It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken

Author: Seth
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770464476
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
In his first graphic novel, It's a Good Life, if You Don't Weaken–one of the best-selling D+Q titles ever--Seth pays homage to the wit and sophistication of the old-fashioned magazine cartoon. While trying to understand his dissatisfaction with the present, Seth discovers the life and work of Kalo, a forgotten New Yorker cartoonist from the 1940s. But his obsession blinds him to the needs of his lover and the quiet desperation of his family. Wry self-reflection and moody colours characterize Seth's style in this tale about learning lessons from nostalgia. His playful and sophisticated experiment with memoir provoked a furious debate among cartoon historians and archivists about the existence of Kalo, and prompted a Details feature about Seth's "hoax".

Nightmare Alley

Author: William Lindsay Gresham
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174283
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

Berserker

Author: Fred Saberhagen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780786254859
Category : Large type books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Presents a series of short science-fiction stories that tells of encounters between humans and the intelligent, self-aware death machines known as the Berserkers.

Suffering

Author: Paul David Tripp
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433556804
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
Sometimes life just hurts. Out of nowhere, death, illness, unemployment, or a difficult relationship can change our lives and challenge everything we thought we knew—leaving us feeling unable to cope. But, in the midst if all this pain and confusion, we are not alone. Weaving together his personal story, pastoral ministry experience, and biblical insights, best-selling author Paul David Tripp helps us trust God in the midst of suffering. He identifies traps to avoid in our suffering and points us instead to comforts to embrace. This raw yet hope-filled book will help you cling to God's promises when trials come and move forward with the hope of the gospel.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

Author: Alan Sillitoe
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504028112
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book Description
Nine classic short stories portraying the isolation, criminality, morality, and rebellion of the working class from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The titular story follows the internal decisions and external oppressions of a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center who is known only by his surname, Smith. The wardens have given the boy a light workload because he shows talent as a runner. But if he wins the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, Smith will only vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up. “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” has long been considered a masterpiece on both the page and the silver screen. Adapted for film by Sillitoe himself in 1962, it became an instant classic of British New Wave cinema. In “Uncle Ernest,” a middle-aged furniture upholsterer traumatized in World War II, now leads a lonely life. His wife has left him, his brothers have moved away, and the townsfolk treat him as if he were a ghost. When the old man finally finds companionship with two young girls whom he enjoys buying pastries for at a café, the local authorities find his behavior morally suspect. “Mr. Raynor the School Teacher” delves into a different kind of isolation—that of a voyeuristic teacher who fantasizes constantly about the women who work in a draper’s shop across the street. When his students distract him from his lustful daydreams, Mr. Raynor becomes violent. The six stories that follow in this iconic collection continue to cement Alan Sillitoe’s reputation as one of Britain’s foremost storytellers, and a champion of the condemned, the oppressed, and the overlooked. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.

Hicksville

Author: Dylan Horrocks
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780864736246
Category : Comic books, strips, etc
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Hidden in a quiet corner of New Zealand's East Cape is a town where the beach is sunny, the tea is hot, the locals are friendly, and everyone loves comics. This internationally acclaimed New Zealand graphic novel is a wryly funny story about the dangerous business of art and a haunting meditation on longing and regret, on getting lost and finding your way home. With a new introduction by the author. First New Zealand edition.

The Little Virtues

Author: Natalia Ginzburg
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628729023
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
In this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, Natalia Ginzburg explores both the mundane details and inescapable catastrophes of personal life with the grace and wit that have assured her rightful place in the pantheon of classic mid-century authors. Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. "A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.' — The New York Times Book Review

Seth

Author: Eric Hoffman
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1626743878
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
Canadian cartoonist Gregory Gallant, pen name Seth, emerged as a cartoonist in the fertile period of the 1980s, when the alternative comics market boomed. Though he was influenced by mainstream comics in his teen years and did his earliest comics work on Mister X, a mainstream-style melodrama, Seth remains one of the least mainstream-inflected figures of the alternative comics' movement. His primary influences are underground comix, newspaper strips, and classic cartooning. These interviews, including one career-spanning, definitive interview between the volume editors and the artist published here for the first time, delve into Seth's output from its earliest days to the present. Conversations offer insight into his influences, ideologies of comics and art, thematic preoccupations, and major works, from numerous perspectives—given Seth's complex and multifaceted artistic endeavors. Seth's first graphic novel, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, announced his fascination with the past and with earlier cartooning styles. Subsequent works expand on those preoccupations and themes. Clyde Fans, for example, balances present-day action against narratives set in the past. The visual style looks polished and contemplative, the narrative deliberately paced; plot seems less important than mood or characterization, as Seth deals with the inescapable grind of time and what it devours, themes which recur to varying degrees in George Sprott, Wimbledon Green, and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists.

George Sprott

Author: Seth
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
ISBN: 9781897299517
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
First serialized in The New York Times Magazine "Funny Pages" The celebrated cartoonist and New Yorker illustrator Seth weaves the fictional tale of George Sprott, the host of a long-running television program. The events forming the patchwork of George's life are pieced together from the tenuous memories of several informants, who often have contradictory impressions. His estranged daughter describes the man as an unforgivable lout, whereas his niece remembers him fondly. His former assistant recalls a trip to the Arctic during which George abandoned him for two months, while George himself remembers that trip as the time he began writing letters to a former love, from whom he never received replies. Invoking a sense of both memory and its loss, George Sprott is heavy with the charming, melancholic nostalgia that distinguishes Seth's work. Characters lamenting societal progression in general share the pages with images of antiquated objects—proof of events and individuals rarely documented and barely remembered. Likewise, George's own opinions are embedded with regret and a sense of the injustice of aging in this bleak reminder of the inevitable slipping away of lives, along with the fading culture of their days.

It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken

Author: David Holmes
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
ISBN: 1398443905
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
Life in the 1950s and 60s sometimes appears to have been lived by people from another planet. Such is the difference in lifestyle between now and then. Computers, social media, and all the problems that come with living in the 21st century were a distant dream (or nightmare). Life was lived at a slower pace, and people had more time for one another. This is not to say that times couldn't be hard, and life certainly wasn’t always a ‘bed of roses’. Through it all, there was always a shoulder to lean on, or a nice cup of tea made by a friend or neighbour, who would listen patiently to your troubles or triumphs (counsellors extraordinaire!) There appeared to be no shortage of characters, and everyone had a tale to tell. ‘A peck of dirt won’t kill you,’ was a well-used adage, and from childhood to old age, people were less fearful than today, thus allowing them to live their lives to the full. This book is about the people who lived through those times, their quirks and habits, their generosity and good humour. Humour plays a big part in this book, with a sprinkling of every other human emotion. The author sincerely hopes that young and old will enjoy looking back at a bygone time which was only 60 short years ago.