Book Description
Sample Text
Author : Ben Yagoda
Publisher : Random House Digital, Inc.
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 47,42 MB
Release : 2007
Category : English language
ISBN : 0767920775
Sample Text
Author : Ben Yagoda
Publisher : Crown
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 48,95 MB
Release : 2008-02-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0767929314
What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. Read If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It and: Learn how to write better with classic advice from writers such as Mark Twain (“If you catch an adjective, kill it”), Stephen King (“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs”), and Gertrude Stein (“Nouns . . . are completely not interesting”). Marvel at how a single word can shift from adverb (“I did okay”), to adjective (“It was an okay movie”), to interjection (“Okay!”), to noun (“I gave my okay”), to verb (“Who okayed this?”), depending on its use. Avoid the pretentious preposition at, a favorite of real estate developers (e.g., “The Shoppes at White Plains”). Laugh when Yagoda says he “shall call anyone a dork to the end of his days” who insists on maintaining the distinction between shall and will. Read, and discover a book whose pop culture references, humorous asides, and bracing doses of discernment and common sense convey Yagoda’s unique sense of the “beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language.”
Author : Lonnie D. Whitaker
Publisher :
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 40,41 MB
Release : 2014-01-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781606530245
Geese to a Poor Market is a geographic slice of Americana with an ensemble cast of crooks, moonshiners, preachers, lawyers, and odd-ball characters. It has one leg that wants to boogie and the other firmly planted on a pew.
Author : Eva Vanrell
Publisher :
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 18,70 MB
Release : 2016-07-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780997704709
An ancient war. A long-told prophecy. A cursed inheritance. If you were destined to die, how would you choose to live? Join Elena as she finds herself in the middle of a Greek myth and an ancient war between gods, in a world where the old myths are real and human belief has the power to alter the divine! *Finalist - Readers' Favorite Book Awards
Author : Mary Lawton
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
Page : 373 pages
File Size : 48,79 MB
Release : 2018-03-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1789120810
This book, which was first published in 1925, is a transcription of an informal account by Katy Leary of her thirty years’ service to the household of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), the 19th century American writer, humourist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, who became world-famous for novels such as Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). It was Mark Twain who suggested that the faithful Katy tell the world all she knew about him. Her reminiscences were locked away in her memory until Miss Mary Lawton, who had known Mr. and Mrs. Clemens for many years, persuaded Katy to reveal them. Katy Leary began to talk and, pencil in hand, Miss Lawton recorded while the old servant poured forth the inimitable words in which she related many a chapter as yet unknown to those outside the family circle. A fascinating read.
Author : Mark Twain
Publisher : St Martins Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 17,38 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9780312143657
Provides a personal look at the man behind the writing through an amusing collection of his expressed opinions and thoughts on such topics as such as fellow writers, authors, editors, children's books, humor, and public speakers.
Author : Ben Yagoda
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 21,79 MB
Release : 2009-11-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1101151471
From a critically acclaimed cultural and literary critic, a definitive history and analysis of the memoir. From Saint Augustine?s Confessions to Augusten Burroughs?s Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. Cultural and literary critic Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings and Roman generals? journals all the way up to the banner year of 2007, which saw memoirs from and about dogs, rock stars, bad dads, good dads, alternadads, waitresses, George Foreman, Iranian women, and a slew of other illustrious persons (and animals). In a time when memoir seems ubiquitous and is still highly controversial, Yagoda tackles the autobiography and memoir in all its forms and iterations. He discusses the fraudulent memoir and provides many examples from the past?and addresses the ramifications and consequences of these books. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition?Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Yagoda also describes historical trends, such as Native American captive memoirs, slave narratives, courtier dramas (where one had to pay to NOT be included in a courtesan?s memoir). Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored. Yagoda's elegant examination of memoir is at once a history of literature and taste, and an absorbing glimpse into what humans find interesting--one another.
Author : Peter Selgin
Publisher : Broadview Press
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 41,61 MB
Release : 2019-08-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1460406737
Your First Page is unlike any other craft book on writing. It is based on the premise that practically everything that can go right or wrong in a work of fiction or memoir goes wrong or right on the first page. Those first 300 or so words function like canaries in coal mines, forecasting success or predicting trouble. They establish the crucial bond between writer and reader, setting them off together on a path toward the heart or climax of a story—or they fail to do so. From first pages we stand to learn most of what we need to know to succeed as authors. This new workshop and classroom edition of Your First Page has been revised to better fit the needs of creative writing classrooms and workshops.
Author : Terry McDonell
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 25,54 MB
Release : 2017-07-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1101970510
An Amazon Best Book of 2016 A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are). You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has top-edited: Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny—playing “acid golf” with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price. Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit—and keep—high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well. Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today’s digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey Eugenides: “Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he's known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it's changed and where it's going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the Swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book.”
Author : Hugh Barker
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 19,60 MB
Release : 2007-01-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 0393060780
Musicians strive to "keep it real"; listeners condemn "fakes"; but does great music really need to be authentic? By investigating this obsession in the last century, this title rethinks what makes popular music work.