The Gilded Chalet

Author: Padraig Rooney
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 1473645026
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
Part detective work, part treasure chest, full of history and scandal, The Gilded Chalet takes you on a grand tour of two centuries of great writing by both Swiss and foreign authors and shows how Switzerland has always been at the center of literary Europe. Two centuries after the Romantics went there to invent Gothic horror, the lure of Switzerland hasn't left us. Writers from the Fitzgeralds to Fleming, Highsmith to Hemingway, Conan Doyle to le Carré, came to escape world wars, political persecution, tuberculosis. They came for sanctuary (from oppression or the tax man), for fresh air and nude sunbathing, for scenery resembling, as Rooney puts it, 'Mother Nature on steroids.' Patricia Highsmith spent her last years in a granite home in Ticino with a fridge containing little but peanut butter and vodka. Hermann Hesse had himself buried to the neck as a cure for alcoholism. Nabokov chased butterflies and played tennis on the hotel courts. When it comes to literature, it seems all roads lead to Switzerland. Padraig Rooney peers through the chalet windows and discovers how Switzerland has influenced some of the greatest authors and characters of literature.

The Gilded Chalet

Author: Padraig Rooney
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1857889878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
A glorious, off-the-beaten path tour of Switzerland, featuring some of the world's most iconic writers and literary figures.

The Gilded Chalet

Author: Padraig Rooney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

Tokyo Precincts

Author: Steve Wide
Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing
ISBN: 1743585314
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Book Description
It’s clear to see why Tokyo is a source of fascination for travellers. Streets of towering neon that never sleep hide warren-like alleys filled with lanterns, vending machines and tiny bars where businessmen drink the latest seasonal beers. Tokyo is a collection of precincts, each with its own personality. Go shopping mad in Shinjuku, tap into Tokyo’s youth culture in Harajuku and Shibuya, go vintage shopping in Koenji, check out the latest gadgets in Akihabara or step back in time in old-world Asakusa. The book is divided into 19 precincts, with a chapter covering each, featuring the very best of Tokyo’s shopping, eating and drinking experiences. Interviews with creative Tokyoites also highlight favourite haunts, and additional information at the front and back offers expert travel tips. Precinct maps make this a handy guidebook, while the hardback cover creates a beautiful keepsake.

Cabin Fever

Author: Rachel Carley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
The first book to showcase the architecture and interiors of this wildly popular all-American style. 225 color photos.

Hotel Splendide

Author: Ludwig Bemelmans
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1782277919
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
“Truly a great book—unique, invaluable and unapproachable as the gold standard of the genre… Bemelmans got there first, more frequently, and better.” —Anthony Bourdain Acerbic, colorful, and spirited stories from a bygone era: behind the scenes in a grand NY hotel, from the author of the Madeline books Picture David Sedaris writing Kitchen Confidential about the Ritz in New York in the 1920s, which had the style and charm of The Grand Budapest Hotel… In this charming and uproariously funny hotel memoir, Ludwig Bemelmans uncovers the fabulous world of the Hotel Splendide—the thinly disguised stand-in for the Ritz—a luxury New York hotel where he worked as a waiter in the 1920s. With equal parts affection and barbed wit, he uncovers the everyday chaos that reigns behind the smooth facades of the gilded dining room and banquet halls. In hilarious detail, Bemelmans sketches the hierarchy of hotel life and its strange and fascinating inhabitants: from the ruthlessly authoritarian maître d'hôtel Monsieur Victor to the kindly waiter Mespoulets to Frizl the homesick busboy. Illustrated with his own charming line drawings, Bemelmans' tales of a bygone era of extravagance are as charming as they are riotously entertaining. “[Bemelmans] was the original bad boy of the NY hotel/restaurant subculture, a waiter, busboy, and restaurateur who “told all” in a series of funny and true (or very near true) autobiographical accounts of backstairs folly, excess, borderline criminality, and madness in the grande Hotel Splendide… If you like stories about old New York as I do, this classic will have you laughing out loud.” –Anthony Bourdain

Recollections of My Nonexistence

Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher:
ISBN: 0593083334
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
An electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy. Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women's rights. She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer--books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.

Toward a Simpler Way of Life

Author: Robert Winter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520209169
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
Anti-commercial and anti-modern, the California Arts and Crafts Movement drew upon the decorative schemes of English Tudor, Swiss chalet, Japanese temple, and Spanish mission, evoking an earlier time before modern industry and technology intruded. This book celebrates the Movement with chapters on architects such as Bernard Maybeck, Charles and Henry Greene, John Galen Howard, and Julia Morgan. 365 duotone photos.

Unconventional Warfare (Special Forces, Book 1)

Author: Chris Lynch
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545861632
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
"All the sizzle, chaos, noise and scariness of war is clay in the hands of ace storyteller Lynch." -- Kirkus Reviews for the World War II series Discover the secret missions behind America's greatest conflicts.Danny Manion has been fighting his entire life. Sometimes with his fists. Sometimes with his words. But when his actions finally land him in real trouble, he can't fight the judge who offers him a choice: jail... or the army.Turns out there's a perfect place for him in the US military: the Studies and Observation Group (SOG), an elite volunteer-only task force comprised of US Air Force Commandos, Army Green Berets, Navy SEALS, and even a CIA agent or two. With the SOG's focus on covert action and psychological warfare, Danny is guaranteed an unusual tour of duty, and a hugely dangerous one. Fortunately, the very same qualities that got him in trouble at home make him a natural-born commando in a secret war. Even if almost nobody knows he's there.National Book Award finalist Chris Lynch begins a new, explosive fiction series based on the real-life, top-secret history of US black ops.

The Girl Who...

Author: Andreina Cordani
Publisher: Atom
ISBN: 0349003513
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE BRANFORD BOASE AWARD 2022 The girl who... survived The girl who... inspires The girl who... has something to hide People can't bring themselves to say what happened to her. They just describe her as 'the girl who... you know...'. But nobody really knows, no one sees the real Leah Leah is the perfect survivor. She was seven years old when she saw her mother and sister killed by a troubled gang member. Her case hit the headlines and her bravery made her a national sweetheart: strong, courageous and forgiving. But Leah is hiding a secret about their deaths. And now, ten years later, all she can think of is revenge. When Leah's dad meets a new partner, stepsister Ellie moves in. Sensing Leah isn't quite the sweet girl she pretends to be, Ellie discovers that Leah has a plan, one she has been putting together ever since that fateful day. Now that the killer - and the only one who knows the truth - is being released from prison, time is running out for Ellie to discover how far Leah will go to silence her anger . . .