Hand-Me-Down Dream (Essay)

Hand-Me-Down Dream (Essay) PDF

Author: George Dohrmann

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2012-02-07

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13: 0345530128

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In this eBook exclusive essay, Pulitzer Prize–winning sports journalist George Dohrmann follows a father and son separated by prison bars—but bonded by their pursuit of basketball glory. The dream of playing big-time basketball never came true for Bruce Nelson, so he passed it on to his son Roberto. His every waking moment as a father was devoted to securing Roberto a Division I scholarship. Oftentimes he worried that his son’s lack of competitive fire might put that dream in jeopardy—when in fact it was Bruce’s own actions that would do so. When Bruce is forced to monitor Roberto’s progress from behind penitentiary walls, his influence recedes—and so too does Roberto’s commitment to the aspirations they once shared. In a story that combines deep insight into family relationships with the deft storytelling that distinguished his award-winning Play Their Hearts Out, George Dohrmann follows Roberto as he addresses his life’s most difficult decisions in the absence of his best friend and most constant companion. In doing so, Dohrmann sheds new light on the larger story of basketball dreams and the pressures they place on young athletes. Includes an excerpt from George Dohrmann’s Play Their Hearts Out, winner of the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting and the Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Youth Sports. Praise for Play Their Hearts Out “Often heartbreaking, always riveting.”—The New York Times Book Review “Tremendous.”—The Plain Dealer “Indispensable.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of reporting, filled with deft storytelling and vivid character studies.”—The Washington Post “One of the finest sports books of all time.”—Harper’s Magazine “Amazing stuff . . . the Friday Night Lights of youth basketball.”—Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam “A landmark achievement in basketball journalism.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) NAMED ONE OF THE BEST SPORTS BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES • THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR • KIRKUS REVIEWS

Why I Write

Why I Write PDF

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: Renard Press Ltd

Published: 2021-01-01

Total Pages: 15

ISBN-13: 1913724263

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George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

The Running Dream

The Running Dream PDF

Author: Wendelin Van Draanen

Publisher: Ember

Published: 2012-01-10

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0375866280

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When Jessica is told she’ll never run again, she puts herself back together—and learns to dream bigger than ever before. The acclaimed author of Flipped delivers a powerful and healing story. Jessica thinks her life is over when she loses a leg in a car accident. She’s not comforted by the news that she’ll be able to walk with the help of a prosthetic leg. Who cares about walking when you live to run? As she struggles to cope, Jessica feels that she’s both in the spotlight and invisible. People who don’t know what to say act like she’s not there. Jessica’s embarrassed to realize that she’s done the same to a girl with CP named Rosa. A girl who is going to tutor her through all the math she’s missed. A girl who sees right into the heart of her. With the support of family, friends, a coach, and her track teammates, Jessica may actually be able to run again. But that’s not enough for her now. She doesn’t just want to cross finish lines herself—she wants to take Rosa with her. “Inspirational. The pace of Van Draanen’s prose matches Jessica’s at her swiftest. Readers will zoom through the book just as Jessica blazes around the track. A lively and lovely story.” —Kirkus Reviews

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men PDF

Author: John Steinbeck

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 1937

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13: 0359199143

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Tells a story about the strange relationship of two migrant workers who are able to realize their dreams of an easy life until one of them succumbs to his weakness for soft, helpless creatures and strangles a farmer's wife.

The Book of (More) Delights

The Book of (More) Delights PDF

Author: Ross Gay

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2023-09-19

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1643755471

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From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us. In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

The Crossroads of Should and Must

The Crossroads of Should and Must PDF

Author: Elle Luna

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

Published: 2015-04-07

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0761184201

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There are two paths in life: Should & Must. We arrive at this crossroads over and over again, and every day. And we get to choose. Starting out or starting over, making a career change or making a life change, the most life-affirming thing you can do is to honor the voice inside that says your have something special to give, and then heed the call and act. Many have traveled this road before. Here’s how you can, too. #choosemust An inspirational gift book for every recent graduate, every artist, every seeker, and every career change.

Dreaming in Cuban

Dreaming in Cuban PDF

Author: Cristina García

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2011-06-08

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307798003

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“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

Desiring Dragons

Desiring Dragons PDF

Author: Kevan Manwaring

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2014-05-30

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1782795820

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Author of The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien, talked of ‘desiring dragons’; that he would prefer ‘a wilderness of dragons’ to the bleak territory of the unimaginative critic. The genre of Fantasy (including Science Fiction and its various sub-genres in TV, film & computer games) has never been more popular. This book seeks to examine why this might be and why so many are tempted to write Fantasy fiction. Tolkien suggested how 'consolation' is an important criteria of the Fairy Tale: we look at how writing Fantasy can be consoling in itself, as well as a portal to Fantastic Realms for the reader. Along the way famous dragons of myth, legend and fiction will be encountered - from Grendel to Smaug. The riddles of dragons will be tackled and their hoard unlocked. ,

Going Down for Air

Going Down for Air PDF

Author: Derek Sayer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 131725872X

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What is hidden in the taste of a madeleine - or in snatches of Bob Dylan songs, operatic arias, and the remembered sting of a rattan cane? An exploration of memory, Going Down for Air artfully combines two very different yet connected texts. A Memoir is richly evocative not only of times past, but also of a very English, imperial, queerly masculine subjectivity, caught on the cusp of the extinction of the world in and of which it made sense. Derek Sayer's allusive writing succeeds as few have done before in capturing the leaps and bounds of memory itself. Rich in its detail, unstinting in its honesty, this beautifully written memoir is a considerable literary achievement. The memoir is complemented by Sayer's provocative theoretical essay on memory and social identity. Drawing on linguistic and psychoanalytic theory, photographic images, and literary texts, In Search of a Subject argues that it is memory above all that maintains the imagined identities upon which society rests. Going Down for Air is a bold and strikingly successful literary and sociological experiment, which makes a major contribution to understanding how our memories work - and gives them social meaning far beyond