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Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, Stephen King’s critically lauded, classic bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999—and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
I read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side). [source]
Alina Varlanuta
My professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that when I’m reading, panic is far away from me, in a safe place. Nevertheless, the words below helped me rewrite and think twice before adding an exclamation point: On Writing by Stephen King. [source]
Andrew Cowan
Yes. It is a surprise to a lot of people that this book is so widely read on university campuses and so widely recommended by teachers of writing. Students love it. It’s bracing: there’s no nonsense. He says somewhere in the foreword or preface that it is a short book because most books are filled with bullshit and he is determined not to offer bullshit but to tell it like it is. [source]
A tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave the author the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story.
Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate, and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy, and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway's life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city.
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Recommended by Janine di Giovanni, Mohsin Hamid, and Wai Chee Dimock.
Janine di Giovanni
The fact that Hemingway writes it as an old, rather bitter man trapped in his Idaho home with a bullying wife while he dreams of his youth in Paris with his first wife and child is so touching to me. [source]
We think of Hemingway as an American writer, but much of his writing is set outside of the United States, just as much of his life was set outside of the United States. [source]
Wai Chee Dimock
This is a memoir by Hemingway about his time in Paris, which includes sketches of people like F Scott Fitzgerald. [source]
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future.
Both Melinda and I read this one, and it has sparked lots of great conversations at our dinner table. Harari takes on a daunting challenge: to tell the entire history of the human race in just 400 pages. He also writes about our species today and how artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and other technologies will change us in the future. Although I found things to disagree with—especially Harari’s claim that humans were better off before we started farming—I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species. [source]
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.
As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. [source]
Tara never went to school or visited a doctor until she left home at 17. I never thought I’d relate to a story about growing up in a Mormon survivalist household, but she’s such a good writer that she got me to reflect on my own life while reading about her extreme childhood. Melinda and I loved this memoir of a young woman whose thirst for learning was so strong that she ended up getting a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. [source]
If you read or listen to only one book this summer, this is it. Bloody brilliant! Every word, every sentence. Rarely do I go through a book with such a rollecoaster of emotion, from love to hate. Thank you for sharing @tarawestover #Educated https://t.co/GqLaqlcWMp [source]
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6
Crime and Punishment: A Russian Realistic Novel
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4.5
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.
I read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side). [source]
Tim O'Reilly
Founder/O'Reilly Media
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. I wouldn't say this book influenced me, since my principles of writing were established long before I read it. However, it does capture many things that I believe about effective writing. [source]
A celebrated writer's irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.
To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.
An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.
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Recommended by Chelsea Frank and Gabriel Coarna.
Chelsea Frank
I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. [source]
Gabriel Coarna
I started reading "Eat, Pray, Love" as soon as I finished watching Elizabeth Gilbert give this talk. [source]
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Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Anne Lamott
4.4
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'" "Superb writing advice... hilarious, helpful and provocative." -- "New York Times Book Review."
"A warm, generous and hilarious guide through the writer's world and its treacherous swamps." -- "Los Angeles Times."
"A gift to all of us mortals who write or ever wanted to write... sidesplittingly funny, patiently wise and alternately cranky and kind -- a reveille to get off our duffs and start writing "now," while we still can." -- "Seattle Times.
Bird by Bird is one of my absolute favorite books, and I gift it to everybody, which I should probably also give to startup founders, quite frankly. A lot of the lessons are the same. But you can get to your destination, even though you can only see 20 feet in front of you. [source]
It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. … Anne Lamott’s book is ostensibly about the art of writing, but really it too is about life and how to tackle the problems, temptations and opportunities life throws at us. Both will make you think and both made me a better person this year. [source]
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Fangirl
Rainbow Rowell
4.4
A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.
Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan..
But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
A powerful and moving story about identical twins trying to find their individual identities outside of their own powerful relationship. [source]
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Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
4.3
A beautiful unabridged 150th Anniversary Edition with 200 original illustrations and a Foreword by Alice L. George entitled "Why Little Women Endures 150 Years Later."
Little Women was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. This edition contains both volumes. It follows the lives of the four March sisters--Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy-- from childhood to womanhood and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Although Little Women was a novel for girls, it differed notably from the current writings for children, especially girls. The book was an immediate commercial and critical success and has since been adapted for cinema, TV, Broadway and even the opera.
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Recommended by Amy Chua, Anne Thériault, Jay Kleinberg, and 1 others.
Amy Chua
Marmee is a character that really resonates for me. She’s obviously not Chinese, but she believes that integrity and hard work are the most important things in life. She holds her daughters to very high standards. She doesn’t sugarcoat much. She also reveals to her rebellious daughter Jo, the star of the book and a character loosely modeled on Louisa May Alcott herself, that she had a bad temper too when she was younger. That’s exactly what I did with my own daughter Louisa…….The kinds of mistakes that Marmee allows her daughters to make are very similar to the kinds of mistakes that I allow my daughters to make. [source]
Anne Thériault
@mmarmoset I love that book so much, and then I got to see Patty Smith perform the year I read it, and she made a Little Women reference during the show, and my heart overflowed [source]
Jay Kleinberg
Nancy Drew is another series which follows in those footsteps. The book is all led by her. I think if one looks in the magazine literature it would be hard to find a similar character at that time. These were stories initially published in a magazine and then bound together as a book. [source]
"Without The Artist's Way, there would have been no Eat, Pray, Love.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
A stunning gift edition of the powerful bestselling book on creativity.The Artist’s Way is one of the bestselling gift books of all time. Beautifully packaged with a slipcase and ribbon, this tenth anniversary gift edition is the ideal gift for loved ones engaged in creative lives.
Recommended by Anand C and Emma Gannon.
Anand C
STARTING FROM AUTHENTICITY: by observing, showing humility and being grateful - I started being open to what’s in the sub-conscious more (30+ sessions in). Speaking your truth is a powerful result of this. One great book to help explore this. https://t.co/sOAgAHhWsO [source]
Emma Gannon
Instead of all these fast paced books saying: ‘Here’s how to be amazing, here’s how to get a side hustle, here’s how to hustle, hustle, hustle.’ This is the total opposite. It’s about slowing right down and connecting with yourself again. [source]
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Just Kids
Patti Smith
4.3
In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.
This is the single best audiobook ever recorded by Patti Smith. It is not going to change the way you do business, but it might change the way you live. It's about love and loss and art. [source]
Academic Batgirl
This book helped me to see how my life as an academic is artful and creative, and gave me renewed faith in embracing risks, innovation, and taking on art with love and strength even when it’s frustrating or “success” is not assured. Recommend! 8/end https://t.co/tkWtSVY6b9 [source]
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The Shining, Carrie and Misery
Stephen King
4.3
For the first time ever in one volume three nightmarish tales of horror from the best selling author Stephen King.
Recommended by Rob Anderson For Louisiana.
Rob Anderson For Louisiana
@CrazyVetDem80 @blu_joon Great book, great movie (“Misery”). Nice reference. We are all in this together. I’m honored to have your support - y’all are the important ones. [source]
An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.
When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?
In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.
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Recommended by Jessica Flitter and Joann Corleyschwarzkopf.
Jessica Flitter
The readability for me is probably the key element for students—and maybe for teachers as well—because it’s a book that you really can’t put down. If that’s what we need to make students readers, then I’m all for it. [source]
Joann Corleyschwarzkopf
Need a fun boost for your team? Want to jump-start great problem-solving? >Book a 1-hour #creativethinking, virtual experience & get a complimentary pdf copy - Brain on Fire: Unleashing Your Creative Superpowers! for each attendee #teambuilding Info here: https://t.co/j6hOxMJrNH https://t.co/b9hAxV90Mf [source]
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The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
4.3
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
@johngreen You should not be. It is a great book. Was recently in Amsterdam and walked some of the scenes with your huge fan, my youngest daughter. Loved hearing from you and meeting you at Kenyon. [source]
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Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
4.3
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER [[ LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD [[ Hailed by Toni Morrison as "required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by "the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States" (The New York Observer)
"This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it."
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and menbodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his sonand readersthe story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr [source]
Q: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! [source]
Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. [source]
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18
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser
4.3
The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books
One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books.
The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters.
Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.
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Recommended by Sarah Taber.
Sarah Taber
I will not be taking questions on this. If you have some, Prairie Fires is a fantastic book. [source]
At Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau reflected on simpler living in the natural world. By removing himself from the distractions of materialism, Thoreau hoped to not only improve his spiritual life but also gain a better understanding of society through solitary introspection.
In Walden, Thoreau condenses his two-year, two-month, two-day stay into a single year, using the four seasons to symbolize human development—a cycle of life shared by both nature and man. A celebration of personal renewal through self-reliance, independence, and simplicity, composed for all of us living in “quiet desperation,” Walden is eternal.
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Recommended by Emma Watson, Donna Dickenson, Emily Thomas, and 5 others.
Donna Dickenson
He discusses how the original ideals that America was founded on were being compromised, and how massive industrial interests were starting to dominate. [source]
Emily Thomas
The beginning is hard going. Once you get past that, then suddenly you’re into these beautiful and inspiring descriptions of nature. [source]
Joan Boixados
In case you were deceived and expected me to name Walden by Henry David Thoreau, you should read it too if you haven’t, it obviously is the inspiration to Walden Two. :) [source]
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The Paris Wife
Paula McLain
4.2
A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.
A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.
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Recommended by Wai Chee Dimock.
Wai Chee Dimock
This book is told in the first person, in the voice of Hadley. In that way it’s a good complement to Monique Truong’s book, which is told in the voice of the cook. Paula McLain did a good job in terms of historical research, and in fleshing out Hadley’s psychology. [source]
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
4.2
Before The Testaments, there was The Handmaid’s Tale: an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times).
The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population.
The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment’s calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. The Handmaid’s Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and a tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best.
Atwood takes all the hard information about gender inequality that she sees around her and then turns it up a few notches. [source]
Cliff Bleszinski
@HandmaidsOnHulu Done. Love the show, book is a classic, can't wait for season 2. [source]
Grady Booch
I read this several years ago but — much like Orwell’s 1984 — it seems particularly relevant given our current political morass. [source]
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22
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear, et al.
4.2
Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him.
Loved this book, had to read it twice! Dostoevsky is recognized as one of the most accomplished writers + philosophers ever. What appeals to me most in The Idiot is how deep and consistent Dostoevsky gets with his protagonist character, Prince Lev Nokolayevich Myshkin. Myshkin is constantly put through challenging moments where he is lied to, manipulated, stolen from but remains compassionate through it all. The stubborn consistency of Myshkin's compassionate character opened my mind to what it means to building strong character, to remaining constantly good when everything around you is chaotic. [source]
"A must read for anyone hoping to live a creative life... I dare you not to be inspired to be brave, to be free, and to be curious.” —PopSugar
From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you’ve dreamed of
Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.
I read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side). I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic.” [source]
Chelsea Frank
I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. [source]
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24
The Elements of Style
William Jr. Strunk
4.2
You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. And now "The Elements of Style"-the most widely read and employed English style manual-is available in a specially bound 50th Anniversary Edition that offers the title's vast audience an opportunity to own a more durable and elegantly bound edition of this time-tested classic. Offering the same content as the Fourth Edition, revised in 1999, the new casebound 50th Anniversary Edition includes a brief overview of the book's illustrious history. Used extensively by individual writers as well as high school and college students of writing, it has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. This new deluxe edition makes the perfect gift for writers of any age and ability level. Fifty Years of Acclaim for "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White "I first read "Elements of Style" during the summer before I went off to Exeter, and I still direct my students at Harvard to their definition about the difference between 'that' and 'which.' It is the Bible for good, clear writing." -- Henry Louis Gates Jr. "For writers of all kinds and sizes the world begins and ends with Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." Only something to actually write about trumps the list of what is required to put words together in some kind of coherent way. I treasure its presence in my life and salute its fifty years of glory and accomplishment." -- Jim Lehrer ""The Elements of Style" remains an unwavering beacon of light in these grammatically troubled times. I would be lost without it." -- Ann Patchett "To the extent I know how to write clearly at all, I probably taught myself while I was teaching others -- seventh graders, in Flint, Michigan, in 1967. I taught them with a copy of Strunk & White lying in full view on my desk, sort of in the way the Gideons leave Bibles in cheap hotel rooms, as a way of saying to the hapless inhabitant: 'In case your reckless ways should strand you here, there's help.' S&W doesn't really teach you how to write, it just tantalizingly reminds you that there's an orderly way to go about it, that clarity's ever your ideal, but -- really -- it's all going to be up to you." -- Richard Ford ""The Elements of Style" never seems to go out of date. Its counsel is sound and funny, wise and unpretentious. And while its precepts are a foundation of direct communication, Strunk and White do not insist on a way of writing beyond clear expression. The rest is up to the imagination, the intelligence within." -- David Remnick, editor of "The New Yorker" "It's the toughness-the irreverence and implicit laughter-that attracted me to the little book when I was seventeen. I fell in love with Strunk & White's loathing for cant and bloviation, the ruthless cutting of crap, jargon, and extra words. For me, that skeptical directness included a tacit permission by "The Elements of Style" to break its rules on occasion: an alloy of generosity in the blade, a grace I still admire and still learn from." -- Robert Pinsky "In the quest for clarity, one can have no better guides than Strunk and White. For me, their book has been invaluable and remains essential." -- Dan Rather "Eschew surplusage! A perfect book." --Jonathan Lethem "Not until I started teaching writing and I reread "The Elements of Style" did I realize that most everything I would be teaching young writers, and everything I would be learning myself as a writer, was contained between the covers of this slim, elegant, wise little book." -- Julia Alvarez "Strunk and White seared their way into my brain long ago, and I benefit from them daily." -- Steven J. Dubner, co-author of "Freakonomics" "Since high school, I have kept a copy of this book handy. That should be unnecessary. I should, by now, have fully internalized "The Elements of Style." But sometimes I get entangled in a paragraph that refuses to be 'clear, brief, bold.' I dip back into "The Elements of Style" and am refreshed. After Scott Simon interviewed me on NPR about whether the word 'e-mail' needs a hyphen (yes, it does), some listeners, including friends of mine, wondered why I had answered in the affirmative when asked, in passing, 'Are you a drunken white man?' Those listeners misheard. 'Strunk and White man' was what Scott said." -- Roy Blount Jr. "Strunk & White--writing's good-natured law firm--still contains enough sparkling good sense to clean up the whole bloviating blogosphere." -- Thomas Mallon "I used Strunk -- that's what we called it, Strunk -- as a student at Berkeley fifty years ago. I didn't know that it was new, and that we were the first generation to be educated in "The Elements of Style." I got a firm foundation in the English language, learned to write basically, and could depict the realistic world. Then I was able to become an impressionist and expressionist." -- Maxine Hong Kingston "Strunk and White's gigantic little book must be the most readable advice on writing ever written. Side by side with Roget, Shakespeare, the Bible, and a dictionary, it's an essential for every writer's shelf." -- X.J. Kennedy" ""With what joy I welcome the fiftieth anniversary of "The Elements of Style." I am greatly indebted to this book for the invaluable help it has given me all these years." -- Horton Foote "Elegant, droll, and perfectly proportioned, and like your favorite aunt, strict but affectionate. And, like your favorite aunt, full of optimism: You can, and will, be a better writer! There has never been a better, briefer, or more loved book about the art and craft of communicating." -- Susan Orlean "This book is an essential tool. It has been of great use to me and is probably responsible for my best writing. I owe my success to Strunk and White; only the mistakes are mine." -- Ben Affleck, in "O, the Oprah Magazine" "This book is a wonderful example of teaching by example. Not only does it recommend clear and concise writing, it demonstrates it. Written in the style of a friend offering help, it is a godsend to anyone wanting to put words on paper. Thank you, Messieurs Strunk and White. And Happy Anniversary, "Elements of Style."" -- S.E. Hinton "When I began to have ... I wouldn't say arguments but conversations in my mind with Strunk and White about a few of their rules and principles, I knew I was coming into my own. If only they were still here to talk things over! No doubt their side of the exchange would be kindly put, well-informed, and wise. They'd probably help me with my side of it. What more could one want from writers reaching out to help other writers?" -- Barbara Wallraff, language columnist for "The Atlantic" "I don't believe there is a serious writer alive who doesn't have a worn copy of 'Strunk & White'on his or her bookshelf." -- Mignon Fogarty, author of "Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips ""for Better Writing" "This little book has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to write better -- partly by precept and partly by example. It continues to influence more writers than any other. It's a force for good in the world." -- Bryan A. Garner, author of "Garner's Modern American Usage" "I can think of no better guide to good writing, and I always think of this little classic with a warm heart. More importantly, I revisit its pages often. It's the one essential book on writing." -- Jay Parini, author of "Why Poetry Matters" "Clarity and simplicity have always been the goals, and this book shows the way. It has always been a lighthouse in the dark and stormy night of student prose, of all of our prose." -- Ron Carlson "The only rules you are ever going to get from me are all in Strunk and White." --Ursula K. Le Guin, from "Steering the Craft " "["The Elements of Style "is] a book to which I return from time to time, the way I periodically reread Shakespeare. I always discover something new, settle a question that has been puzzling me, or learn a principle of usage that I have been pretending to know, a pretense that has resulted in inconsistency and in the sort of errors from which I can only pray some saintly copy editor will save me." -- Francine Prose, from "Reading"" Like A Writer" ..".still a little book, small enough and important enough to carry in your pocket, as I carry mine." -- Charles Osgood "Almost every writer has a Strunk and White story. One journalism professor spends the first two weeks of school forcing his students to memorize the book. A top editor at a major paper buys copies at yard sales to distribute to her writers and interns. It has even caused love affairs. . . . Could its greatness be any more clear?" -- Jesse Sheidlower, American Editor of the "Oxford"" English Dictionary," on NPR" ""If the English language is one of the finest homes ever devised for the human spirit, "Elements" is the best guided house tour we've got." --David Gelernter, "The Wall Street Journal" ..".Should be the daily companion of anyone who writes for a living and, for that matter, anyone who writes at all." "--"Jonathan Yardley, " Greensboro (N.C.) Daily News" "No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume." -- Herbert A. Kenny, "The Boston Globe" "Buy it, study it, enjoy it. It's as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility." -- Charles Poore, "The New York Times" "White is one of the best stylists and most lucid minds in this country. What he says and his way of saying it are equally rewarding." "-- "Edmund Fuller, "The Wall Street Journal ""If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of "The Elements of Style." The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy." -- Dorothy Parker, "Esquire"
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Recommended by Tobi Lütke, Alina Varlanuta, Ann Handley, and 3 others.
Tobi Lütke
Founder & CEO/Shopify
My most frequently gifted book is this book because I like good writing. [source]
Alina Varlanuta
My professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that when I’m reading, panic is far away from me, in a safe place. Nevertheless, the words below helped me rewrite and think twice before adding an exclamation point: The Elements of Style. [source]
Bill Nye
This is my guide. I accept that I’ll never write anything as good as the introductory essay by the author. It’s brilliant. [source]
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25
Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White
Melissa Sweet
4.2
“SOME PIG,” Charlotte the spider’s praise for Wilbur, is just one fondly remembered snippet from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. In Some Writer!, the two-time Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet mixes White’s personal letters, photos, and family ephemera with her own exquisite artwork to tell his story, from his birth in 1899 to his death in 1985. Budding young writers will be fascinated and inspired by the journalist, New Yorker contributor, and children’s book author who loved words his whole life. This authorized tribute is the first fully illustrated biography of E. B. White and includes an afterword by Martha White, E. B. White's granddaughter.
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26
The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Lucia Grave
4.2
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love. --back cover
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin
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Recommended by Richard Branson, Bianca Belair, and Julia Enthoven.
Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]
Bianca Belair
For #BlackHistoryMonth I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 5th Book: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By: Maya Angelou Another autobiography classic that will be hard to not find on any must- read book list! https://t.co/mGRG76lLRn [source]
Julia Enthoven
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is beautifully written, and I really enjoy the voice of the protagonist and think it’s sad and fascinating to read about her time in history. [source]
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28
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1
Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society
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29
Bossypants
Tina Fey
4.2
Tina Fey is one of of the world's greatest comic writers and performers. Here she reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected - you're no one until someone calls you bossy.
Recommended by Sheryl Sandberg.
Sheryl Sandberg
COO/Facebook
I absolutely loved Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only was I laughing on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy. … It is so, so good. As a young girl, I was labeled bossy, too, so as a former - O.K., current - bossypants, I am grateful to Tina for being outspoken, unapologetic and hysterically funny. [source]
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30
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Auste
4.2
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268
Since its immediate success in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.
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Recommended by Meg Rosoff.
Meg Rosoff
It’s a coming-of-age story, because she throws aside her prejudices but also sees the house and realises that she could be quite comfortable and maybe realises how important that is. [source]
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31
The Shining
Stephen King
4.2
Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.
If you think you know the story because you’ve seen the film then you’d be wrong. This book is an absolute classic and a great way into the vast King oeuvre. [source]
I have always rated Stephen King. I think he is so much more than just a commercially successful horror writer. [source]
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32
The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
4.2
All children mythologize their birth...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.
As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.
Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.
The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.
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33
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling
4.2
Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!
In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Recommended by Angela Kinsey and Yashar Ali.
Angela Kinsey
.@mindykaling I am rereading your book and cracking up. I appreciate your chapter on The Office so much more now. But all of it is fantastic. Thanks for starting my day with laughter. You know I loves ya. ❤️ https://t.co/EB99xnyt0p [source]
Yashar Ali
Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from @mindykaling's book (even though I'm an early riser): “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” https://t.co/pS56bmyYjS [source]
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Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
4.2
Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.
In November 2014, Obama took a trip to D.C. independent bookstore Politics and Prose to honor small businesses and add to his personal library. Accompanied by daughters Malia and Sasha, POTUS picked up novels from the Redwall fantasy series by Brian Jacques, as well as some from the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park. He also added this title to his heavy bags. [source]
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35
The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4)
Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery
4.2
A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
Ursula Le Guin may be the writer I most admire. The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, may be her best novel….The Left Hand of Darkness is often discussed, and indeed taught, as a machine for thinking about gender, and it performs that function admirably. But there is much more to it than that. There is a rather dangerous gender-essentialism in the assumption that Le Guin, being female, must have subordinated her aesthetic project to feminist proselytising. Le Guin’s writing is always much more balanced than that. Indeed, that balance as such forms one of her major concerns. [source]
Ursula Le Guin may be the writer I most admire. The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, may be her best novel….The Left Hand of Darkness is often discussed, and indeed taught, as a machine for thinking about gender, and it performs that function admirably. But there is much more to it than that. There is a rather dangerous gender-essentialism in the assumption that Le Guin, being female, must have subordinated her aesthetic project to feminist proselytising. Le Guin’s writing is always much more balanced than that. Indeed, that balance as such forms one of her major concerns. [source]
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36
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
4.2
'An act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief.'
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.
This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."
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Recommended by Catalina Penciu.
Catalina Penciu
I can't forget The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. [source]
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37
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
4.1
First U.S. Publication
A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.
Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.
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Recommended by Tim Kendall.
Tim Kendall
The Journals are, in their unabridged state, an astonishing body of work. We talk about how poets are born, not made, but what I always take away from every page of the Journals—and it’s a serious slab of a book—is the extent to which Plath was both born and self-made. [source]
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38
Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
Roy Peter Clark
4.1
A special 10th anniversary edition of Roy Peter Clark's bestselling guide to writing, featuring five bonus tools.
Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost thirty years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of fifty short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the best loved books on writing available.
Organized into four sections, "Nuts and Bolts," "Special Effects," "Blueprints for Stories," and "Useful Habits," Writing Tools is infused with more than 200 examples from journalism and literature. This new edition includes five brand new, never-before-shared tools.
Accessible, entertaining, inspiring, and above all, useful for every type of writer, from high school student to novelist, Writing Tools is essential reading.
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39
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4.1
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.
Source: chimamanda.com
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Recommended by Barack Obama, Angelica Ross, and Julia Enthoven.
As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. [source]
Angelica Ross
@WarnerMediaGrp @tressiemcphd @Lupita_Nyongo @DanaiGurira LOVE THIS BOOK! Can’t wait for this!!!! [source]
Julia Enthoven
For non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. [source]
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40
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
4.1
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE ON NETFLIX - A remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German Occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.
"I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb...
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society's members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.
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41
The Writing Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Writers
Jennifer Serravallo
4.1
The Reading Strategies Book made the New York Times Best Seller List by making it simpler to match students' needs to high-quality instruction. Now, in The Writing Strategies Book, Jen Serravallo does the same, collecting 300 of the most effective strategies to share with writers, and grouping them beneath 10 crucial goals.
"You can think of the goals as the what, "writes Jen, "and the strategies as the how." From composing with pictures all the way to conventions and beyond, you'll have just-right teaching, just in time. With Jen's help you'll:
develop individual goals for every writer give students step-by-step strategies for writing with skill and craft coach writers using prompts aligned to a strategy present mentor texts that support a genre and strategy adjust instruction to meet individual needs with Jen's Teaching Tips demonstrate and explain a writing move with her Lesson Language learn more with Hat Tips to the work of influential teacher-authors. She even offers suggestions for stocking your writing center, planning units of study, celebrating student writing, and keeping records.
Whether you use Writing Workshop, 6+1 Traits, Daily 5's "Work on Writing," a scripted writing program, the writing exercises in your basal, or any other approach, you'll discover a treasure chest of ways to work with whole classes, small groups, or individual writers.
"I am convinced that helping kids to articulate clear goals for their work," writes Jen Serravallo, "and supporting them with strategies and feedback to accomplish those goals, makes a huge difference." With The Writing Strategies Book you can make that kind of difference with your writers every day.
…
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42
Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd
4.1
From one of the twentieth century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory is Vladimir Nabokov's moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian Revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.
I still think it’s one of the most beautiful memoirs ever written. Although it’s not about the Russian revolution as such, it is permeated with a sense of loss and exile, as are all of Nabokov’s books. He evokes gorgeous countryside scenes of pre-revolutionary Russia, but at the same time has some distance from it – he recognises the awfulness of what he at one point calls his rather appalling country at the same time. [source]
Eva Hoffman
I love it for several reasons. First, it made me feel that it is possible to give written form to nostalgia. The lyrical affirmation of that was quite important to me. Secondly, his preoccupation with language. I kept looking for books which talk about language, and at the end of the book Nabokov has a dedication to the Russian language, or an invocation of it and his incredibly poignant loss of it. [source]
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43
The Complete Maus
Art SPIEGELMAN
4.1
Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance.
…
Recommended by Susan Bordo.
Susan Bordo
It’s about the Holocaust. It’s also a comic book, in which the various characters are depicted as animals – the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats. [source]
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44
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl Strayed
4.1
An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
I found the narrative honest and riveting. The author used the journey through the hiking trail to work out her problems. [source]
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45
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
Ann Patchett
4.1
What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when the person you promise to love and to honor for the rest of your life is not your lover, but your best friend? In Truth & Beauty, her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Ann Patchett shines a fresh, revealing light on the world of women's friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.
Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work was. In her critically acclaimed and hugely successful memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, the years of chemotherapy and radiation, and then the endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long, cold winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this book shows us what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.
This is a tender, brutal book about loving a person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.
…
Recommended by Diana Kimball.
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46
Beach Read
Emily Henry
4.1
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They're polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
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47
One Writer's Beginnings
Eudora Welty
4.1
Now available as an audio CD, in Eudora Welty's own voice, or as a book.
Eudora Welty was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. In a "continuous thread of revelation" she sketches her autobiography and tells us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing. Homely and commonplace sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father's coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that become a metaphor for her mother's sturdy independence, Eudora's earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture. She has recreated this vanished world with the same subtlety and insight that mark her fiction.
Even if Eudora Welty were not a major writer, her description of growing up in the South--of the interplay between black and white, between town and countryside, between dedicated schoolteachers and the public they taught--would he notable. That she is a splendid writer of fiction gives her own experience a family likeness to others in the generation of young Southerners that produced a literary renaissance. Until publication of this book, she had discouraged biographical investigations. It undoubtedly was not easy for this shy and reticent lady to undertake her own literary biography, to relive her own memories (painful as well as pleasant), to go through letters and photographs of her parents and grandparents. But we are in her debt, for the distillation of experience she offers us is a rare pleasure for her admirers, a treat to everyone who loves good writing and anyone who is interested in the seeds of creativity.
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48
The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)
Robert Galbraith
4.1
Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.
But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.
When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before...
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49
The Boy with the Painful Tattoo (Holmes & Moriarity, #3)
Josh Lanyo
4.1
It's moving day at Chez Holmes. Somehow, against Kit's better instincts, he and J.X. are setting up house together. But while J.X. is off at a writing conference, Kit unpacks a crate that should contain either old books or new china. It doesn't. Within the mounds of green Styrofoam popcorn is a dead body. A very dead body.
There goes the neighborhood.
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50
I Capture The Castle
Dodie Smith
4.1
I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.
Cassandra and Rose are two very different sisters, isolated from the world by their peculiar and magical upbringing…I would say this is the most important book in my life. [source]
Sophie Ratcliffe
It is a delicious, glorious, coming-of-age tale told with humor about two sisters who live in a derelict, tumble-down, ramshackle castle. Underneath the surface, it’s a novel of absolute desolation. Cassandra is in mourning without having fully realized it yet. Her desperation to be noticed is partly because she likes Simon, and partly, I think, because she’s desperate for someone to love her. [source]
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51
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf
4.1
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
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52
The Freedom Writers Diary
The Freedom Writers
4.1
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
Straight from the front line of urban America, the inspiring story of one fiercely determined teacher and her remarkable students.
As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust—only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the “Freedom Writers” in homage to the civil rights activists “The Freedom Riders.”
With funds raised by a “Read-a-thon for Tolerance,” they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwell’s students were “the real heroes.” Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognition—appearances on “Prime Time Live” and “All Things Considered,” coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley—and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college.
With powerful entries from the students’ own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students.
The authors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to The Tolerance Education Foundation, an organization set up to pay for the Freedom Writers’ college tuition. Erin Gruwell is now a visiting professor at California State University, Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers.
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53
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Therese Anne Fowler
4.1
A dazzling novel that captures all of the romance, glamour, and tragedy of the first flapper, Zelda Fitzgerald.
When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame.
Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.
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54
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
Sherman Alexie
4.1
A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, and loss from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award winner.
When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is this stunning memoir. Featuring 78 poems, 78 essays and intimate family photographs, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine--growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated woman. You Don't Have To Say You Love Me is a powerful account of a complicated relationship, an unflinching and unforgettable remembrance.
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55
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)
Art Spiegelman
4.1
A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.
An intimate look at writing, running, and the incredible way they intersect, from the incomparable, bestselling author Haruki Murakami.While simply training for New York City Marathon would be enough for most people, Haruki Murakami's decided to write about it as well. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Runningis rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit.
On the non-business side of things, “What I Talk about When I Talk About Running” by Haruki Murakami is my recent favorite. I’m a long distance runner and I was extremely delighted to find out that one of the top fiction writers in the world draws a huge chunk of his inspiration from long distance running. In this book, Murakami beautifully connects running to writing, which are two skills close to me that I want to get better at. [source]
The single best distillation of the kind of focus, commitment, and sense of mission it takes to become a great artist. [source]
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57
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
4.0
In 1936 George Orwell travelled to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.
The other reason I picked this book is that Orwell, like Dan Schorr, was an outsider. When he went to Spain, he was an unknown. He wasn’t Hemingway. He wasn’t a well-connected intellectual. He just had this amazing eye for detail. He was an amazing observer, and he could write so powerfully. This book, to me, is just one of the classics of foreign reporting. [source]
Anyone who wants to go off and write about Egypt, Tunisia or Libya today should pack a copy of Homage to Catalonia. It’s brilliant reportage. As you know, it opens with a vignette of an Italian militiaman in the barracks in Barcelona and he only saw this guy for a few moments but it captures the excitement. [source]
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58
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
4.0
You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.
This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.
New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.
Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.
A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.
…
Recommended by Claire Jarvis, John Sutherland, Rachel Hickman, and 2 others.
Claire Jarvis
Wuthering Heights is a strange novel in a lot of ways. It’s a standalone—there’s not really another book like it. [source]
John Sutherland
The Brontës had this idea of a Samson figure. Rochester, like Samson, has to be mutilated before he can be domesticated. What is interesting about Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, is that he isn’t. He remains this superman. He is greater than a human being. He is named after two elemental things, the heath and the cliff. We never know what his first name is. [source]
Rachel Hickman
In Wuthering Heights once again it’s the landscape that underlines the choices the characters must make. Cathy must choose between the grand house in the lush valley: protected, comfortable and tame; or the wild, exhilarating bleakness of Wuthering Heights. [source]
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59
Writer's Market 2020: The Most Trusted Guide to Getting Published
Robert Lee Brewer
4.0
The Most Trusted Guide to Getting Published!
Want to get published and paid for your writing? Let Writer's Market 2020 guide you through the process with thousands of publishing opportunities for writers, including listings for book publishers, consumer and trade magazines, contests and awards, and literary agents--as well as new playwriting and screenwriting sections. These listings feature contact and submission information to help writers get their work published.
Beyond the listings, you'll find articles devoted to the business and promotion of writing. Discover 20 literary agents actively seeking writers and their writing, how to develop an author brand, and overlooked funds for writers. This edition also includes the ever-popular pay-rate chart and book publisher subject index!
You also gain access to:
- Lists of professional writing organizations - Sample query letters - How to land a six-figure book deal
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60
The Ghostwriter
Alessandra Torre
4.0
Four years ago, I lied. I stood in front of the police, my friends and family, and made up a story, my best one yet. And all of them believed me.
I wasn't surprised. Telling stories is what made me famous. Fifteen bestsellers. Millions of fans. Fame and fortune.
Now, I have one last story to write. It'll be my best one yet, with a jaw-dropping twist that will leave them stunned and gasping for breath.
They say that sticks and stones will break your bones, but this story? It will be the one that kills me.
This book is not a romance. It is contemporary fiction, but very suspenseful in nature. It is about a famous romance author and a dark secret she keeps.
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61
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
4.0
Librarian's Note: An alternate cover edition can be found here
In April, 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, a party of moose hunters found his decomposed body. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw away the maps. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.
…
Recommended by Holger Seim.
Holger Seim
When it comes to adventure stories, Into the Wild. [source]
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62
All She Wrote (Holmes & Moriarity, #2)
Josh Lanyo
4.0
Giving screwball mystery a whole deadly new meaning.
A murderous fall down icy stairs is nearly the death of Anna Hitchcock, the much-beloved American Agatha Christie and Christopher Holmes's former mentor. Anna's plea for him to host her annual winter writing retreat touches all Kit's sore spots: traveling, teaching writing classes, and separation from his new lover, J.X. Moriarity.
For J.X., Kit's cancellation of yet another romantic weekend is the death knell of a relationship that has been limping along for months. But that s just as well, right? Kit isn't ready for anything serious and besides, Kit owes Anna far too much to refuse.
Faster than you can say Miss Marple wears boxer shorts, Kit is snooping around Anna's elegant, snowbound mansion in the Berkshires for clues as to who's trying to kill her. A tough task with six amateur sleuths underfoot, six budding writers with a tangled web of dark undercurrents running among them.
Slowly, Kit gets the uneasy feeling that the secret may lie between the pages of someone's fictional past. Unfortunately, a clever killer is one step ahead. And it may be too late for J.X. to ride to the rescue.
Warning: Contains one irascible, forty-year-old mystery writer who desperately needs to get laid, one exasperated thirty-something ex-cop only too happy to oblige, an isolated country manor that needs the thermostat cranked up, various assorted aspiring and perspiring authors, and a merciless killer who may have read one too many mystery novels.
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63
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson
4.0
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.
Recommended by Bill Earner and Matthew O’Brien.
Bill Earner
My favorites novels are 100 Years of Solitude, All the King's Men, The Last Samurai, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. [source]
Matthew O’Brien
It’s one of my favourite books and probably my favourite Las Vegas-related book. Hunter S Thompson came out here in the early 70s to cover the Mint 400 off-road race for Sports Illustrated. He ended up writing a 10,000-word riff on his visit. In 1971, Jann Wenner ultimately published two long sections of it in Rolling Stone. Those two stories were the foundation for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. [source]
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64
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Jeanette Winterson
4.0
Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded search for belonging, for love, identity, home, and a mother.
Jeanette Winterson's novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness. It's a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the Universe as Cosmic Dustbin.
It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she'd written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother.
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65
The Writing Life
Annie Dillard
4.0
Annie Dillard has written eleven books, including the memoir of her parents, An American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A gregarious recluse, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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66
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
4.0
In 1920s London, Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on her new novel. A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940s Los Angeles, yearns to escape and read her precious copy of Mrs Dalloway. And Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990s New York to buy flowers for a party she is hosting for a dying friend.
The Hours recasts the classic story of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway in a startling new light. Moving effortlessly across the decades and between England and America, this exquisite novel intertwines the worlds of three unforgettable women.
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Recommended by Amy Chua and Danielle Teller.
Amy Chua
Laura Brown makes the strictest of tiger mothers look wonderful by comparison. She is totally detached and can’t get out of her head, so she retreats into books, specifically Mrs. Dalloway. [source]
Shirley Jackson reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the literary genius behind such classics as The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House. In this “remarkable act of reclamation” (Neil Gaiman), Ruth Franklin envisions Jackson as “belonging to the great tradition of Hawthorne, Poe and James” (New York Times Book Review) and demonstrates how her unique contribution to the canon “so uncannily channeled women’s nightmares and contradictions that it is ‘nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era’ ” (Washington Post). Franklin investigates the “interplay between the life, the work, and the times with real skill and insight, making this fine book a real contribution not only to biography, but to mid-20th-century women’s history” (Chicago Tribune). “Wisely rescu[ing] Shirley Jackson from any semblance of obscurity” (Lena Dunham), Franklin’s invigorating portrait stands as the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary genius.
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68
The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig
4.0
Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era. Zweig's books (novels, biographies, essays) were translated into numerous languages, and he moved in the highest literary circles; he also encountered many leading political and social figures of his day.
The World of Yesterday is a remarkable, totally engrossing history. This translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed shortly before his tragic death in 1942. It is read with sympathy and understanding by David Horovitch.
…
Recommended by Will Hobson.
Will Hobson
He celebrates how much more he’s been able to learn from his own life than his parents had been able to in theirs. It’s amazingly graceful and light. [source]
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69
The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa, RICHARD Zenith
4.0
Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology. and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague."Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.
This is a book of ideas. It’s not a book about the internet. It was written much earlier, in the 20th century, and written in Portuguese. It’s really a book of meditations. It’s very philosophical. It applies to the internet in that the main point is how much joy you can take in small things and small changes and the true drama of life can be extraordinarily minute in scale, and this, I think, gets at the idea that the internet and the stories we follow are, to a lot of us, extremely important and exciting and meaningful, though really they are just a few changes of characters on a little screen somewhere. [source]
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70
The Dark Tide (The Adrien English Mysteries, #5)
Josh Lanyon, Chris Patton, et al
4.0
As if recovering from heart surgery beneath the gaze of his over-protective family wasn’t exasperating enough, someone keeps trying to break into Adrien English’s bookstore. What is this determined midnight intruder searching for?
When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of the Cloak and Dagger Bookstore renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan -- now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective.
Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien’s past than either of them expects -- and one of those surprises may prove hazardous to Jake’s own heart.
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71
84, Charing Cross Road
Helene Hanff
4.0
This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that will grab your heart and not let go.
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72
A Ladder to the Sky
John Boyne
4.0
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for success. The one thing he doesn't have is talent - but he's not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don't need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice's first novel. Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall...
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73
Less
Andrew Sean Greer
4.0
Who says you can't run away from your problems?
You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes--it would be too awkward--and you can't say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.
QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?
ANSWER: You accept them all.
What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.
Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, LESS is, above all, a love story.
A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," LESS shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.
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74
All the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven
4.0
The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Elle Fanning! Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.
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75
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
Charlotte Gordon
4.0
Romantic Outlaws is the first book to tell the story of the passionate and pioneering lives of Mary Wollstonecraft – English feminist and author of the landmark book, The Vindication of the Rights of Women – and her novelist daughter Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
Although mother and daughter, these two brilliant women never knew one another – Wollstonecraft died of an infection in 1797 at the age of thirty-eight, a week after giving birth. Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.
Both women became famous writers; fell in love with brilliant but impossible men; and were single mothers who had children out of wedlock; both lived in exile; fought for their position in society; and thought deeply about how we should live. And both women broke almost every rigid convention there was to break: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia. Shelley faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women’s liberty should matter to everyone.
Not only did Wollstonecraft declare the rights of women, her work ignited Romanticism. She inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth and a whole new generation of writers, including her own daughter, who – with her young lover Percy Shelley – read Wollstonecraft’s work aloud by her graveside. At just nineteen years old and a new mother herself, Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein whilst travelling around Italy with Percy and roguish Lord Byron (who promptly fathered a child by Mary’s stepsister). It is a seminal novel, exploring the limitations of human nature and the power of invention at a time of great religious and scientific upheaval. Moreover, Mary Shelley would become the editor of her husband’s poetry after his early death – a feat of scholarship that did nothing less than establish his literary reputation.
Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.
…
Recommended by Margaret Heffernan.
Margaret Heffernan
Wollstonecraft and Shelley are two of the most important women most people have rarely thought about. They believed passionately (and at great cost) in the equality of women and the vital, distinctive contribution women should be able to make to human history. Their stories alone are remarkable, but Charlotte Gordon’s idea to interweave the two biographies brilliantly explores the deep relationship between the mother and the daughter who never knew each other. In their search for a richer and more liberated way of life, the Romantics cherished Wollstonecraft’s writing and the daughter they hoped would embody the life of imaginative emancipation. What a legacy — but what an inspiration. [source]
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76
How to Make a Living with Your Writing: Books, Blogging and More
Joanna Penn
4.0
Would you like to make a living with your writing?
This book will show you how.
I spent 13 years working as a cubicle slave in the corporate world. I was miserable in my job and my creativity was stunted by the crushing daily grind.
Then I started writing books and blogging, using my words to create products and attract readers. In September 2011, I left my corporate job to become a full-time author and creative entrepreneur and since then I've grown my business year on year "" all based on my writing. More importantly, I'm finally living the happy life I always wanted.
I'm not a Kindle or blogging millionaire and this is not a get rich quick scheme. But I will share with you how I make a six-figure income from writing books, blogging and marketing in an ethical manner.
We're living in the best time ever to make a living with your writing! Read on to learn more.
The book includes:
Overview of how I make a living and income split
First principles
Tips on writing and productivity
Tips on mindset
Part 1: How to make money from books
It's not just one book
Your publishing options: Traditional publishing
Changes in the publishing industry
Your publishing options: Becoming an indie author
How to self-publish an ebook
How to self-publish a print book
How to self-publish an audiobook
Part 2: How to make money online in other ways
A business powered by content marketing
Product sales
Affiliate income
Consulting or coaching
Professional speaking
Advertising and sponsorship
Freelance writing
Tips for content marketing
The transition and your next steps
Plus/ Companion Workbook so you can answer the questions in the book for yourself.
If you'd like to make a living with your writing, this book will help you take the next steps.
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77
Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market 2020: The Most Trusted Guide to Getting Published
Amy Jones
4.0
The Most Trusted Guide to the World of Children's Publishing!
The 32nd edition of Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market is the definitive and trusted guide for anyone who seeks to write or illustrate for kids and young adults. If you're a writer or an illustrator for young readers and your goal is to get published, CWIM 2020 is the resource you need.
In this book, you'll find more than 500 listings for children's book markets, including publishers, literary agents, magazines, contests, and more. These listings include a point of contact, how to properly submit your work, and what categories each market accepts.
This edition also features:
- Interviews with bestselling authors including Cassandra Clare, N.K. Jemisin, Jacqueline Woodson, Leigh Bardugo, and more. - Craft articles on topics ranging from P.O.V., mocking-up picture books, and including diverse characters. - Business articles on topics such as making the most of your platform, tracking submissions, and blocking out distractions when you write, and much more.
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78
A Dangerous Thing (The Adrien English Mysteries, #2)
Josh Lanyon
4.0
Suffering from writer's block and frustrated with his tentative relationship with hot but closeted L.A.P.D. Homicide Detective Jake Riordan, gay bookseller and mystery writer Adrien English travels to northern California where he finds a body in his front drive. By the time the sheriffs arrive, the body has disappeared, and Adrien once again finds himself playing amateur sleuth. But when the game turns deadly, Adrien turns to Jake. Jake may be confused about some things, but keeping his lover alive is not one of them--no matter what the cost.
Who are the mysterious strangers excavating on his land? And will he sort out his problems with LAPD Detective Jake Riordan, heavily into S/M sex but not so hot on relationships? Find out in this engrossing, slyly witty thriller.
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79
Death of a Pirate King (The Adrien English Mysteries, #4)
Josh Lanyon
4.0
Gay bookseller and reluctant amateur sleuth Adrien English's writing career is suddenly taking off. His first novel, Murder Will Out, has been optioned by notorious Hollywood actor Paul Kane.
But when murder makes an appearance at a dinner party, who should be called in but Adrien's former lover, handsome closeted detective Jake Riordan, now a Lieutenant with LAPD -- which may just drive Adrien's new boyfriend, sexy UCLA professor Guy Snowden, to commit a murder of his own.
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80
Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction
Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson
4.0
Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.
Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You’ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today’s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.
Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.
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81
In Other Words...Murder (Holmes & Moriarity, #4)
Josh Lanyo
4.0
Death reveals all secrets.
Mystery author Christopher Holmes, now comfortably married to sometimes rival, sometimes nemesis J.X. Moriarity, is starting a new career as a true crime writer when threatening anonymous notes start arriving.
Even worse, Christopher's ex also arrives--asking for help locating the man he left Christopher for!
It's life--and death--as usual at Chez Holmes. In other words... Murder.
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82
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
4.0
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
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83
The Reading Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Readers
Jennifer Serravallo
4.0
With hit books that support strategic reading through conferring, small groups, and assessment, Jen Serravallo gets emails almost daily asking, "Isn't there a book of the strategies themselves?" Now there is.
"Strategies make the often invisible work of reading actionable and visible," Jen writes. In The Reading Strategies Book, she collects 300 strategies to share with readers in support of thirteen goals-everything from fluency to literary analysis. Each strategy is cross-linked to skills, genres, and Fountas & Pinnell reading levels to give you just-right teaching, just in time. With Jen's help you'll:
develop goals for every reader give students step-by-step strategies for skilled reading guide readers with prompts aligned to the strategies adjust instruction to meet individual needs with Jen's Teaching Tips craft demonstrations and explanations with her Lesson Language learn more with Hat Tips to the work of influential teacher-authors. Whether you use readers workshop, Daily 5/CAFE, guided reading, balanced reading, a core reading program, whole-class novels, or any other approach, The Reading Strategies Book will complement and extend your teaching. Rely on it to plan and implement goal-directed, differentiated instruction for individuals, small groups, and whole classes.
"We offer strategies to readers to put the work in doable terms for those who are still practicing," writes Jen Serravallo. "The goal is not that they can do the steps of the strategy but that they become more comfortable and competent with a new skill." With The Reading Strategies Book, you'll have ways to help your readers make progress every day.
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84
What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love
Carole Radziwill
4.0
"What Remains" is a vivid and haunting memoir about a girl from a working-class town who becomes an award-winning television producer and marries a prince, Anthony Radziwill, one of a long line of Polish royals and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Carole Radziwill's story is part fairy tale, part tragedy. She tells both with great candor and wit.Carole grew up in a small suburb with a large, eccentric cast of characters. She spent her childhood summers with her grandparents and an odd assortment of aunts and uncles in their poorly plumbed A-frame on the banks of a muddy creek in upstate New York.
At the age of nineteen, Carole struck out for New York City to find a different life. Her career at ABC News led her to the refugee camps of Cambodia, to a bunker in Tel Aviv, to the scene of the Menendez murders. Her marriage led her into the old world of European nobility and the newer world of American aristocracy.
"What Remains" begins with loss and returns to loss. A small plane plunges into the ocean, carrying John Kennedy, Anthony's cousin, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Carole's closest friend. Three weeks later Anthony dies of cancer. The summer of the plane crash, the four friends were meant to be cherishing Anthony's last days. Instead, Carole and Anthony mourned John and Carolyn, even as Carole planned her husband's memorial.
Carole Radziwill has an anthropologist's sensibility and a journalist's eye. She writes about families--their customs, their secrets, and their tangled intimacies-- with remarkable acuity and humanity. She explores the complexities of marriage, the importance of friendship, and the challenges of self-invention with unflinching honesty. This is acompelling story of love, loss, and, ultimately, resilience.
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85
The White Album: Essays
Joan Didion
4.0
First published in 1979, The White Album is a mosaicof the late sixties and seventies. It includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson family, a Black Panther Party press conference, the story of John Paul Getty's museum, the romance of water in an arid landscape, and the swirl and confusion of the sixties. With commanding sureness of mood and language, Joan Didion exposes the realities and dreams of that age of self-discovery whose spiritual center was California.
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Recommended by Dan Richards and Steven Amsterdam.
Dan Richards
I feel Joan Didion is the patron saint of a maelstrom of culture and environment of a particular time. She is the great American road-trip writer, to my mind. She has that great widescreen filmic quality to her work. [source]
Steven Amsterdam
With her gaze on California of the late 60s and early 70s, Didion gives us the Black Panthers, Janis Joplin, Nancy Reagan, and the Manson follower Linda Kasabian. [source]
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86
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, Stella McNichol, Hermione Lee
4.0
For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged. To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives, gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values. Virginia Woolf saw the novel as an elegy to her own parents, and in her diary she wrote: 'I used to think of him (father) and mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse laid them in my mind'.
Aristotle tells us that all politics starts in the family, and you really do see that in To the Lighthouse. Woolf always said that there is no symbolism in the lighthouse at all, and I think we should believe her. All the same, I do think that the lighthouse, in a way, is Mrs Ramsay because the lighthouse is there to protect us from harm and from hazards, and Mrs Ramsay is a self-sacrificing, patient mother who attends to everyone’s needs and tends to protect them from hazards. Of course, that was an impossibility for Woolf, because her mother died when she was 13. So she is really trying to recreate her mother and also her father, Mr Ramsay. She’s brought them to life – I wonder what that must have been like for her to write. In Hot Milk, I refer to To the Lighthouse as well as Woolf’s earlier novel The Voyage Out. It seems to Sofia that her mother is a hazard, and she says, later, ‘I’ve been waiting for her to take the voyage out of her gloom, to buy a ticket to a vital life with an extra ticket for me. I’ve been waiting all my life for her to reserve a seat for me.’ [source]
Hermione Lee
When all is said and done, I think it is her greatest novel. [source]
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87
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
Chuck Palahniuk
4.0
Renowned, bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk takes us behind the scenes of the writing life, with postcards from decades on the road and incredible examination of the power of fiction and the art of storytelling.
In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing.
With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a"kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
Clear-eyed, sensitive, illuminating, and knowledgeable, Consider This is Palahniuk's love letter to stories and storytellers, booksellers and books themselves. Consider it a classic in the making.
@MArbones_Areste New book on writing: read @chuckpalahniuk's "Consider This". What an honest book from a great writer. [source]
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88
The Friend
Sigrid Nunez
4.0
A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.
While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.
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89
Anne Sexton: A Biography
Diane Middlebrook
4.0
Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still sings to thousands of readers. This exemplary biography, which was nominated for the National Book Award, provoked controversy for its revelations of infidelity and incest and its use of tapes from Sexton's psychiatric sessions. It reconciles the many Anne Sextons: the 1950s housewife; the abused child who became an abusive mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried "kill-me pills" in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who transmuted confession into lasting art.
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90
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print
Renni Browne, Dave King
4.0
"A superb tutorial for anyone wanting to learn from pros how to polish fiction writing with panache."-- Library Journal
Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.
In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.
…
Recommended by Alina Varlanuta.
Alina Varlanuta
My professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that when I’m reading, panic is far away from me, in a safe place. Nevertheless, the words below helped me rewrite and think twice before adding an exclamation point: Self-editing for Fiction Writers. [source]
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91
Chronicles: Volume One
Bob Dylan
4.0
"I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career.
Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.
By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.
Dylan has had a career of extraordinary richness and variety. Yet here he is writing a memoir that completely ignores everything which made him a world figure. It ignores all of his most famous songs, it ignores all the periods in which he was a great star. It’s all about times when he was trying to learn, when he was confused and lost but absolutely alive with the thrill of discovering new ideas, new singers, new information. [source]
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92
My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
Caleb Carr
4.0
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93
Lincoln
David Herbert Donald
4.0
A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s life and presidency.
Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln’s character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union—in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen.
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94
Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pamela Smith Hill
4.0
Pioneer Girl follows the Ingalls family's journey through Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota, and on to Dakota Territory sixteen years of travels, unforgettable experiences, and the everyday people who became immortal through Wilder's fiction. Using additional manuscripts, letters, photographs, newspapers, and other sources, award-winning Wilder biographer Pamela Smith Hill adds valuable context and leads readers through Wilder's growth as a writer. Do you think you know Laura? Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography will re-introduce you to the woman who defined the pioneer experience for millions.
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95
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
Charles J. Shields
4.0
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96
A Writer's Diary
Virginia Woolf
4.0
An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn by her husband from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, others that are clearly writing exercises; accounts of people and scenes relevant to the raw material of her work; and comments on books she was reading. Edited and with a Preface by Leonard Woolf; Indices.
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Recommended by Juliet Gardiner.
Juliet Gardiner
I think she is the finest diarist of the 20th century. Nobody comes near her. She is so brilliant, but she’s snobbish and anti-semitic. [source]
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97
One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder for the Spiritual and Nonspiritual Alike
Brian Doyle
4.0
A playful, deeply moving book of spiritual essays-for the spiritual and non-spiritual alike-that excavate the rich seams of examined life and point to the miracles that surround us. When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.
At a time when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes, nothing is ordinary.
David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to the glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size or renown, and brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." In a time when wonder seems to be in short supply, One Long River of Song, Doyle and Duncan invite readers to experience it in the most ordinary of moments, and allow themselves joy in the smallest of things.
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98
Virginia Woolf
Hermione Lee
4.0
While Virginia Woolf--one of our century's most brilliant and mercurial writers--has had no shortage of biographers, none has seemed as naturally suited to the task as Hermione Lee. Subscribing to Virginia Woolf's own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer and the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact. Such issues as sexual abuse, mental illness, and suicide are brought into balance with the immensity of her literary achievement, her heroic commitment to her work, her generosity and wit, and her sanity and strength.
It is not often that biography offers the satisfactions of great fiction--but this is clearly what Hermione Lee has achieved. Accessible, intelligent, and deeply pleasurable to read, her Virginia Woolf will undoubtedly take its place as the standard biography for years to come.
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99
Reasons to Stay Alive
Matt Haig
4.0
Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.
"Destined to become a modern classic." —Entertainment Weekly
Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.
Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.
You know how they have the bible in all hotel room drawers? Well they should have Matt Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive. [source]
Ella Botting
Books have helped me with just about every decision I’ve ever made. One that sticks out to me was reading How to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. There’s a moment in the book where Matt talks about wanting to kill himself but not having the gusto to go through with it. And I’ve been there before, in pretty much the exact circumstances he describes. I thankfully got help and I’m all good now, but it felt reassuring to read that experience and almost share it with him and know that he and maybe other people get it. It’s hard to explain but sometimes when you feel suicidal having people worry makes you feel annoyed, but being able to almost joke about it, in the way Matt does, feels quite cathartic. Although I’m certainly not saying anything about suicide is funny! [source]
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Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
4.0
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. As the police begin to investigate, the town golden boy parades a series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter - but is he really a killer?
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