Notes on a Life

Notes on a Life
Author: Eleanor Coppola
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2010-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1423489055

Eleanor Coppola shares her life as an artist, filmmaker, wife, and mother in a book that captures the glamour and grit of Hollywood and reveals the private tragedies and joys that tested and strengthened her over the past twenty years. This book travels between the center of the film world and the intimate heart of her family. She looks at the vision that drives her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and describes her daughter Sofia's rise to fame with the film Lost in translation. Even as she visits faraway movie sets and attends parties, she is pulled back to pursue her own art, but is always focused on keeping her family safe. The death of their son Gio in a boating accident in 1986 and her struggle to cope with her grief and anger leads to a moving exploration of her deepest feelings as a woman and a mother.

Notes from the Night

Notes from the Night
Author: Taylor Plimpton
Publisher: Broadway
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9780307716231

Here in New York, a good night never ends. We will not let it. Though the hour is late, we are more awake than we have ever been in our lives, we are wild-eyed and grinning and dancing around like fools, and the music is thumping and the lights are flashing and the whole place is pulsating like a massive beating heart, and we do not want to go home, we do not want to go to sleep. Above all, we do not want to miss anything. So begins Notes from the Night, Taylor Plimpton's account of a night out in New York City. Passionately engaged and endlessly curious, Plimpton is part participant, part observer, a student and uniquely apt chronicler of human behavior--particularly at its most absurd. Accompanied by his best friend Zoo and a tight-knit band of other mischief-makers, and fueled by drinks, drugs and big dreams, Plimpton journeys from one Manhattan hotspot to the next with boundless energy and an eye for the dark, often comic realities of club culture. Exploring the myriad pleasures, mysteries and pitfalls of that elusive world, Notes from the Night is guide to a place ― and a state of mind ― that has never been mapped. With savvy advice and point-on commentary, the book ushers the reader through the velvet ropes to experience New York's most exclusive nightclubs. Surrounded by celebrities, models, and the best of friends, the reader will feel the rush of the party , the wonderful, heart-thumping panic of approaching a beautiful woman and the often forgotten joy of simply having a good time. By relentlessly pursuing the truth of his own experience, Plimpton uncovers the sexy, and seamy, lining of the city that never sleeps, and in so doing exposes what at heart is sought by all those who leave their home well after dark -- the singular thrill of being young and free and full of desire in a world where anything can happen. Plimpton is both an unlikely clubber and a likely seeker--a little bumbling and somewhat aloof, often naïve and unusually erudite. He's an insider who remembers what it was like to be an outsider, and from this unique perspective he invites you to experience the splendor, sorrow and possibility of New York after hours. Lyrically written and vividly described, this brisk, surprising and confident debut will stay with you long after the sun has risen. From the Hardcover edition.

Painting Below Zero

Painting Below Zero
Author: James Rosenquist
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2009-10-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307263428

From James Rosenquist, one of our most iconic pop artists—along with Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein—comes this candid and fascinating memoir. Unlike these artists, Rosenquist often works in three-dimensional forms, with highly dramatic shifts in scale and a far more complex palette, including grisaille and Day-Glo colors. A skilled traditional painter, he avoided the stencils and silk screens of Warhol and Lichtenstein. His vast canvases full of brilliant, surreally juxtaposed images would influence both many of his contemporaries and younger generations, as well as revolutionize twentieth-century painting. Ronsequist writes about growing up in a tight-knit community of Scandinavian farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota in the late 1930s and early 1940s; about his mother, who was not only an amateur painter but, along with his father, a passionate aviator; and about leaving that flat midwestern landscape in 1955 for New York, where he had won a scholarship to the Art Students League. George Grosz, Edwin Dickinson, and Robert Beverly Hale were among his teachers, but his early life was a struggle until he discovered sign painting. He describes days suspended on scaffolding high over Broadway, painting movie or theater billboards, and nights at the Cedar Tavern with Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and the poet LeRoi Jones. His first major studio, on Coenties Slip, was in the thick of the new art world. Among his neighbors were Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, and Jack Youngerman, and his mentors Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Rosenquist writes about his shows with the dealers Richard Bellamy, Ileana Sonnabend, and Leo Castelli, and about colorful collectors like Robert and Ethel Scull. We learn about the 1971 car crash that left his wife and son in a coma and his own life and work in shambles, his lobbying—along with Rauschenberg—for artists’ rights in Washington D.C., and how he got his work back on track. With his distinct voice, Roseqnuist writes about the ideas behind some of his major paintings, from the startling revelation that led to his first pop painting, Zone, to his masterpiece, F-III, a stunning critique of war and consumerism, to the cosmic reverie of Star Thief. This is James Rosenquist’s story in his own words—captivating and unexpected, a unique look inside the contemporary art world in the company of one of its most important painters.

The Scraps Book

The Scraps Book
Author: Lois Ehlert
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2014-03-04
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1442435720

The renowned Caldecott Honoree and illustrator of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom provides a moving, intimate, and inspiring inside look at her colorful picture book career. Lois Ehlert always knew she was an artist. Her parents encouraged her from a young age by teaching her how to sew and saw wood and pound nails, and by giving her colorful art supplies. They even gave her a special spot to work that was all her own. Today, many years and many books later, Lois takes readers and aspiring artists on a delightful behind-the-scenes tour of her books and her book-making process. Part fascinating retrospective, part moving testament to the value of following your dreams, this richly illustrated picture book is sure to inspire children and adults alike to explore their own creativity.

Notes from the Life of a Total Genius

Notes from the Life of a Total Genius
Author: Stacey Matson
Publisher: Scholastic Canada
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2016-08-30
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1443148237

A new year, a new controversy, and another way to make Kennedy mad . . . Arthur Bean is back! With Robbie in another city (thank goodness for texting) and Kennedy as his co-editor of the school newspaper, Arthur's final year at Terry Fox Jr. High is off to a rocky start. A chance to produce his own play gives him visions of fame and (finally!) the respect he is sure he deserves, but that's all dashed when the new principal challenges the content of Arthur's play. Never one to take no for an answer, Arthur uses his wit (and his own column in the school paper) to skewer censorship . . . He so irks the principal that now the grad prom is in danger of being cancelled --much to Kennedy's dismay. In typical fashion, Arthur won't back down, even when Kennedy pleads with him. Torn between the wishes of his fellow students and his own best chance for fame, what will Arthur decide?

Book by Book

Book by Book
Author: Michael Dirda
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1429900288

A Pulitzer Prize-winning critic's often surprising meditation on those places where life and books intersect and what might be learned from both Once out of school, most of us read for pleasure. Yet there is another equally important, though often overlooked, reason that we read: to learn how to live. Though books have always been understood as life-teachers, the exact way in which they instruct, cajole, and convince remains a subject of some mystery. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word can inform and enrich nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death. Organized by significant life events and abounding with quotations from great writers and thinkers, Book by Book showcases Dirda's considerable knowledge, which he wears lightly. Favoring showing rather than telling, Dirda draws the reader deeper into the classics, as well as lesser-known works of literature, history, and philosophy, always with an eye to what is relevant to how we might better understand our lives.

Notes on an Execution

Notes on an Execution
Author: Danya Kukafka
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 006305275X

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE 2023 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL • NEW YORK TIMES BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR “Defiantly populated with living women . . . beautifully drawn, dense with detail and specificity . . . Notes on an Execution is nuanced, ambitious and compelling.” —Katie Kitamura, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Editors' Choice) "A searing portrait of the complicated women caught in the orbit of a serial killer. . . . Compassionate and thought-provoking." –BRIT BENNETT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half Recommended by New York Times Book Review • Los Angeles Times • Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • Esquire • Good Housekeeping • USA Today • Buzzfeed • Goodreads • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Rolling Stone • Business Insider • Bustle • PopSugar • The Millions • The Guardian • and many more! In the tradition of Long Bright River and The Mars Room, a gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense that deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row, told primarily through the eyes of the women in his life—from the bestselling author of Girl in Snow. Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake. Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men. "Poetic and mesmerizing . . . Powerful, important, intensely human, and filled with a unique examination of tragedy, one where the reader is left with a curious emotion: hope." —USA TODAY “A profound and staggering experience of empathy that challenges us to confront what it means to be human in our darkest moments. . . . I relished every page of this brilliant and gripping masterpiece."—ASHLEY AUDRAIN, New York Times bestselling author of The Push

Leone: Notes on a Life

Leone: Notes on a Life
Author: Carmine Di Giandomenico
Publisher:
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2021-09-21
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781534320178

Leone arrived to the States from Southern Italy on aboat, a story common to many. Once in New York, he worked on construction sitesof skyscrapers and buildings, filling his days with effort and music. Called toarms by his country he goes back home, leaving the life that he built forhimself in the States, lovers and friends, to fight the war - and save manylives. The life of Leone contains so many stories:the stories of all those who left home but never forgot their origins, and whospread courage and love in the world before going backhome. Leone is a symbol of courage andstrength, an unstoppable force guided by just one need: to go backhome. LEONE is a true story of an Italian manwho migrated to the US to seek fortune, freedom and jazz. From the stage of hislast concert in New York City before going back home, through the sound of histrumpet Leone tells us about his past and future, a tale made of jazz, memoriesand time leaps. An emotional trip by superstar artist Carmine Di Giandomenico(The Flash, Daredevil: Battlin' Jack Murdock) and the talented FrancescoColafella. Immigration seen from the eyes ofwho's leaving home, a common theme to men and women all over theworld.

Notes on Life and Letters

Notes on Life and Letters
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2009-03-31
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 142704550X

Notes on Life and Letters is a collection of twenty-six essays by Joseph Conrad. These essays present a fluctuating outlook of his literary views and concerns about the events of his time such as the Titanic Disaster and the First World War. Engrossing and insightful!In 1894, at age 36, Conrad reluctantly gave up the sea, partly because of poor health and partly because he had decided on a literary career.

A Dream Life

A Dream Life
Author: Claire Messud
Publisher:
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2021-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781649697295

A JEWEL OF A NOVEL BY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER CLAIRE MESSUD. When the Armstrong family moves from New York at the dawn of the 1970s, Australia feels, to Alice Armstrong, like the end of the earth. Residing in a grand manor on the glittering Sydney Harbour, her family finds their life has turned upside down. As she navigates this strange new world, Alice must find a way to weave an existence from its shimmering mirage. Lies and self-deception are at the heart of this keenly observed story. This is a sharp, biting and playful tale with a cast of unscrupulous characters adrift in a dream life of their own making. Written with the characteristic delicacy of touch, humour and emotional insight that make Claire Messud one of our greatest writers. '[Messud is] among our greatest contemporary writers.' -- The New Yorker 'A perfect frolic of a book, puffed on breezes of beauty and wit: it waltzes you through a little fear, a little darkness, and tips you out, refreshed and laughing, into the sun.' -- Helen Garner 'Witty, arch and acutely observed, A Dream Life expertly captures the excruciating insecurities of class in our supposedly classless society.' -- Geraldine Brooks 'A novelist of unnerving talent.' -- The New York Times