The Worst Band in the Universe


Book Description

On Planet Blipp, beyond the stars, beyond the sun and moon, The world was ruled by music - but tradition called the tune. The Ancient Songs of ages past were all that could be heard, And no one was allowed to change a single note or word...




The Worst Band in the Universe


Book Description

Castigated for defying tradition and playing an original tune on his Splingtwanger, thirteen-year-old Sprocc leaves Planet Bipp in search of musical freedom and enters the annual Worst Band in the Universe Competition. Includes a CD of songs supposedly recorded by the bands in the story.




The Worst Band in the Universe


Book Description

Castigated for defying tradition and playing an original tune on his Splingtwanger, thirteen-year-old Sprocc leaves Planet Bipp in search of musical freedom and enters the annual Worst Band in the Universe Competition. Includes a CD of songs supposedly recorded by the bands in the story.




Worst Thing in the Universe


Book Description

Albert Ross is the most miserable, pathetic, and terrible thing in the entire universe. He is reviled by many, most of all God. Albert Ross is an anomaly. Karma doesn't think anything he does is wrong. It's a glitch in the universe that God can't fix. Every trillion or so births in the universe, there is a karmic anomaly. That's not to say karma doesn't have its retribution. For every horrible act Albert Ross commits, karma punishes Vikram Suresh. Poor, sweet Vikram. He doesn't know why his life is so horrible. He doesn't know why the universe is unkind. It's unkind because of Albert Ross. That is the crux of the karmic anomaly. Karma thinks everything that Albert Ross does is actually carried out by Vikram Suresh. What a horrible lot in life. That's why Vikram kills himself. It usually doesn't matter when a poor, miserable schlub dies, but this death has instant ramifications. With his death, Karma can instantly see Albert Ross again and realizes its mistake. Like a rubber band, all the horrible things that Albert's ever done slingshot back to him at once. And God watches with glee as karma has its revenge. Worst Thing in the Universe is narrated by God, as he pontificates on the horrible fate of Vikram Suresh, expounds on the nature of the universe, and explores the flaws in the whole system.




The Worst Band in the World


Book Description

10cc chalked up more Top 10 singles and albums in the UK than virtually any other band of their generation: their most famous creation, 'I'm Not In Love', is a pop classic that has been played more than 3 million times on American radio; their records have been covered by everyone from The Pretenders to the Fun Lovin' Criminals; and their admirers include REM. Yet 10cc's enormous contribution to pop music consistently gets overlooked.




Citizen of Earth


Book Description

Vincent Solaris is a teenage malcontent whose future changes dramatically when he is arrested and sentenced to three year's service in the Earth Defense Forces. Any dreams of him lazing away his years of servitude are shattered when an alien horde called the Alliance attacks. Along with a Martian gangster named Fiona, he must find a way to survive




Dreaming the Beatles


Book Description

An NPR Best Book of the Year • Winner of the Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism “This is the best book about the Beatles ever written” —Mashable Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them. Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn’t another exposé about how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents’ stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up? As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time—The Beatles. In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia. Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the world’s biggest pop group, then broke up—but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn’t belong to the past—it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the world’s favorite thing—and how they invented the future we’re all living in today.




Band Sinister


Book Description

Sir Philip Rookwood is the disgrace of the county. He




The Worst of All Possible Worlds


Book Description

The rag-tag crew of the Capricious hunts down rogue AI, ancient colony ships, and the biggest treasure in the universe in this pulse-pounding space adventure for fans of Firefly and The Expanse. The crew of the Capricious seems to leave a trail of devastation wherever they go. But with powerful enemies in pursuit and family and friends under attack planetside, there's no time to worry about all that. Ensnared by the legend of Origin, humanity's birthplace, and a long-dead form of magic, the Capricious takes off on a journey to find the first colony ship . . . and power that could bring down gods. Read the incredible space-fantasy series that V. E. Schwab calls "A total blast!" The SalvagersA Big Ship at the Edge of the UniverseA Bad Deal for the Whole GalaxyThe Worst of All Possible Worlds




I Wear the Black Hat


Book Description

One-of-a-kind cultural critic and New York Times bestselling author Chuck Klosterman “offers up great facts, interesting cultural insights, and thought-provoking moral calculations in this look at our love affair with the anti-hero” (New York magazine). Chuck Klosterman, “The Ethicist” for The New York Times Magazine, has walked into the darkness. In I Wear the Black Hat, he questions the modern understanding of villainy. When we classify someone as a bad person, what are we really saying, and why are we so obsessed with saying it? How does the culture of malevolence operate? What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why don’t we see Bernhard Goetz the same way we see Batman? Who is more worthy of our vitriol—Bill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpson’s second-worst decision? And why is Klosterman still haunted by some kid he knew for one week in 1985? Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and imaginative hypotheticals, I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the antihero (seemingly the only kind of hero America still creates). As the Los Angeles Times notes: “By underscoring the contradictory, often knee-jerk ways we encounter the heroes and villains of our culture, Klosterman illustrates the passionate but incomplete computations that have come to define American culture—and maybe even American morality.” I Wear the Black Hat is a rare example of serious criticism that’s instantly accessible and really, really funny.