My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan


Book Description

Chubby, Jewish, and gay high school sophomore Justin Goldblatt plans to become popular by the end of the year, but instead of dating the star quarterback he catches the eye of Becky, the quarterback's girlfriend, while his best friend, Spencer, stops speaking to him.




Awful Awesome


Book Description

Welcome to the wild world of Awful Awesome cinema. In over 100 reviews, this book explores Horror genre films released from the 1980's to today that are so bad, they're good. These are films that are hilariously terrible and make for a great night of movie watching with friends. Monsters, slashers, mutants, sharks, witches, and werewolves await you as you explore the often ignored world of low budget, direct to video, trash films made with lots of heart but not a lot of money. Films include Rock N Roll Nightmare, Shark Attack 3, and Suburban Sasquatch and films from studios like The Asylum, AGFA, and New Horizons. So stock up on crosses, load up the silver bullets, put on your running shoes, and get out of the water, because this is going to be a wild ride!




My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan


Book Description

Justin has two goals for sophomore year: to date Chuck, the hottest boy in school, and to become the king of Cool U, the table in the cafeteria where the "in" crowd sits. Unfortunately, he has the wrong look (short, plump, Brillo-pad curls), he has the wrong interests (Broadway, chorus, violin), and he has the wrong friends (Spencer, into Eastern religions, and Mary Ann, who doesn't shave her armpits). And Chuck? Well, he's not gay; he's dating Becky, a girl in chorus with whom Justin is friendly. But Justin is determined. In detention one day (because he saw Chuck get it first), Justin comes up with a perfect plan: to allow Becky to continue dating Chuck, whom Becky's dad hates. They will pretend that Becky is dating Justin, whom Becky's dad loves. And when Becky and Justin go out on a fake date, Chuck will meet up with them for a real date with Becky. Chuck's bound to find Justin irresistable, right? What could go wrong? Seth Rudetsky's first novel for young adults is endearingly human, and laugh-out-loud funny, and any kid who ever aspired to Cool U will find Justin a welcome ally in the fight for popularity.




Awful Awesome Action Volume 1


Book Description

Welcome to the wild world of Awful Awesome cinema. In over 100 reviews, this book explores Action genre films released from the 1980's to today that are so bad, they're good. These are films that are hilariously terrible and make for a great night of movie watching with friends. Over the top action, explosions, car chases, and towns where everyone knows martial arts await you as you explore the often ignored world of low budget, direct to video, trash films made with lots of heart but not a lot of money. Films include Samurai Cop, Miami Connection, Revenge of the Ninja, and Parole Violators and films from studios like Cannon, PM Entertainment and the films of Andy Sidaris. So pull up your zubaz, comb your mullet, grab your long-butt-bikini clad girl, strap on your uzi, and stroke your mustache because this is going to be a wild ride!




Dictionary of Confusable Words


Book Description

Adjacent or adjoining? Abuse or misuse? Consist, comprise, constitute, or compose? Guarantee or warranty? Pose, propose, or propound? Stationery or stationary? The Dictionary of Confusable Words aims to clear up the confusion in such cases. In more than 1,100 entries, the meaning of 3,000 individual words are given,the difference between them is explained, and an illustrative example showing the correct usage is provided. The book also includes specific examples to show past and present usage of words, and words occuring as the second or subsequent in a group are cross-referenced to ther head word in the appropriate alphabetical place. Editor Adrian Room has also included some familiar proper names that are sometimes confused, such as Liberia and Libya (countries), Monterey and Monterrey (towns), and Lloyds and Lloyd's (financial institutions). Classic or classical? Discreet or discrete? Continual or Continuous? Principle or Principal? Confused? Be confused no longer, with this handy book as your user-friendly guide.




How to Live an Awesome Life


Book Description

Awe. It is about wonder. About accessing the amazing to express reverence, admiration. Awe like this can show up in every aspect of our lives – even those we declare as not so great. When we can look at all aspects of our lives with this kind wonder and admiration, awe changes us. We are broken open by it. It forces us to rethink things. To tweak our behaviors and choices. To move toward things that matter. Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey says awe forces us to reconfigure our mental model so we can make sense of what we’ve seen and experienced. It broadens us, inspires us. Awe then, has the ability to awaken us. It can show us the beauty that already exists and remind us who we are at our spiritual core. It brings us closer to our purpose and passion and helps us create meaning. It helps us to live with the mystery in life, to survive the uncertainty of it all. It allows us to sink into the experience of living. To engage in it. To be touched by it. To participate rather than needing to manipulate, contrive, or control every moment, each experience. When you live in awe of your life you are open to diverse experiences. Some are easy peasy, comfortable and even joyous. Others totally suck. But you are okay because you know that within every experience the possibilities are limitless and experience is multi-dimensional. It is never just one thing. It is always more than bad or good. Polly Campbell designed this book to help you engage with the awesome qualities of your life. Do the exercises if you want – or not. Read this book chapter by chapter or go to the section that will help you most right now. Take what works, discard the rest. You will not be graded on how well you use this book. You won’t be judged. Living an Awesome Life isn’t about following a strict set of rules. It’s about living from your essence and using all that to catapult you into your best life. What that life looks like is up to you. You are the creator of your moments. They are shaped by what you believe, what you notice, how you behave. You get to choose. No matter who you are, what you’ve done, where you’ve been, what you’ve experienced and borne, the very next moment can be awesome. Seriously. Sounds a little woo-woo, I know, but this is totally doable. When you discover the awe in the now, it transforms the next moment and makes it more possible, a bit easier to bear. A bit more awesome. When you string together a whole batch of little awesome moments, you can create a big, fat awesome life. Starting now. From right here




Garner's Modern English Usage


Book Description

With more than a thousand new entries and more than 2,300 word-frequency ratios, the magisterial fourth edition of this book-now renamed Garner's Modern English Usage (GMEU)-reflects usage lexicography at its finest. Garner explains the nuances of grammar and vocabulary with thoroughness, finesse, and wit. He discourages whatever is slovenly, pretentious, or pedantic. GMEU is the liveliest and most compulsively readable reference work for writers of our time. It delights while providing instruction on skillful, persuasive, and vivid writing. Garner liberates English from two extremes: both from the hidebound "purists" who mistakenly believe that split infinitives and sentence-ending prepositions are malfeasances and from the linguistic relativists who believe that whatever people say or write must necessarily be accepted. The judgments here are backed up not just by a lifetime of study but also by an empirical grounding in the largest linguistic corpus ever available. In this fourth edition, Garner has made extensive use of corpus linguistics to include ratios of standard terms as compared against variants in modern print sources. No other resource provides as comprehensive, reliable, and empirical a guide to current English usage. For all concerned with writing and editing, GMEU will prove invaluable as a desk reference. Garner illustrates with actual examples, cited with chapter and verse, all the linguistic blunders that modern writers and speakers are prone to, whether in word choice, syntax, phrasing, punctuation, or pronunciation. No matter how knowledgeable you may already be, you're sure to learn from every single page of this book.




High School Journalism


Book Description

Includes a brief history of American journalism and discusses the duties of a journalist, styles of writing, the parts of a newspaper, newspaper and yearbook design, photography, and careers in journalism.




Learned Writing


Book Description

As lawyers, we must not, in hot pursuit of common law, outrun common sense. The dread of that eventuality prompted this book. Learned Writing promotes common sense in legal language. Plain language, which is commonsensical, broadens access to legal documents, thus democratizing the law. If democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, law is the language in which government interacts with the people—it is the language of democracy. The people whose government speaks through law must understand what is said. No democratic society should brook legalese, a dense, verbose dialect known only to lawyers. What then should society do to redress the lawyer-induced obscurity? A Shakespearean character had an alarming proposal: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Apparently, that proposal was not enthusiastically endorsed, which explains why we’re still here. A milder remedy—enrolling lawyers in language classes—has been muted, which explains why this book is in your hands. Learned Writing motivates lawyers to prefer plain language to the legalese and verbosity that have besmirched legal writing for centuries. This book is as sweeping a treatment of its subject as you can find anywhere.




Highly Irregular


Book Description

"Perhaps you're reading a book and stop to puzzle over absurd spelling rules, or you hear someone talking and get stuck on an expression, or your kid quizzes you on homework. Suddenly you ask yourself, "Wait, why do we do it this way?" You think about it, try to explain it, and keep running into walls. It doesn't conform to logic. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. There doesn't seem to be any rule at all. In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more. Along the way she tells the story of the many influences--from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers--that made our language the way it is today"--