Startle And Illuminate

Download or read book Startle and Illuminate written by Carol Shields and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shimmering with her unique style, sense, humour, vision and wit, Startle and Illuminate is a book of advice and reflections on writing by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields that is destined to become as valued and essential as Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. An essential work from one of Canada's finest writers, Startle and Illuminate stands as a reflection of Carol Shields' devotion to the writer's craft. Drawn together by her daughter and grandson from decades of correspondence with other writers, essays, notes, comments, criticism and lectures, Startle and Illuminate helps answer some of the most fundamental questions about the craft: Why do we write at all? Can writing be taught? What keeps a reader turning the pages? How is a writer to know when a work is done? In her own words, Shields reveals her thoughts on why we read, and more importantly, why we write: for the joy of the making, to reimagine our world, to discover patterns and uncover forms that echo our realities as well as interrogate them.

Download or read book Relating Carol Shields’s Essays and Fiction written by Nora Foster Stovel and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores celebrated Canadian author Carol Shields’s experimentation with the essay genre in relation to her fiction. Shields’s essays clarify her iconoclastic approach to rules of narrative and illuminate her revisionist policies, elucidating the development of her fiction, both novels and stories, as her writing gradually becomes more explicitly feminist, as well as more daringly postmodernist. The dozen essays by the eminent Canadianists included in this edition throw fresh light on Shields’s writing, inviting us to read it with new eyes by revealing how her essays reflect and refract the brilliance of her fiction. These essays read Shields’s fiction through the lens of her essays, including those contained in the recent Giardini edition, wherein the author explains the creative methodologies involved in her fiction and also offers specific advice to writers of fiction.

Download or read book The Sad Truth About Happiness written by Anne Giardini and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful and affecting novel -- bittersweet and comic -- on the elusive nature of happiness Maggie is in her early thirties, gainfully employed, between relationships, and ready for a change. But when she takes a quiz in a magazine that promises to predict the date of a person's death, she's shocked to learn she's going to die before her next birthday unless she can somehow discover contentment in life. What ensues is a quirky and satisfying journey in pursuit of true happiness, a quest that leads to unexpected joys and perceptions.

Download or read book The UberReader written by Avital Ronell and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Avital Ronell has put together what must be one of the most remarkable critical oeuvres of our era... Zeugmatically yoking the slang of pop culture with philosophical analysis, forcing the confrontation of high literature and technology or drug culture, Avital Ronell produces sentences that startle, irritate, illuminate. At once hilarious and refractory, her books are like no others.”--Jonathan Culler, Diacritics For twenty years Avital Ronell has stood at the forefront of the confrontation between literary study and European philosophy. She has tirelessly investigated the impact of technology on thinking and writing, with groundbreaking work on Heidegger, dependency and drug rhetoric, intelligence and artificial intelligence, and the obsession with testing. Admired for her insights and breadth of field, she has attracted a wide readership by writing with guts, candor, and wit. Coyly alluding to Nietzsche’s “gay science,” The ÜberReader presents a solid introduction to Avital Ronell’s later oeuvre. It includes at least one selection from each of her books, two classic selections from a collection of her early essays (Finitude’s Score), previously uncollected interviews and essays, and some of her most powerful published and unpublished talks. An introduction by Diane Davis surveys Ronell’s career and the critical response to it thus far. With its combination of brevity and power, this Ronell “primer” will be immensely useful to scholars, students, and teachers throughout the humanities, but particularly to graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary theory.

Download or read book It's the Way You Say It written by Carol A. Fleming and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2013-03-04 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revised and updated edition of the detailed, down-to-earth guide to speaking your mind effectively—includes useful exercises. The best, most direct way to convey your intelligence, expertise, professionalism, and personality to other people is through talking to them. But most people have no idea what they sound like. And even if they do, they don’t think they can change it. It’s the Way You Say It is a thorough, nuts-and-bolts guide to becoming aware and taking control of how you communicate with others. Dr. Carol Fleming provides detailed advice and scores of exercises for Understanding how others hear you Dealing with specific speech problems Varying your vocal patterns to make your speech more dynamic Using grammar and vocabulary to increase your clarity and impact Reinforcing your message with nonverbal cues Conquering stage fright An entire section of the book focuses on communication issues in the workplace—interviews, presentations, voice mail, and more. In addition, Dr. Fleming puts a human face on her advice through vivid before-and-after stories of forty men and women who came to her for help. “No other skills will position you ahead of your competition as much as good speaking and presentation skills. No book approaches the depth and breadth of Dr. Carol Fleming’s It’s the Way You Say It.” —Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE, keynote speaker, executive speech coach, and president of Fripp & Associates

Download or read book Book Crush written by Nancy Pearl and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you remember your first book crush? You know, the first time a book completely captured your imagination, transported you to a magical place, or introduced you to a lifelong friend you will never forget? In Book Crush, popular librarian and reading enthusiast Nancy Pearl reminds us why we fell for reading in the first place—how completely consuming and life-changing a good book can be. Pearl offers more than 1,000 crush-worthy books organized into over 100 recommended reading lists aimed at youngest, middle-grade, and teen readers. From picture books to chapter books, YA fiction and nonfiction, Pearl has developed more smart and interesting thematic lists of books to enjoy. Parents, teachers, and librarians are often puzzled by the unending choices for reading material for young people. It starts when the kids are toddler and doesn’t end until high-school graduation. What’s good, what’s not, and what’s going to hold their interest? Popular librarian Nancy Pearl points the way in Book Crush.

Download or read book The Vonnegut Encyclopedia written by Marc Leeds and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now expanded and updated, this authorized compendium to Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, stories, essays, and plays is the most comprehensive and definitive edition to date. Over the course of five decades, Kurt Vonnegut created a complex and interconnected web of characters, settings, and concepts. The Vonnegut Encyclopedia is an exhaustive guide to this beloved author’s world, organized in a handy A-to-Z format. The first edition of this book covered Vonnegut’s work through 1991. This new and updated edition encompasses his writing through his death in 2007. Marc Leeds, co-founder and founding president of the Kurt Vonnegut Society and a longtime personal friend of the author’s, has devoted more than twenty-five years of his life to cataloging the Vonnegut cosmos—from the birthplace of Kilgore Trout (Vonnegut’s sci-fi writing alter ego) to the municipal landmarks of Midland City (the midwestern metropolis that is the setting for Vonnegut’s 1973 masterpiece Breakfast of Champions). The Vonnegut Encyclopedia identifies every major and minor Vonnegut character from Celia Aamons to Zog, as well as recurring images and relevant themes from all of Vonnegut’s works, including lesser-known gems like his revisionist libretto for Stravinsky’s opera L’Histoire du soldat and his 1980 children’s book Sun Moon Star. Leeds provides expert notes explaining the significance of many items, but relies primarily on extended quotations from Vonnegut himself. A work of impressive scholarship in an eminently browsable package, this encyclopedia reveals countless connections readers may never have thought of on their own. A rarity among authors of serious fiction, Kurt Vonnegut has always inspired something like obsession in his most dedicated fans. The Vonnegut Encyclopedia is an invaluable resource for readers wishing to revisit his fictional universe—and those about to explore it for the first time. Praise for The Vonnegut Encyclopedia “An essential collection for fans of the singular satirist.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Indispensable.”—Publishers Weekly “If you’re somebody who has read one Kurt Vonnegut book then there’s a chance you’ve read them all. For the devout reader of Vonnegut there’s a voracious sense of completism. And, Marc Leeds and his new [The Vonnegut] Encyclopedia are here to guide you through it all. Just don’t blame him if you become unstuck in time while you’re reading.”—Inverse “Vonnegut enthusiasts will be delighted with Leeds’s exhaustive, almost obsessive, treatment of the characters, places, events, and tantalizingly mysterious references for which Vonnegut’s five-decade writing career is celebrated. . . . A wonderful and beautifully designed reference source.”—Booklist (starred review) “Leeds’s scholarship and genuine love for his subject matter render this encyclopedia a treasure trove for Vonnegut readers.”—The Nameless Zine