The Stuff of Fiction

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Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472031535
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Stuff of Fiction by : Douglas Bauer

Download or read book The Stuff of Fiction written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006-08-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A master storyteller and teacher talks about the tools of the fiction writer's craft

The Story of Stuff

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439148783
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Story of Stuff by : Annie Leonard

Download or read book The Story of Stuff written by Annie Leonard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-02-18 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic exposé in company with An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring, The Story of Stuff expands on the celebrated documentary exploring the threat of overconsumption on the environment, economy, and our health. Leonard examines the “stuff” we use everyday, offering a galvanizing critique and steps for a changed planet. The Story of Stuff was received with widespread enthusiasm in hardcover, by everyone from Stephen Colbert to Tavis Smiley to George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America, as well as far-reaching print and blog coverage. Uncovering and communicating a critically important idea—that there is an intentional system behind our patterns of consumption and disposal—Annie Leonard transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet. From sneaking into factories and dumps around the world to visiting textile workers in Haiti and children mining coltan for cell phones in the Congo, Leonard, named one of Time magazine’s 100 environmental heroes of 2009, highlights each step of the materials economy and its actual effect on the earth and the people who live near sites like these. With curiosity, compassion, and humor, Leonard shares concrete steps for taking action at the individual and political level that will bring about sustainability, community health, and economic justice. Embraced by teachers, parents, churches, community centers, activists, and everyday readers, The Story of Stuff will be a long-lived classic.

The Stuff of Fiction

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Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472026275
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (72 download)

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Book Synopsis The Stuff of Fiction by : Douglas Bauer

Download or read book The Stuff of Fiction written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, prizewinning novelist and popular creative writing instructor Douglas Bauer (The Book of Famous Iowans) shares the secrets of his trade. Talent, as Bauer acknowledges, is the most crucial element for a writer and cannot be taught. But without a regular habit of work, and a perseverance of effort, no amount of talent can come forward and be recognized. His lively and candid essays on subjects critical to the fiction writer’ s success demystify the essential elements of fiction writing, how they work, and work together. Bauer’ s focus is on the building blocks of successful fiction: dialogue (the intimate relationship between characters talking and the eavesdropping reader), characters (the virtues of creating fictional characters that are both splendidly flawed and sympathetic), and dramatic events (ways to create moments that produce an emotional and psychological impact). There are also chapters on crafting effective openings and memorable closings of stories and on the vital presence of sentiment in fiction versus the ruinous effect of sentimentality. By assuming the point of view of someone at the task, engaged with the work, inside the effort to bring an invented world to life, The Stuff of Fiction speaks to writers of all ages in a pleasurable yet practical voice. Douglas Bauer is the author of three novels, Dexterity, The Very Air, and The Book of Famous Iowans, and one book of nonfiction, Prairie City, Iowa. He is also a core faculty member with the MFA Program at Bennington College and has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Massachusetts Artists Foundation grant, and two Harvard Danforth Excellence in Teaching Citations.

The Stuff of Fiction

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Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472031535
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Stuff of Fiction by : Douglas Bauer

Download or read book The Stuff of Fiction written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006-08-09 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A master storyteller and teacher talks about the tools of the fiction writer's craft

To Feel Stuff

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Author :
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 054434622X
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (443 download)

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Book Synopsis To Feel Stuff by : Andrea Seigel

Download or read book To Feel Stuff written by Andrea Seigel and published by HMH. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of a college student beset with afflictions, by an author whose “books are shot through with light and dark, with strangeness and humor” (Kelly Link). Meet Elodie Harrington, college student and medical anomaly. From chicken pox to tuberculosis, Elodie suffers such a frequent barrage of illnesses that she moves into the Brown University infirmary. When charismatic Chess Hunter enters the infirmary with two smashed knees, he and Elodie begin an intense affair—but Chess is only a visitor to Elodie’s perpetual state of medical siege. As he heals, he moves back to his former life. But Elodie heads in the other direction and begins to experience strange visions. When Professor Mark Kirschling, MD, gets wind of Elodie, he’s convinced he can make his professional mark by cracking her case. But he’s entirely unprepared for what he’s about to encounter. By the author of Like the Red Panda, To Feel Stuff is a novel that is “a satire, ghost story, college romance, and medical drama . . . Seigel’s confidence—her intelligence and nerve—lets her take risks that sweep the reader along” (Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of Less than Zero and American Psycho).

The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0684859785
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of by : Thomas M. Disch

Download or read book The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of written by Thomas M. Disch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2000-07-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular insider offers a fascinating history of science fiction filled with provocative critiques, tidbits, and insights that reveal much about our cultural and literary history.

All the Right Stuff

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Author :
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006211428X
Total Pages : 114 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (621 download)

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Book Synopsis All the Right Stuff by : Walter Dean Myers

Download or read book All the Right Stuff written by Walter Dean Myers and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers tackles the social contract from a teen’s perspective in his novel All the Right Stuff. In one of his most thought-provoking novels to date, Myers weaves together political philosophy, basketball, and making soup in Harlem, with the depth that defines his writing career. After his father is shot and killed, Paul Dupree finds a summer job at a Harlem soup kitchen. Elijah, the soup man, questions Paul about tough life choices, even though Paul would rather be playing basketball. Over the summer, Paul begins to understand the importance of taking control of your life. All the Right Stuff includes a Q&A between Walter Dean Myers and Ross Workman, coauthor of Kick.

Such Stuff as Dreams

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119973538
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (199 download)

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Book Synopsis Such Stuff as Dreams by : Keith Oatley

Download or read book Such Stuff as Dreams written by Keith Oatley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction explores how fiction works in the brains and imagination of both readers and writers. Demonstrates how reading fiction can contribute to a greater understanding of, and the ability to change, ourselves Informed by the latest psychological research which focuses on, for example, how identification with fictional characters occurs, and how literature can improve social abilities Explores traditional aspects of fiction, including character, plot, setting, and theme, as well as a number of classic techniques, such as metaphor, metonymy, defamiliarization, and cues Includes extensive end-notes, which ground the work in psychological studies Features excerpts from fiction which are discussed throughout the text, including works by William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Kate Chopin, Anton Chekhov, James Baldwin, and others

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101222999
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Will Grayson, Will Grayson by : John Green

Download or read book Will Grayson, Will Grayson written by John Green and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author join forces for a collaborative novel of awesome proportions. One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won them both legions of faithful fans. A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice An ALA Stonewall Honor Book “Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a complete romp. [It is] so funny, rude and original that by the time flowers hit the stage, even the musical-averse will cheer.” —The New York Times Book Review ★“Will have readers simultaneously laughing, crying and singing at the top of their lungs.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review “It is such a good book. [Green and Levithan] are two of the best writers writing today.” —NPR’sThe Roundtable

What Makes This Book So Great

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1466844094
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis What Makes This Book So Great by : Jo Walton

Download or read book What Makes This Book So Great written by Jo Walton and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Stuff That Never Happened

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307393682
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis The Stuff That Never Happened by : Maddie Dawson

Download or read book The Stuff That Never Happened written by Maddie Dawson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journey into the what-ifs that haunt us all, The Stuff That Never Happened is an intricate, heartfelt examination of modern marriage that brims with truths about the nature of romantic love. What if you were married to someone for twenty-eight years but in love with another? What if you were in love with them both? Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn’t have any complaints. She’s been in a stable marriage that’s lasted almost three decades and has provided her with two wonderful children, thousands of family dinners around a sturdy oak table, and a husband so devoted that he schedules lovemaking into his calendar every Wednesday morning. Other wives envy the fact that Grant is not the type of man who would ever cheat on her or leave her for a younger woman. The trouble is Annabelle isn’t sure she wants to be married to Grant anymore. The trouble is she’s still in love with someone else. In the early tumultuous years of her marriage, Annabelle carried on a clandestine affair with the one person whose betrayal would hurt her husband the most. When it ended, she and Grant found their way back together and made a pact that they would never speak of that time again. But now years later, with her children grown and gone, and an ominous distance opening between them, she can’t help but remember those glorious, passionate days and wonder if she chose the right man. Then, when called to New York City to help care for her pregnant daughter, Annabelle bumps into her old lover. Offered a second chance at an unforgettable love, she must decide between the man who possesses her heart and the husband who has stood squarely by her side.

Stuff You Should Know

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Publisher : Flatiron Books
ISBN 13 : 1250268516
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Stuff You Should Know by : Josh Clark

Download or read book Stuff You Should Know written by Josh Clark and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the duo behind the massively successful and award-winning podcast Stuff You Should Know comes an unexpected look at things you thought you knew. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant started the podcast Stuff You Should Know back in 2008 because they were curious—curious about the world around them, curious about what they might have missed in their formal educations, and curious to dig deeper on stuff they thought they understood. As it turns out, they aren't the only curious ones. They've since amassed a rabid fan base, making Stuff You Should Know one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Armed with their inquisitive natures and a passion for sharing, they uncover the weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics. The pair have now taken their near-boundless "whys" and "hows" from your earbuds to the pages of a book for the first time—featuring a completely new array of subjects that they’ve long wondered about and wanted to explore. Each chapter is further embellished with snappy visual material to allow for rabbit-hole tangents and digressions—including charts, illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. Follow along as the two dig into the underlying stories of everything from the origin of Murphy beds, to the history of facial hair, to the psychology of being lost. Have you ever wondered about the world around you, and wished to see the magic in everyday things? Come get curious with Stuff You Should Know. With Josh and Chuck as your guide, there’s something interesting about everything (...except maybe jackhammers).

Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff

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Publisher : Washington Square Press
ISBN 13 : 1501189050
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff by : Sean Penn

Download or read book Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff written by Sean Penn and published by Washington Square Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An incredibly interesting work.” —Jane Smiley “A straight up masterwork.” —Sarah Silverman “Blisteringly funny.” —Corey Seymour “A transcendent apocalyptic satire.” —Michael Silverblatt “Crackling with life.” —Paul Theroux “Great fun.” —Salman Rushdie “A provocative debut.” —Kirkus Reviews From legendary actor and activist Sean Penn comes a scorching, “charmingly weird” (Booklist, starred review) novel about Bob Honey—a modern American man, entrepreneur, and part-time assassin. Bob Honey has a hard time connecting with other people, especially since his divorce. He’s tired of being marketed to every moment, sick of a world where even an orgasm isn’t real until it is turned into a tweet. A paragon of old-fashioned American entrepreneurship, Bob sells septic tanks to Jehovah’s Witnesses and arranges pyrotechnic displays for foreign dictators. He’s also a contract killer for an off-the-books program run by a branch of United States intelligence that targets the elderly, the infirm, and others who drain society of its resources. When a nosy journalist starts asking questions, Bob can’t decide if it’s a chance to form some sort of new friendship or the beginning of the end for him. With treason on everyone’s lips, terrorism in everyone’s sights, and American political life sinking to ever-lower standards, Bob decides it’s time to make a change—if he doesn’t get killed by his mysterious controllers or exposed in the rapacious media first. A thunderbolt of startling images and painted “with a broadly satirical, Vonnegut-ian brush” (Kirkus Reviews), Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is one of the year's most controversial and talked about literary works.

The Book of Famous Iowans

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Author :
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609382668
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis The Book of Famous Iowans by : Douglas Bauer

Download or read book The Book of Famous Iowans written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2014-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Vaughn, a man of late middle age living in Chicago with his second wife, remembers the month of June 1957 in his hometown, the rural village of New Holland, Iowa. More precisely, Will remembers just a few days of that month and the quick sequence of astonishing events that have colored, ever since, the logic of his heart and the moods of his mind. He tells of his stunningly beautiful young mother, Leanne, who liked to recall the years of the Second World War, during which she sang with a dance band in a lounge in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He tells too of his father, Lewis, a soldier in the war who one night saw the “resplendently sequined” Leanne step onstage and began at that instant to plot his courtship of her. But mostly what Will summons up in his intimate remembrance are those few catastrophic days in early June when he was “three months shy of twelve,” more than a decade after his parents have married and returned to the Vaughns’ home place, where Lewis farms his family’s land. For it is during those days that Leanne’s affair with a local man named Bobby Markum becomes known—first to Lewis and then, in a fiercely dramatic public confrontation, to young Will, to his beloved Grandmother Vaughn, and by nightfall to all the citizens of the town. The knowledge of such scandal, in so small a place, sets off a series of highly charged reactions, vivid consequences that surely determine the fates of every member of this unforgettable family. A tale of memory and hero worship and the restless pulse of longing, The Book of Famous Iowans examines those forces that define not only a state made up of a physical geography, but more important, those states of the wholly human spirit.

The Lonely Soldier

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Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807061492
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lonely Soldier by : Helen Benedict

Download or read book The Lonely Soldier written by Helen Benedict and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lonely Soldier--the inspiration for the documentary The Invisible War--vividly tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006--and of the challenges they faced while fighting a war painfully alone. More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine." In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L.A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D.C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers-including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful, The Lonely Soldier is a clarion call for change.

Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0195157044
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (951 download)

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Book Synopsis Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions by : Orin Hargraves

Download or read book Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions written by Orin Hargraves and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans and Britons are exposed to unedited texts, scripts, and speech from one another's dialects at an unprecedented and accelerating rate. Most people have no trouble understanding the general meaning of language in the other dialect, but readers and listeners very often fail to understand or misunderstand critical words, references, and allusions for lack of familiarity of the social and cultural contexts that underlie various usages. This book remedies this gap in understanding by cataloguing the differences that language users on either side of the Atlantic are likely to encounter in their dealings with the other dialect. By taking a culturally neutral stance it addresses the needs of both British and American readers and listeners. The thematic organization of the book allows the user to access language differences in various subject areas, where words likely to be needed at the same time can all be found together. Chapters include; Politics, Law, and Government; Business and Money; Medicine and Healthcare; Education; Food, Clothing, and Shelter; Transportation; Sports; and Profanity and Obscenity, in addition to basic information on orthography, weights and measures, etc. The appendices and extensive index provide a ready point of entry for quick look-ups, and there will be an extra chapter on Canadian, Australian, and Asian English.

All Rights Reserved

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Author :
Publisher : Harlequin
ISBN 13 : 1488015473
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis All Rights Reserved by : Gregory Scott Katsoulis

Download or read book All Rights Reserved written by Gregory Scott Katsoulis and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where every word and gesture is copyrighted, patented or trademarked, one girl elects to remain silent rather than pay to speak, and her defiant and unexpected silence threatens to unravel the very fabric of society. Speth Jime is anxious to deliver her Last Day speech and celebrate her transition into adulthood. The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks (“Sorry” is a flat ten dollars and a legal admission of guilt), for every nod ($0.99/sec), for every scream ($0.99/sec) and even every gesture of affection. She’s been raised to know the consequences of falling into debt, and can’t begin to imagine the pain of having her eyes shocked for speaking words that she’s unable to afford. But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Backed into a corner, Speth finds a loophole: rather than read her speech—rather than say anything at all—she closes her mouth and vows never to speak again. Speth’s unexpected defiance of tradition sparks a media frenzy, inspiring others to follow in her footsteps, and threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them.