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For decades, acclaimed author John Barth has strayed from his Monday–through–Thursday–morning routine of fiction–writing and dedicated Friday mornings to the muse of nonfiction. The result is Final Fridays, his third essay collection, following The Friday Book (1984) and Further Fridays (1995). Sixteen years and six novels since his last volume of non–fiction, Barth delivers yet another remarkable work comprised of 27 insightful essays. With pieces covering everything from reading, writing, and the state of the art, to tributes to writer–friends and family members, this collection is witty and engaging throughout. Barth's "unaffected love of learning" (San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle) and "joy in thinking that becomes contagious" (Washington Post), shine through in this third, and, with an implied question mark, final essay collection.
New York Times bestselling sportswriter John Feinstein exposes the real “March Madness”—behind the scenes at the Final Four basketball tournament. When Stevie wins a writing contest for aspiring sports journalists, his prize is a press pass to the Final Four in New Orleans. While exploring the Superdome, he overhears a plot to throw the championship game. With the help of fellow contest winner Susan Carol, Stevie has just 48 hours to figure out who is blackmailing one of the star players . . . and why. John Feinstein has been praised as “the best writer of sports books in America today” (The Boston Globe), and he proves it again in this fast-paced novel. “A page-turning thriller and a basketball junkie’s bonanza.” —USA Today
The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.
American Book Review is not just a book review—it is also the heart and soul of writerly writing and small press publishing. In 2006, the publication was relocated to Victoria, Texas, where cultural critic and philosopher Jeffrey R. Di Leo became editor and publisher. Turning the Page collects Di Leo’s contributions to American Book Review from his more recent “Page 2” entries on “social reading” and book bannings in Arizona to his early engagements with the work of Raymond Federman and Harold Jaffe. The common themes are book and publishing culture, and how they intersect with current problems in the humanities, including the rise of neoliberalism. “There is no dimension of contemporary book culture that Jeffrey Di Leo doesn’t examine beautifully in Turning the Page. These essays are essential reading for everyone who cares about the state of literature today.”—Charles Johnson, author, Middle Passage “For the past decade, Jeffrey Di Leo, the editor of American Book Review, has been a witty, genial, super-well-informed, and incisive guide to what’s been happening on the literary scene as well as the public world beyond it.”—Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities Emerita, Stanford University “Literary culture is going through convulsions not seen since the emergence of the printing press, which is exactly why Jeffrey Di Leo’s Turning the Page is such necessary reading.”—Steve Tomasula, author, TOC: A New-Media Novel
The theme of The Planetary Clock is the representation of time in postmodern culture and the way temporality as a global phenomenon manifests itself differently across an antipodean axis. To trace postmodernism in an expansive spatial and temporal arc, from its formal experimentation in the 1960s to environmental concerns in the twenty-first century, is to describe a richer and more complex version of this cultural phenomenon. Exploring different scales of time from a Southern Hemisphere perspective, with a special emphasis on issues of Indigeneity and the Anthropocene, The Planetary Clock offers a wide-ranging, revisionist account of postmodernism, reinterpreting literature, film, music, and visual art of the post-1960 period within a planetary framework. By bringing the culture of Australia and New Zealand into dialogue with other Western narratives, it suggests how an antipodean impulse, involving the transposition of the world into different spatial and temporal dimensions, has long been an integral (if generally occluded) aspect of postmodernism. Taking its title from a Florentine clock designed in 1510 to measure worldly time alongside the rotation of the planets, The Planetary Clock ranges across well-known American postmodernists (John Barth, Toni Morrison) to more recent science fiction writers (Octavia Butler, Richard Powers), while bringing the US tradition into juxtaposition with both its English (Philip Larkin, Ian McEwan) and Australian (Les Murray, Alexis Wright) counterparts. By aligning cultural postmodernism with music (Messiaen, Ligeti, Birtwistle), the visual arts (Hockney, Blackman, Fiona Hall), and cinema (Rohmer, Haneke, Tarantino), this volume enlarges our understanding of global postmodernism for the twenty-first century.
Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play. “Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues—from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.
When John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse appeared in 1968, American fiction was turned on its head. Barth’s writing was not a response to the realistic fiction that characterized American literature at the time; it beckoned back to the founders of the novel: Cervantes, Rabelais, and Sterne, echoing their playfulness and reflecting the freedom inherent in the writing of fiction. This collection of Barth’s short fiction is a landmark event, bringing all of his previous collections together in one volume for the first time. Its occasion helps readers assess a remarkable lifetime’s work and represents an important chapter in the history of American literature. Dalkey Archive will reissue a number of Barth’s novels over the next few years, preserving his work for generations to come.
“A rendering of a deep and lasting friendship . . . Dozens of anecdotes about Sweets and Ivins and their rollicking adventures in cooking and eating.” —Denver Post You probably knew Molly Ivins as an unabashed civil libertarian who used her sharp wit and good ole Texas horse sense to excoriate political figures she deemed unworthy of our trust and respect. But did you also know that Molly was one helluva cook? And we’re not just talking chili and chicken-fried steak, either. Molly Ivins honed her culinary skills on visits to France, often returning with perfected techniques for saumon en papillote or delectable clafouti aux cerises. Friends who had the privilege of sharing Molly’s table got not only a heaping helping of her insights into the political shenanigans of the day, but also a mouth-watering meal, prepared from scratch with the finest ingredients. In Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins, her longtime friend, fellow reporter, and frequent sous-chef Ellen Sweets takes us into the kitchen with Molly and introduces us to the private woman behind the public figure. She serves up her own and others’ favorite stories about Ivins as she recalls the fabulous meals they shared, complete with recipes for thirty-five of Molly’s signature dishes. Friends who ate with Molly knew a cultured woman who was a fluent French speaker, voracious reader, rugged outdoors aficionado, music lover, loyal and loving friend, and surrogate mom to many of her friends’ children, as well as to her super-spoiled poodle. They also came to revere the courageous woman who refused to let cancer stop her from doing what she wanted, when she wanted. This is the Molly you’ll be delighted to meet in Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins. “Ms. Sweets’s anecdotes about the cast of characters who roundtabled Ms. Ivins’s home are as satisfying as the Texas pistol’s concoctions.” ―The Wall Street Journal
Award winning fine artist Joe Pearce brings wisdom, humor, and creative perspective to the trials, tribulations, and party that is life. After growing up in the drug culture of the 70’s, Joe Pearce turned to a fundamentalist church for personal redemption. He felt called to become a traveling evangelist and musical artist, which is how he met his wife. Joe eventually transitioned away from that belief system to become part of corporate America. Joe was working a job in financial services, 20 years into marriage, when his wife developed severe schizophrenia. The Art of My Life explores Joe’s struggles with care taking for, and coping with, his wife’s illness. Joe tells a raw, blatantly honest narrative of his unique life experiences while weaving in themes of his and other's art with the hopes of helping people find their passion along their own unique paths.
Cincinnati Magazine taps into the DNA of the city, exploring shopping, dining, living, and culture and giving readers a ringside seat on the issues shaping the region.