The Splendid Things We Planned

Download or read book The Splendid Things We Planned written by Blake Bailey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 'Autobiography' The renowned biographer’s unforgettable portrait of a family in ruins—his own. Meet the Baileys: Burck, a prosperous lawyer once voted the American Legion’s “Citizen of the Year” in his tiny hometown of Vinita, Oklahoma; his wife Marlies, who longs to recapture her festive life in Greenwich Village as a pretty young German immigrant, fresh off the boat; their addled son Scott, who repeatedly crashes the family Porsche; and Blake, the younger son, trying to find a way through the storm. “You’re gonna be just like me,” a drunken Scott taunts him. "You’re gonna be worse." Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Blake Bailey has been hailed as "addictively readable" by the New York Times and praised for his ability to capture lives "compellingly and in harrowing detail" by Time. The Splendid Things We Planned is his darkly funny account of growing up in the shadow of an erratic and increasingly dangerous brother, an exhilarating and sometimes harrowing story that culminates in one unforgettable Christmas.

Download or read book Zapatista written by Blake Bailey and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2022-12-07 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blake’s second novel, Zapatista, is faithfully based on the facts of the 1994 Chiapas Indian uprising in southern Mexico. Whether looking for an adventure story or a deeper look into the real drama of a people’s revolution, you’ll find that in Zapatista. Peter, the protagonist, running from devastating life events and the associated guilt involved, finds himself in the heart of the Sierra Madre hoping to drink, write, and find adventure in that order. But Peter gets more adventure than bargained for through a series of whirlwind circumstances that hurl him into the middle of a life and death struggle for a revolutionary cause and the love of Lxil, an Indian woman, both catalysts that forever change Peter’s life.

Download or read book Farther and Wilder written by Blake Bailey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Jackson’s novel The Lost Weekend—the story of five disastrous days in the life of an alcoholic—was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Although he tried to escape its legacy, Jackson is often remembered only as the author of this thinly veiled autobiography. In Farther & Wilder, the award-winning biographer of Richard Yates and John Cheever goes deeper, exploring Jackson’s life—from growing up in the scandal-plagued village of Newark, New York, to a career in Hollywood and friendships with everyone from Judy Garland and Billy Wilder to Thomas Mann and Mary McCarthy. This is the fascinating biography of a writer whose life and work encapsulated what it meant to be an addict and a closeted homosexual in mid-century America, and who was far ahead of his time in bringing these forbidden subjects into the popular discourse.

Download or read book The Thought of Her written by Blake Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2008-03-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Everybody's Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mindlessness written by Thomas Joiner (Jr.) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Joiner's Mindlessness chronicles the promising rise of mindfulness and its perhaps inevitable degradation. Giving mindfulness its full due, both as a useful philosophical vantage point and as a means to address various life challenges, Joiner mercilessly charts how narcissism has intertwined with and co-opted the practice to create a Frankenstein's monster of cultural solipsism and self-importance.

Download or read book The Hue and Cry at Our House written by Benjamin Taylor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning memoir of one tumultuous year of boyhood in Fort Worth, Texas, opening with a handshake with JFK, and recalling the changes and revelations of the months that followed. Winner of the LA Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and a New York Times Editor's Choice. “A marvel of a book—elegant, touching, singular.” —Mary Karr “Brief and moving . . . An elegantly written book, erudite, perceptive and at times painfully candid.”—Moira Hodgson, Wall Street Journal After John F. Kennedy’s speech in front of the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963, he was greeted by, among others, an 11-year-old Benjamin Taylor and his mother waiting to shake his hand. Only a few hours later, Taylor’s teacher called the class in from recess and, through tears, told them of the president’s assassination. From there Taylor traces a path through the next twelve months, recalling the tumult as he saw everything he had once considered stable begin to grow more complex. Looking back on the love and tension within his family, the childhood friendships that lasted and those that didn’t, his memories of summer camp and family trips, he reflects upon the outsized impact our larger American story had on his own. Benjamin Taylor is one of the most talented writers working today. In lyrical, translucent prose, he thoughtfully extends the story of twelve months into the years before and after, painting a portrait of the artist not simply as a young man, but across his whole life. As he writes, “[A]ny twelve months could stand for the whole. Our years are so implicated in one another that the least important is important enough . . . Any year I chose would show the same mettle, the same frailties stamping me at eleven and twelve.”