Diary of a Somebody

Author: Brian Bilston
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1760786659
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
It’s January 1st and Brian Bilston is convinced that this year his New Year’s resolution will change his life. Every day for a year, he will write a poem. It’s quite simple. Brian’s life certainly needs improving. His ex-wife has taken up with a new man, a motivational speaker and indefatigable charity fundraiser to boot; he seems to constantly disappoint his long-suffering son; and at work he is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and management jargon. So poetry will be his salvation. But there is an obstacle in the form of Toby Salt, his arch nemesis at Poetry Club and rival suitor to Liz, Brian’s new poetic inspiration. When Toby goes missing, just after the announcement of the publication of his first collection, This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, Brian becomes the number one suspect. If he is to regain his reputation and to have a chance of winning Liz, he must find out what has happened to Toby before it is too late. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is the most original novel you will read this or any year.

50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems

Author: Brian Bilston
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1529058058
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Book Description
A funny collection of football poems by Brian Bilston, the unofficial Poet Laureate of Twitter. Perfect for football fans of all ages – from the young footie fanatic to a been-to-every-game-grandma, and every 'I could've been a pro' in between. Full of poems that will make you giggle about all things football, including being left out of the World Cup squad, mum's opinion on Messi vs Ronaldo, or those unmissable fixtures: I’d love nothing more than to go outside and spend time with Mother Nature. But what can I do? It’s out of my hands: Nigeria are playing Croatia 50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems includes witty chants, a haiku or two, and fun shape poems about the beautiful game. Laugh together through the Euros or Premier League games, and swap the half-time pundits for puns! 'Bilston is a magician with words' – Guardian 'Someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative.' – The Times

A Life Discarded

Author: Alexander Masters
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374178186
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
"An unorthodox investigative literary biography of a mysterious graphomaniac whose nearly 150 diaries are rescued from a dumpster by the author"--

You Took the Last Bus Home

Author: Brian Bilston
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
ISBN: 1783523069
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
You Took the Last Bus Home is the first and long-awaited collection of ingeniously hilarious and surprisingly touching poems from Brian Bilston, the mysterious ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’. With endless wit, imaginative wordplay and underlying heartache, he offers profound insights into modern life, exploring themes as diverse as love, death, the inestimable value of a mobile phone charger, the unbearable torment of forgetting to put the rubbish out, and the improbable nuances of the English language. Constantly experimenting with literary form, Bilston’s words have been known to float off the page, take the shape of the subjects they explore, and reflect our contemporary world in the form of Excel spreadsheets, Venn diagrams and Scrabble tiles. This irresistibly charming collection of his best-loved poems will make you laugh out loud while making you question the very essence of the human condition in the twenty-first century.

Diary of an Oxygen Thief

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501157868
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Hurt people hurt people. Say there was a novel in which Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer’s assistant and, somehow, they met in Bright Lights, Big City. He’s blinded by love. She by ambition. Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an honest, hilarious, and heartrending novel, but above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other and what we allow to have done to us.

Diary of a Man in Despair

Author: Friedrich Reck
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Hailed as one of the most important works on the Hitler period, this is an “astonishing, compelling, and unnerving” portrait of life in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1944—from a man who nearly shot Hitler himself (The New Yorker) Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck, the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule. The result is less a diary than a sequence of stark and astonishing snapshots of life in Germany between 1936 and 1944. We see the Nazis at the peak of power, and the murderous panic with which they respond to approaching defeat; their travesty of traditional folkways in the name of the Volk; and the author’s own missed opportunity to shoot Hitler. This riveting book is not only, as Hannah Arendt proclaimed it, “one of the most important documents of the Hitler period,” but a moving testament of a decent man struggling to do the right thing in a depraved world.

The Hatred of Poetry

Author: Ben Lerner
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0865478201
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

Book Description
"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--

Diary of a Somebody

Author: John Lahr
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9780879101244
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 76

Book Description
Screenplay to John Lahr's successful dramatization of The Orton Diaries that chronicles the last eight months of Joe Orton's life, his growing theatrical celebrity, and the corresponding punishing effect it had on his relationship with his friend and mentor Kenneth Halliwell, who murdered him on August 9, 1967, and then took his own life.

Go Ask Alice

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689832494
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. January 24th After you’ve had it, there isn't even life without drugs… It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her. For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl’s harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful—and as timely—today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.

Sometimes I Lie

Author: Alice Feeney
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250144833
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?