Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
I Heart My Little A-Holes: A bunch of holy-crap moments no one ever told you about parenting by Karen Alpert
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Following the success of Go the F**k to Sleep, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, and Ketchup Is a Vegetable,
a collection of funny, warm, and charmingly profane tales from the
frontlines of parenthood by the author of the popular Baby Sideburns
blog.
Once upon a time you and your partner had a perfect life: dinners out, weekend mornings cuddling in bed, brunch with friends. Then you gave birth to a poop machine (or two). Now, it's all about the pediatrician, breast pumps, princess dresses, and minivans. And discovering that your pride and joy is actually a little A-hole.
When your son wakes you up at 3:00 A.M. because he wants to watch Caillou, he's an a-hole. When your daughter outlines every corner of your living room with a purple crayon, she's an a-hole. When your rug rats purposely paint the kitchen ceiling with their smoothies, they're a-holes. At times like these, it's only natural to want to kill them (or yourself). But it's against the law (and there's the suicide hotline). Plus, there's that whole loving them more than anything in the whole world thing.
In I Heart My Little A-Holes, Karen Alpert shares hilarious stories, lists, and deep thoughts on the joys and horrors of raising children. Accompanied by cheery illustrations and photos I Heart My Little A-Holes will make you laugh so hard you'll wish you were wearing a diaper.
Once upon a time you and your partner had a perfect life: dinners out, weekend mornings cuddling in bed, brunch with friends. Then you gave birth to a poop machine (or two). Now, it's all about the pediatrician, breast pumps, princess dresses, and minivans. And discovering that your pride and joy is actually a little A-hole.
When your son wakes you up at 3:00 A.M. because he wants to watch Caillou, he's an a-hole. When your daughter outlines every corner of your living room with a purple crayon, she's an a-hole. When your rug rats purposely paint the kitchen ceiling with their smoothies, they're a-holes. At times like these, it's only natural to want to kill them (or yourself). But it's against the law (and there's the suicide hotline). Plus, there's that whole loving them more than anything in the whole world thing.
In I Heart My Little A-Holes, Karen Alpert shares hilarious stories, lists, and deep thoughts on the joys and horrors of raising children. Accompanied by cheery illustrations and photos I Heart My Little A-Holes will make you laugh so hard you'll wish you were wearing a diaper.
Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys by Billy Crystal (Author, Narrator)
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Audie Award - Audiobook of the Year, 2014
Audie Award Winner, Narration by the Author or Authors, 2014
Audie Award Winner, Humor, 2014
Nominated for a 2014 Grammy in the Spoken Word category!
Hilarious and heartfelt observations on aging from one of America's favorite comedians, now that he's 65, and a look back at a remarkable career.
Billy Crystal is 65, and he's not happy about it. With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt. In humorous chapters like ""Buying the Plot"" and ""Nodding Off,"" Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone age with him. He also looks back at the most powerful and memorable moments of his long and storied life, from entertaining his relatives as a kid in Long Beach, Long Island, and his years doing stand-up in the Village, up through his legendary stint at Saturday Night Live, When Harry Met Sally, and his long run as host of the Academy Awards. Listeners get a front-row seat to his one-day career with the New York Yankees (he was the first player to ever ""test positive for Maalox""), his love affair with Sophia Loren, and his enduring friendships with several of his idols, including Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali. He lends a light touch to more serious topics like religion (""the aging friends I know have turned to the Holy Trinity: Advil, bourbon, and Prozac""); grandparenting; and, of course, dentistry. As wise and poignant as they are funny, Crystal's reflections are an unforgettable look at an extraordinary life well lived.
Still Foolin' 'Em includes a portion recorded in front of a live studio audience.
Audie Award Winner, Narration by the Author or Authors, 2014
Audie Award Winner, Humor, 2014
Nominated for a 2014 Grammy in the Spoken Word category!
Hilarious and heartfelt observations on aging from one of America's favorite comedians, now that he's 65, and a look back at a remarkable career.
Billy Crystal is 65, and he's not happy about it. With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt. In humorous chapters like ""Buying the Plot"" and ""Nodding Off,"" Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone age with him. He also looks back at the most powerful and memorable moments of his long and storied life, from entertaining his relatives as a kid in Long Beach, Long Island, and his years doing stand-up in the Village, up through his legendary stint at Saturday Night Live, When Harry Met Sally, and his long run as host of the Academy Awards. Listeners get a front-row seat to his one-day career with the New York Yankees (he was the first player to ever ""test positive for Maalox""), his love affair with Sophia Loren, and his enduring friendships with several of his idols, including Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali. He lends a light touch to more serious topics like religion (""the aging friends I know have turned to the Holy Trinity: Advil, bourbon, and Prozac""); grandparenting; and, of course, dentistry. As wise and poignant as they are funny, Crystal's reflections are an unforgettable look at an extraordinary life well lived.
Still Foolin' 'Em includes a portion recorded in front of a live studio audience.
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
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This short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) incorporates almost completely Vonnegut's 1961 "Canary in a Cathouse," which appeared within a few months of Slaughterhouse-Five and capitalized upon that breakthrough novel and the enormous attention it suddenly brought.
Drawn from both specialized science fiction magazines and the big-circulation general magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, etc.) which Vonnegut had been one of the few science writers to sell, the collection includes some of his most accomplished work. The title story may be his most famous--a diabolical government asserts control through compulsory technology removing orgasm from sex--but Vonnegut's bitterness and wit, not in his earlier work as poisonous or unshielded as it later became, is well demonstrated.
Two early stories from Galaxy science fiction magazine and one from Fantasy & Science Fiction (the famous "Harrison Bergeron") show Vonnegut's careful command of a genre about which he was always ambivalent, stories like "More Stately Mansions" or "The Foster Portfolio" the confines and formula of a popular fiction of which he was always suspicious. Vonnegut's affection for humanity and bewilderment as its corruption are manifest in these early works.
Several of these stories (those which appeared in Collier's) were commissioned by Vonnegut’s Cornell classmate and great supporter Knox Burger, also born in 1922.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.
Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels--Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan--were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak.
Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humor and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Author Kurt Vonnegut is considered by most to be one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His books Slaughterhouse-Five (named after Vonnegut's World War II POW experience) and Cat's Cradle are considered among his top works. RosettaBooks offers here a complete range of Vonnegut's work, including his first novel (Player Piano, 1952) for readers familiar with Vonnegut's work as well as newcomers.
When I grow up, I'm going to have my first kid read the Harry Potter series and convince him that he's a Wizard, too, and he'll receive his Hogwarts letter when he turns eleven. Sure enough, on his eleventh birthday he'll check the mail to find the letter ( written by me, obviously) and in the fall, I'll take him to King's Cross, point him towards platforms nine and ten, and not say a word as he collides into the pillar.
I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist by Kirk Douglas (Author), George Clooney (Foreword)
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From Kirk Douglas, Hollywood royalty and bestselling author of The Ragman’s Son and My Stroke of Luck, comes the candid story of the making of Spartacus, the blockbuster film that broke the blacklist
One
of the world’s most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished
himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of
fiction and memoir. Now, more than fifty years after the release of his
enduring epic Spartacus, Douglas reveals the riveting drama
behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. Douglas began
producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when
Hollywood’s moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist
sympathies. In a risky move, Douglas chose Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted
screenwriter, to write Spartacus. Trumbo was one of the
“Unfriendly Ten,” men who had gone to prison rather than testify before
the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political
affiliations. Douglas’s source material was already a hot property, as
the novel Spartacus was written by Howard Fast while he was in jail for defying HUAC.
With
the financial future of his young family at stake, Douglas plunged into
a tumultuous production both on- and off-screen. As both producer and
star of the film, he faced explosive moments with young director Stanley
Kubrick, struggles with a leading lady, and negotiations with giant
personalities, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter
Ustinov, and Lew Wasserman. Writing from his heart and from his own
meticulously researched archives, Kirk Douglas, at ninety-five, looks
back at his audacious decisions. He made the most expensive film of its
era—but more importantly, his moral courage in giving public credit to
Trumbo effectively ended the notorious Hollywood blacklist.
A master storyteller, Douglas paints a vivid and often humorous portrait in I Am Spartacus! The book is enhanced by newly discovered period photography of the stars and filmmakers both on and off the set.
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