![]() Wonderfully set in his ways, Pekar's constant self-deprication is clearly a front for his prolific interests in music and art. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini maintain this balance between the actors and the real-life characters-Pekar's wife Joyce and coworker Toby also appear on set as themselves-while crafting a funny, difficult, heartwarming tale that encapsulates Pekar's life, work, and uniquely bizarre perspectives.Pekar is a pessimistic file clerk with no hope of ever rising above his boring job, slobbish apartment, and bad attitude. Played by actor Paul Giamatti, Pekar also appears as himself, giving the film a documentary feeling with many behind-the-scenes on-set shots. Harvey Pekar, the hilariously downtrodden Cleveland comic book artist, is the subject of AMERICAN SPLENDOR, titled after Pekar's autobiographical series. ![]()
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![]() Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson was a poor public speaker. Jefferson was surrounded by brilliant speakers in Philadelphia, including John Adams and Ben Franklin. The prologue and appendix of the book address the most burning question that people often have about Jefferson, his alleged relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.Īs a stylish young aristocrat, Jefferson traveled to the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775. This technique allows Ellis to focus on Jefferson's most outstanding achievements while glossing over embarrassments such as Jefferson's term as Governor of Virginia. Two of Jefferson's respites at his beloved plantation, Monticello, are also included. ![]() These include the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson's sojourn in Paris and his first term as president. ![]() Author Joseph Ellis focuses on Jefferson's high points of achievement. ![]() American Sphinx traces the trajectory of Thomas Jefferson's life at key points in his career. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() That tells a story which has yet to be heard. And perhaps most of all, it is an utterance that emerges from within deafening silence. This book is bold yet nuanced, expansive yet specific. The book is centered around the narrative of an abusive relationship, and each chapter offers a new, illuminating metaphor: “ Dream House as Omen,” “ Dream House as Lost in Translation,” “ Dream House as Exercise in Style.” These riveting fragments weave together folklore, fiction, and scholarship on queer domestic abuse. In the Dream House is billed as a memoir, but the word hardly captures the variety within its pages. When I picked up her new book, In the Dream House, I was hoping, instead, for someone to sit with me in the dark of the night. I turned the final page just as the birds outside my window began to chirp. She is not a writer who will sing you to sleep. Her debut collection, Her Body and Other Parties , conveyed the horrors of living in the world and inhabiting a body so vividly that it made her a finalist for the National Book Award. Nothing, it seemed, could put my mind at rest.Ĭarmen Maria Machado might seem a strange companion for such a night. Those who have wronged me and those whom I have wronged. These small irritations distracted me from sleep just long enough for all the big, looming concerns to descend. The sheets scratched, the cats in the empty lot next door screeched. Late one evening early in October, I struggled to fall asleep. ![]() ![]() So begins an exhilarating forty-year saga brimming with colorful, unforgettable characters: ordinary Mary, who will cause a miracle seductive Karl, who lacks his sister's gift for survival Sita, their lovely but disturbed cousin and the half-Native American Celestine James, who will become Mary's best friend. ![]() After being orphaned in a most peculiar way, Mary seeks refuge in the butcher shop of their aunt and her husband, while Karl gets back on the train. On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. ![]() "A remarkable and luminous novel." -Michiko Kakutani, New York Timesīestselling and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich dazzles in this vibrant and heartfelt tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love that explores with empathy, humor, and power the eternal mystery of the human condition. About the Book From the award-winning author of "Love Medicine" comes a vibrant tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love-a 40-year saga brimming with original and powerful characters. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But in doing this he has never allowed himself to become too outlandish in his invention. Setting his scenario in the distant future, about 50 million years from now, he has given the members of his new animal kingdom time to undergo dramatic changes in structure and behaviour. ![]() By waving a time-wand and eliminating today’s dominant species, including man, he has been able to watch, through his mind’s eye, the lesser animals gradually taking over as the major occupants of the earth’s surface. “Dougal Dixon has given himself the intriguing task of contemplating a future evolution on our own planet, closely based on species that exist at present. Back in print for the first time in over a decade, and featuring a new introduction from the author and updates based on scientific discoveries made in the 37 years since its initial publication, this new edition of Dougal Dixon’s lavishly illustrated speculative zoology imagines the strange creatures that might evolve in a distant future after the extinction of man. ![]() ![]() ![]() Now, far from home and surrounded by his enemy, Scot Harvath must battle his way out. Two days ago, that man was crossed- badly. They are highly prized intelligence agents, military operatives, and assassins. Today, men like these still strike from the shadows. They were fearless men of honor who have been known throughout history by different names: Spartan, Viking, Samurai. ![]() And once crossed, there was no crossing back. Their loyalty was to their families, their friends, and their kings. These men were considered part angel, part demon. In ancient texts, there are stories about men who struck from the shadows, seemingly beyond the reach of death itself. #1 New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Brad Thor is back with his most gripping thriller yet! ![]() “Raw emotion, nonstop action, and relentless pacing makes Backlash another one-night read from Brad Thor.” - The Real Book Spy ![]() ![]() Heartstopper is more than just a graphic novel, it's a much needed counter-narrative that features one of the best romances I've seen put to page, regardless of its intended audience. There certainly is a time and place for all kinds of stories, but when the default narrative for a community is one of tragedy, it can be a heart-breaking experience navigating fiction, especially while young. Heartstopper has its share of bittersweet moments, surely, but Alice Oseman has crafted an optimistic, uplifting, and wholesome love story that is a breath of fresh air after drowning in the waves of doomed romances between LGBTQ+ couples across all media and genres. Stories about the LGBTQ+ community have historically been grim, focusing on the hardships, struggles, and violence that people face simply by existing as queer in the world we live in. ![]() ![]() ![]() In the world of fiction, the space that's been carved out for marginalised people has been a small and uncomfortable one, often lacking in the things other people in society take for granted things like tenderness, hope, and joy. ![]() ![]() In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.īut a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. "It is a book that feels fundamentally true it is a book to live in" - Washington Postįor Kivrin Engle, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing a bullet-proof backstory. ![]() "Ambitious, finely detailed and compulsively readable" - Locus "A tour de force" - New York Times Book Review ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So, forget about making one in the backyard, instead find a clearing in the woods near the animal tracks. Next step is to look for deer tracks as well as search for any other signs or sights of wildlife.īut…what’s the first thing children want to do after lots of snow? Roll balls of snow to make a snowman. What if I suggested looking for wildlife and building a snowman in the woods at the same time? And if you’re wondering about this combination, I’ll explain what inspired this idea for an adventure.įirst of all you need woods covered in snow. There’s something magical about exploring the woods with children after a snowfall. ![]() ![]() Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller listįrom the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. ![]() |