You Suck, Sir


Book Description

Paul Bae is now a highly regarded comedian, podcaster, and the director of the Marvel Studios podcast Marvels, but he was once a high school English teacher. One day, during his student-teaching practicum, Paul Bae assigned weekend homework to the class. “You suck,” a student muttered. Mr. Bae turned on his heel, approached the student. “What did you say?” “Sorry. You suck, sir,” the student replied. Mr. Bae promptly returned to his desk, took out his teaching journal, and wrote down the exchange, which would become the first entry of hundreds of recorded encounters with students. Over the course of twelve years of teaching English, "Mr. Bae" -- or more simply, “Sir” -- kept several journals in which he recorded conversations he had with his students. You Suck, Sir presents the best of those conversations. Ranging from outrageously funny to touchingly poignant, these vignettes are full of heart. Paul’s stories are an irreverent, honest glimpse of teaching and learning and an inspiring peek into the connection one teacher has with his students. Both educators and anyone who has ever been a student will see themselves and their daily triumphs and struggles reflected here. You Suck, Sir is the latest title to be published under the Robin’s Egg Books imprint. Robin’s Egg Books features some of the freshest, smartest, and above all, funniest writing on a variety of culturally relevant subjects. Titles in the imprint are curated and edited by comedian, playwright, and author Charles Demers.




Dear Life, You Suck


Book Description

In this emotionally powerful, funny debut, Cricket Cherpin needs to figure out what to do with his life before he turns 18. But life sucksNso why not just give up?




What Makes This Book So Great


Book Description

As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Why the World Sucks and What We Can Do about It


Book Description

"Tired of watching the news, which is almost always bad? Frustrated at the deterioration of our society? Concerned about the world we will leave to our children? Think that the average person was a better person a generation or two ago? Politics won't solve the problem. It's now a game which goes round in circles, accomplishing little. Financial mismanagement is everywhere. Look at Greece, Spain and Italy. But also look at France and the United States. We're managing our governments like spoiled children. And it doesn't matter whether it's liberals or conservatives who are in charge. Both left and right are to blame because the problem is the system itself. "Why the World Sucks" outlines the issues and provides possible solutions. From a slightly eccentric point of view and with a little bit of humor." -- Back cover




Or What You Will


Book Description

Or What You Will is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton. He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years. But Sylvia won't live forever, any more than any human does. And he's trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he. Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he's got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Other Conundrums


Book Description

Other Conundrums, copublished with Vancouver's Artspeak Gallery and the Kamloops Art Gallery, is an extraordinary collection of essays on Canadian artists of colour by Monika Kin Gagnon, one of Canada's most respected art writers and curators. The essays explore the history of cultural production in this country with an emphasis on race, cultural difference, and cultural hybridity. Using specific artists and exhibitions as a starting-point for Gagnon's discussions, these essays, and the artists she writes about, are firmly grounded in Canadian cultural events, artistic projects, and theoretical ideas concerning race and culture which have circulated in often disparate contexts for the last decade. The book makes a distinctively Canadian contribution to ongoing dialogues on issues of race and culture that have originated from artists, writers, and theorists from the US and Britain, and provides an important and relevatory context to the work of Canada's artists of colour. The book includes numerous colour and black and white images, and a foreword by award-winning writer Larissa Lai (When Fox Is a Thousand). Chapters include overviews of the work of such artists as Shani Mootoo, Paul Wong, Jamelie Hassan, and Dana Claxton. Other Conundrums is an essential snapshot of contemporary issues surrounding race and identity as revealed in visual art.




Blackbird


Book Description

First published by St. Martin's Press in 1986, Blackbird is a funny, moving, coming-of-age novel about growing up black and gay in southern California. The lead character, Johnnie Ray Rousseau, is a high school student upset over losing the lead role in the school staging of Romeo and Juliet. As if that weren't enough, his best friend has been beaten badly by his father, and his girlfriend is pressuring him to have sex for the first time. All the while, he's intrigued by Marshall MacNeill, whom he meets at an audition and is surely the sexiest man to walk God's green eartha "at least according to Johnnie Ray. This novel of adolescent awakening is as fresh and heartfelt as it was when first published. With an introduction by Michael Nava, who is best-known for his gay mystery novels featuring Henry Rios, five of which have won Lambda Literary Awards, including Goldenboy and Howtown. He lives in San Francisco.




Venous Hum


Book Description

Reunions, racial and sexual tensions, extramarital affairs and cannibalistic, undead vegetarians: hell times infinity.




Plastic Sucks! You Can Make A Difference


Book Description

How can YOU help save our planet? This awesome and inspiring guide, written by McFly bassist and environmental activist Dougie Poynter, will show you how to get involved in the mission to cut out single-use plastic. Plastic is everywhere and it sucks. It fills up our oceans, endangers our wildlife and never goes away. So it's time to take action, find ways to cut down our plastic use and help protect our environment. Together we can make a difference! As a lifelong supporter of environmental causes and a key player in the campaign to ban microbeads in the UK, Dougie is always on the hunt for ways to reduce and replace plastic. This campaigning book, his first solo authored project, draws on his own experiences in the fight against plastic waste – the problems he's encountered and the solutions he's found. It covers the history of plastic, introduces us to some key campaigners and eco entrepreneurs and is full of top tips and infographics. The clear and easy steps in Plastic Sucks! You Can Make a Difference show us how we can all make small changes and become champions for our planet. Includes contributions from: - Adam Lowry, founder of Method - Amanda Keetley, founder of Less Plastic UK - Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen, founders of 5 Gyres - Blue Ollis - Dara McAnulty - Edwin Broni-Mensah, founder of GiveMeTap - Emily Penn - James Robson and Andy Bool, Sea Life and Sea Life Trust - Jonathon Porritt - Josh White and Perry Fielding, co-founders of CanO Water - Kate Arnell - Lauren St John - Lucy Woodall - Will Travers, president of Born Free




Sir Vidia's Shadow


Book Description

The acclaimed writer shares an intimate portrait of his former mentor V.S. Naipaul in this memoir of their thirty-year friendship and sudden falling out. Paul Theroux was a young aspiring writer when he met the legendary V.S. Naipaul in Uganda in 1966. There began a friendship that would span continents as both men ascended the ranks of literary stardom. Naipaul’s early encouragement of Theroux’s talent had a profound impact on him—yet the apprenticeship was not always easy. This heartfelt and revealing account of Theroux's thirty-year friendship with Naipaul explores the unique effect each writer had on the other. Built around exotic landscapes, anecdotes that are revealing, humorous, and melancholy, and three decades of mutual history, this is a personal account of how one develops as a writer and how a friendship waxes and wanes between two men who have set themselves on the perilous journey of a writing life. A New York Times Notable Book