DescriptionBeloved author Roger Angell discusses his memoir, which includes reflections on his family and growing up that have recently appeared in The New Yorker, with Mark Singer, staff writer for The New Yorker .
DescriptionKate's Daughter gets to the heart of the Catherine Cookson story. With the help of material made available only since Catherine's death, Piers Dudgeon, author of the number one best seller The Girl from Leam Lane and editor of her own illustrated memoir, Catherine Cookson's Country, lifts the veil on the myth and lays bare the true nature of this complex and fascinating woman.
DescriptionVirginia Woolf's life as part of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group has captured the imagination of millions. Now Nigel Nicolson, the distinguished son of British writers Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West (Vita was one of Woolf's closest and most intimate friends) threads his personal reminiscences through the narrative of her life. In so doing, he paints an astonishing portrait of one of the most remarkable women in history. Nicolson recalls childhood times with Woolf: from her walk around his ancestral home as she planned Orlando to her writing of the modern classics Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own . Virginia Woolf probes keenly her stance on women's issues and the nature of war, drawing new connections between the woman and the literary genius.
DescriptionRichard Belzer, stand-up comic, actor, talk-show host, author, and renowned conspiracy theorist, was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was thrown out of (or "politely asked to leave") every school he ever attended, due to "uncontrollable wit". Special appearances by Paul Shaffer, Professor Irwin Corey, and Gilbert Gottfried.
DescriptionOf Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley says that "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels". Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life. Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic, and lionized. Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all his major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew.
DescriptionAn autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten." (Roald Dahl) As full of excitement and the unexpected as his world-famous, best-selling books, Roald Dahl's tales of his own childhood are completely fascinating and fiendishly funny. Did you know that Roald Dahl nearly lost his nose in a car accident? Have you heard about his involvement in the Great Mouse Plot of 1924? If not, you don't yet know all there is to know about Roald Dahl. Sure to captivate and delight you, the boyhood antics of this master storyteller are not to be missed!
