Keep 'Er Lit


Book Description

'This mix of genuine humility and hard-won hubris, of mysticism and technical mastery ... makes Van Morrison quite simply, and quite indisputably, "The Bard of Belfast".' Paul Muldoon If I ventured in the slipstream Between the viaducts of your dreams Keep 'Er Lit is the second volume of Van Morrison's collected lyrics containing one hundred and twenty songs from across his storied career. It contains love songs, work songs, songs about the pains and anxieties of existence, songs of consolation, songs about various kinds of spiritual quest and the realms of the mystical, and songs which deal with healing and reconciliation, both with the self and with others. Then there are the songs of memory and of childhood; songs about the natural world and about the perspectives it can provide on time. Taken together with Lit Up Inside , this volume gives an overview of his fifty-year career, revealing why he is celebrated as one of the most innovative and enduring songwriters of our time.




Keep 'Er Lit


Book Description

As I sit here writing this book, in the Sunshine State of Florida, in the middle of a lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I can't help thinking about how the world has changed since I ran around the streets of Belfast as a kid all those years ago. And then I think about how I headed to the UK and survived as a groundworker before starting a one-man band construction business after many years of hard work. And about how this one-man humble start-up grew into a multi-million pound group of companies operating in the Southeast of England. Writing this book has not been easy, but I had a lot of encouragement from my friends and family, and having made many mistakes and learnt many lessons the hard way over the years, I wanted to show any young guys just starting off their business careers that anything is possible. If this guy can do it, so can you. I really hope you enjoy this book. I've spent many long days and nights these last few months labouring over a keyboard. The experience has been a great learning curve. If one person learns anything from my story, this book will have been a success.




The Tobacco Keeper


Book Description

First published in Arabic in 2008, The Tobacco Keeper relates the investigation of the life of a celebrated Jewish Iraqi musician who was expelled to Israel in the 1950s. Having returned to Iraq, via Iran, the musician is thrown out as an Israeli spy. Returning for the third time under a forged passport, he is murdered in mysterious circumstances. Arriving in Baghdad's Green Zone during the US-led occupation, a journalist writing a story about the musician's life discovers an underworld of fake identities, mafias and militias. Even among the journalists, there is a secret world of identity games, fake names and ulterior motives.




Keeper


Book Description

The poems in Keeper explore, and long for, intimacy: with nature, with others, with the unknown. They delve into purely dark spaces (the insides of birdhouses and mailboxes, caves of prehistoric paintings) and in-between places, searching out, as Paul Eluard put it, the other world inside this one, pointing to the pervasive sensuality that connects all beings, and to the fact that essential goodness and sorrow often walk hand in hand.




Indigenous


Book Description

Engaging memoir about growing up in rural Southern California and identifying as a "Californian" for life.







These Days


Book Description

WINNER OF THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION WINNER OF THE E. M. FORSTER AWARD AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4s BOOK AT BEDTIME Two sisters. Four nights. One City. April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war - so far. Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the Belfast Blitz, These Days is an unforgettable novel about lives lived under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves 'Brilliantly evokes wartime love and heartbreak.' Guardian 'Breathtakingly good. A novel of enormous heart; full of luminous passages of prose.' Observer 'Meticulously researched, perfectly imagined, full of compassion and emotional truth.' CLARE CHAMBERS




The Yank


Book Description

1975: A young Irish-American man joins an elite US Marine unit to get the most intensive military training possible — then joins the Irish Republican Army, during the days of some of the bloodiest fighting ever in the Irish-British conflict . . . The Irish "Troubles" were at a murderous fever pitch when John Crawley volunteered for the IRA. Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday, the bombing of the British Houses of Parliament, and other deadly incidents had recently unfolded or were about to ... Civilian casualties were common as British soldiers, Republican militants (who wanted the UK out of Northern Ireland) and Unionist police and militants (who wanted to remain in the UK), engaged in gun battles and car bombing throughout Northern Ireland. The death toll numbered over 1,000. The IRA split over how to react between the old-line IRA, and the new Provisional IRA — the Provos, mostly impassioned young men who were not hesitant to resort to violence. In a powerful, brutally honest, no-holds-barred recounting of his experience, John Crawley details, first, the grueling challenges of his Marine Corps training, then how he put his hard-earned munitions and demolitions skills to use back in Ireland in service of the Provos. It is a story that will see him running guns with notorious American mobster — and secret IRA fundraiser — Whitey Bulger; running, under cover of night, from safe house to safe house in the Irish countryside, one step ahead of British troops; being captured, imprisoned, and being part of a mass escape attempt; fending off a recruitment offer from the CIA; and being one of the masterminds behind a campaign to take out London's electrical system. Along the way, Crawley is blisteringly candid about the memorable people he worked with, including behind-the-scenes portrayals of revered IRA leader Martin McGuinness, and of the psychopathic Whitey Bulger, as well as others in the Boston IRA support network. There are vivid portraits of colleagues and enemies, and Crawley is unflinching in his commentary on IRA leadership and their tactics, both military and political. Through it all comes the steadfast voice of a man on a mission, providing an evocative, detailed, and passionate recounting of where that mission led him and why — as well as why, to this day, he remains ready to serve.




The Imperial Dictionary


Book Description




Compound Words in Spanish


Book Description

This is the first book devoted entirely to the history of compound words in Spanish. Based on data obtained from Spanish dictionaries and databases of the past thousand years, it documents the evolution of the major compounding patterns of the language. It analyzes the structural, semantic, and orthographic features of each compound type, and also provides a description of its Latin antecedents, early attestations, and relative frequency and productivity over the centuries. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data shows that although most compound types have survived, they have undergone changes in word order and relative frequency. Moreover, the book shows that the evolution of compounding in Spanish may be accounted for by processes of language acquisition in children. This book, which includes all the data in chronological and alphabetical order, will be a valuable resource for morphologists, Romance linguists, and historical linguists more generally.