Showing titles in Essays

In Feeding the Monster, Anna Bogutskaya dispels this notion once and for all by examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power.

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the...

Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying good-bye to her father in a way only he could have understood and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy,and healthy place she is today.

Ursula K. Le Guin witnessed and contributed to many of the twentieth century’s rebellions and upheavals, including women’s liberation, the Civil Rights movement and US anti-war and environmental activism. Spanning fifty years of her life and work, Space Crone brings together Le Guin’s writings on feminism and gender for the first time, offering new insights into her imaginative, multispecies feminist consciousness: from its roots in deep ecology and philosophies of non-violence to her self-education about racism and her writing on motherhood and ageing.

The View from the Cheap Seats draws together, for the first time ever, myriad nonfiction writing by international phenomenon and Sunday Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman. From Make Good Art, the speech he gave at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia that went viral, to pieces on artists and legends including Terry Pratchett, Lou Reed and Ray Bradbury, the collection offers a glimpse into the head and heart of one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.

This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things. "Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register "Didion’s timeless essays...

Brought to you by Penguin. In this book inspired by her phenomenally popular Substack newsletter, India Knight explores the essence of what makes a home, debunking intimidating ideas about ‘taste’ and trends, offering practical and reassuring advice for every room, and above all celebrating...

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughts - always adroit, often acerbic - on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation. Ursula K. Le Guin has taken listeners to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she's in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice - sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical - shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula's blog, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters.

Two weeks before his death, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness, the last book he would oversee. The bestselling author of On the Move, Musicophilia, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks is known for his illuminating case histories about people living...

In this engaging and erudite essay, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age and time.

Join Ursula K. Le Guin as she explores a broad array of subjects, ranging from Tolstoy, Twain, and Tolkien to women's shoes, beauty, and family life. With her customary wit, intelligence, and literary craftsmanship, she offers a diverse and highly engaging set of stories. The Wave in the Mind includes some of Le Guin's finest literary criticism, rare autobiographical writings, performance-art pieces, and most centrally, her reflections on the arts of writing and reading. 

Stockinette, ribbing, cables, even the humble yarn over can instantly evoke places, times, people, conversations, all those poignant moments that we’ve tucked away in our memory banks. Over time, those stitches form a map of our lives. —From the preface In The Yarn Whisperer: Reflections on...

When it comes to how societies commemorate their own distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, Jeremy Eichler makes a revelatory case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers - Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich - lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving works of music.

To overcome a crisis of melancholy after the death of his father, Montaigne withdrew to his country estates and began to write, and in the highly original essays that resulted he discussed themes such as fathers and children, conscience and cowardice, coaches and cannibals, and, above all, himself.

The great insights of the Stoics are spread over a wide range of ancient sources. This book brings them all together for the first time. It systematically presents what the various Stoic philosophers said on every important topic, accompanied by an eloquent commentary that is clear and concise. The result is a set of philosophy lessons for everyone - the most valuable wisdom of ages past made available for our times, and for all time.

This selection of essays by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) demonstrate the varied power of his genius. Compiled from his lecture tours, newspaper articles, essays and epigrams, these writings show that beneath his trademark wit and love of paradox, Oscar Wilde was an original and remarkably modern writer.

弱冠23歳で発表された平野文学の原点！ すべてはここから始まった。 15世紀末、ペストの猖獗によって荒廃した南仏の小村を舞台に、旅の途上の若き学僧の聖性体験を、漢語を多用した華麗で清新な文体で描き出し、文壇に衝撃を与えたデビュー作。

ロングセラー『本の読み方 スロー・リーディングの実践』の続編。 ポール・オースター『幽霊たち』、綿矢りさ『蹴りたい背中』、伊坂幸太郎『ゴールデンスランバー』、美嘉『恋空』、ドストエフスキー『罪と罰』、自著『本心』……現代の純文学、ミステリーさらにはケータイ小説も含めた計13作品を題材に、小説をより深く楽しく味わうコツをわかりやすく解説する。

本を速く読みたい！──それは忙しい現代人の切実な願いである。 しかし、速読は本当に効果があるのか？ 10冊の本を闇雲に読むよりも、1冊を丹念に読んだほうが、人生にとってはるかに有益ではないのか？

病気じゃないけど、体力がない。労働する元気も恋愛する元気もない――。SNSで「虚弱エッセイ」が話題沸騰の著者による「虚弱体質」のリアルをつづる、新世代のサバイバル・エッセイ！ ・21歳で身体にガタがきた ・仕事がないからじゃなくて、体力がないからお金がない