Other books that might interest you

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  The Life and Work of Dennis Potter

  W. Stephen Gilbert

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  The first critical biography of the innovative television writer whose off-kilter creations helped spark the Golden Age of modern television.   TV writer Dennis Potter is widely credited with revolutionizing television. The innovative shows he created for the BBC, including The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven, trailblazed new paths for genre-bending entertainment and demonstrated the creative possibilities of episodic television. Potter also adapted both of those shows into critically acclaimed major motion pictures: Pennies from Heaven starring Steve Martin, and The Singing Detective starring Robert Downey Jr.   In The Life and Work of Dennis Potter, W. Stephen Gilbert analyzes Potter’s impressive body of work, emphasizing the dramatic interplay between his life and the medium he loved. At the age of twenty-four, Potter was diagnosed with psoriatic arthopathy, a rare debilitating skin disease whose horrors he portrayed with biting black humor through his alter ego, the character Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective. Gilber traces Potter’s career from its beginnings to his astonishing final interview to Melvyn Bragg, weeks before his death. Unforgettable for its honesty about life, work, and dying, the result was yet another gripping piece of television—and quintessential Dennis Potter.   “[T]he late dramatist’s influence can be seen in many places, from Twin Peaks to Mrs. Brown’s Boys.” —The Guardian   “Gilbert recalls the lacerating wit, passionate intelligence, and courage behind the television playwright responsible for The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven.” —Vanity Fair

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  The World According to Proust

  Joshua Landy

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  Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was arguably France's best-known literary writer. He was the author of stories, essays, translations, and a 3,000-page novel, In Search of Lost Time (1913-27).This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the listener to view the novel as a single quest—a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging—through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind.Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find genuine connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself—how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls.

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  Swimming with the Blowfish -...

  Jim Sonefeld

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  The ultimate front-row seat to Hootie  the Blowfish and Jim “Soni" Sonefeld’s breathtaking path from addiction to recovery.For a time, there was no bigger band in the world than Hootie  the Blowfish—rock  roll’s unexpected foil to the grunge music that dominated the early ’90s airwaves. Jim Sonefeld, drummer and one of the group’s principal songwriters, reveals their humble beginnings, meteoric rise, Grammy Award–winning musicianship, sudden fall, and ultimate rebirth—and opens his heart to readers about addiction, recovery, and faith.Hootie’s debut album Cracked Rear View was one of the bestselling in the history of rock music. It saturated radio airwaves, television, and culture, and placed the quartet at the center of the American music conversation—for better and for worse. Though Jim enjoyed the perks that came with fame—the parties, the relationships, the money, the drugs and alcohol—eventually it all became a camouflage that hid a deeper spiritual malady. As his life careened toward disaster, he sought relief in twelve-step recovery, eventually devoting himself to a loving but by no means uncomplicated home life.Swimming with the Blowfish is an unpretentious, emotional story of one man’s spiritual path to a more fruitful life. Jim’s journey is staggering and redeeming, and ultimately as comforting as your favorite flannel shirt.

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  Claude Rains - An Actor's Voice

  David J. Skal, Jessica Rains

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  The first full-length biography of the actor known for his roles in The Invisible Man, Casablanca, and other classics, based on newly released interviews.   Given his childhood speech impediments and his origins in a destitute London neighborhood, the ascent of Claude Rains to the stage and screen was remarkable. Rains’s difficulties in his formative years provided reserves of gravitas and sensitivity, from which he drew inspiration for acclaimed performances in The Invisible Man, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Casablanca, Notorious, Lawrence of Arabia, and other classic films. In this book, noted Hollywood historian David J. Skal draws on more than thirty hours of newly released Rains interviews to create the first full-length biography of the man nominated multiple times for an Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor.   Skal’s portrait also benefits from the insights of Jessica Rains, who provides firsthand accounts of the enigmatic man behind her father’s refined screen presence and genteel public persona. As Skal shows, numerous contradictions informed the life and career of Claude Rains. He possessed an air of nobility and became an emblem of sophistication, but he never shed the insecurities that traced back to his upbringing in an abusive and poverty-stricken family. Though deeply self-conscious about his short stature, Rains drew notorious ardor from female fans and was married six times. His public displays of dry wit and good humor masked inner demons that drove Rains to alcoholism and its devastating consequences. Skal’s layered depiction of Claude Rains reveals a complex, almost inscrutable man whose nuanced characterizations were, in no small way, based on the more shadowy parts of his psyche. With unprecedented access to episodes from Rains’s private life, Skal tells the full story of the consummate character actor of his generation.   “This highly readable biography, written with the help of his daughter, Jessica Rains, reveals the witty, talented man behind this universally respected Hollywood legend.” —Tucson Citizen

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  Double or Nothing - How Two...

  Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman

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  If Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had come of age at the end of the twentieth century looking for an all-American adventure, they probably would've headed for Vegas. However, they'd have been hard-pressed to go on a wilder ride than the one taken by Tom Breitling and Tim Poster to the top of the famed Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino.Call them the Odds Couple.Breitling is the kid who lives next door if you grow up in Burnsville, Minnesota. He never saw a hundred dollar bill or The Godfather until he went to college. Poster comes from a family of oddsmakers who reach for the Doritos on football Sundays and scream for the point spread. He was whistling Sinatra and booking games at his Las Vegas high school.Their unlikely friendship began in college over an eight-dollar veal parmigiana sandwich that led to a partnership in a hotel reservation business. Starting with a desk, a chair, a pillow, and a telephone, Tim and Tom grew a company that they sold during the dot.com boom for $105 million. This allows Tim to pursue his childhood dream of owning a casino and bringing back the glory days of Vegas.When Tim ups the odds and raises the limits to give gamblers the best game in town, a craps player nicknamed "Mr. Royalty," who's on one of the hottest winning streaks in history, heads for the Nugget. When he begins to take Tom and Tim for millions, the partnership is put to the test. But Tim refuses to back off on the odds or the high limits, telling his partner, "It's a ballsy proposition here. It's gonna be a roller coaster ride. But we don't have a public company to answer to. It's just you and me."When Mr. Royalty rolls twenty-two consecutive passes and rakes in a mountain of chips, he takes Tim and Tom to the brink. They must figure out a way to hold up the House.Just as they do, the roller coaster ride really gets rolling—and the ride becomes crazier than they'd ever imagined.

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  Barack

  Jonah Winter

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  Acclaimed poet and award-winning children's author Jonah Winter-inspired by a political rally he attended during the historic 2008 presidential campaign-tells the moving story of Barack Obama. Beginning in Africa and Kansas, this enlightening biography describes Obama's life as an ongoing journey, from his birth in Hawaii to his election as president. Obama emerges as someone who, even from an early age, wondered where he belonged and who he might become.

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