pitfall of poor writing--overabundance of adjectives and adverbs, tedious or unrealistic dialogue, and lack of subtlety to name just a few--by identifying the problem, presenting solutions, giving examples (one wishes these weren't quite so obvious), and offering writing exercises. It's a little bizarre to think about approaching your work as would an agent, but if you are serious about getting published, you may as well get used to it. Plus, Lukeman has plenty of solid advice worth listening to. Particularly fine are his exercises for removing and spicing up modifiers and his remedies for all kinds of faulty dialogue. --Jane Steinberg [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Holy Places & Temples of India'
India has a vast array of cultures, religions and interests. But many people miss the real meaning and value of India-the spiritual side. This is not due to a lack of interest, but because it is difficult to find an easily understandable book on this subject. This book is different. It goes deeper into the heart of India-its spiritual side. What yogis and ascetics have been realizing for centuries. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Read/Write a Dirty Story'
Susie Bright, the best-selling editor and founder of The Best American Erotica series, has finally written the complete guide for people who like to read, write, publish, and think about sex. With her impeccable credentials in the field of sexual social studies and literature, (The Boston Phoenix) Bright offers the ultimate manifesto for the erotic literati. For Erotic Writers:
What is Your Sexual Story?
Creating Sexual Characters
Steamy Plots
How to Mix Sex with Other Genres
Up-to-Date Resources for Erotic Authors For Erotic Readers:
Is This is a Stroke Book, or is This Art?
The Erotic Readers Bill of Rights
The Good Parts
Susies Erotic Reference Library For Erotic Thinkers:
Is Writing Sex Better than Having Sex?
The Similarities Between Erotica and Pornography
Sex and Violence
Erotic Burn-out For Erotic Publishers:
A Devils Argument Against Publishing
Finding the Perfect Editor
Money Money Money
Big-Time, Small Press, and Internet Publishing
Fan Clubs, Book Tours, and Book Reviews With candor and humor, Bright tells her own explicit adventures in erotic publishing, from the creative inspiration to the nitty-gritty economics. She offers provocative exercises for writers and readers alike to hone their writing and critical skills, as well as opening up the whole treasure chest of erotic literature and history. Heres a guide that will teach you not only how to read and write a dirty story, but also how to recognize the most powerful insights of the erotica experience. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Write: Advice and Reflections'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy'
You've always dreamed of writing science fiction and fantasy tales that pull readers into extraordinary new worlds and fantastic conflicts. Best-selling author Orson Scott Card shows you how it's done, distilling years of writing experience and publishing success into concise, no-nonsense advice. You'll learn how to:
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Capture the Castle'
Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain wants to become a writer. Trouble is, she's the daughter of a once-famous author with a severe case of writer's block. Her family--beautiful sister Rose, brooding father James, ethereal stepmother Topaz--is barely scraping by in a crumbling English castle they leased when times were good. Now there's very little furniture, hardly any food, and just a few pages of notebook paper left to write on. Bravely making the best of things, Cassandra gets hold of a journal and begins her literary apprenticeship by refusing to face the facts. She writes, "I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic, two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud."
Rose longs for suitors and new tea dresses while Cassandra scorns romance: "I know all about the facts of life. And I don't think much of them." But romantic isolation comes to an end both for the family and for Cassandra's heart when the wealthy, adventurous Cotton family takes over the nearby estate. Cassandra is a witty, pensive, observant heroine, just the right voice for chronicling the perilous cusp of adulthood. Some people have compared I Capture the Castle to the novels of Jane Austen, and it's just as well-plotted and witty. But the Mortmains are more bohemian--as much like the Addams Family as like any of Austen's characters. Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations, wrote this novel in 1948. And though the story is set in the 1930s, it still feels fresh, and well deserves its reputation as a modern classic. --Maria Dolan [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'If You Can Talk You Can Write'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Insider's Guide To Getting An Agent'
Very little of The Insider's Guide to Getting an Agent is devoted to getting an agent. A more apt title would have been Your Agent: A User's Manual. It's common knowledge that, as author Lori Perkins states here, "The essential task of agenting is matchmaking between editors and authors." We know as well that agents spend all day on the phone (minus two hours for lunch) and all evening poring over proposals and manuscripts. But there are questions about agentdom that beg to be answered: Is an agent a salesperson, editor, legal advisor, or all of the above? What goes on during those mysterious agent-editor lunches? How can you help your agent help you? And what exactly are all those rights and options that your agent is busy negotiating for you? Perkins uses her 15 years of experience as a literary agent to answer these and other ponderables.
At bottom, though, an agent, she quotes author Robert Weinberg here as saying, should be like "a good Jewish mother.... Pushy, annoying, constantly questioning, and wanting the very best for you." And a writer, Perkins reminds us, should let her writing do the talking. "While I remember getting a query with a blood-dripping plastic axe," she cautions, "I don't remember the book." Finally, in case you think all those New York agents are just a bunch of heartless dealmakers, guess again. "There is no bigger accomplishment," says Perkins, "than seeing one of the books that I have sold in a bookstore or in the hands of someone reading it on the subway." --Jane Steinberg [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Joint Ventures: Authorship, Translation, Plagiarism'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Women'
- Beautifully illustrated in colour by well-known artists such as Quentin Blake and Michael Foreman.- Complete and unabridged editions.- Available individually at only $6.95 in paperback. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Women and Good Wives'
Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community, Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Lawrence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever. Good Wives takes up the story of the March sisters, some three years later, when, as young adults, they must face up to the inevitable trials and traumas of everyday life in their search for individual happiness. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Women, Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy'
Uniquely designed, this 6" X 9" deluxe edition of Signature Classics features a padded leatherette casing enhanced by gold gilding on all three sides. Highlighted by a full color picture insert on the cover surrounded by gold foil stamping, this series is sure to become a collectable. A standard Jacketed Edition is also available. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Love Me'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers'
As Carolyn See says, writing guides are like preachers on Sundaythere may be a lot of them, but you cant have too many, and theres always an audience of the faithful. And while Making a Literary Life is ostensibly a book that teaches you how to write, it really teaches you how to make your interior life into your exterior life, how to find and join that community of like-minded souls youre sure is out there somewhere.
Carolyn See distills a lifetime of experience as novelist, memoirist, critic, and creative-writing professor into this marvelously engaging how-to book. Partly the nuts and bolts of writing (plot, point of view, character, voice) and partly an inspirational guide to living the life you dream of, Making a Literary Life takes you from the decision to become a writer to three months after the publication of your first book. A combination of writing and life strategies (do not tell everyone around you how you yearn to be a writer; send a charming note to someone you admire in the industry five days a week, every week, for the rest of your life; find the perfect characters right in front of you), Making a Literary Life is for people not usually considered part of the literary loop: the nonEast Coasters, the secret scribblers.
With sagacity, a magical sense of humor, and an abiding belief in the possibilities offered to ordinary people living ordinary lives, Carolyn See has summed up her lifes work in a book so beguiling, irreverent, and giddily inspiring that you wont even realize its changing your life until it already has. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mujercitas / Little Women'
Readers will take pleasure in discovering the classics through these beautifully packaged and affordably priced editions of famous works of literature from all over the world. A variety of periods, themes, and authors are represented.
Los lectores tomarán un gran placer en descubrir los clásicos por estas bellas y económicas ediciones de literatura famosa y universal. Se representa una variedad de épocas, temas, y autores. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On Writing'
Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're right there with the young author as he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls locker room. He crumpled it up, but his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing."
King also evokes his college days and his recovery from the van crash that nearly killed him, but the focus is always on what it all means to the craft. He gives you a whole writer's "tool kit": a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, and nuts-and-bolts advice on dollars and cents, plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph, and literary models. He shows what you can learn from H.P. Lovecraft's arcane vocabulary, Hemingway's leanness, Grisham's authenticity, Richard Dooling's artful obscenity, Jonathan Kellerman's sentence fragments. He explains why Hart's War is a great story marred by a tin ear for dialogue, and how Elmore Leonard's Be Cool could be the antidote.
King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher. --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Page After Page: Discover the confidence & passion you need to start writing & keep writing (no matter what)'
False starts. Self-doubt. Mind games. They end the moment you pick up this book. With an inspiring mix of humor, wisdom, and creativity, Page After Page shows you how to find the courage and commitment to start writing and keep writing.
Author Heather Sellers draws on twenty years of teaching and personal writing experience to provide lively anecdotes and exercises to help you develop a mindset and lifestyle conducive to daily creation. As each chapter takes you deeper into the eccentric, exclusive world known only to writers, you'll learn how to build a productive creative life that keeps you writing page after page, day after day.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The People of Paper'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pocket Muse Endless Inspiration: New Ideas for Writing'
With an incredible spectrum of writing prompts, photos, and advice, The Pocket Muse: Endless Inspiration offers creative insights and inspirations for your daily writing life.
Inside, you'll find transformative ways to:
All types of writersfiction, nonfiction, and poetswill be engaged and informed by this magical book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspirations for Writing'
According to Monica Wood, every writer needs two critics: one who offers unconditional praise and another who tells only truth. Wood's Pocket Muse does both--"on some pages you get a pat on the head, on others a kick in the seat"--and more. Every page of this pretty little book is devoted to helping you "jumpstart a writing session, inspire confidence, or strengthen your resolve." There are intriguing writing exercises, thought-provoking photographs, offbeat quotations from writers, enticing unfinished sentences, mini writing lessons, quirky word lists, stories from the writing trenches, and a generous dose of encouragement. "Write about a noise--or a silence--that won't go away," Wood suggests. "Someone has left a note on a car windshield," she offers. Books of this sort are often forced, or cute, or more about spirituality than writing. Not The Pocket Muse. It is a lively, appealing companion for a writer in need of a good nudge. --Jane Steinberg [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portable Mfa in Creative Writing: improve your craft with the core essentials taught to MFA students'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Roberts Rules Of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Take Joy: A Book for Writers'
A helpful book for writers to get better at their craft. Wonderful insight. Nothing is more powerful than knowledge. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Take Joy: The Writers Guide To Loving The Craft'
Are you a writer longing to rediscover the joy that you once had in the craft (or even find it for the first time)? In this inspiring guide, Jane Yolen, an author who has been called America's Hans Christian Andersen, shows writers how to focus on aspects of the craft that bring them joy.
She remarks in the first chapter, Save the blood and pain for real life, where tourniquets and ibuprofen can have some chance of helping. Do not be afraid to grab hold of the experience with both hands and take joy."
Addressing topics all writers struggle with, Yolen discusses the writer's voice, beginnings and endings, dealing with rejection, the technical aspects of writing, and the process of coming up with an ideaand deals with each of them in a way that focuses on the positive and eliminates the negative.
As Yolen says, "Be prepared as you write to be surprised by your own writing, surprised by what you find out about yourself and about your world. Be ready for the happy accident."
Get ready to take joy in your writing once again." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination'
Join Ursula K. Le Guin as she explores a broad array of subjects, ranging from Tolstoy, Twain, and Tolkien to women's shoes, beauty, and family life. With her customary wit, intelligence, and literary craftsmanship, she offers a diverse and highly engaging set of readings. The Wave in the Mind includes some of Le Guin's finest literary criticism, rare autobiographical writings, performance art pieces, and, most centrally, her reflections on the arts of writing and reading. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Who Wrote the Bible?'
"J," "P," "E," and "D" are the names scholars have given to some authors of the Bible, and, as such, they are very important letters to a lot of people. Churches have died and been born, and millions of people have lost faith or found it, because of the last two centuries of debate about who, exactly, wrote the canonical texts of Christianity and Judaism. Richard Elliott Friedman's survey of this debate, in Who Wrote the Bible?, may be the best written popular book about this question. Without condescension or high-flown academic language, Friedman carefully describes the history of textual criticism of the Bible--a subject on which his authority is unparalleled (Friedman has contributed voluminously to the authoritative Anchor Bible Dictionary). But this book is not just smart. Perhaps even more impressive than Friedman's erudition is his sensitivity to the power of textual criticism to influence faith. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Write-Brain: 366 Exercises To Liberate Your Writing'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Writing Down the Bones'
Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control and don't think. Goldberg brings a touch of both Zen and well... *eroticism* to her writing practice, the latter in exercises and anecdotes designed to ease you into your body, your whole spirit, while you create, the former in being where you are, working with what you have, and writing from the moment. --Ali Perry-Gallagher [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Writing down the Bones : Freeing the Writer Within'
Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control and don't think. Goldberg brings a touch of both Zen and well... *eroticism* to her writing practice, the latter in exercises and anecdotes designed to ease you into your body, your whole spirit, while you create, the former in being where you are, working with what you have, and writing from the moment. --Ali Perry-Gallagher [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work A Collection from the Washington Post Book World'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Writing the Private Eye Novel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zen and the Art of Writing and The Joy of Writing: Two Essays'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity Expanded'
"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft-everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style-as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays. Zen In The Art Of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. In it, Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Les Quatre Filles Du Dr March'
On est en Amérique, en pleine guerre de Sécession. Le docteur March est au front et sa petite famille doit survivre. Heureusement, les quatre soeurs March et leur mère forment un clan très uni qui affronte l'adversité avec courage et bonne humeur malgré tout.
L'auteur s'est fortement inspirée de sa propre vie pour écrire cette histoire. On la reconnaîtra sous les traits de Jo, le garçon manqué de la famille. Depuis sa publication en 1868, ce roman n'a cessé d'enchanter ses lecteurs, les petites filles surtout, qui se reconnaissent dans l'une ou l'autre des quatre soeurs. Sans jamais sombrer dans le mélo, l'histoire est extrêmement touchante, car la vie des personnages est ponctuée de beaucoup de joies mais aussi de grands moments d'angoisse. On suit avec plaisir les péripéties quotidiennes de leur existence, leur évolution aussi, puisque les quatre jeunes filles ne seront pas tout à fait les mêmes à la fin du roman. Ajoutons que ce livre présente pour le lecteur d'aujourd'hui un nouvel intérêt, celui de découvrir l'intimité de la vie d'une famille américaine au XIXe siècle, qui revêt pour nous nombre d'aspects étonnants et pittoresques. --Pascale Wester [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Le Sceau De L'uvre'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las asombrosas aventuras de Kavalier Y Clay/ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Una Habitacion Propia'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tintenherz'
Meggie lebt mit ihrem Vater Mo, einem "Bücherarzt", in einem alten Haus. Da steht eines Nachts ein merkwürdiger Mann vor der Tür. Er warnt Mo vor jemandem namens Capricorn. Bei Nacht und Nebel fliehen die drei, und nach und nach findet Meggie heraus, dass ihr Vater allerlei Geheimnisse vor ihr verbirgt. Wieso hat er sich zum Beispiel immer geweigert, ihr vorzulesen? Und was ist mit Meggies Mutter wirklich geschehen, die vor vielen Jahren verschwand?
Meggie bekommt erste Antworten, als sie vom grausamen Capricorn gefangen genommen werden. Er tut alles, um von Mo das Buch "Tintenherz" zu bekommen. Denn Capricorn selbst -- und nicht nur er -- ist aus diesem Buch in unsere Welt gekommen, "herausgelesen" von Mo. Ein Albtraum wird lebendig, ein Buch erwacht zum Leben. Und Meggie wird zum Angelpunkt eines dunklen Kampfes zwischen Realität und allzu realer Fiktion.
Tintenherz ist ein fabelhaft erzähltes Buch über Bücher, über das Wunder des Lesens und über die Bedeutung, die Geschichten für unser Leben haben. Wer hätte sich nicht schon einmal gewünscht, dass die Figuren aus seinen Büchern lebendig werden? Funke lässt diesen Traum Wirklichkeit werden. Aber Meggie, Mo und alle anderen zahlen dafür einen hohen Preis. Denn wundersame Märchenwelt und finsterer Albtraum gehen Hand in Hand, und das Böse scheint von Anfang an die besseren Karten zu haben...
Mit ihrem neuen Buch wird Cornelia Funke nicht nur ihre Fangemeinde begeistern. Auch diejenigen, die ihre Bücher noch nicht kennen, werden "Funke-süchtig" werden, sobald sie einige Seiten gelesen haben. Und die einen wie die anderen werden am Ende erstaunt und betrübt feststellen, dass sie die fast 600 Seiten wie im Rausch verschlungen haben. Aber glücklicherweise gibt es ja noch andere Bücher von dieser außergewöhnlichen Autorin, die zu Recht seit ihrem Buch Herr der Diebe auch international bekannt ist. --Gabi Neumayer [via]
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