The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding PDF

Author: Chad Harbach

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2011-09-07

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 0316192163

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

MFA vs NYC

MFA vs NYC PDF

Author: Chad Harbach

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0374712271

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Writers write—but what do they do for money? In a widely read essay entitled "MFA vs NYC," bestselling novelist Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding) argued that the American literary scene has split into two cultures: New York publishing versus university MFA programs. This book brings together established writers, MFA professors and students, and New York editors, publicists, and agents to talk about these overlapping worlds, and the ways writers make (or fail to make) a living within them. Should you seek an advanced degree, or will workshops smother your style? Do you need to move to New York, or will the high cost of living undo you? What's worse—having a day job or not having health insurance? How do agents decide what to represent? Will Big Publishing survive? How has the rise of MFA programs affected American fiction? The expert contributors, including George Saunders, Elif Batuman, and Fredric Jameson, consider all these questions and more, with humor and rigor. MFA vs NYC is a must-read for aspiring writers, and for anyone interested in the present and future of American letters.

The Brothers K

The Brothers K PDF

Author: David James Duncan

Publisher: Dial Press

Published: 2010-07-28

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 030775524X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality. This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. A father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident. A mother who clings obsessively to religion as a ward against the darkest hour of her past. Four brothers who come of age during the seismic upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with what the world has become. By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, and beautifully written throughout, The Brothers K is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years. Praise for The Brothers K “The pages of The Brothers K sparkle.”—The New York Times Book Review “Duncan is a wonderfully engaging writer.”—Los Angeles Times “This ambitious book succeeds on almost every level and every page.”—USA Today “Duncan’s prose is a blend of lyrical rhapsody, sassy hyperbole and all-American vernacular.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The Brothers K affords the . . . deep pleasures of novels that exhaustively create, and alter, complex worlds. . . . One always senses an enthusiastic and abundantly talented and versatile writer at work.”—The Washington Post Book World “Duncan . . . tells the larger story of an entire popular culture struggling to redefine itself—something he does with the comic excitement and depth of feeling one expects from Tom Robbins.”—Chicago Tribune

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game PDF

Author: Michael Lewis

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2004-03-17

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0393066231

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame." —Forbes Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge—insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.

The Natural

The Natural PDF

Author: Bernard Malamud

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2003-07-07

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 146680503X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new edition Introduction by Kevin Baker The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."

Grand Avenue

Grand Avenue PDF

Author: Joy Fielding

Publisher: Seal Books

Published: 2012-06-05

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0385674589

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

For four women, the bonds of friendship had sustained them for twenty years, through marriage, motherhood — and murder. Looking back, it seemed like paradise — lives filled with the blessings of friendship, marriage, children and career. Over twenty years, four friends shared everything through good times and bad, and together they faced the challenges of life and love head on. Now, one of their number sits alone to ponder the strange twists and turns of fate and the unpredictability of circumstance. Now, she must sift through each of their pasts to discover exactly what went wrong, how dreams turned to nightmares, how friendships faded and how lives were destroyed. In this powerful novel, Joy Fielding explores the bonds women forge, the nature of friendships, and the meaning of unconditional love.

Shoeless Joe

Shoeless Joe PDF

Author: W. P. Kinsella

Publisher: Rosetta Books

Published: 2014-01-09

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0795311710

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The novel that inspired Field of Dreams: “A lyrical, seductive, and altogether winning concoction.” —The New York Times Book Review One of Sports Illustrated’s 100 Greatest Sports Books “If you build it, he will come.” When Ray Kinsella hears these mysterious words spoken in the voice of an Iowa baseball announcer, he is inspired to carve a baseball diamond in his cornfield. It is a tribute to his hero, the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose reputation was forever tarnished by the scandalous 1919 World Series. What follows is a timeless story that is “not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “A triumph of hope.” —The Boston Globe “A moonlit novel about baseball, dreams, family, the land, and literature.” —Sports Illustrated

The Digested Read

The Digested Read PDF

Author: John Crace

Publisher: RDR Books

Published: 2005-12

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9781571431592

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct. From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions of Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross.

Becoming America

Becoming America PDF

Author: James Glisson

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300247565

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Celebrating two collectors' passion for Americana and the window it provides into the everyday beauty of the past Becoming America offers a multifaceted view of one of the foremost collections of 18th- and 19th-century American folk and decorative art from the rural Northeast. Essays by leading specialists discuss the culture of furniture workshops, exuberant painted decoration, techniques of sewing and quilting, and poignant stories about the families depicted in the portraits. The collection itself includes Shaker boxes, a beaded Iroquois hat, embroidered samplers, metalwork, scrimshaw, handwoven rugs, ceramics, and a weather vane. The majority of these works have never before been published. With lively essays and profuse illustrations, this handsome volume brings to life the aesthetic of early Americans living in the countryside and is an essential exploration of the period's taste and style. Distributed for The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Exhibition Schedule: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA (October 22, 2016-ongoing)