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Bleaker house : chasing my novel to the end of the world / by Stevens, Nell,1985-author.;
"On a frozen island in the Falklands, with only penguins for company, a young would-be writer struggles to craft a debut novel ... and instead writes a funny, clever, moving memoir that heralds the arrival of a fresh new literary talent. Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but somehow life kept getting in the way. Then came an irresistible opportunity: she won a fellowship to spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Did she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Um, no. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock off the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she imagined she could finally rid herself of distractions and write her 2,500 words a day. In three months, surely she'd have a novel, right? It's true that there aren't many distractions on Bleaker, other than sheep, penguins, paranoia and the weather. But as Nell gets to work on her novel--a delightful Dickensian fiction she calls Bleaker House--she discovers that an excruciatingly erratic Internet connection and 1100 calories a day (as much food as she could carry in her suitcase, budgeted to the raisin) are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humour, this memoir traces Nell's island days and slowly reveals details of the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her art. They pop up in her novel, as well, as memoir and novel start to reflect one another. It seems that there is nowhere Nell can run--neither a remote island nor the pages of her notebook--to escape herself. A whimsical, entertaining, thought-provoking blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with tongue-in-cheek writing advice, Bleaker House brilliantly captures the hopes, fears, self-torture and humour of being young and yearning to make a creative life. With winning honesty and wit, Nell's race to finish her book emerges as a fascinating narrative in its own right."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Stevens, Nell, 1985-; Stevens, Nell, 1985-; Authors, English; Authorship.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A (very) short history of life on Earth : 4.6 billion years in 12 pithy chapters / by Gee, Henry,1962-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In the tradition of E.H. Gombrich, Stephen Hawking, and Alan Weisman-an entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place-in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents-a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed"--
Subjects: Evolution (Biology); Life;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Defending Jacob [videorecording] / by Dockery, Michelle,1981-actor.; Evans, Chris,1981-actor.; Jones, Cherry,1956-actor.; Martell, Jaeden,actor.; Tyldum, Morten,television director.; television adaptation of (work):Landay, William.Defending Jacob.; Paramount Home Media Distribution,publisher.;
Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaeden Martell, Cherry Jones, Pablo Schreiber, J.K. Simmons.Defending Jacob unfolds around a shocking crime that rocks a small Massachusetts town and one family in particular, forcing an assistant district attorney to choose between his sworn duty to uphold justice and his unconditional love for his son.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.Described video for the blind and visually impaired.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Thrillers (Television programs); Television programs.; Television mini-series.; Murder; Public prosecutors; Fathers and sons; Trials (Murder);
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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True west : Sam Shepard's life, work, and times / by Greenfield, Robert,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An intimate portrait of the iconic playwright, actor, and director Sam Shepard, whose wide-ranging and enduring body of work places him at the center of the American canon, from an award-winning biographer. True West is the story of an American icon, a lasting portrait of Sam Shepard as he really was, revealed by those who knew him best. This sweeping biography charts Shepard's long and complicated journey from a small town in southern California to his standing as an internationally known playwright and movie star. The son of an alcoholic father, Shepard crafted a public persona as an authentic American archetype: the loner, the cowboy, the drifter, a stranger in a strange land. Despite his great critical and financial success, he seemed, like so many of his characters, to remain perpetually dispossessed. Much like Robert Greenfield's biographies of Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, this book delves deeply into Shepard's life as well as the ways in which his work illuminates it. True West takes readers through the world of downtown theater in lower Manhattan in the early sixties, the jazz scene at the Village Gate, fringe theatre in London in the seventies, Bob Dylan's legendary Rolling Thunder tour, the making of classic films like Zabriskie Point, Days of Heaven, and The Right Stuff, and Broadway productions of Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love. For this definitive biography, Greenfield interviewed dozens of people who knew Shepard well, many of whom had never before spoken on the record about him. While exploring his relationships with Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Jessica Lange across the long arc of his brilliant career, Greenfield makes the case for Shepard not just as a great American writer but a unique figure who first brought the sensibility of rock 'n' roll to serious theater"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Shepard, Sam, 1943-2017.; Actors; Dramatists, American;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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